Chasing The One

By Christine Gauthier

Christine is young, attractive, and fresh out of grad school. Eager to start her "real" life, she sets out on a new career path, and to find The One, the man of her dreams. 

 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Christine Gauthier Books
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990412811

Book preview

1

HAWAIIAN ADVENTURE, HERE I COME

My US Airways flight touched down in Honolulu, and even before I made it outside, I could feel the island’s lifeblood. Sunlight pierced my window and caught the red highlights in my hair. The sight of tropical flowers dotting the landscape beyond the airport tickled my senses. As I disembarked, a rush of wind came through the gap between the plane and the jetway, gathering my dark-brown hair and playing it against my cheeks and shoulders, like the soft caress of my mother’s hands.

Thank you, I whispered.

Color and light bombarded my groggy eyes. Birds hung on the breeze in an infinite sky. Scents of salt and honey and seeped into my lungs. The San Francisco fog, grueling years as a graduate student, and the five-hour-long flight all vanished with this first breath in paradise.

Stretching beyond the airport’s distant wildflower-covered hills was the promise of freedom, the kind I hadn’t felt in years. In five days, I would turn thirty. In four months, I would finish graduate school and set out to build a career, a community, and a family—I hoped—back home in New Hampshire.

When I approached the arrivals terminal, a young Hawaiian woman gently wished me aloha. She adorned my neck with a lei of purple orchids as I corralled my thick, wind-swept locks. The orchids’ deep aroma released me from the weight of my academic obligations and deadlines. For ten days in Hawaii, the worn-out woman who had been studying and working nonstop would be free and let out to play at last.

Not that I could have afforded even sixty seconds of the flight. No, the luxury of this trip was possible courtesy of my ever-supportive, ever-present, ever-living-vicariously-through-me mother, as nurturing as the flower-scented air I breathed.

Hawaii drew me because of a promise I’d made to myself when I began grad school two years prior—that is, if I was still single when I finished, I’d leave the West Coast and head east, to home. More specifically, I announced to my bathroom mirror many times that I would be blowin’ this joint, come hell or high water! As it happened that year, the hell and the high water were licking the shores of my youth. So, I asked myself, when would I ever have an opportunity to see the islands once I lived so much farther away in New England? At least in California I was already halfway there, and the plane fare would be much less expensive. It’d be the trip of a lifetime. What better way to mark my thirtieth year and my transition from a graduate student to a professional than by basking in the Pacific’s most beautiful shores before I said goodbye?

It also seemed to be a fitting way to enjoy my mother’s most-generous gift—making unforgettable memories because of an unforgettable woman’s gesture.

And that deal I’d made with myself at the front end of grad school? Well, let’s just say I was pulling out the ol’ life jacket and fire extinguisher. Eight years of city living hadn’t yielded much in the love department, though you couldn’t fault me for not trying. Look no further than me for quintessential San Francisco excursions: running in costume in the Bay to Breakers festival, celebrating at Indigenous Peoples’ Day ceremonies, participating in protests and marches, patronizing farmers markets, listening to bands at coffee shops, biking in Critical Mass rides, volunteering at after-school programs, having my palms and star chart read, walking Ocean Beach right when the cute guys with dogs came out, attending the free Stern Grove music festivals. Granted, I loved it all, but even after doing what I loved, the pages of my love-life story had nothing to show.

Despite how much I enjoyed one of the most colorful cities in the country, life wasn’t without challenges beyond my search for romance. Being a grad student living in said city meant total dependence on student loans for my grocery and anti-homelessness fund. Every semester my fingertips lost layers of skin to nervous nail biting, and my underfed body a few pounds, while I waited for those loans to come through.

Five mornings a week I slapped my alarm at the crack of dawn to beat rush hour, driving two and sometimes three hours a day, depending on traffic, back and forth to school, never feeling caught up on anything. Every day equated to a race against the clock to morning classes, my afternoon internship, and off-campus evening work, my supervisor never missing the frequency and drama of my tardiness.

As a counseling intern, I felt the weight of others’ problems, unsure if I wasn’t just occupying space and wasting their time, as I struggled to understand the marriage of counseling theory to its actual practice. My professors’ weekly critiques of session recordings, telling me what else I should have said or said differently, fed my insecurities well.

