"Hurry it up, Princess! We're losing daylight!"
"Stop calling me that!"
Nate laughs as I paddle to catch up with him. He hasn't stopped teasing me about winning Homecoming Princess all week. This surf lesson has been no exception.
I glide to a stop next to him sitting on his board, the ocean moving smoothly under us.
"As you wish." He puts on big, fearful eyes. "After all, I'm but a mere peasant among royalty. Who am I to disobey a princess?"
I shove him so hard he topples to the side, quickly finding balance to stay afloat.
"All right, I'm done! Hand to god." His grin fades as he rakes back his hair, gazing over the horizon. Entirely at ease.
This is the furthest he's taken me out to sea, and I couldn't be more on edge. Past the breaking waves, past the line where most people stop swimming, the water is stiller out here. Darker. A shark could be swimming right under us and we wouldn't be able to tell. My dangling legs are bait just waiting to be snapped off.
"I'm tired," I tell him. "And the sun's setting."
"I know. Nothing like it, right?" he muses, tilting back to take in the pink and gold hues surrounding us. "I've always thought that being in the ocean at sunset is what swimming through heaven must feel like."
"This is hell."
He doesn't look at me, he just smiles at the pessimism he expects from me out here, and I'd be lying if I claimed the beauty in what he said didn't strike a chord in me. But I'd only appreciate the beauty if I was on dry land.
"I think we should go back to shore," I urge.
"I think not."
"Nate."
"Lia."
"I'm going back to shore, with or without you."
"No you're not."
"Yes I am!" I shriek, my wetsuit constricting me more and more by the second. "What's the point of carrying on with this, anyway? All these lessons and I haven't even stood up properly! And I never will. I was kidding myself trying to surf. I'm the most athletically hopeless person in the universe, and from now on I'm just going to be a land baby like Clara!"
I lie on my stomach and begin a frantic paddle, wincing from my tender ribs. They're constantly bruised or tender these days. A result of pushing myself up on this damn board, over and over. Pushing myself to grasp a sport I will never grasp.
My hands cut through the water and I turn around before I'm met with resistance. "Let go of my board, Nathan!"
He drags it back, overpowering my paddles. "The only way you're getting to shore is if you surf there."
"Do you just tune me out when I talk?"
"Sometimes."
I throw him a glare and he smiles, moving my board next to his so we're facing each other.
He grabs my hands to stop the splashing. "I get it, okay? You're scared."
That's an understatement. It's as if a snake is coiling around my lungs, squeezing tighter the longer I look at the murky water. Sitting up, I slide my fingers from his. "I can't do it, Nate. I'm not cut out for this."
"I know it's worse out here," he says, his voice laced with understanding. "Being so far from shore would make loads of people freak out."
"Yeah, because there's valid reasons to freak out, which is why I'm going back. And not by surfing, because all I'd do is wipe out. Again. You know what surf lessons really are? Lessons in humiliation, that's what."
He smirks, his bright eyes crinkling at the corners. "Well, I think we should take a different approach to your lessons. I have a new method in mind."
My eyes narrow. "A method? What kind of method?"
"The kind you won't like," he says, slapping his hands on his knees. "I want you to use your fear."
"I don't know what that means, but no."
"Just hear me out, DeMarco."
I look at the water again, curling my toes in its cold depths. "Make it quick."
His hand skims over the surface, creating ripples that draw my attention to him. "Fear is all-consuming, right? It's the only thing you're thinking about right now. All your fears about being so far out in the water are heightened."
I grit my teeth, feeling a twinge of annoyance. "Not helping."
"It will," he insists, leaning forward on his board. "And I'd never usually say that. I hate being controlled by fear, but that's exactly what I want you to do. The next wave you take, instead of trying to fight it, embrace the fear you're feeling. Let it distract you from the technique. Let it carry you."
I press my lips together, thinking it over. "Fine, I'll try it. Only once, though. I'm not swimming back out here again."
"If that's the best alternative to quitting, then I'll take it."
And so we wait, bobbing up and down while waves form and pass by. At this point in our lessons, I've learned to wait until Nate gives me the green light. I know I'll never have this ability that he has, this intuition to identify a worthy wave.
He absentmindedly glides his open hand across the surface of the water, as if he's reading braille written by the current itself. Feeling a swell that hasn't even begun. All I can see is an endless expanse of blue, and all I can feel are nerves.
With a slight nod, Nate signals for me to start paddling, and I suck in a salty breath before I do. As I stroke my arms through the water, I feel the energy building beneath me, and then suddenly, a surge of power as the wave lifts me up. My fears surge with it. But this time, I don't fight them. I let them consume me.
I think about a riptide pulling me under to drown, a cold-blooded shark breaching the water. I forget about the technique, about everything but the python crushing my stomach. And then I feel it: the wind on my face, chilled spray whipping over my skin. I'm standing. I'm riding a wave.
