Hollie Porter Builds a Raft

3. Ode to Etta James

3

Ode to Etta James

It’s our last full day here. Ryan’s brother, Tanner, is meeting us at Seattle’s Lake Union early tomorrow morning for the trip back to Revelation Cove, British Columbia. Our own private island with grass and trees and beaches and golf and swimming and Miss Betty’s famous jam.

Well, a private island we share with the guests who come stay at the resort owned by Ryan, Tanner, and a couple other silent partners, former NHL players and friends of Ryan’s. It’s a good life—I still pinch myself daily to make sure it’s real, even if I’m pinching myself while helping the maid staff clean rooms or scrub toilets or helping unload the floatplane after a fresh supply run or while trying to get a bunch of rambunctious kids to listen as we meander the grounds on a nature walk. Which is really what my job entails now. Wildlife Experience Educator. That’s my official title. I even have business cards.

It’s a long way from the confining basement dungeon of the emergency dispatch center. No more Polyester Patty, no more Les and his Book of Death, no more trying to wash my brain of the images of what Les and Candida the Troll Lady are doing to each other’s body parts in the oversized handicapped bathroom. Oh. God. Stop, brain. Just stop.

But today is brighter, I am no longer throwing up from bad processed meat, and we have the whole day to ourselves to hang out in Portland.

I roll over in bed, hiding my morning breath behind the sheet draped across my lips. “Ryan, get me out of this hotel room.”

“As your concierge, I think that can be arranged,” he says, twisting to face me, his dark brown curls appropriately messed after slumber. “First, however, I need to do an inspection.”

“Of?”

“Everything. I need to make sure you’re fully healed and healthy and ready to face the world.”

“And that would involve …” Ohhhhh, that. His scruffy face tucks under my nightshirt, an old Red Wings T-shirt stolen from his vast collection, and he blows a raspberry between my boobs. Which, of course, leads to laughter and the blowing of raspberries on other important body parts.

It does not matter how many times I see his nekked bod—I still cannot believe I get to touch it whenever I want.

Once fully inspected and deemed fit for consumption, I am cleansed. Head to toe. Ryan is nothing if not thorough in his duties as concierge and boyfriend. Sharing a shower with me is always a win-win for Mr. Fielding, except he’s enough taller that he has to drop to both knees so I can wash his curls. Oh, what a tough job this is.

I’m careful when I bathe the scarred patchwork decorating his left arm. Though it’s been almost a year, Ryan likely has another surgery or two to deal with nerve and tendon damage from Chloe the Cougar’s handiwork. And while he’s self-conscious about the fact that the arm is now weaker and smaller than the right one, I try to make him forget by kissing all the bits the doctors sewed back together.

Most importantly, his arm is still attached to his body, and it still functions mostly the right way, and I’ve told him a hundred times that it lends itself to his softy-wrapped-in-a-tough-guy shell. Scars are badass, as is wrestling a cougar one-handed. Then he kisses the scarred lines on my left wrist—the same badge of honor earned when stabbing the cougar in the shoulder to save both our lives. That did not make Chloe the Cougar very happy at all. If I could see her again—my body safely ensconced in claw-proof glass—I would apologize for getting in her way. It was her wilderness, not mine.

Nothing further has been mentioned about the incident at the Winterhawks game two nights ago (we won, by the way). No mention of the almost-proposal. I haven’t seen the ring box, although I have sort of looked. Not too hard—curiosity kills cats and honestly, I don’t need to poke Fate in the chest. Ryan hasn’t razzed me once for screwing up his important night, or for making a fool out of us via YouTube. Keith gained far too much pleasure from shoving his phone in people’s faces at the ER, stopping only when my dad threatened to call his supervisor.

Clothes on, camera bag in the trunk, caffeine on board, it’s time for fresh spring Portland air. Ryan takes a detour through downtown and we stop at an amazing diner called Piewalker’s—total retro-meets-Star Wars thing going on, the best cherry turnover I have ever eaten, so good that Ryan strikes up a convo with the owner, cute guy named Luke Walker, and they exchange info, especially as it pertains to the resort. Seems Luke and his fiancée will be looking at wedding venues. We have just the place!