Although I lived with three roommates, community was off the table. Instead of joining them for a regular dose of Sex and the City over wine and popcorn or simply a meal, I’d retreat to my bedroom at the end of the day—to my assigned reading, or to start a paper, or to write notes documenting my therapy sessions, or to study for an exam, ad infinitum. Even on weekends, when I could sleep in, rest often got interrupted by my roommates’ footsteps overhead during breakfast prep.

Having the time and space to just be? To go on a vacation? Pipe dreams.

Sure, I enjoyed occasional social time with girlfriends, and every three months or so my weekend calendar noted a bike messenger or day trader date, which helped me maintain some sense that I was, indeed, still in the land of the living. After continual disappointment, though (I mean, they were bike messengers and day traders), who wouldn’t be fed up and think the universe just wasn’t on their side? New Hampshire, from which I’d been absent for so long, held the hope of novelty and for love to finally find me.

Working against these efforts was everything I’d read about the topic, plus all my friends’ advice, which warned that to search for love would make me appear desperate, Chris. Though, after attending seven weddings during the summer of 2004, I wanted to give my friends and the ol’ Universe the proverbial finger, in the nicest possible way. My grandmothers—as they still lived and breathed, for the love of God—would see me walk down the aisle.

Not that marriage should have been the be-all and end-all, but it was becoming more difficult to feel like I belonged anywhere, even in my own family, what with cousins and college and high school friends stepping, one by one, onto that path, their friendship and the community that surrounded me fracturing and fading as they did. My dancing and biking buddies were disappearing, only to resurface at their own baby showers and then be lost again to motherhood. Though I had a good life, not many ever asked how it felt to live in San Francisco or what adventures I invariably fell into on Sunday afternoon bike rides, because no one could relate anymore.

Except for a few friends, conversation within my social circle was about marriage and baby making, house and car buying, lawn mowing and retirement saving. And only those who had hopped onto that wheel of life could contribute. It all left me feeling a tad excluded, undesirable, and, yes—sigh, woe is me—unworthy.

After eight years in San Francisco, I still lived with roommates out of necessity, still fumbled my way from one odd job, one odd date, to the next. As a parade of couples passed me by at the grocery store, at the gym, in the Presidio on my daily runs, at my retail job while I rung up their purchases, I envisioned what life would be like once my own time for love had finally arrived. But circumstances being as they were, to create an opening for that day to come, I realized, after much angst and reflection, that I needed to leave San Francisco. How all those couples had found each other was beyond me—damned if I didn’t try to uncover their secret. Hence the deal I had made with myself when I started grad school, which marked my sixth single year in the city.

Two years after my finger hovered over the grad school start button, the time had come to follow through on that promise. My mother popped a surprise for me in the mail, knowing that I’d never live as close to Hawaii again and wanting to imbue my late youth with the same laissez-faire spirit she herself had once known.

It’s my birthday gift to you, she explained when I called, her monogrammed greeting card and check in my hand. You never ask me for anything, Christine, not even when you’re starving in between student loan installments. Take it. Go turn thirty somewhere beautiful.

I found a free airport shuttle that stopped within three blocks of the youth hostel I’d reserved ahead of my arrival. There’s nothing like a free lunch, especially when you’re vacationing on someone else’s dime and with no means to get out of a bind if it came to that. Frugality was my bestie.

Once at the hostel, I unpacked and made my way to the Honolulu boardwalk for my first Hawaiian sunset. Couples, lost in the romance of their somewhat annoying moments, filled restaurants and dotted the beach. Hordes of them paraded by hand in hand as though they were the only lovers around and the island was all theirs.

Cool sand filtered through my flip-flops. Looking out across the ocean, I breathed in my wish for a fuller life. Like a night sky full of stars, the ocean stretched farther than my eyes could see. I reminded myself that a better future lay at the end of sacrificing years to grad school, and that there would be more days, similar in spirit to this one, to look forward to.

