Chapter 18
The wave under her board is solid and keeps her upright as she rides it to a natural conclusion toward the Malibu Pier.
It brings her nearly all the way back onto the sand and she pops off her board gracefully, before lifting it up under her arm and carrying it over to where Xavier is stretched out next to his board, his chest rising and falling in a way that makes her remember him stretched out across her bed, hair sweat-soaked, body spent.
As a smaller wave follows the one she rode in, it catches her ankles and makes her stumble at the contact, but Xavier doesn’t see. His eyes are closed, his breathing starting to regulate as she sits on the towel beside his, while the early morning sun casts long shadows over his face.
“You’re way better at this than you said you were,” he accuses, but there’s no bite to his words.
She can’t quite help the smile that quirks up at the backhanded praise. “I don’t remember claiming any particular level of skill.”
“You know what I mean.”
Bianca lets out a hum of agreement. “You are way less coordinated than you look.”
She’s teasing and he absolutely knows it. Most first-time surfers never even stand up during their first lesson. He actually managed to stay upright on the board for a few seconds before face-planting into the water that last time and he’d gotten a mouthful of salt water and sand for his trouble.
“I thought I looked like Indiana Jones,” he grouses, turning away from her and spitting into the sand.
Wrinkling her nose, she digs through her bag and grabs a water bottle. “I’m not sure how closely you watched those movies, but for an action hero, he actually falls down a lot.”
“I feel like I swallowed an entire shaker of salt.” He wipes at his face, trying to get the sand off it, but she bats his hands away.
“You basically did. Don’t do that, you’ll make it worse. Keep your eyes closed.” She takes her water bottle and pours it gently over his head before pressing a clean towel into his hands. He presses the cotton against his eyes before he blinks up at her. “Here.”
He chugs the water bottle down and lets out a harsh cough once he finishes.
“How long has it been since you’ve been out?”
“A couple of years, probably,” she says, trying to remember. It was a few summers ago, once her semester wrapped up, right around this time – before Lexi got pregnant, they’d all gone to the beach as a family.
“Years?” he asks, clear disbelief written across his face.
“Eh, it’s like riding a bike or ice skating, you can’t really forget how to do it.”
“So how long until I’m as good as you?”
“We do not have that kind of time.”
“Can you surf in Greece?”
“Actually, you can. There are a few really good spots I’ve been to on the islands, but there’re a couple of beaches around Athens you can go to, too, that get a decent swell.”
“Gonna need you to make me a list. I think I’m addicted.”
“To lungfuls of salt water and face-fulls of sand?”
“Yep.”
“You’re such a freak.”
“Guilty. I kind of wish I’d tried this my first year here.”
“We were a little bit busy.”
“Too busy, maybe. Now that it’s done, I . . .”
“You have regrets?”
“A few, maybe,” he admits. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. It all seems to have worked out, right?”
She looks down at him, sun shining into his eyes while he squints against it, his hair windblown and wild, freckles starting to stand out on his shoulders and chest as his skin pinks in the heat. The pull toward him is inescapable. Reaching out, she brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes.
“No regrets at all?” he rasps.
She doesn’t answer, which is enough of an answer in and of itself.
What would have happened if she’d said something about this connection years ago, or if he had?
If they’d taken some of the energy they channeled into their degrees and explored this thing between them instead.
Would they be happy now? Would they have lasted?
Would they both be poised to have their professional dreams come true?
Or would their dreams have changed? Would she be headed back to a high school to teach while he settled into a couple of adjunct jobs teaching archaeology?
Would they already have the house and maybe a kid?
Would they even have finished the program?
There are too many variables, and if there’s one thing the last five years have taught her, it’s that you can never account for every variable. It’s the great trap of any research, one they’re always fighting against, a battle they’ll never win.
That doesn’t make it not worth fighting, but all these what ifs? That’s all they are – possibilities that they never explored, the road not taken, forever untraveled.
Because they can’t go back.
They can only go forward.
And their roads are diverging.
God, is she really referencing nineteenth-century poetry instead of reveling in the now, being here in the warm sand, salt water on their skin and him looking at her like maybe she’s the sun that’s blinding his eyes.
Who cares?
They’re here now and she’s going to enjoy it for as long as she can.
“You want to try again?”
