Page 66 of Unworthy
“Yeah, sorry, Mia.” Violence of any kind wasn’t easy for Mia to be around. All the anger drained out of both of us.
“I’m fine. It’s you lot that have lost the plot. You’ve both been total shits to Yaz, well done for finally admitting as much, but punching each other isn’t going to solve anything.”
I kept my mouth shut, but I didn’t exactly agree with Mia there. I don’t really think there was ever a way I could have snogged Max’s sister and not been punched in the face. And anyway, it had cleared the air more effectively than any amount of discourse. Max was not a very verbal guy.
In all that went on, I hadn’t noticed Yaz get out of the bed and make her way over to me until her small hand slipped into mine.
“Max, don’t hit my boyfriend again, you numpty,” she said. Her voice was back to calm, serene Yaz, emotionless despair now absent. I gave her hand a squeeze at the word boyfriend as hope shot through me for the first time in weeks. She looked up at me then and again the world faded away. “I’m rather in love with him, you see. And I like his face the way it is.”
I could hear her dad in the background asking what the hell was going on. Her mum still banging on about Yaz coming to stay with them, but it was like Yaz and I were in our own bubble.
“I’ll let you give me the sea,” she said, her voice the only one I could hear now. I smiled down at her and we started walking out of the cubicle with our family and friends trailing behind. “I only ever liked you for your house, anyway.”
“Little shit,” I muttered as I grabbed her discharge letter from a colleague, and we left the department.
Epilogue
Butterfly in a jar
Yaz
“Okay, I looked into it and there is some trial data that backs up your sea swimming therapy stuff,” Heath admitted as we made our way down to the shore. During my recovery from the dislocated shoulder, I’d convinced him to come into the water with me before work every day, and now it was a habit. I maintained that a man couldn’t live with a view like Heath’s and not sea swim on a daily basis. We’d just had to get around Heath’s slight aversion to cold and early mornings. I’d been waking up at dawn since my teens, so I barely noticed it. But for Heath, it took some adjusting.
“Ha, I told you!”
“I still don’t understand how freezing my balls off every morning helps me live longer.”
“Your balls are fine.”
“You should hope so.” He gave me a smug grin, and I rolled my eyes. “Jesus Christ,” he snapped as his toes hit the water. “Okay – kiss me and I’ll go in.”
This was pretty much standard. He fussed like an old woman about how cold the water was, demanded a kiss and then eventually made his way in and happily swam half a mile up the coast with me. Same routine for the last six months.
After I’d recuperated at Heath’s house, he managed to convince me to move in, seeing as Bryn’s daughter really did need me to vacate the flat. I wasn’t sure if we should move so fast, but Heath was so adamant that he’d lost too much time with me already due to his being a ‘stubborn blind prick of the highest magnitude’. He begged me to not make him wait, using Winnie as additional emotional blackmail – apparently I was an essential component of her recovery. Heath convinced that both man and dog had abandonment issues which I would be compounding if I refused to move in with them permanently.
I’d been back on the water and teaching now for the last few months. Dee had become my partner, and we were able to put much more emphasis on the kids’ teaching programme than before. I’d hired another two instructors to help us out with the yoga, and the vetting process for employment at Ocean Blue, our new company name, had become a lot more rigorous since I discovered that Bodhi wasn’t even Nigel Fuller’s real name. I expect he’d just watchedPoint Breaka few too many times and thought that the name ‘Bodhi’ would fit the persona he was projecting. I was using a proper accountant now as well – she was actually the same one Max used. That was another big change. I’d learnt that accepting help from my family wasn’t the end of the world, and that I didn’t have to sacrifice my pride in order to do so – although I’d yet to accept the money my parents insisted I was owed. I knew it upset them, but I was holding on to that small bit of resentment for their dismissive attitude over the years. It would take me a bit longer to shake that off, but I was getting there. Mum had started occasionally coming to beginner yoga sessions. She even accepted a special pot of essential oils I mixed up for her to help with constipation.
Once Heath and I got far enough out, he dived down under the water and I followed. He’d been trying to learn how to free dive over the last few weeks and could nearly hold his breath for as long as me. When we were both hovering above the ocean floor, he touched my arm and I turned to him. He was fumbling about with his pocket with one hand, while struggling to stay under the water with the other. I cocked my head to the side and floated next to him, my hands rhythmically pushing the water away so that I didn’t float back up. Heath frowned and a stream of bubbles left his mouth. It looked like he was swearing to himself. I smiled and swam over to him, rested my hands on either side of his face, and kissed his mouth. He stopped yanking away at his pocket and pulled me towards him to kiss me back. We both floated up and broke the surface with our mouths still connected. When he pulled back, he was looking at me with the same awestruck expression I’d grown accustomed to. My arms were around his neck, his resting on my waist. I gave him another light kiss on the lips.
“Wanna skip the mile today and find another way to get those endorphins going for a bit?” I asked, giving him a wink and a wide smile.
“Yeah,” he rumbled. “Let’s go back–” then he closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, no!”
“Er… okay?” I said, thoroughly confused. “We don’t have to–”
“Grr! No, I mean yes to that. Very much, yes. Just… crap, wait a minute.”
He was back to fiddling with his pocket again. I raised both my eyebrows expectantly.
“Ah, fucking finally,” he said, withdrawing a small box from his pocket just as a large wave crashed over our heads. When we both came up for air, spluttering with the water we weren’t prepared to inhale, Heath fumbled with the box trying to open it and it fell into the water. With reflexes honed from years of practice, I flew down after it and grabbed it before the wave could carry it away.
“Here you go,” I said, handing the small box to Heath, who was now looking thoroughly disgruntled.
“You do realise I’m known as a pretty smooth operator with everyone but you,” he grumped. “This was supposed to beperfect.”
“What was? What’s in the…?” My mouth fell open as I put it all together.
“It was supposed to be under the water. I would sign that I loved you, offer you the ring on the sea floor, and then we’d float up together in perfect synchrony. Then–”
