“Mamá.”
“What? I’m allowed to have eyes. He’s the most interesting thing to come through this cove in a decade.” She gathered her bag. “Which is why I’m meeting him tonight. Right now, actually—I’m on my way. Drinks at The Salty Siren. We’ll talk about the waves, what the ocean might provide for him. Men like that understand favors.”
She paused at the door, and I wished she’d just kept walking, just left everything as broken as it already was.
“And don’t worry—I’ll mention you, put in a good word. It can’t hurt, can it, having someone like me vouch for the tournament. He likely didn’t even know that’s what you were doing.”
The blender pitcher cracked in my hand. Just a hairline fracture under my fingers, where the magic jumped before I caught it. She didn’t notice. She had never once noticed.
“He registered,” I said.
“Of course, mija.” The smile she gave her invisible audience. “I’m so glad you are finally seeing results for all of…this.” She waved at the shack, the sign, at me. “Wear something nice this weekend. People will be looking at us now.”
Us.
I just stood there. She had not asked about the match. Hadn’t asked how I’d played or whether I’d enjoyed beating two professionals into the sand on the court I’d built. On the beach I’d had to reclaim from RipTide, from her. She had watched a video of the best day I’d had in years, and the only thing in it she recognized was an opportunity—an opportunity shaped like a man—and she was on her way to him right now. To talk about waves, likely forget to mention me at all, and stand between me and one more thing I’d claimed for myself.
I shookmy head.
I should have gone home and watched bad TV with Lupe or slept it off like a responsible adult.
I grabbed my keys and closed Shark Bites faster than I ever had.
The girl at the waterline had finished her sandcastle. She stood back with her hands on her hips, satisfied. Then the tide came in and took the whole thing in one pull. The girl stared at the wet, flat sand where it had been. Then she looked up the beach at her mother, like maybe she’d seen it, like maybe someone would say,That was beautiful. You did that.
Her mother wasn’t watching.
The warm power from the match was still in my body, but now it shifted like the current, the warmth swinging cold, and my heart was slamming like I’d run five miles, and every old, feral thing in me was awake at once and pulling seaward. I knew this feeling. I’d spent ten years smothering it. It used to come up in the last set of a match I refused to lose, the thing that had no interest in being a small, beautiful object on a shelf, the thing my mother had never once seen because she’d never looked up at the right moment in her life.
She wanted to talk about waves. She wanted to stand in front of cameras as if she owned the ocean. Fine. She could have the cameras. She could have the broadcast and her bottomless need to be the biggest thing in this town. But I was done being the daughter who stayed on the sand because that was all she had room for.
I wanted to be the version of me that nobody got to make small. And the only place I’d ever found her was when I was pushing myself to the very limit of what I could do.
Tonight, the ocean wouldn’t just belong to Marina Torres.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Chase
“Man, she really thrashed us,”Tanner said.
“And now the whole internet gets to see it,” Diego added.
“She nearly took out my face, dude.My.Face. I need that. It’s the moneymaker.” Tanner pulled his trucker hat down low like he could protect it posthumously.
“Is that why you always need to borrow money from me?” Diego tipped his head back against the cooler and glanced at me. “You’re quiet.”
“Nothing to say.”
“Mmm.” Diego was getting to be a problem.
The swell had been building all afternoon, and it was a big one, sets stacking up gray and heavy past the bar. But the noise it made wasn’t right, laced with unnatural heaviness. I heard it struggling, and underneath that, the static.
“Last light session?” Tanner was already reaching for his board. “That outside set is pumping. Chase.Chase. Last light.”
“I’m good.”
“You’regood?” He stared at me. “It’s firing. It’s literally why we’re here. Your whole comeback is this swell?—”
