Where the Stars Still Shine(29)
“Callie!” Kat blows into the store like a breeze and whisks me away from Alex as if he’s not even there, leaving me to wonder what he was going to say. What was he thinking?
She’s wearing a simple navy-blue dress that skims her knees and is ultraconservative compared to the skinny jeans and short shorts she usually wears, and her makeup is lighter than normal, too.
“Ugh, I know,” she says, pulling me toward the dressing room. “My mom will not let me wear anything even remotely cute to church. Must. Change. Immediately.”
I glance over my shoulder at Alex, who gives me a two-fingered wave and leaves.
“What did he want?” Kat asks, from the other side of the closed curtain.
“Nothing,” I say. “He was just saying hi.”
She snorts, and I wonder if there is something in their common history that makes her hate him—beyond her perception that he’s a man whore, I mean. Why does she care? But I don’t ask. Not here.
Kat emerges a couple minutes later wearing a pale-yellow Tarpon Sponge Supply Co. T-shirt, denim shorts, and leather sandals. Her lips are slicked with her signature rosy gloss and her lashes spiked with mascara, making her the girl I recognize.
“Good shirt choice.” As she selects a shell necklace from the jewelry rack and fastens it around her neck, I notice she’s wearing a black cord around her wrist with an evil eye bead knotted in the middle. “That color looks amazing with your skin tone.”
“Where did you get that bracelet?”
“Oh, you can buy evil eye bracelets everywhere around here,” she says. “Mine was one of those stretchy, elastic kinds with beads all the way around, but I wore it so much the band disintegrated. I saved one of the beads and threaded it on a cord. If you want one, you can get one right across the street.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out my matching bead. “I’ve had it as long as I can remember, but I don’t know where it came from.”
“We got them from Greg,” Kat says. “I don’t really remember it either because we were little, but apparently he brought us down here one day and we begged for them until we broke him down.”
“That’s it?” Most of my life I’ve thought this stupid bead actually meant something. I can’t believe it was just a trinket to pacify a pair of demanding four-year-olds.
She laughs. “They’re not magic or anything. It’s just an Old World superstition. But how cool is it that we both still have them?” Kat plucks mine from my palm. “I’ll string it for you. Then we’ll match again.”
It feels strange letting it go, but I don’t take it back. “Theo says we’re supposed to go on the eleven o’clock tour. He wants me to familiarize myself with sponging.”
Kat rolls her eyes and fishes her cell phone from the pocket of her shorts. “Wonderful.” She texts someone as she talks. “We’ll have front-row seats for the Alex Kosta show.”
A trio of older women come into the store to buy tickets for the tour, followed by a group of German high school students with a couple of adult chaperones. While I ring up the tickets and some T-shirts for the Germans, Kat tries to sell a chunky bar of honey-almond soap to the older ladies.
“It’s magic. I swear,” I hear her say, with the same outgoing charm Theo uses. “I might look seventeen, but really? I’m thirty-five.”
One woman nudges her friend and says, “If this soap could make me look seventeen again, I’d go after that Greek boy outside. He’s a hunk.” As the trio giggle, Kat turns toward me and makes a face as if she’s gagging. She also makes the sale.
Theo returns right before the tour, and Kat and I head outside to wait for the boat to board. Alex is getting his picture taken with his arm around the woman who called him a hunk, which makes Kat groan. “God, he’s so annoying.”
Her cell phone buzzes. She looks at the screen and smiles. “I hope you don’t mind, but I invited Nick and Connor to go with us. I figured if we had company, it would be less lame.”
I really don’t want to see Connor, but it’s too late. I spot his floppy hair above the crowd of German teens as he and Nick make their way toward us.
“Hello there, Kit Kat.” Nick greets her with a kiss, while Connor hangs back. He offers me a tentative smile and I counter with one of my own, but neither of us speak.
A couple of men move a boarding ramp up alongside the boat, which is a replica of the original boats from when they first started diving for sponges in Tarpon Springs. Or at least that’s what it says in the brochures we keep on the desk in the shop. The boat is lined with benches for passengers and the deck is covered by a canvas canopy for shade. Alex stands in the middle, his casual Greek outfit replaced by an old-fashioned one-piece dive suit with a heavy brass collar and weighted shoes strapped to his feet. Kat chooses a stretch of bench for us near the stern of the boat—as far away from Alex as we can be—and Connor sits beside me.
All around us, tourists are snapping photos with their cameras and phones of the Anclote River, of the sponge docks from the boat, and of Alex. It’s so odd that he’s a tourist attraction, but he is—and he makes the most of it, flashing his knee-weakening grin at every female on the boat, posing for pictures, and answering questions even though the tour hasn’t even started yet. He leans in to listen as if their questions are special and intimate, and the stupidity of my thinking I might be something more makes my face hot.