Page 75 of Britta & the Beach Boy
There are no platitudes. No, “it will be okay” or “things will get easier with time.” Because it won’t ever be okay that Mom wasn’t here and I didn’t miss her, and I also hate the thought of things getting easier the longer Mom is gone. I don’t want her tobe gonenowor in the future when my memories of her start to fade.
“What do you think it means that I forgot her today?” I ask when my tears slow enough I can form the question without making that weird choking sound that comes with crying.
“Do you mean while we were getting married in one of the world’s tallest Ferris wheels, even though you’re scared of heights? And maybe marriage, too.”
I let out a small laugh.
“I think it means you were too terrified to think of anything besides what was happening in the moment. Nothing else.” Dex’s hand is cupped around my shoulder, and he caresses my bare skin with his thumb.
I take a deep breath, wanting to let go of the weight I’ve carried for years, but that’s become unbearable since Mom passed. “I don’t want to forget Mom, but I’m afraid that’s the penance I have to pay.”
“Penance for what?” Dex’s voice is calm, like what I’ve told him is totally normal.
“Being mad at her for getting sick. It makes no sense, but I am. It’s not her fault, but I gave up everything I had planned because I wanted to take care of her.” Not only have I never said these words out loud, but I also haven’t articulated them to myself.
But saying them brings clarity to my feelings, and I shed a fragment of the shame I’ve been carrying. “She raised me to be whatever I wanted, to go wherever my heart took me. Then, because I’m her only daughter, her illness brought me home before I could do any of the things I wanted to do.”
I feel Dex nod. “She asked you to come home?”
I’ve asked myself the same question, because I honestly don’t remember. “Nobody tried to stop me.”
“Hmm. You regret going home?” He drags one fingertip at a time slowly down my shoulder.
I don’t answer right away, because regret isn’t what I feel. Anger? Yeah. Resentment? Yes. But not necessarily regret.
“I wouldn’t change going home instead of taking a job in LA. I’d care for Mom all over again. The only thing I’d change is her getting sick.” I push out a frustrated laugh. “See why it makes no sense that I’m mad at her?”
Dex makes his “ah” sound that I’m learning is what he does before saying something he wants you to think isn’t much but is actually pretty deep.
“Makes perfect sense to me. It’s how I feel about my dad pushing me to surf.”
I tilt my chin toward the outline of his jaw. “You love surfing.”
“More than anything.” He looks down at me, and I turn over to rest my chin and hands on his chest, which I realize as the duvet between us shifts, is bare.
His skin is warm, and I brush my thumb over his shoulder, the way he did to mine. There’s only enough light in the room to see shapes, not his eyes. But I feel them on me, studying me, weighing whether to open up to me the way I have to him.
“Remember how I told you I was ten when I told my dad I wanted to go pro?” he says. “That’s all it took for my pipedream to become his dream. Suddenly surfing was less about us connecting than it was about me earning money for it.”
“That’s a lot of pressure for a ten-year-old.”
“It’s a lot of pressure for any surfer. You put up heaps of money before you ever start earning.” He tucks one arm under his head, but the other one stays draped across my lower back.
“That’s true of any sport, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but other athletes don’t travel internationally for months at a time before they’re pros, hoping to win enough smaller events to qualify for the paying events.” There’s no bitterness in his voice, just acceptance.
“You did that?”
Dex nods. “A football stadium can be built anywhere, but the only place to surf is where the waves are, and a good wave depends on the seafloor, time of year, and wind. The type of seafloor—reef break, sandbar, beach break or the like—and the wind speed, duration, and how large the fetch determines how the wave breaks.”
I hold back my joke aboutMean Girlsand fetch, and instead raise my hand, like I’m in a high school science class. “Professor Dexter, will you explain what fetch means?”
Dex laughs, and his chest expands. Then I lose track of time as he explains to me how waves are formed—math was my best subject, not science—what makes a perfect wave for surfing, and the differences between the waves he’s surfed. He explains why surf competitions are held all over the world and how waves are scored differently—so no one has an unfair advantage. His stories of traveling to Indonesia, Tahiti, Brazil, and other far-flung places, sleeping in tents or in vans to save money, away from home for months at a time while he was still a kid, are fascinating. His descriptions of the biggest waves, though, are both interesting and terrifying.
“A barrel wave, like Pipeline in Hawaii, is created by the wind and the shallow reef it comes off.” He uses his hands to imitate the shape of the wave and the reef. “It’s the reef that makes it so perfect but also so dangerous. You get pummeled by that wave and hit the reef, you’re in for a serious injury. I’ve seen it happen to more than one surfer, and anyone who surfs it regularly has stories of close encounters.”
“I had no idea surfing could be so dangerous.”
