CHAPTER 2 #2
Marina dropped her bag on the couch and went to the kitchen.
The evidence was exactly what she’d expected: a pot on the stove, its contents darkening at the edges where the sauce had caught and caramelized into something closer to bark than food.
The top portion, as Katrina had promised, looked salvageable. Mostly.
“I’m sorry, Rina,” Katrina said. She stood at the counter, stirring something in a second pot with the focused determination of someone trying to redeem themselves through auxiliary effort. “But the top was quite good.”
“No worries,” Marina said. She opened a cabinet and pulled down two plates. “Just make sure you scrub the pot later.”
“Yes ma’am.” Katrina gave a mock salute with her wooden spoon, flicking a droplet of sauce onto the counter in the process. She wiped it with her thumb and licked it off, grinning.
They sat down at the dining table. Katrina had salvaged the sauce as best she could, topping it with a generous layer of melted cheese. It looked far better than either of them had expected.
“Tell me about your day,” Katrina said, twirling pasta around her fork. “Any interesting customers?”
Ryan popped into Marina’s mind right away. She felt the urge to tell her sister about him, to narrate the brief encounter and watch Katrina’s face for the reaction she knew would come—eyebrows lifting, mouth curving into the smile that meant she’d already decided something Marina hadn’t.
But what was there to tell? Nothing, really. A man had sat at her bar. They’d talked. He'd been attentive in a way that felt driven by genuine curiosity rather than politeness. And then he’d left. The whole thing had taken thirty minutes, maybe less.
She shook her head. “No, not really. Same old.” She took a bite of pasta. The sauce was actually good beneath the carbonized top layer, tangy and garlicky. “What about you?”
“Oh, my day was pretty interesting.”
“Of course it was,” Marina said.
Katrina always had an endless supply of funny stories. Her students amused her constantly, not because she found them ridiculous but because she found people ridiculous in general, herself included, and surfing just happened to be the context in which human absurdity became most visible.
"I had a lesson with a family from Fresno today."
"How'd it go?"
"The husband was fine. The wife was fine. The dog was the problem."
Marina looked up.
"The dog?"
"Golden retriever. Seventy pounds. Refused to stay on shore."
"You let a dog surf?"
"I didn't let him do anything. He made his own choices."
Marina laughed.
"What happened?"
"Every time his owner paddled out, the dog followed him."
"Swimming?"
"Swimming. Then the dog climbed onto the board."
"No."
"Yes."
"Did he fall off?"
"Eventually. But not before riding farther than his owner."
Marina laughed as she imagined a dog balancing on a surfboard. "I wish Skylla could do that."
Katrina snorted. "I know. You tried, didn't you?"
"Once."
"Twice."
"Okay, twice."
They both laughed.
Their attempts to introduce Skylla to the ocean had been spectacular failures. The German Shepherd tolerated many things. Long hikes. Car rides. Storms.
Water was not one of them. The dog hated baths, hated the shower, and hated the ocean most of all.
The last time Marina had tried to coax her into the surf, Skylla had planted all four paws in the sand and refused to move. When Marina attempted to pull her forward, the dog slipped out of her collar and sprinted back up the beach.
They laughed a little longer, and then Katrina said, “Oh, Rina, you should join me. The two of us can make a good team.” She twirled more pasta, casually, as if the suggestion had occurred to her spontaneously rather than being the thing she brought up every few weeks like clockwork.
“We could expand my little surfing school. Take on more students. Actually make some money.”
Marina didn’t respond right away. She knew what this was. Katrina’s effort to get her back to surfing had the persistence of weather—constant, inevitable, wearing at the edges of whatever resistance Marina had built.
From time to time, Marina was tempted. She missed it. The feeling of a board beneath her feet, the particular silence of being inside a wave, the world reduced to water and sky, and the thin line between them.
But she was afraid, too. For the past eight years, she hadn’t given up surfing completely. She still went out sometimes, early mornings when the beach was empty, and caught a few waves before work. But she hadn’t dared to take it seriously.
Becoming an instructor meant commitment. It meant showing up, consistently, to the thing that had once been the center of her life and now sat at its edges. She wasn’t ready for that.
“No, Kat,” she said. Her voice came out softer than she’d intended. “I’ve told you over and over. I’m not ready yet.”
“Okay.” Katrina was still smiling, but the smile had shifted into something gentler, the edges rounded. She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “But Daddy would’ve loved to see you do that, you know?”
“Kat!” Marina’s voice rose before she could stop it. The sound hung in the kitchen, sharp and sudden. Skylla lifted her head from Marina’s foot.
Katrina shrugged. “Sorry.”
The rest of the dinner passed in silence.
They ate. Marina focused on the taste of the sauce, the texture of the pasta, the way the cheese had congealed at the edges of her plate into a translucent skin.
Small, concrete things. Katrina scrolled through her phone, the blue light reflecting off her face in the dim kitchen.
When they'd both finished, Katrina checked a text and set her phone down.
"We have a reservation," she said. "Someone chartered the boat. Two weeks from now. Group of five from San Francisco coming for a vacation and a fishing trip."
"Nice," Marina said. That would help.
Wayfinder wasn't just a boat. It was a commitment. Their parents' Catalina 42 sat in her slip at the marina waiting for the next charter, the next maintenance bill, the next thing that needed fixing.
Most people saw a beautiful sailboat. Marina saw responsibility.
But it was worth it. The boat was a tangible connection to her parents and the life they’d built on the water. As long as Wayfinder was moving, something of her parents was moving with it.
There had been chances to sell. Interested buyers. Good offers. But she couldn't imagine letting it go. Not after everything it had meant to Mom and Dad. Not after all the years she'd spent keeping it afloat.
"Looks like you'll get to play captain again," Katrina said.
Marina smiled. "Something like that."
She stood and carried her plate to the sink.
Behind her, Katrina was already talking about something else, the tension dissolved as quickly as it had formed.
That was Katrina too. She pushed, she retreated, she moved on.
The rhythm of her was as familiar as the tide, and Marina had long ago learned to swim with it rather than against it.