‘You remind me of why I started surfing,’ he said simply.
‘And why is that?’ I asked, nudging him.
‘I have seen the look on your face after the wave. You light up.’ He stared at the sea.
‘You don’t any more?’
‘Not like that.’ He smiled sadly. He stood up and offered his hand to pull me up. I took it.
‘Can we come back tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘Your lesson is on the main beach.’ He lifted the boards and we walked towards the van. He handed me a towel and a bottle of water, which I took gratefully.
‘You did well today,’ he said, and started the engine.
His words sent a tingling heat through me.
‘Thanks,’ I said, watching how his muscles flexed as he changed gears. ‘The waves are different here.’
‘They are. They are more honest. Less forgiving, but everything makes more sense here,’ he said. And when he spoke, he found my eyes and held my gaze before turning back to watch the road, as heat rose in my cheeks.
On the way home, the silence was charged. Not awkward, not uncomfortable, but like the air just before a storm.
‘Same time tomorrow?’ Antoine asked as he pulled into the campsite to drop me off.
‘I’d like that,’ I said, ignoring the storm warning completely.
21
I tried not to dwell on what had happened with Felix. But he hadn’t written back after my last message, and it really pissed me off. I was a pushover with Theo, and look where that got me. Well, I wasn’t going to be the same with Felix.Hecould apologize.
So I didn’t even feel guilty that I spent the whole of the next week with Antoine, surfing early mornings at the main beach, supervising Rue and Wren at their lessons, which they’d loved so much that we booked more, surfing with Sébastian, Delphine and Lili, and late afternoons surfing at the cove with Antoine until the sun was setting. At the end of the sessions we’d sit on the rocks, eating ham-and-cheese baguettes and watching the sun go down. I basked in Antoine’s encouragement, which had become more frequent and more complimentary with each lesson. I didn’t give myself the space to think about Felix’s silence, or Ari and Theo and whatever they were doing at home. I didn’t care about any of it. I was focused, the way I used to be in the pool. At least that’s what I told myself anyway. And there was something else. Something that hung in the air between me and Antoine. It was in the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching, andin the way his fingers lingered just a few seconds longer when he was showing me a new technique. And that electricity? It hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it was getting harder to ignore.
And on one of those evenings, staring at the blurred gold horizon on the sparkling water, sitting beside Antoine and dreaming about competing inLa Vague d’Or, my phone buzzed.
FELIX: Can we meet? There is something I want to show you. Tonight?
I froze and just stared at the message as if I was trying to translate it. And I guess I was.
‘Everything is OK?’ Antoine looked at me, concerned. Over the last few days I’d noticed how observant he was. If I’d a pain somewhere, it was like he almost knew about it before I did and demanded that we rest. When I was quiet because Rue had cried when I told her I was going out again, he teased it out of me almost immediately. So when I replied, ‘Yeah … just family stuff,’ I knew he knew I was lying. And he didn’t push it or ask again. But it was there, in the air, when the atmosphere changed from something easy to an awkward silence.
I hesitated before replying. I’d deliberately stopped myself from thinking about Felix, but when I let him in, my gut response wasn’t to be cold or unresponsive, it was to give him a chance.
ME: OK. Where?
FELIX: I’ll pick you up at 9. Dress warmly
The message from Felix was just something I couldn’t ignore. There was so much we needed to talk about. That day, at his house. How perfect it had been until everything fell apart. But there was this uneasiness, like I was betraying whatever this was that I’d built with Antoine.
When Antoine’s van pulled into the campsite, he didn’t turn off the engine.
‘OK, thanks. See you later?’ I asked, trying to force some cheeriness into my tone.
‘Later?’ he replied, like he was demanding clarification.
‘Later, like tomorrow?’ I offered, tailing off as my own awkwardness closed in on me.
‘You should take your board,’ Antoine said, then got out of the van. I followed him, then loitered a few metres away, tracing the dusty ground with my sandal.
