Diving With Tigers — Part 1

Liv takes a solo dive trip. Swims with the sharks. And grapples with the unraveling of a marriage, nine months in.

May 18, 2025

If you’re new here, Welcome! This is a Liv-ing Story, a fictionalized tale told through my alter ego, Liv. These stories live in a world adjacent to mine. They’re made up, but stitched with real life.

Diving With Tigers is a serialized short story, and I’ll be publishing new installments over the next two weeks.

You can read more about what I write and why here.

What I Didn’t Want

The flight attendant’s voice cut through the cabin, waking me from the kind of half-sleep I’d grown used to. Light, restless, entirely unrefreshing.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please return your tray tables and seat backs to their upright and locked positions. We’ll be landing in Kona in ten minutes. Welcome to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi.”

I didn’t want to be there.

I didn’t want to be landing solo on an island where I was supposed to spend the week scuba diving with manta rays and pretending I wasn’t unraveling.

I didn’t want to be facing the fact that my marriage, just nine months old, was already choking on lies and chaos, while the man I had married was off gallivanting through Spain with the one woman who had been a thorn in our relationship from the start.

I didn’t want to think about her.

I didn’t want to think about the way he used to say they were “just friends” even as she slid into every chapter of our life like an understudy rehearsing her lines.

I didn’t want to think about the substance abuse, the blackouts, the weekend he disappeared and called me from a corner store on 6th and Mission, disoriented and ashamed, asking me to come get him.

Or the promises he made — I’ll stop, I swear. You and Anna mean everything to me.

Or how easily he broke them.

I didn’t want to think about how fast it all fell apart. How we’d stood on a beach in Baja, barefoot and beaming in front of 300 guests, promising forever, only to find ourselves, months later, already threatening to end things.

I didn’t want to think about what it meant to have left my career for him. How I’d turned down the VP track, handed in my resignation, and told myself I was choosing love. Not giving in to his ultimatum. Love.

I didn’t want to think about what any of this meant for my daughter, who had loved him since she was five, and who believed, until very recently, that this man was family.

What I wanted was the life I thought we were building — the sunny kitchen in Bernal Heights, the house in Baja we bought three days after our wedding, the spontaneous flights and lazy mornings and camping trips.

I wanted the man I knew he could be.

But right now, I just wanted it all to stop.

The pretending. The humiliation. The aching sense that I had gambled everything — and lost.

Alone on Paper

The dive shop was only a twelve-minute drive from Hertz. I dropped the top on the Jeep and let the warm air roll over me as I headed south. To my right, the Pacific shimmered. It was a slow, undulating sheet of blue. Not even one cloud dotted the sky.

I pulled into the parking lot beneath the Big Island Divers sign. A gecko sunned itself on the curb. It was a few minutes before closing. I’d made it.

“Come on in!”

A young, sun-kissed pair sat behind a table just inside the shop, all teeth and ease.

“Hi. I’m Liv.”

The guy waved me over. “Yep, Liv, you just called. Glad you made it. I’m Jack.”

“Sorry again. My flight was delayed out of San Francisco.”

“No worries, friend,” the girl said brightly. “You’re here. And you’re about to have an epic adventure.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Jill.”

Jack and Jill. Of course.

“I hope so,” I shook her hand, forcing a smile, hoping to pass for someone even remotely optimistic.

Jack tapped his keyboard. “Looks like we’ve got you down for two morning dives tomorrow, the Manta Ray Night Dive on Wednesday, and the Blackwater Night Dive on Thursday.”

I handed Jill my driver’s license, payment, and certification cards. “That’s right.”

“And it’s just you?” Jack asked, glancing up.

Oof. “Yep. Just me.” I averted his eyes and glanced around the shop.

Jill passed me a clipboard with forms. As I filled them out, the two of them chattered about where to grab salad bowls after they closed up.

And then, like a booby trap I should’ve seen coming, I landed on the line just above the signature.

Emergency Contact.

I stared at the space, pen hovering.

Fucking asshole.

Anna was too young. Her dad would’ve made sense, but they were off backpacking in Yosemite, probably out of range and out of reach. Elle was an option, but she had two toddlers and hadn’t slept through the night in five years. I couldn’t saddle her with an emergency.

I took a breath and pressed the pen to the paper.

D-a-d: J-a-m-e-s F-i-e-l-d-s.

I wrote his number next to his name and then added my signature.

Brutal.

I handed the clipboard back to Jill, imagining how much she was enjoying this carefree phase of her life.

I whispered a little prayer for her in my mind.

May this radiant young woman never know the particular anguish of heading toward a second divorce as a middle-aged woman filling out dive forms in paradise, listing her Kansas father as her lifeline.

“Thanks!” she chirped, unclipping the forms from the board.

“You’re all set,” Jack added. “Be at the marina by 7:00 tomorrow morning.”

“Will do. Enjoy your salad bowls.” It was the only genuine kindness I could muster.

“Right on.” Jack nodded, while Jill smiled with her eyes.

Just as I reached the door, she called, “Hey Liv?”

I turned.

She tilted her head. “You’re going to love the manta rays. They’re magic.”

I gave her a small smile. “Can’t wait.”

Am I Safe?

The Big Island Divers boat slip was empty. No other divers in sight. I checked my watch.

6:40 a.m.

Earlier than I thought.

