Page 6 of The Summer I First Saw You
I put on leggings and a sports bra and go downstairs to the deck. The air is crisp, the ocean coated in a thin glaze of sunlight, and the road is lined with guys climbing out of cars and pickups in wetsuits.
There must be a surf break across the street. Agoodsurf break. You don’t buy a board like the Vissla currently being unloaded if you’re just fucking around.
Liam says Harrison never surfs anymore, but I still understand why he wanted this house. The ocean makes you feel a little more alive just by beingnearit.
Which reminds me why I came down here in the first place. I turn away and begin my morning routine, the thing that haskept me sane of late. Once I’ve stretched, I follow the same sequence of burpees and lunges and squats and pushups and planks I’ve completed every morning without fail for weeks, a sequence I find strangely comforting. When I start to spiral, I cling to the thought that no matter how bad I feel, no matter how dire the future appears, in the morning I’ll be moving through this same routine, and that life might not be better by then but it probably can’t get worse.
Not until August, anyway.
In August, it could definitely get worse.
When I’m done, I collapse in one of Harrison’s uncomfortable chairs, hoping he might appear in boxers again, because that erection of his was a visual delight.
His attempt to block it from view was ridiculous…and required two hands.
A guy across the street starts the laborious process of pulling on a wetsuit. And as much as I hated getting into and out of a wetsuit…I miss it. I miss the elation of surfing, the exhaustion. I miss wanting something,anything, as much as I used to want that. I’ve slowly shut outallthe things that make me happy over the past few years, but that’s the one I miss most.
Harrison used to love to surf too—I can still remember him as a sunburned teenager, attempting to surf backward—but the boards I saw leaning against his garage wall yesterday when I carried my wetsuit inside had cobwebs on it. I bet he’s never gone out here once.
He and I are in different places in our lives—wealthy lawyer with oceanfront mansion versus homeless, blackmailing drifter—but we’re on the same trajectory: a steep downward spiral, with our best selves behind us.
And in order to reverse his trajectory, maybe I’ve got to reverse my own first.
I probably shouldn’t try to resume surfinghere, butsuddenly I want this too much to tell myselfno. I move fast before I can chicken out—a bikini from my room, followed by the wetsuit I left hanging in the garage—fighting a nervous pulse of excitement the entire way.
It’s like riding a bike, right? A bike you ride at high speed toward the face of a cliff, sure, but it will come back to me. At least I hope it will come back to me. I’d prefer not to discover the analogy is false while in the middle of the ocean.
I borrow one of Harrison’s many surfboards and wax it quickly, ignoring a queasy hit of fear, and then I swallow hard and cross the street, wincing at the pavement under my bare feet. I have city girl feet now. I wonder if I also have a city girl’s ability to gauge the surf, to pop up, to carve.
I wonder if I’m going to plow straight into the face of a cliff because any one of those things, or all of them, is true.
A sign at the top of the stairs says, “Welcome to Horseshoe Point. Proceed at your own risk.”
I hiss quietly under my breath, not at the warning, but because I recognize the name.
I’ve heard of this place. People refer tothe Horseshoein the same hushed tones reserved for Mavericks. Based on the cliff, I assume the break is much like Steamer Lane—one where you’ve got to pop up fast and angle to the side immediately to avoid smashing into the rocks. Technical, challenging surfing. Incredible when it works out and fatal when it doesn’t.
I have no business surfing here after so long out of the water, but if I back out now, I’ll keep backing out. When’s the next time I’ll be in a house thirty yards from a fucking surf break?
I descend the steep staircase and wrap my leash tight around my ankle at the bottom. It’s best to jump in just as the tide starts to go back out—that way the water’s doing some of the work for you. But the water sweeps in and recedes, and I stay in place with my heart in my throat.
I look like an idiot, standing here, not jumping, as one wave after another sloshes against the stairs. I’m not sure if my fear is about surfing or something bigger, but I know that I’m really fucking tired of feeling scared.
Another wave comes in, and this time I jump. The water is ice cold, of course, but it’s not the kind of thing you dwell on when you’re at risk of smashing into the rocks. I scramble atop my board and begin to paddle. I don’t have the arm and shoulder strength I once did, but I fall into a rhythm, turtle rolling beneath the incoming wave without even thinking and then continuing on.
I really hope the rest of it comes back to me too.
I reach the break, ignoring the guys down at the good end of the wave. I’m sure I’m a curiosity—the lone female, one who doesn’t appear to know what she’s doing.
A small wave approaches and I have toforcemyself to turn my board toward the shore for the first time in years and start to paddle. When I don’t catch it in time, it’s more out of fear than lack of skill.
I close my eyes, wishing Harrison was here. When I was a kid and the terror inside me was visible, Liam used to say, “Shit or get off the pot,” which usually had the wrong effect. Harrison was kinder. “Just push up, Daisy,” he’d say with quiet certainty. “The rest will take care of itself.”
And he was always right. Surfing isn’t complex—it’s a sequence, and you only need the courage to let that sequence begin. You push up your chest, and your body takes over.
Two of the guys are getting ready for the next wave and I do the same, maneuvering myself to face the shore, paddling slow, then hard.
Just push up, Daisy.
