Page 43 of The Holiday Honeymoon Switch
“Good bourbon is never a bad idea,” Oliver says, accepting a tumbler full of water from Larry after she pours Ivy’s and drinking half of it in one gulp. “But apparently, sometimes itisa bad idea.”
“Yes, well, you were talking my ear off before bed,” Larry says dryly, glancing at Ivy.
“I’m sure it was just gibberish,” he says quickly. “No need to discuss anything I may have said in present company. Anyway, I’vegotto get myself feeling better for work.” He rubs his head again and groans. “This is an important day.”
“Busy day at the hotel?” Ivy asks.
Oliver shakes his head. “I’m off for the next two days. I’ve got a camping trip planned at Na Pali, a state park. I need one more shot for myNational Geographicassignment. I’ve got all the wave images I plan to include, but there’s a waterfall there I’ve been trying to catch the perfect image of for years. Maybe I’m just used to getting pounded by waves, but it’s elusive, and it was part of the pitch to the magazine.”
“I keep telling him the shots he has are incredible, but Oliver is a perfectionist—which is probably whyNationalGeographicis always beating down his door with assignments.”
“I needtheshot, not justashot,” Oliver insists, gulping more water. He stands. “I also need Advil.”
He ambles inside, still rubbing his head. Larry watches him go, then turns back to Ivy. “What did you say your plan was for today? Just walking up the beach, looking for inspiration?” Ivy nods. “You should go with him! Talk about inspiration. Na Pali is gorgeous.” She grabs her phone from the tabletop and scooches her chair closer to Ivy’s. “Hang on, let me find the album from the last time we camped there.” She scrolls for a moment before turning the screen toward Ivy as she thumbs her way through photos of jagged cliffs and pristine beaches with otherworldly colors as Ivy looks on, dazzled.
“Wow,” Ivy exclaims as she looks at a photo of a cliff range that appears to have been hand-carved by some mysterious god. The sharp angles rise into peaks that resemble castles; the colors tumble and pitch from deep forest green to sunshine yellow. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Not even here, and I’ve seen a lot of beauty on these beaches already.”
“Na Pali is really something else.”
The next photo is of a waterfall that flows down the side of a cliff like the water is made of delicate spiderwebs. It’s not especially big or powerful, but the way it flows is almost ghostly. “And here is Oliver’s waterfall.”
“The water looks like strands of silk. I can see why he might be finding capturing it so challenging.”
“He’s become a bit obsessed, but I don’t blame him.”
Ivy imagines what it might be like to try to draw those spun-silk strands of water, let alone capture them in a still photograph. She’d love to try, she realizes.
Larry scrolls to the next photo; it’s of a campsite at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Shira is there, holding up a tin camping mug. Larry has her arm around her, and they’ve both been caught mid-laugh. “You know, I can’t believe I ever thought you were with Oliver,” Ivy says with a laugh. “You and Shira are clearly perfect for each other.”
Larry smiles down at the image fondly. “I can’t wait to see her—she’s been back in LA, finishing postproduction on a film. She’s a director. Her arrival is why I can’t go camping with Ollie. I have to work so I can hand the reins over to a few of my staff and take some time off to be with her over the holidays.” Larry is scrolling again through the photos. “Look at that view, Ivy. That’s the Hanakapi‘ai Valley. It’s beautiful here near Hanalei, yes, but being out on this more rugged coastline is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“I can’t,” Ivy says firmly.
“Why not?” But then Larry stops scrolling through photos and puts her phone down on the table. “Sorry. I shouldn’t pressure you. Shira is always saying that just because my ideas seem great tomeand I think everyone should always do what I say so the world would be a better place”—shelaughs and so does Ivy—“does not mean that everyone else has to agree.”
“No, it really does seem like a great idea. I just…”
“I get it. You don’t know Oliver well enough to want to go off camping in the wilderness with him.”
“I guess so,” Ivy says, but she knows this is a half-truth, that she’s always been an adventurer and that she feels she knows Oliver well enough to go camping with him. “It’s not that.”
Larry’s voice is soft now. “What is it, then? Are you okay?”
“Sorry. Those cocktails are coming back to haunt me. My head’s a bit foggy.” She sighs. “But no, I’m not okay. I’m being a bit ridiculous about something. And I need to quit it. Na Pali looks like a landscape artist’s dream. When else will I ever get the chance to draw scenery like that, from real life?” She reaches for Larry’s phone again and looks at the kaleidoscope of colors in the state park, the waterfalls, the streams, the breathtaking cliffs. She can feel her fingers tingle and itch with a yearning to translate all that onto paper with her pastels. It would be her best work, and she knows it.Maybeeven good enough to want to tell the gallery owners who still call her sometimes that she has work she wants to show.
The next photo she scrolls to features a flock of seabirds flying through the sky as a lone fish jumps out of the dawn-flat ocean below.
“Wow, that’s agreatshot, Larry!”
“Every once in a while I take some of the stuff I’ve learned from being friends with Oliver and catch something special on my phone’s camera,” Larry says. “He’s right that it takes patience. And a bit of luck.”
Ivy gazes down at the photo—and all at once, a line comes into her head from the one romantic movie, other thanMeet Joe Black, that she has always had a weak spot for:Ever After, the “Cinderella” retelling featuring Drew Barrymore.
She can see Drew’s lovely, sweet, heartbroken face, hear her voice as she utters the line “A bird may love a fish, but where would they live?”
But she’s not in love with Oliver. That’s ridiculous. They’ve just met. It’s chemical, a physical attraction. That’sall. Okay, maybe a tiny bit intellectual, too, and maybe he’s turning out to be one of the sweetest, weirdest, quirkiest, most thoughtful men she’s ever met. And maybe she also likes his sense of humor. And his dedication to his art. But she can fight it.
Can’t she?
