After breakfast they caught a safari to Magen’s Bay.
The countryside was beautiful, and nearing the beach, trees arched down over the roadway. They bought drinks and then found a spot on the smooth, white sand. While Jeremy was stripping off his shorts and T-shirt, she spread her towel out on the sand, found her sunglasses, and lay down.
“Aren’t you going to take things off?” he asked.
Angelina took her shorts off and lay back down. Jeremy had gotten out his lotion.
“I can’t get your back with your shirt on.”
Angelina sat up and hugged her legs.
“Is something wrong?”
“Well, I forgot to bring my bathing suit. This one is borrowed and not quite to my...specifications.”
“We’re on St. Thomas. No one cares what your bathing suit looks like. Come. Let me give you a massage,” he suggested.
Reluctantly, she pulled her T-shirt over her head and balled it up next to her. She was wearing Safire’s bikini, the kind of thing she never wore. And though the sisters were similar in stature, Angelina was slightly better endowed in the front and the rear. She could feel the little straps cutting into her rump, and her breasts were almost pouring from the tiny little triangles in front—or at least she felt as if they were.
Jeremy’s jaw dropped. His eyes caressed her desirously.
“You look great in that,” he said. “It fits you like a glove.”
Angelina relaxed a bit, seeing the admiration in his eyes.
After he got the lotion on her, he lifted her up.
“What are you doing?”
He was heading for the surf. He got her into waist-high water and then lifted her to throw her in, but she clung to his neck, and only her legs dropped. Both of them were laughing.
“Hey,” she said after gaining her footing. “The water is warm. Let’s go in.”
She took off under the water, and he dove in to follow. They swam out a bit, then swam the length of the rounded, heart-shaped shore and came back.
“You’re a real swimmer,” he said as they gained their footing near the shoreline.
“I love the water. And this is so blue. Stand up and look down at your feet. You can see the little fish swimming around them.”
“Yeah, you can.”
They were neck deep in crystal-blue water. He lifted her in the water and spun her around, taking her into his arms to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, laughing, until the kiss became more serious. She could feel him beginning to swell against her.
He let her down, a wistful look in his eyes, and they started to swim again, this time to the other end of Magen’s Bay. After swimming and playing in the water for almost two hours, they padded back up to their towels.
“You’re not from Florida,” she said. “How did you learn to swim so well?”
“Actually, I was raised in Texas. My parents are still there. I went to Howard University, and as an undergraduate, you had to take swimming. I swam at the YMCA as a kid, but I got a C in swimming.”
She laughed. He did, too.
“That’s not funny. It brought my grade point average down.” That made her laugh harder. “I was then determined to master the art.”
“You had to take swimming?”
“At Howard, you still have to take swimming in Arts and Sciences.”
“If I wasn’t from North Miami, it might have brought my average down as well. But you’re not a nerd.”
Jeremy laughed. “Thank you, I guess. I played a bit in high school, though. I knew if I wanted to go on, I had to do well, so I was pretty determined in college. What about you?”
“I wanted the A. I got a B in chemistry lab and freaked out. I guess that’s one of the reasons I’m not a doctor now. Book stuff I could do. Practical application with beakers and Bunsen burners and goggles—no.”
They both laughed.
“Did you ever actually aspire to medical school?” he asked.
“No, I was always more arts than sciences.”
“I guess I was always more sciences than arts. I had to work in English, and I mean work.”
They both laughed again. Angelina wanted to tell him about her writing, but something stopped her. It was personal, as personal as sex, and as usual, she held back. After last night, maybe she didn’t need to. But the moment had passed.
After drying off in the sun, they caught the safari back to the ship. They had lunch, but after that, reason got the better of her. She hadn’t gotten much work done yet, so she begged off. He had dinner plans with his boys, so they decided to meet afterward. She could pick the activity.
She showered, rinsed out her sister’s swimsuit and spent the afternoon at the table in her room working on the syllabus for one of her classes and making notes for her paper on World War II political activism by Black women in Harlem.
Around six o’clock, she grabbed a sandwich and then camped out on the balcony with the Patterman book. After several chapters, though, she brought her laptop out to work on her creative writing.
That’s what she was doing when Jeremy called at a quarter of eight.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Dress comfortably, and meet me at the elevator on my side on the ninth deck.”
“What are we doing?”
“You’ll see.”
She already had on her jeans and a loose top, so she pulled on her sneakers, grabbed her room key, and headed out. She had picked the perfect activity for them.
He stepped off the elevator in casual slacks and a shirt.
“What are we doing?” he asked, seeing her mischievous grin.
“Skating.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. They have an inline skating rink.”
“Okay, but I don’t actually know how to Rollerblade.”
“Neither do I.”
They both laughed. They rented skates and had a hilarious time learning how to use them. At first, they held on to each other for support but only managed to topple each other over in the effort, giggling like kids. More than once Angelina found herself cushioned by Jeremy’s body—horizontal on the floor. And to her dismay, getting up in skates was much harder than falling down.
Once they managed to stay upright and get themselves parallel to one another, they locked hands and took slow, tentative glides—a foot or two to begin. In an hour or so, they were becoming rather proficient.
“I wonder,” Angelina said, “if they’d let us skate through one of the gardens.”
“We can stand,” Jeremy said, considering it. “But we’d still be a public menace.”
They both laughed.
“Okay, then that has to be next,” she said. “That or window shopping.”
“I think the stores are closed now.”
“That’s why it’s just window shopping.”
They laughed again.
Next they headed to the Admiral’s Arbor, one of the gardens. Both were surprised by how big it was. They held hands and wandered between the flowerbeds and hedge work. Then they found a bench with an ocean view and rested for a bit, their legs sore from skating.