Eleven a.m. and no sign of a firefighter. Julián's entire supply of cookies that he'd hand out to blood donors had been shared between all thirty-three of us, and I was starving. Gloria was probably feeding Will gorditas and chocolate while my stomach rumbled like the quake.
"Where's Jules?" I asked, suddenly remembering how surprised I'd been to see Selena in the studio instead of her.
"She's home, probably. I do six a.m. classes now. She and Lars are doing a FlowYoga video shoot today. Well, they were gonna." The mention of Lars seemed to take Selena to a new level of dejected. On top of her injuries from the quake, she looked like she hadn't slept for weeks. "Jules's place is north-east so she won't have felt the worst of the tremors anyways."
I guessed that Jules had a good insurance policy on her rental contract for the Pier Studio, given that it was suspended on fucking pillars in an earthquake zone. By sheer luck Selena had taken the six a.m. yoga class, saving Jules from the horror of seeing her beloved studio fall into the ocean, and I suspected that Jules wouldn't have been a fucking badass in a crisis like Selena had.
The Pier Studio's calendar had been packed with so many of California's big yoga events, I couldn't imagine that there was a single yoga studio in California with the same serene atmosphere; anywhere else would seem inadequate in comparison. But the selfish traitorous shibal-seki in me secretly thanked the Santa Elena Faultline for taking the studio down, hoping that its loss would delay Jules's purchase of FlowYoga, perhaps for long enough that Lars would have to fly home before the contracts could be signed.
The thought of Lars Eriksen moving to Cali set the contents of my stomach swirling. Selena looked equally as nauseated by the talk of Lars. Selena hadn't been the same since the West Coast Yoga Retreat, when she'd hidden herself in convenient corners, like she'd wanted to disappear completely.
"What's going on with you, Selena? All this," I said, lifting a section of her wavy black hair, lank and matted with dry blood. "You used to look like a carbon-copy of Jules."
"I'm...doing my own thing now," she said, with all the enthusiasm of a priestess whose idol had just been shattered before her eyes.
"Did Lars say something to you? Didn't he like that you dressed like Jules?"
Selena toyed with her bandage, fraying the end of it. "He doesn't care about that."
"Jules said that you don't like him because he keeps his fee for his masterclasses at the Retreat, when the other teachers give theirs to charity."
"It's not just that, Zeph. It's...it's everything about him." She pulled at her bandage. The end started to unravel. "He's always so friendly and charming in front of the cameras, or when the gurus and Swami Narayan are there. But he doesn't have to impress nobodies like me and Katelyn and Meena, so he doesn't even look at us. Sometimes I think that he can't stand Jules, and he's just hanging with us because it makes FlowYoga look good on Youtube."
I took her injured hand in mine, partly to stop her from pulling her fraying bandage off. "Why don't you think he wants to be with Jules?"
"Jules texted me from the beach, asking me to pick up programs and posters from her place on the first day of the Retreat. I heard Lars on her balcony, talking about Jules to someone on the phone. I don't know who he was talking to..." Selena tugged at her bandage again, the frayed end slipping before I could stop her. "He didn't even call Jules by her name. He called her The Walker Project."
Project.
I hadn't heard that word for weeks. Not since I'd left Sigma. I took Selena by the shoulders. "What did Lars say?"
Selena shrugged my hands off her shoulders, afraid. "Nothing. I...I don't care what he said."
I took her hand again. "It's OK. My lawyer friend is checking Lars Eriksen out for the D.A.'s Office. Making sure that Jules doesn't get hurt. Just tell me what Lars said."
Selena looked up at me like she was gonna cry. "He...he was talking to someone who was super-pissed on the phone. Lars was defending himself, saying that things were progressing with the Walker Project. He told them about Jules's studios, and the revenue from her book sales. He said that he'd have the money soon."
"So he's being blackmailed?" I needed to call Charlotte.
"Is that what's going on? Is Lars interested in Jules's money? Is that it?"
"Listen, Selena. If the D.A.'s Office calls you in the next couple of days to ask about Lars, will you be prepared to tell them the same as you told me just now?"
