Page 3 of A Love Letter to Whiske
“Thought you had plans with Jenna.”
He shrugged. “I did. But there was a cheerleading crisis, apparently.”
We met eyes then, both stifling laughs before letting them tumble out.
“I’ll never understand organized sports,” I said, shaking my head.
Jamie squinted against the sun as we rode over a small wave, our legs dangling on either side of our boards. “What? You’ll never understand having a team who works toward the same goal?”
I scoffed. “Don’t be annoying. You know what I meant.”
“Oh, so you hate fun?”
“No, but I hateorganizedfun.” I glanced sideways at him then, offering a small smirk, and I grinned a little wider when the right side of his mouth quirked up in return. “I didn’t know you surfed.”
“Yeah,” he answered easily. “Believe it or not, us organized-fun people enjoy solo sports, too.”
“You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”
He laughed, and I relaxed a bit. So what Jamie was impossibly gorgeous and had the abs of the young Brad Pitt? I could do this, be friends, ignore the little zing in my stomach when he smiled at me. It was nice to have a friend other than Jenna. Where she made friends easily, I tended to push people away — whether by choice or accident. Maybe the Jamie-B-Jenna tricycle wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
But when I truly thought about that possibility, of having a guy as a friend, my stomach dropped for a completely different reason. A flash of Mom bent over our toilet hit me quickly, her eyes blood-shot and her truthful words like ice picks in my throat. I swallowed, closing my eyes just a moment before checking the waterproof watch on my wrist.
“We should try to catch this next wave.”
I didn’t wait for him to answer before I paddled out.
We surfed what we could, but the waves were sad that day, barely offering enough to push our boards back to shore. So eventually, we ended up right back where we started, legs swinging in the salt water beneath us as we stared out at the water. The sun was slowly sinking behind us, setting on the West coast and casting the beach in a hazy yellow glow.
“Where do you go when you do that?”
“Do what?” I asked.
“You have this look, this faraway stare sometimes. It’s like you’re here, but not really.”
He was watching me then, the same way he had the first day we met. I smoothed my thumb over one of the black designs on my board and shrugged.
“Just thinking, I guess.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
He grinned, and I felt my cheeks heat, though no one would know but me. My skin didn’t reveal a blush the way Jenna’s did. “Probably is. You should steer clear.”
Jamie chewed the inside of his lip, still staring at me, and opened his mouth to say something else, but didn’t. He turned, staring in the same direction as me for a few moments before speaking again.
“So what are you thinking right now?”
I let out a long, slow breath. “Thinking I can’t wait to get out of here, move to California, and finally surf a real wave.”
“You’re moving?”
“Not yet. But hopefully for college.”
“Ah,” he mused. “I take it you have no interest in going to Palm South University, then?”
I shook my head. “Nah, too much drama. I want a laid-back west coast school. Somewhere with waves that don’t suck.”
Jamie dipped his hand into the water and lifted it again, letting the water drip from his fingertips to the hot skin on his shoulders. “Me too, Brecks. Me too.”
