“You know that’s not actually a compliment.” My eyes furiously scanned the water in front of me like I might find a spot of dry land on it. We weren’t actually that far out, seeing as this was supposed to be abeginner’s lesson, but for some reason, I was feeling the same kind of bottomless sensation in my stomach you get when you’re about to drop on a roller coaster or, I’d imagine, before you do something like jump out of a plane, off a bridge. “I think someone not being afraid of anything would indicate a certain brand of narcissism. And, hey—” I glanced over at him, suddenly irritated “—you’re the one who said it was probably healthy to be a little wary of sharks earlier, and— What?”
Everett was grinning, which only irked me more. “Still feeling nervous?”
“I—” I started, confusion rising and waning in the space of one breath. “Oh my god, I hate tricks like that. Just replacing one emotion with another isn’t—”
“You’ve got to paddle now,” Everett interrupted.
“What?”
“No matter how you feel about my teaching methods, you’ve got to start paddling now if you want to make this wave,” he said, but in my moment of hesitation, it was too late, and this time the drop in my stomach wasn’t just from nerves but from the sudden lurch of the board beneath me, the wave bigger than either of us had anticipated.
“Everett!” I yelped as the board rocked, falling forward to grip it with my hands. He steadied it immediately, leaning over to wrap an arm across the front.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he held me there. I watched as the wave bobbed toward the shore in front of us now, and considered, for a moment, how ridiculous I must look from that vantage point, a dot of a person screaming as the water rose like a tiny wrinkle in a blanket beneath them. I looked over at Everett, breathing hard. “Come on.” He waved me in the direction of shore. “I shouldn’t have pushed it. Let’s go.”
“No,” I said as he started to lean forward, ready to paddle back to the beach. “I still need to stand up.”
“You did great,” he said. “We can try again another day.”
“We don’t have another day,” I said. “We leave after tomorrow.”
“Then we can try again next summer,” he said. I’d expected him to ask me to stay again, was almost disappointed that he didn’t.
I glanced over my shoulder. Another small wave was rolling in toward us, far enough for me to prepare. “This is the one,” I said to him. “I’m standing up.”
Everett’s eyebrow tugged upward. “You sure?”
I nodded, even though it was shaky. “Yep. This is it.”
The corners of Everett’s mouth turned down as he considered, but he nodded and dropped forward to paddle a little away from me, giving me space.
“You can do it!” he called to me as I fell forward, feet on my board behind me.Like a push-up, Everett had told me while we practiced on the beach.Or a burpee.He’d laughed when I’d glared at him about it.
The same nerves Everett told me he didn’t think I had started to bubble up, but the wave was under me before they could take root, and Everett was telling me to “Paddlepaddlepaddle!”And I was pushing up, getting my feet under me, and Everett was cheering, and for one tiny second I wasn’t afraid at all. It felt a little like flying.
I fell immediately.
But Everett was there when I popped up, in the water too, his board bobbing gently toward shore, and I was wrapping myself around him, laughter jostling out of me.
“You did it!” he said, pulling his head back to smile at me. We were pressed together as much as we could be as we both pedaled to stay afloat, salt water sluicing off his shoulders under my palms.
“And here you thought it was time to go,” I said. Everett threw his head back, a laugh barking out of him. I wanted him to kiss me, I realized, when he looked back at me and I could see the water clinging to his eyelashes, wanted to taste the salt on his lips. He seemed to realize it then too, hands tightening on me for a split second before he was loosening his grip.
“Is that enough for today?” he asked.
No. “Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled, nodding as we let go of each other and kicked off in the direction of our boards.
We didn’t waste any time lingering on the beach. We walkedin silence back to the rental shop and rinsed off our boards there before returning mine and heading back to the car. Everett leaned his surfboard against the trunk and reached inside to retrieve two towels. He slung one around his neck and returned to me where I stood with my back against the driver’s side door. It was warm out, hot even, but there were goose bumps on my arms.
Everett wrapped the towel around me, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. We were staring at each other, too serious. He pulled the top of the towel up over my head and scrubbed a hand on top of it, dragging a laugh out of me. I squirmed my head out from under his hand but didn’t move away from him, even though I knew I should have. Instead I grabbed onto the ends of the towel he still had hanging around his neck, his bare stomach brushing against mine.
“Better?” he asked, hands still on my arms. I could feel the heat of his palms through the terry cloth, the rise and fall of his breath against my abdomen.
“Loads,” I said. We had been this close in the ocean, his arms wrapped around me as he pedaled his legs below, heart thrumming against mine; and yet, it hadn’t felt like this. Maybe because I was just alittleafraid of drowning out there. Maybe because I was warmer and back on dry land. Maybe because I’d been trying all week not to think about Everett like that, look at him like that, dream about him like that. But at his car, bodies pressed together, it was all I could think about. My eyes traced along the sharp angle of his jaw, up to the achingly soft curve of his lips, the straight bridge of his nose. By the time they landed on his eyes, my hands had climbed to his shoulders, the pads of my fingers brushing over his skin and the remaining hints of salt water there.
Everett stared at me as I traced the tips of my fingers to hiscollarbone, over his sternum, down until he was lifting an arm to lean it above my head, forehead dropping to the car just next to mine, breath against my ear. He pressed a kiss to the spot just below it and I gasped, curling closer toward him, adding to the pressure between us.
Everett looped his other arm around my waist and drew me against him, moving his mouth up to mine in slow, hungry movements. I arched against him, bringing my hand back up to thread into his hair, the other grasping for the side mirror like I was losing my balance. It was as good as our last kiss was—better even, sharper, a want behind it that felt somehow time sensitive. Which it was, I remembered as Everett’s hand dropped to the small of my back, pressing me against him, and I moaned into his mouth, an incriminating sound.