My master’s degree would be the catalyst I needed to change course. No more would I work the sporting goods retail grind, smiling at people I probably would have enjoyed talking with if they weren’t so needy or demanding once inside the store. No more long workdays earning minimum wage. No more clocking hours fulfilling someone else’s capitalist pursuits. No, I would become a therapist like I’d always dreamed. From the very first kitten I’d saved from the wilds of my childhood backyard to the friends I’d consoled, heartsick over a crush, I’d become the person my clients turned to for an ear, for wisdom, for guidance. I’d make a good living doing what came naturally and owning my own practice. I imagined a waiting list a mile long and could expand my business to include new therapists. It was all so clear in my mind.

I wouldn’t live with roommates forever. I wouldn’t always be working toward something in anticipation. I’d finally arrive. Questions about when and with whom would resolve themselves. My values wouldn’t exist only in my head but would be expressed tangibly, palpably. With hands on my hips, I straightened my spine and puffed out my chest as a soft ocean breeze whispered through my hair.

I should go for a swim, I announced, but movie memories of shark attacks gave me pause. Then I remembered my mom’s gift, the grad school grind, and where on the planet I stood at that moment. What was I thinking? I shed my shorts and T-shirt, exposing a hand-me-down black bikini with a spray of fluorescent flowers stitched into the hip and bustline, gifted to me by my infinitely more stylish and spendy little sister. Submerging myself in the water, and feeling the life of the sea, I did my most confident backstroke, the sound of the ocean flooding my ears.

While drying off, I buried my feet and hands in the sand and relaxed into its soft support until the last flicker of sunlight flashed across the water. My hair, newly buoyant and full from the humidity, tickled my face, free to be unencumbered with the breeze. My first day on the island, and the realization that life would finally be more my own, melted into me.

The following morning, I gathered with a group of other tourists in the hostel’s lobby. Paul, its desk attendant and our tour guide, had succeeded in never leaving behind the bliss of boyhood. Palm trees dotted his Jimmy Buffet–style button-down, and his shock of shaggy, white hair went in as many directions as his laugh lines. Jingling keys to the tour van in the pocket of his worn shorts, he rattled off a series of questions.

Before we leave, do you all have your bathing suits?

He scanned the looks on our faces, his thumbs already up.

Do you have a towel? Have you packed sunscreen and water? I don’t want anyone burning to a crisp when we’re having the time of our lives.

We all nodded.

That’s what I like to see. Now, let’s get to know each other a bit, shall we?

As we formed a circle, my attention diverted to a handsome, blond, blue-eyed guest who had also signed up for the tour.

Let’s see, Paul said, rubbing his hands together. Why don’t you all tell us something most people wouldn’t figure about you at first glance. He pointed to the blond young man to start.

Um, hello. He waved. I’m Charlie. The posh in his British accent was as smooth as honeyed ice tea on a hot summer day, his voice a luscious baritone. I play rugby. He curled his hands into fists. I’ve never lost a fight, neither on the rugby field nor off.

Charlie’s confidence was chiseled into every inch of his strong brow, his broad shoulders, his rough hands, and his distinguished accent—not that I was looking. I imagined him as my date at the annual family Christmas party. How impressed my discerning relatives would be that I’d found someone, and an English one at that. I twirled a small lock of my hair.

Hawaiian adventure, here I come!

Five miles outside town, a Milky Way of beige and black hardened lava flowing into a diamond-encrusted ocean greeted us. Paul sprang from his seat and opened the van’s sliding door. The group began to explore as Charlie peered through the long lens of his very serious digital camera, focusing. I did the same through the lens of my disposable, affordable cardboard variety in the foolish hope that he would notice me as a bird of a feather, since I couldn’t quite find the nerve to speak to him.

Charlie was inspecting his latest shots when I interrupted. So, you’re English? My heart jumped to my throat at the leap I’d taken.

And you’re American, he said, turning his lens and his gaze toward the ocean. His confident dismissal of me took me off guard. Your white shirt gave you away. He grinned, just in time to reassure, eyebrow arched.

Oh. Why’s that? I asked.

He turned his head and looked at me. The traditional British wardrobe is a combination of sober darks. Only Americans dress in happy colors.

