Chapter 13
Fifteen minutes later, the water’s heating up as nicely as things seem to be between Jai and Duane. His last name is Schneider, he’s thirty-five, he likes to listen to a mixture of hard rock and country music, but Jai won’t hold that against him. Despite his surfer hair, tanned skin, and sunshine smile, he isn’t much of a beach bum.
“Don’t get me wrong, the beach is fine,” he says at one point. They’re downstairs again, and Duane leans over to gather up his tools and toss them indiscriminately into his toolbox as Jai watches from the steps. “But I’m a river rat, if anything. Give me a cold beer and a fishing rod, and a few lazy hours down by the James, and I’m good to go.”
The closest Jai has ever gotten to the James River that runs just south of Richmond is Brown’s Island, w