I slid back into the Jeep and finished the second half of my toasted Everything bagel, chewing as I scrolled through the local news.

The first headline grabbed me.

Hapuna Beach Closed Following Tiger Shark Attack

Sharks hadn’t even occurred to me while planning the trip.

I kept reading.

A 58-year-old man from Kansas…

“Kansas?” I said out loud.

Seriously? What are the chances?

My brows furrowed as I read how this man — this Kansas man — had been snorkeling with his family just the day before when a tiger shark bit his left arm and thigh. He’d been airlifted to North Hawaiʻi Community Hospital.

Jesus.

I looked up. A 36-foot Newton Dive Special had just pulled into the slip. A small group was gathering on the dock, dive bags slung over their shoulders.

I shut off my phone and shoved it into the side pocket of my bag.

Time to go.

—

Jack and Jill were already on deck when I stepped aboard.

“Morning!” I waved.

“Good morning, Liv!” they called in unison, almost cartoonishly cheerful.

Jack walked over, gesturing toward my gear. “Your setup’s over here. Bag can go under the bench.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I noticed the rest of the group consisted of three couples.

Jack clapped a hand on my shoulder. “We get to be dive buddies today.”

“Oh, great.” I smiled, more genuinely this time. He had that ocean-lifer energy: sun-bleached, chill, and perpetually unbothered.

“This is my first time diving without a partner,” I admitted.

“I got you,” he said easily. “We’re gonna have fun.”

Jill called us to the stern for the captain’s briefing.

Captain Frank looked like a modern-day Viking. Red hair. White beard. Freckled skin. His barrel chest topped his tree-stump legs. And his voice rasped like he’d smoked three packs on the way to the harbor.

He walked us through the weather, safety procedures, and then laid out the plan for the day’s two dive sites.

“Any questions?” he asked, scanning the group.

I surprised myself by speaking up.

“Any chance we’ll run into a tiger shark?” I half-joked.

Muffled chuckles emerged from the group.

Frank squinted at me. “Are you afraid of sharks?”

I felt the group’s eyes. “I don’t think so.” I shrugged. “I just read about the Hapuna Beach attack and figured I’d ask.”

Now I sounded like a nervous nelly instead of someone just up on current events.

“Unlikely,” he grunted. “I’ve been operating out of here for twenty years. Can’t remember the last time I saw a tiger shark.”

“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Just curious.”

Jill jumped in to shift the vibe. “What we will be looking for: eels, nudibranchs, octopus, frogfish, sea turtles…”

I let her voice and the activity of the boat fade as my mind drifted to the last time I’d been in Hawaiʻi. Anna had just turned ten. She’d completed her Junior Open Water certification in a heated pool back home so she could dive with us in Maui over spring break.

It was magnificent, watching her navigate underwater beside me, pointing at parrotfish and sea stars, eyes wide with wonder.

But like many seemingly “perfect” vacations, there was rot beneath the surface.

The first night, we visited one of his friends, Lucy. She sold timeshares and lived in company housing. When he hugged her, I didn’t like how long it lasted. She wore a short, backless dress as thin as a t-shirt that showed the lines of her breasts. His hands caressed her bare skin, massaging her back while he whispered something that made her blush.

Anna and I stood off to the side like uninvited guests.

But I swallowed it. Like I always did.

When they unwrapped themselves from each other, I smiled and introduced myself, and then introduced Anna.

We took Lucy to Mama’s Fish House. It was fine. Surface-level pleasant.

Later, back at our rental, we were lying in bed reading when he set his book down and said, out of nowhere, “God, she just looks like sex, doesn’t she?”

We had just come through another cheating incident. And now this?

I got up and grabbed my pillow.

“You have an uncanny ability to ruin a moment in half a sentence,” I said, walking toward the couch in the living room.

He sighed loudly. “Oh my god. I forgot. I have to watch what I say and account for your jealousy at all times.”

He did it on purpose. He got off on watching me shrink. On stoking my insecurity just enough to keep me in a box I couldn’t crawl out of.

The downshift of the engine snapped me back to the present. I shook my head.

Why am I never enough for him?

The Descent

The boat slowed as we neared the first dive site. I pulled on my wetsuit, checked my BCD, tank valve, and pressure gauge.

Jack came over to help me shrug into the BCD and slipped a handful of weights into the side pockets.

We lurched with the waves as Frank adjusted our position.

“I’ll be the last one in,” Jack said. “Wait for me at the surface, and we’ll descend together. Once we hit the bottom, I’ll do a quick skills check. I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

“Sounds great.”

Jill’s voice rang out over the clang and shuffle of tanks, fins, and masks. “Alright, one at a time please.”

We waddled to the platform in our gear and queued up.

When it was my turn, I stood at the edge. Regulator in. My left hand pressed it and my mask to my face. My right hand wrapped my waist.

Jill steadied me with a hold on my tank. “Have a great time, Liv.”

I nodded, took one giant stride off the boat, and dropped into the cold.

Water surged around me, dark and full. I reminded myself to breathe.

I surfaced and gave Jill the OK signal. Then I kicked away from the boat, floating on my back to wait for Jack.

Nearby, one of the couples giggled over a fin issue, flailing in good humor. The light glinted off their masks, off the surface, off everything.

Jack slipped into the water and finned over to me.

“Ready, Liv?”

“Let’s do it.”