He tilts his head at her in question, eyebrows lifting as a wicked smile spreads across his face.
Warmth that has nothing to do with the sun floods her cheeks and spreads over her skin, settling low in her belly.
“Surfing,” she clarifies, but winks.
Laughing, he nods.
This is good, this in-between space they’ve found, a compromise, between where they were before and the lines they’d crossed without thinking. It’s . . . comfortable, almost natural.
Standing, she dusts the sand off her and holds out a hand for him to take, pulling him up as he groans.
“I’m going to be feeling this for days,” he mutters as he finds his feet, and they both grab their boards, head down toward the water.
“I’d say no one warned us about turning thirty, but like . . . everyone did.”
“I figured I’d be immune.”
“Of course you did,” she says, as they push through the smaller ripples on the shore, the water rising around their waists as they get up onto their boards and paddle out to wait for some decent waves to ride in.
“What you said before, about it all working out,” he says, as the water around them stays pretty calm.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not sure it would have, if I hadn’t met you.”
“What?”
“You pushed me, always, to be better, to dig deeper. I’ve .
. . I’ve never not been the top of my class before and it was, shit, it was fucking humbling.
You made me really try for the first time in a long time and I’m really grateful for that.
I should have told you before now, should have told you years ago, really, but .
. . I don’t know . . . I’m telling you now. ”
“Wow, I . . .”
He’s stunned her absolutely speechless. Even his fake engagement proposal hadn’t done that. It’s maybe the best thing anyone has ever said to her before.
“You . . . you did that for me too.”
“Nah,” he denies it immediately. “You don’t have to say that just because I did.”
“I’m not. I was so sure you were going to be a massive pain in the ass when we met, and I was right, but not how I thought.
I figured you were some hotshot asshole who thought that our program was a shortcut PhD and you’d just spend five years showing all of us how beneath you it was, but you proved me wrong and people rarely do that.
So thank you for showing me that being wrong isn’t always a bad thing. ”
“Any time, boss.”
“Xavier?”
“Yeah?”
“I got this one,” she says, lying flat on her board, arms paddling her ahead, and she feels his eyes on her as she powers through the water, catching the crest of the wave, pushing up onto her feet and riding it away from him, all the way into shore.
“You have any plans for the rest of the day?”
They’re driving up through the Santa Monica Mountains in a halfway decent effort to avoid the traffic back down into LA at this time of the morning.
“Not really.”
“What about Paolo? He’s only around for a few days, right?”
“Yeah, he’s flying back tonight, but it’s all good. In a few months I’ll be sick of his face.”
“Frankie invited me to the Dodger game tonight, if you want to go?”
“Sure, that’d be fun. I’ve . . .”
“Never been? Five years in this city and you literally just spent it on campus, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“LA doesn’t do anything for you?”
“It’s got its charms, like any other city.”
She tries not to take it personally, but it’s her home and it feels he’s talking about the city and she’s talking about . . . something else.
“Okay, we’ll just drop this stuff back off at Frankie’s.”
When they pull up to her house, Frankie’s car is still in the driveway, which is . . . odd. She’s always up and gone before eight and it’s almost nine.
“Frankie?” she calls, after knocking on the door.
It takes almost a full minute, with Bianca’s stomach in knots while Xavier peers through the front windows, before they hear footsteps and the door unlocking.
“Hey,” Frankie says, dressed for work, but . . . clearly not actually going anywhere, her hair hanging limply down to her shoulders and her face bare of any makeup, eyes red-rimmed.
Bianca furrows her brow. “Are you – are you sick or something?”
“No, I . . . Well, maybe, I don’t know . . .”
She steps back and invites them in without a word, just gestures them toward the door and wanders back into the house.
“What happened?”
“I called in to work,” Frankie says, curling up in a gray armchair in the corner of the living room. “I . . . never do that.”
“You’re not going in?” Bianca asks, sitting on the couch across from her, close enough to reach out and touch her if she needs to.
“I . . .” Frankie starts to respond, but then shakes her head. “I’m going in late. We have a night game.”
Bianca snorts. “You should just take the day.”
“I can’t take the whole day off. That’s not how it works.”
“Okay,” she allows, for now, because clearly hustle culture isn’t what’s bothering her best friend. “So then what’s up?”