Calories consumed, we’re off for an adventure. Although what that adventure will entail, I am still unsure. When Ryan turns the wheel onto Highway 26 West out of downtown, I know we’re going to the Oregon Zoo.

One of my favorite places in the whole world.

“I figured your buddies might like to see you again,” he says, holding my hand across the console. By my buddies, he means the southern sea otters who live there—Eddie (who plays basketball to help relieve his arthritis), Thelma, and baby Juno, who joined the older two otters in 2014.

And that is another reason why I love Ryan Fielding. Despite the fact that I have spent the last ten months filling his head with every fact I know about Enhydra lutris and Lontra canadensis (river otters need love too), he still listens, he still surprises me with adorable otter trinkets and collectibles—he even built me a gorgeous cabinet out of maple and glass that we keep in our shared apartment at Revelation Cove so I have a place to keep everything. We invented a game where, for every otter or sea creature fact I feed him, he gives me one in return about hockey.

I tell him that otters are the largest members of the Mustelidae, or weasel, family; he tells me that the Seattle Metropolitans were the first American team to win the Stanley Cup, in 1917 against the Montreal Canadiens. I tell him that sea otters don’t have blubber but rather the densest fur in the animal kingdom; he tells me that Maurice Richard, aka “The Rocket,” has his name on the Stanley Cup eleven times as a player. See, kids? Romance can be educational! Who knew?

Ryan has checked his phone twice since we pulled in. Once since we parked. And again as we’re making our way through the epic parking lot toward the front gates.

“Got a hot date, Fielding?”

“Only with you,” he says, grabbing a handful of ass.

“Mind your manners. There are small humans lurking about.”

It’s a weekday, so the front terrace of the zoo teems with school-aged monkeys, running around touching and sneezing and punching and stuffing their germy faces with whatever the harried teacher or parent guardian shoves into their grabby hands. Humans of the world who make teaching their life’s mission? I salute you.

“They’re more interested in their elephant ears than what my hand is doing.” Ryan’s right. More than one face we pass is smeared with a buttery mixture of cinnamon and sugar. I’ll need to make a stop at the café for one of my own before this fine day concludes. An elephant ear, not a grimy child.

“Otters first?” As if he has to ask. Steller Cove, where the sea otters live, is not far from the entrance. I know the zoo houses lots of other beasts, but this … this is my favorite spot.

When I found myself at Revelation Cove the first time, it was to cash in the Sweethearts’ Spa & Stay package my dad had gifted me. Well, gifted me and Keith, the loser paramedic-classless-voyeur-ex-boyfriend you met earlier. But I dumped Keith, got drunk, made the reservation for the Cove, and managed to get myself into all kinds of mischief for about a week.

I might have fallen flat on my stupid face in love that week too.

It didn’t take long. Have you met Concierge Ryan?

Once we decided that our hearts beat better when they shared the same atmosphere, I applied for a work permit, packed up my tiny Laurelhurst apartment, and moved to O Canada. (Did you know they have healthcare and they’re actually grateful for it?)

But just before I made the big move north of the 49th, I spent two weeks with some amazing otter people in Monterey, with Friends of the Sea Otter and the scientists and animal behaviorists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We went into Elkhorn Slough and counted otters and I cried when I saw new babies clinging to their mommies, and the researchers and otter enthusiasts were so gracious with their knowledge and science. For the first time ever, I felt … whole.

Another unexpected side effect fell out of the otter experience: I picked up a camera. One of the guys working with Friends of the Sea Otter loaned me a DSLR for a few days. Who knew I could take pictures of otters and make them not half bad?

During the two weeks away, I sent Ryan and my dad copies of my photos. When I stepped off the plane in Portland, Nurse Bob presented me with a gift card to a camera store and a one-year subscription to an online learning academy where I am still taking classes to learn how to take better pictures. At the resort, I assist the wedding and event photographers, carrying equipment and holding reflectors and changing out batteries and moving lights. It’s grueling and makes me sweat like a dude, but in exchange, the pros teach me hands-on stuff I could never learn from a classroom.

Like I said, it’s been a good year.