My brain went blank. His comment sounded like an intersection of dry British humor and a jab at flirtation. In all the years I had lived in San Francisco, I had never met someone so boldly cute, so tantalizing—even among the bike messenger and day trader dating lineup—which probably said more about the effects of working menial jobs and living as an isolated grad student than it did about my fellow San Franciscans, but still. Tiny beads of sweat draped themselves from his hairline and over his cheekbones, reflecting the sun. He called to mind an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.

Paul allowed us fifteen minutes to explore before shuttling us to our first real, as in quintessentially glorious, Hawaiian destination, Waimanalo Beach, just north of Maunalua Bay. Flanked by volcanic cliffs pouring into an azure sea, the scenery couldn’t have been more idyllic. Golden grains of silken sand kissed palm trees not far from the shore, providing pockets of shade, the trees curtseying and bowing in the sea breeze. Following lunch, our group dotted the beach like the sunbathers we’d so easily become. Goose bumps still peppered my skin from a post-lunch swim, though the sun bored through me like a laser, warming my core. I hadn’t felt the sureness of the sun since leaving New Hampshire. Summers in San Francisco always mean fog and sweatshirts, long pants, and toes tucked snugly away against the characteristic wet, bitter cold. Digging my hands and feet into the hot sand, I realized that US Airways had transported me not to another state, but to another world.

The men in our group, feeling the heat anew after their last swim, headed back to the ocean, tossing a football to each other across the water. Charlie’s aim, in chiseled, English boy fashion, was perfect, and distinguished him from the others. He lunged after a poorly executed pass and fell with a crash, sideways, into the Pacific.

Emerging from the water, he chided its sender. Nice one, mate! Is this how you play in America? The words rookie, third string, and go home colored their banter, carried clear as a bell across the water.

You’re all right, doc, one of them chimed. Just in case, though, tell us how we’re supposed to save you if you fall too hard next time.

Doc? I wondered. Being British was one thing. Having an appreciation of beauty yet another. But a doctor? My family gushed at my imaginary Christmas dinner party. Through my wavy curtain of hair, I glanced up from my book while the boys walked back to the beach. Instead of following them, however, Charlie made his way toward me.

What are you reading? he asked, slumping into the sand beside my blanket.

I tilted my head in his direction and slowly combed my hair aside, watching him as he watched me do so. It’s a book of short stories about a woman who’s kayaked all over the world.

Travel much?

Every chance I get, which these days isn’t often. You?

Not as much as I’d like. My schedule’s a bit insane.

Right, I overheard someone call you doc.

Eavesdropping, were you? Charlie asked. He’d dropped his voice an octave, tuning it to just the right tone of mischief.

My stomach fluttered. I had never been good at faking cool, but now I was on the spot to do exactly that.

Nope. Not me. I returned to my book, letting my hair shroud my face again. Sound travels fast over water.

It does indeed. He smothered his face with his hands and wiped the salt out of his eyes. I just love the first few days of being away. I’m still getting into holiday mode. Best not to discuss work while I’m not there, but, yes, I’m a cardiologist.

Putting my book down, I looked him square in the eyes. You don’t look old enough to drive, let alone carve someone’s chest open. How’s it possible you’ve already finished med school?

I’m twenty-six, and in England we do school differently than you free-wheeling Americans. Our paths are pretty much decided by secondary school, based on exam performance. If you’re good at taking tests, like I was, then you’ve got more options than the kid who isn’t so good at them.

Leaning into my shoulder, he whispered, Little does anyone know, I’m just a doctor in disguise. I’m really a master mechanic who refurbishes old automobiles.

"You’ve got quite the resume, whatever it is you do. Either way, you’re sprucing up people’s lives, though I have a hunch you actually deal with more blood than motor oil."

Right you are, my new American friend. But back home I’m restoring a 1967 Karmann Ghia. He clucked his tongue. "Cars these days, they’ve got no soul." He made a fist with one of his strong hands, the sight of which I couldn’t quite take my eyes off of.

I imagined my grandmothers sitting beside me and exchanged raised eyebrows with them.

How’s it you’ve got such a soft side and have also swung a punch or two. Or twenty?

Charlie regarded me, then gazed across the beach to the waves languidly making their way to shore.

You want the short or the long story?

Hmmm. Long ones are better, I think. Besides, we’ve got the time.

