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As I slide into the driver’s seat and pull out of the garage with my surfboards in the truck bed, I put on Pandora and smile when “Is This Love” by Bob Marley comes on. It reminds me of the brief time between when I broke up with Lindsay and moved to Wrightsville Beach nine years ago. The days when Yuri and I used to hang out at his apartment in Durham every weekend, back when Lena worked as a preschool teacher.
If Yuri wasn’t competing that week, we’d kick off the weekend every Friday night with a few well-packed bowls. Then we’d go out somewhere and get shit-faced drunk until I found some poor girl to take back to Yuri’s place so I could fuck her in his guest room. Come Monday, I’d head into work at Parker Construction in Wilmington, and try not to feel like a failure for having given up on my surfing career. For having given up on myself, really.
It wasn’t until I got arrested for assaulting Kaia’s father, Nathan Jennings, and moved to Wrightsville that I began to feel like maybe I didn’t have to be the man my father wanted me to be. I didn’t have to take over the family construction business. That wasn’t my fate.
I was destined for a lifelong love affair with the ocean. There is seawater pumping through my veins, of that I’m certain. And no one, not my father or Carlos Ferreira or even Lindsay, can change that.
Lena asked me to meet her on the beach today instead of picking her up at her house. When I arrive at our usual spot about 150 yards north of the pier, I find her sitting cross-legged on a green blanket on the sand with her eyes closed and her hands resting on her knees, palms facing up. I quietly set my boards down on the sand a few feet downwind, then I sit on the sand and wait for her to notice I’ve arrived.
The breeze picks up and carries the scent of coconut-pineapple sunscreen to me. I smile as I think of how my ex-girlfriend Claire used to meditate in front of me sometimes. She was actually addicted to it, though. I’d almost forgotten about that.
I try not to think of Claire when I’m home. Something about allowing my mind to wander back to past relationships feels sort of like mentally cheating on Lindsay, even though I harbor no romantic feelings for any of my exes. If I were to tell a marriage counselor about this, he or she would probably tell me that this stems from the fact that both Lindsay and I have been unfaithful in the past.
I’ve never seen Lena meditate before. I guess all the problems she’s having with Yuri must be really getting to her.
I allow myself to think back to the times I watched Claire meditate, and I remember she used to picture the ocean. Now that I think about it, there’s probably no better place to meditate than the beach, especially for someone like Lena, who loves the ocean as much as I do.
It takes about ten minutes for Lena to realize I’m sitting a few feet away from her. When she opens her eyes and looks at me, the serene expression on her face melts into a bright smile.
“About time you got here,” she says with a smile.
“What are you talking about? I’ve been sitting next to you for about two hours,” I reply, standing up and grabbing my board.
Suddenly, she peels off her T-shirt, exposing a coral string bikini. “Oh, so that smell was coming from you?”
I laugh as I watch her push her shorts down. “I told Lindsay she needs to stop feeding me eggs in the morning.”
Lena grabs her board and nods toward the waves. “First one to catch a wave gets a free lunch today.”
Once we paddle out, I feel the need to go easy on her and let her catch the first wave, but she quickly calls me out on it as we lie belly-down on our boards near the lineup.
“I’m not a newbie, so don’t treat me like one, Adam,” she says, fixing me with a piercing glare as a wave lifts our boards, rolls under us, and drops us on the surface before it races toward the shore. “Imagine I’m Carlos. It’s down to me and you. And the next one to catch this wave wins the whole fucking tour.”
“You’re much better looking than Carlos,” I say before I can stop myself. “I didn’t mean to say that. I—”
I’m about to apologize when she begins paddling out toward the crest of the wave passing underneath us. My thirst to win kicks in and I paddle out after her, quickly gaining on her. She laughs as I shove her aside so I can catch the wave, which I ride for only a couple of seconds before I intentionally bail so I can head back to meet her at the lineup.
She’s straddling her board when I paddle up next to her. “I guess chivalry is dead.”
“Hey, you told me to pretend you were Carlos,” I say, spitting out a bit of salty seawater as I climb up onto my board so we’re both sitting next to each other, facing the shore.