We’re through the admission gates; Steller Cove is in the Pacific Shores section just ahead. Steller sea lions bark at their fish-toting trainers; the mid-May sun burns through what’s left of a misty morning. Excited whistles and chatter from kids, squeals from those of the human larval stage strapped into strollers and on parental torsos, the haunting call of peacocks hovering around garbage cans and along the edges of the picnic area, one fellow with his fan on full display as a disinterested peahen grooms herself atop a concrete table.

Ryan checks his phone again.

“Everything okay?”

He seems jittery. I should’ve vetoed that second espresso at Piewalker’s.

He pulls me against him, his arms lovingly around my front, and kisses the top of my head. Stopped in front of the otter enclosure, I press my hands against the glass like I used to do as a kid at the aquarium in Newport—wanting to let the beautiful beasties inside know that I love them better than anyone else. Childhood habits die hard.

Juno, the baby abandoned sea otter rescued in California, is giving Thelma a good game of chase over an urchin. Thelma’s an old girl, but little Juno chases and dives and bobs around the pool, keeping her older friend on her otter toes. Thelma floats along the glass, urchin guts atop her belly, and I swear her little brown eyes are staring into my soul.

Stop laughing at me.

I really love otters.

Violin music trickles in above the din of the local crowd. Faint at first, I look around for speakers in the nearby manmade rock structures. Ryan takes my hand and we move to the glass half-wall overlooking the otter pool. The violin music grows louder. And nearer.

“Is that live music?”

Ryan looks in the direction of the melody. “Sounds like it.”

And then the sea of people parts, and there’s my dad, and two women stroking violins tucked under their chins, and Miss Betty and Ryan’s brother Tanner and his very pregnant wife Sarah, followed by a gathering crowd, smiles on everyone’s faces.

When I turn to Ryan, he’s on his knee.

Again.

And in his hand, the same little velvety box.

“Hollie, a year ago, I was manning the check-in desk late at night, looking at hockey scores and pretending like I wasn’t really alone in this world. Then I get this call from a newly single drunk girl who sounds like she needed a vacation almost as much as I did. Little did I know that when you arrived on that dock in Victoria, wondering where the real pilot was for Miss Lily, that you would change my life in immeasurable ways. It quickly became obvious that you were unlike anyone I’d ever met—from almost falling out of the plane midflight to streaking through my hotel in nothing but your birthday suit to getting lost in a remarkable storm during which you swam with orcas—I knew I was done for. Whatever had been missing in my life up to that point all of a sudden wasn’t missing anymore.

“I love how you love otters, how you love all the animals—well, except the demon goat—and that you were brave in the face of certain death when you saved us both from that rather large angry cat.” He flexes his left arm, and kisses my scarred forearm. “I love that even when you’re having a really rotten day, you try to make all the people around you laugh. I love that you love with your whole heart, even if it means you might get hurt.” Ryan swallows his emotion, voice wavering. He’s in double vision because my eyes are clotted with tears. “I don’t mind the fact that you snore, or that you never change the toilet paper roll in our bathroom, or that you root for the Anaheim Ducks even though you should be a Canucks fan because of where we live.” The crowd chuckles. “I don’t even mind that you barfed your way through my first attempt to do this and that we are now YouTube stars. I always knew I’d make it to the big time, one way or another.”

More crowd giggles.

“You told me that otters will float together in the tide, holding hands so they don’t drift apart. That they make a raft so they can stay together. Hollie Porter, my otter girl and best friend, if you’ll have me, I’d like to make a forever raft with you. Float with me in the tide so we don’t drift apart. Marry me, Porter. Marry me so that I can have the tax deduction, and so that I can wake up to your funny-looking toes every day for the rest of my life.”

Wow.

And all these people are staring at me, and I should use this time to answer, but instead I am running my fingers through his curls and through his playoff beard that gets thicker every day that his team doesn’t get eliminated.

I lean forward, my lips inches from his. “Yes,” I whisper. He smiles, kisses me harder and longer than is appropriate with so many applauding bystanders, and stands, wrapping us both in his wondrous embrace and then we’re both crying and kissing and the whole crowd is cheering and even the otter trainers are clapping and someone is singing At Last in a voice that would make Etta James jealous and then he’s returning my feet to the ground although they’re not really touching anything but clouds.

Hollie Porter is engaged.