The fear is still there, still all-consuming, but there's something else, too. A sense of exhilaration, of ecstasy. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. This concoction of it all.
It's short-lived before I lose my balance and fall, but that moment burned so bright that all my thoughts burned with it. Euphoria overrides the fear, even when I'm pushed under the surface, swimming up and gasping through crashing waves. I'm too elated to panic. That was the closest taste to actual surfing I've ever had, and it's exactly what I craved when I had seen Nate on the day we ditched detention. Flying free. Weightless.
On shore, I untether my ankle from the surfboard leash with fumbling fingers, adrenaline soaring through my body. Sand sprays around my feet as I race up to Nate. "Did you see me? I did it! Kind of!"
"You did it kind of!" He drops his board and lifts me when I reach him, spinning me around. "Land baby, my ass."
We beam at each other as he sets me down, but his hands don't leave my waist, and mine don't leave his arms. "That was incredible. I really see it now, why you're so obsessed with this. It's like a drug. I can't wait to ride my first full wave!"
"So my unorthodox method works and you're not quitting? God, I'm a good teacher."
"I was never gonna quit, dummy. That was the chicken in me talking." I scoff. "But yes, you're a good teacher."
He smiles gently, fingers slowly moving from my wetsuit. "C'mon, I'm buying you a milkshake. You earned it, Princess."
〰️〰️〰️
On the way to the parking lot, I stop skimming the sand for butterfly shells when we come across Blake and Alex. They're both in wetsuits. Blake is kneeling down and waxing his surfboard, Alex is sitting with half her suit peeled off, a yellow bikini top on display.
"Lia rode her first wave!" Nate announces. "Well, almost. It was close."
"Congrats! You're already jonesing for the next one, aren't you?" Blake smiles up at me.
"Yep, but it's getting pretty late, so next time."
"Next time?" Alex's eyes dart to Nate. "If she caught a wave then isn't your job done?"
"No. I said it was close, but she's not there yet."
"Right." She gives him a stony look of annoyance.
"We're going to Shelly's if you guys want to join us," I speak up.
I haven't witnessed such a negative aura around Alex before, and her tagging along to the diner would undoubtedly put a damper on my victory and knock me off cloud nine. It's really more of a curtesy invite.
Blake taps the bar of wax on his board. "Already ate, and I'm gonna stick around here for a while. Get a few more waves in before it's dark."
"And I want to go home," Alex drawls. "Nate?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you take me home?"
A frown seeps onto his face. "We're going to Shelly's."
"But I want to go home."
"Then go home."
A moment of tension bubbles before she jumps up and seizes his hand, dragging him away from me and Blake. They immediately get into an argument once they're out of range. The sound of the sea drowns out anything intelligible.
I look at Blake and he's bitterly watching them, shaking his head before he returns to his board. Waxing it a little too hard now.
"Was it like this before?" I ask him.
"Was what like this before?"
"Them. Fighting like that," I say, taking Alex's spot in the sand. "Nate didn't tell me much about when they were together, but he said it was bad at one point. Before she cheated."
"Uh-huh, it was bad. And now they're just repeating the cycle. Same old shit."
"So if they're repeating the cycle, do you think she'd cheat again?"
The scrape of the wax bar momentarily slows. "I dunno. But if your friend Rachel got cheated on by Whatshisname, you think she'd trust him not to do it again? If Matt cheated on you, would you trust him? A lot of people wouldn't give another chance to find out, but Nate's a goddamn idiot. Alex makes him like that."
It's bizarre hearing Blake talk so harshly. There isn't a fleck of the usual levity in his voice. He thuds the bar down, letting out a weighty sigh as he watches them. Nate reaches to hold Alex's hand and she promptly brushes him away.
"And I mean, she's like my sister," Blake continues. "But she really screwed him up. So much. With Nate and Alex, when it's good, it's great. When it's bad, it's the worst. They don't see how hooking up again is a mistake 'cause they're just totally blinded by each other, you know?"
"But you're his best friend. He'll listen if you talk to him about breaking the cycle this time."
He snorts out a laugh, tucking his hair behind his ears. "Sometimes I forget you haven't known him for that long."
"Why is that relevant?"
"Because then I wouldn't have to tell you how Nate turns into a brick wall when people tell him what to do," he says, moving off his knees to sit. "I've known him since kindergarten and it's always been like that. Nothing I say is gonna get through to him."
I watch the marmalade light sweeping over the water. "Yeah, I gave it a shot and he said he didn't need anyone looking out for him."
"Mm, I've heard him regurgitate just about every variation of that."
"And he never listens?"
Blake waves his hand over his face. "Brick wall."
I turn their way again. Alex is glowering, and Nate is walking over to us, and he looks so miserable it hurts.
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a/n: thanks for reading, don't forget to vote!