I feel like I should mention the fact that she’s usually not in the water with me while training, but I guess it’s difficult to tell—at this stage in the competition—how much of my success this year has come from working with Remy in the past, how much has come from working with Lena this year, and how much comes from my own hard work. Maybe it’s okay for her to be out here, seeing everything from a different angle. I must admit, it’s nice to be out here with her, enjoying the waves before the beachgoers start hitting the water in an hour or two.
She pulls her dark hair up away from her neck and yanks a hair tie off her wrist to secure it in a messy ponytail. “All right, you have to practice that rodeo before—Ah!” She yelps as she loses her balance and falls off her board. “Shark!”
My instincts kick in and I slide off my board into the water. Immediately, my foot smacks against something hard under the water. “Swim to shore!” I shout at her as I kick my feet furiously. “Hurry up!”
Holding my board in my right arm, I spin around and around, trying to find whatever it is that I just kicked, whatever it was that knocked Lena off her board. Then I glimpse something dark swimming up toward my left arm. I kick my legs out again and connect with the underside of the shark’s jaws, but this hardly stops its momentum. When it’s about to reach me, I lift my arm in the air and bring it down hard as its snout breaks the surface of the water.
I can’t tell what kind of shark it is, but the blow to the nose sends it thrashing. The shark’s tail smacks my leg as it begins to swim away. I take that as my cue to also get the fuck out of the water.
“Holy fuck,” I breathe as I stumble onto the wet sand and drop my board. “I’ve seen sharks in the water, but never that fucking close. That was fucking close, wasn’t it?”
“I think that shark wanted your phone number,” Lena jokes, but her face is still pale from the close call.
“Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
She nods. “You… You probably just saved my life.”
I laugh at this. “I may have saved your foot, but we’re not far enough from a hospital for you to die from a shark bite.”
She sinks down onto the sand and covers her face with her hands to hide her tears. “I’m sorry. I’m just… kind of all over the place right now.”
I sit down next to her and that’s when I notice she has a small puncture wound on her right calf, so small it’s barely bleeding. “Looks like you got clipped,” I say, touching the spot on her leg. “You should go get that cleaned up.”
She stares at my finger on her leg, her gaze following my hand as I pull it away. “I don’t feel any pain,” she says, swiping her finger across the drop of blood running down her leg.
“Lena, please don’t take this the wrong way, but… do you think maybe you need a few days off? Do you want to sit out Trestles?”
She wipes the blood off on the sand and shakes her head. “I don’t need time off.” She looks up at me, the tears gone and a resolute expression hardening her features. “I need to get away for a while. Yuri’s not the only one person with needs right now.” She shrugs as she digs her hands into the sand. “Maybe the time away will make him appreciate me more.”
I sigh as I stand up and offer her a hand to help her up. “I just don’t want to be the source of tension between you two. Yuri’s my best friend. We agreed you’d only be my traine
r so long as it didn’t interfere with you two.”
The moment she’s on her feet, it seems the pain in her leg becomes more real, as I notice her trying not to put weight on it. I slide my arm around her waist to help her, but she pushes me away.
“I can walk,” she insists as she limps toward the green blanket where she left her beach bag. “And I can decide whether or not the training is interfering in my love life. It’s not.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” I follow closely behind her, expecting her to drop any second. “But I’m taking you to the emergency room. They need to clean that leg up properly so it doesn’t get infected.”
She agrees to my terms, but by the time we reach my truck, she’s almost hopping on one leg from the pain. She tries to grab on to the top of the passenger door to pull herself up, but the door swings inward, almost closing on her tiny body.
I shake my head as I scoop her up and set her down gently in the passenger seat. She glances at me as I pull my arms out from underneath her, then she quickly looks away.
We drive in silence the four blocks to her and Yuri’s house. When I pull up in front of their bungalow, she slides out of the truck before I can make it around to the passenger side to open her door.
“I’m fine. Stop fussing over me,” she says as she scoots around me.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?” I ask as I watch her limping toward the front steps.
“I’m positive,” she insists. “You go back out there and practice. Yuri will take me.”