Selena shrank away. "I didn't hear anything really." She turned her face away to hide her haunted expression, eyes brimming with tears. "There's probably a simple explanation."
"It's OK. Nobody's gonna tell Jules that you spoke to the D.A.'s Office. They just wanna make sure that she isn't buying Lars's company without knowing all the facts, that's all."
"Is your lawyer friend gonna make Lars go back to Norway?" Selena's forehead crinkled, like she was mulling over the risk of losing Jules. "Jules is gonna be so hurt if Lars leaves her for good. She's never gonna talk to me again. She might fire me. I love my job so much, Zeph. I can't lose it."
Santa Maria, I felt like such a cold fucking asshole, but I still said it. "She knows that Lars isn't good for her and she's gotta leave him. We're just speeding up the process for her. She'd never fire you for helping her. She'll realize that you did it because you care. "
"I guess. But work is gonna suck if my boss hates me."
I pressed on, coaxing Selena to turn her best friend's boyfriend in to the police, like all the world's bad karma depended on it. "Jules would understand. You're friends."
Selena shook her head. "I don't think she's liked me for years, Zeph. Wearing whatever she's wearing, buying whatever she's buying. I even started yoga just because she did."
"She loves you, Selena. You've been friends since school, right?"
"Yeah." Selena peeked up at me with a proud little smile. "But it's so hard being friends with someone like Jules. She's so nice and everyone loves her, and Clive and Gloria are like...perfect parents. Jules is so pretty, and she knows everything about everything, and if she wants something, she just...makes it happen. I've always been following her around. I couldn't bear it if she didn't wanna be my friend anymore."
"Once Lars is out of the picture, she'll rely on you and Katelyn to take care of her. She'll need you." I was going to hell for this.
"But Lars is so hot and confident and rich, and he has this huge online following. Jules will just think I ratted him out because I'm jealous. She trusts him way more than she trusts me. When I overheard his phonecall, I was so angry that she'd not listened to me, I didn't wanna be like her anymore. I think she's done with me."
"Please, just think about it. Jules, above all, is fucking smart. She'll know that you're being a friend, not trying to sabotage shit." I tried to gather up the pieces of unraveled bandage and wrap them sloppily around Selena's wrist, but the entire thing slid off her arm and landed in a bloody lump on the carpet. "You know, you've been amazing recently, since you stopped trying to be like Jules."
"Really? I wanna be confident like her, but I end up just being rude. And I never looked pretty like her, even with the same outfits and hair. So I'm just gonna do what I want now. And Zeph? I'm so sorry for upsetting you, about Will."
"It's OK. Things are...complicated...between me and Will anyways."
"Complicated like...you're both ignoring how you feel because you're moving back to Korea?"
I laughed at that. That was exactly what was happening. It wasn't complicated at all. It just hurt.
"Yeah. But Will and me are gonna stay good friends. So it's OK." I looked up to see Julián staring intently at Selena from where he was nestled among a clutch of yoga students. "Hey, someone's looking at you."
"He's just pissed about my bandage," she replied, holding up the bloody rag with a shrug.
"So go get your arm fixed again," I said, pulling her up.
"He's so into Jules, there's no way he'd-"
"Did you see how he looked at you when you were being a total badass, dragging your students in here and aggressively administering medical care?"
"Shut up, Zeph," Selena groaned as I shoved her in the direction of Julián, who started redressing her arm, talking to her earnestly in his relaxation audio voice.
Selena thus occupied, I decided to fuck waiting for the firefighters and tore out of the building, down the broken lumps of seawall, and across the newly boulder-strewn stretch of Santa Elena Beach, home to Will.
After my minor heart attack at not being able to find Will, I ran to Gloria's. She wrenched open the front door and fell onto me, weeping.
"He's here, cariño! He's here!" Gloria bundled me against her front door with a bruising hug, releasing me when we heard thundering footsteps into the porch. The flash of a beard, two frightened eyes, and Will crashed headlong into me, folding his arms around me tight.
"I was so scared, I was so scared." He whispered into my hair for long moments, holding me so tightly that I couldn't draw in breath. He must have been going crazy with worry.
"Will, you're crushing me," I chuckled, pulling away before my lungs gave up. "I'm OK, really."