He let out a burst of air, as though punching the sky with his lips.

"I’m the second of my parent’s children. My sister, Rebecca, was born with brain damage due to lead poisoning in utero, which my parents didn’t discover until she was about six months old. Wasn’t meeting normal milestones, etcetera, etcetera. The lawsuit they brought against the housing development they lived in at the time was ruled in their favor, so we never wanted for anything, but my sister didn’t have an easy go of it in school. She was often the butt of jokes. We’re not that far apart in age, so I was often around to see pranks playing out at her expense. My father always counseled me against starting fights in her defense. But he also said if I ever did happen to start one, I’d better not lose it. I learned very quickly how to be a winner, for my sister’s sake. I credit her struggle with the reason I worked so hard on my A Levels, so I could get into med school. She’s the most inspiring person I know."

Hearing this passage from his life’s story caused my nervous uncertainty around him to melt away like the waves making their way back out to sea. Not only did Charlie impress me with a sense of ambition, intelligence, and sensitivity to the world around him, but he also wore the shoes of a good man, the shoes of a man I felt I could trust. So, I decided to dive in with my own story.

My brother was hit by a car when he was nine. He’d just had a birthday and couldn’t wait to take his new bike for a spin. The streets had always been so safe in our neighborhood, but that day he rode beyond it to a busier part of town. I don’t think he knew what to watch out for. The car that hit him left forty feet of skid marks. He was thrown from its windshield and got cut up so bad he looked like Frankenstein when the hospital released him. He’d always had a hard time in school, and it didn’t get any easier after the accident. He’d lose sleep, get sick on school nights. I often got called down to his classroom to help him with things, tie his shoes, or console him when school became too much. Nineteen years later, he’s still struggling. Worries my parents sick. He’s the reason I’m working toward becoming a therapist.

Charlie watched me as my own story unfolded, like I was a bird of a feather.

While etching our way along Oahu’s shoreline, we stopped at Laniakea Beach. At Paul’s direction, our chatter switched to silence as we approached, cameras at the ready. From a distance, rocks appeared to be strewn strategically on the beach. But as I got closer, I realized my mistake. What I thought were rocks were splashing sand around them and over their shells, flippers as active as actual stones would have been still.

Giant sea turtles have nested at this beach for millennia, and there I was, a one-time observer of the ritual. We were permitted to walk within fifteen feet of the animals, but approaching at that distance felt too close, disrespectful even. As I crouched near one, her golf-ball-sized orb of an eye tracked my movements, neither telling me to leave nor stay. She merely lay there, exposed in the act of laying her eggs.

I held my breath, not wanting to startle her or ruin the stillness. Salty locks of hair fluttered around my face, intermittently disrupting my line of sight. Her matte, lumpy shell formed a puzzle of pockmarks and scars. Blighted yet beautiful, she was almost too big to take in.

As delicately as a mother cradling her sleeping child, I withdrew my camera from a pocket in my backpack. My feet, my stance, every movement drew her eye in one direction or another. Soon our time together would end, a mere flicker in the course of her life.

Slow, shushing footsteps in sand approached from behind. Charlie crouched down beside me and trained his camera on the animal:

"O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour which doth in it live."

He shook his head and took a picture of her.

Tough ol’ girl. He paused, reflecting. And still she’s life-giving. So much more than her shell, he mused. ‘She is beauty, and she is truth. That is all there is, and all ye need to know.’

First Shakespeare, now Keats? I wondered. I felt the heart and warmth of him. Simply standing near him seemed familiar and safe, and made me nervous for what other good things there were to be discovered.

Slowly, he lowered his camera and turned to face me. I’m thinking about renting a motorbike tomorrow. Would you give me the pleasure of your company?

I smiled and nodded, not least because he’d said motorbike.

My insides did a little victory leap. How miraculous was this trip turning out to be? Not wanting to get ahead of myself, I mentally sized up my wardrobe: one bathing suit; two pair of hiking shorts; jeans and two tank tops, one black, one white; two short-sleeved shirts, one flowy and loose, the other fitted around the waist. Calculating the speed at which we’d likely travel, given Charlie’s penchant for high-impact sports, I decided it would be best to wear jeans and