The Dream Jumper's Promise

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

            The way he looked at her sometimes left Tina wondering if he still held some tenderness for her. Or if someone who dumped her that easily had felt much to begin with. If he tried anything romantic on the walk, she’d deck him. As much as any petite woman could deck a six foot, trained cop and soldier. “Okay, let’s walk.”

             They paid the bill, crossed the boardwalk and when Jamey stopped to helped lift a man from his wheelchair to join his wife on the beach. “I’ll be back in fifteen to help you back in,” he said. After taking off flip flops, they continued to the water’s edge.

            The cold sand felt good on Tina’s tired feet. The surf was so slight that barely enough water to be called a wave lapped gently against the beach. Ripples. Great night for a dive. She used to love diving at night like it was a forbidden PJ party activity.

            Jamey took a deep breath, only feet away from her. “I mentioned visualization because it’s a proven method used by a lot of counselors and psychiatrists, and it works. I don’t know where you stand on this sort of thing or if you’d be open to trying.”

            Tina turned north towards the infamous Black Rock, where long ago Hawaiians made human sacrifices to their god. “Visualization doesn’t exactly work for me. I tried it and other stuff. My grief counselor has me doing these relaxation exercises that make me fall asleep and have bizarre dreams.”

            He picked up a shell and threw it into the ocean. “So you’re saying you’re having hallucinations while diving and strange dreams at night?”

            She nodded.

             “Dreaming while asleep is extremely complex and entirely different from hallucinating. Jamey sounded like he was lecturing to a stranger.

             “What are you talking about?” All of a sudden, this guy didn’t seem like Jamey.

            “Seeing your husband’s form while diving could be a recollection from a dream or not. Do you believe in intuition?”

            “Yes.” Of course she did. She had great gut feelings on things. The sand was cool between her toes.

            “I do too.” He looked so intense.

            “And you have a feeling you can get me diving again. I get it but I am a widow with an unrecovered body for a dead husband and it’s driving me crazy. Not being able to dive is only the tip of the iceberg. I’m on all kinds of meds, I can’t sleep. I’m angry. I feel like that empty shell you just threw back in the ocean.” She looked into Jamey’s face. “My problems are really big.”

             “Remember that staring thing I did with you on the Molokini dive?”

             “You know I do.”

            Jamey’s face was lit by the tiki torches wedged into the massive rock at the end of the beach. He looked up like he’d find the answer in the sky.

             “Tina.” He took a deep breath. “Something you don’t know about me is that I have intuition that most people don’t have. It’s stronger, more reliable.”

            If he was bullshitting her, she’d leave and drive home very fast with all the windows down to clear her head.

            “And my intuition is accurate.” He picked up a piece of dead coral and tossed it in his hand. “I use it to help people sometimes.”