Will cradled my face and turned my head back and forth to examine my cuts, checking my head wound and tracing worried fingers over my knuckles, all ten of which were skinned and bloody.
"Your hands." Will looked heartbroken. "You're not gonna be able to play while they heal."
"I used to bust my knuckles up all the time when I was a kid. Still played piano just fine."
Will went on checking me, worrying at lacerations and bruises before taking me into his arms again, his scent all around me, like we were melting together.
I held tight, hoping that it would take his hours of worry away. After the horror of the quake, the nausea of tending to cut-up students, and Selena's revelation of Lars's blackmail, being back with Will was like having reached safe harbor after a long night in a storm. Nestled in Will's warmth I barely heard Gloria and Clive's voices in the distance, describing my messed-up state, worrying at my blood-soaked T-shirt.
"I'm OK, just a scratch or two." I showed Gloria the worst of my cuts, and when she was suitably convinced that I wasn't gonna die of blood loss, we both gave accounts of the trembling and splitting of the ground as the fault line shifted.
Seapoint Avenue hadn't been affected badly, save a few ornaments falling off shelves, and Clive taking a tumble. The phone lines were still down, but I assured a panic-stricken Clive and Gloria that, despite losing the Pier Studio, Jules and Lars had probably been asleep when the quake hit, and that Selena and the yoga students were safe.
There was little evidence of the quake at Will's place, apart from the tilted pictures on the walls, the staff paper scattered all over the sunroom, and the piano having rolled on its casters, coming to rest a hair's breadth away from Mozhgan's urn.
Will didn't let me out of his sight, his eyes still wild with tramadol-induced worry for me. He must have had a terrible morning.
"I tried to contact you using ToothGrind, in case you'd come to Arenosa to find me, but nothing happened."
"What?" Will's forehead corrugated like the tarmac on Arenosa's now-devastated beachfront avenue.
"You know. ToothGrind. That bluetooth app. You had it on your phone for when there's no phone signal on the beach. But it didn't work."
Will brightened a little, and headed into the kitchen. "Sorry, Zeph. I deleted it from my phone the night we arrived here from Maria."
"Guess I wouldn't have found you anyways then," I said, trailing after him. "Hey, now that I got a free day to practice, what you want me to play?"
Will slid a hand down his beard like he was selecting a piece from his mind's library, when his eyebrows rose suddenly. He went to the porch and fished around in his electrical kit bag, eventually pulling out a boxcutter, slicing at an object in his hand, then sheathing the knife away.
"I used Clive's drill to make something while I was waiting for you."
He held up a length of thick black cord with a speckled brown object dangling from it. I peered at it, unsure what it was at first. It was the little sandy-brown conch shell. Will had strung it onto cord to make a simple necklace.
I took the little shell into my palm, sliding the length of cord out of Will's hand. "Why?" I asked.
"When the tremors started I was so scared. I wanted to take something of yours with me. Don't know why. But you don't have anything. And I couldn't take the piano. So I took the shell." He'd wanted to take something of mine to Gloria's? Had he thought that I wasn't coming back? "You miss Sora so much. I thought...maybe you could...give that to her when you see her."
The shell twirled on its axis. I knew right then that I was never gonna give it to Nuna. I was gonna keep it forever. Perhaps Will had made it with that hope too, and Nuna was just a convenient excuse for the both of us.
"Thank you," I whispered, unable to rein back my smile, still clutching the necklace in both hands while the shell spun on its loop. "You sure you don't wanna keep it?"
Will didn't reply; he just sat there with that dumb faraway smile he sometimes wore, like the conversation in his head was way more fun than whatever I was saying to him.
I wanted to tell him that I understood. That he didn't need to use Nuna as an excuse. That we could just tell each other what was in our hearts. Couldn't we? But I'd left my courage back in Julián's general practice.
We didn't need to talk, anyways. We already had our little way of showing that we cared, when we weren't brave enough to say it.
"Will?" I dragged my eyes away from the twirling conch shell, letting them come to rest on Will. "You hungry?"
Will answered with the smoothest, lowest, bassiest rumble of laughter that I'd ever heard from him. "Yeah. I'm hungry."