21. Selena
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Selena
My heart was still pounding against my chest when I got back to Shark Bites.
Somebody had filmed it and the tournament form had already gained fifteen sign-ups as the video quickly racked up views. I wasn’t glowing like after our sex, but the hollow place inside me felt full. Not buzzing and overflowing, but a more natural feeling, like I had earned it.
You’ve still got it.
I smiled to myself as I cleaned out the blender for a new smoothie order.
I watched a young family playing down by the shoreline, their daughter building an epic sandcastle.
I glanced up at El Soldado and he nodded.
He swooped down and nabbed a rare piece of blue sea glass I held out, then flew over the beach, dropping it right next to the girl.
She squealed and immediately set it as the crown jewel atop her tallest tower. The rest of the day passed quickly.
Then I felt her.
The energy on the beach shifted when my mother arrived, like it curved around her, drawn into her immense gravitational orbit. I’d spent enough of my life watching it happen that I could feel the ripple from behind the counter without looking up.
I finished making the acaí bowl I was working on, smiling at the woman who took it before turning to her.
“Mi corazón! There you are.” She glanced around the shack like she was appraising it for a buyer.
“Mamá, I was just closing—”
“This is cute. Is this new?” She touched the wind chime I’d hung by the register. “I saw a video today. Sandra sent it to me—you remember Sandra, from my circle—she said, Marina, isn’t this your daughter? Playing volleyball with El Tiburón?”
“Beating El Tiburón.”
“Mmm.” She was already looking past me, at the menu board. “Do you still make that thing with the mango? Don’t trouble yourself. Anyway, I watched it, and I thought, well. This little tournament of hers is finally getting interesting.”
Finally. After eight years of hard work and thousands of dollars I’d raised for this town.
“It’s the same tournament, Mamá. It’s always been—”
“So I’ve decided to bring everyone.” She said it like she was blessing me with a favor I’d asked for.
“The whole community. Sandra, the Vega sisters, some of the coastal families from up north. They were already here for my waves, anyway. We’ll need seating, obviously—somewhere shaded.
I’ll send you the numbers.” She finally met my gaze. “You can manage that?”
“This isn’t really that kind of event—” I started, but she wasn’t listening.
“It’ll be wonderful exposure for you.” Past me again, at her own reflection in the window now, adjusting an earring. “Everyone always asks what you’re doing down here. Now I’ll finally have something to show them. Oh, this will be just perfect.”
Something to show them.
Eight years, and I became worthy the day a famous man stood on the other side of my net.
I breathed. In, out, in, out. “Okay. We’ll figure out covered seating.”
“And the Perez boy.” Her smile was hungry, and I did not like that at all. “My god, mija. The photos don’t do him justice, do they? That jawline, and those tattoos. The shoulders on him. If I were twenty years younger.” She laughed, delighted with herself. “Honestly, even now—”
“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 shook my 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.