Chapter 18 Summer
“Oh, fu—”
I’m weightless. Flying through the air, sucking down a breath as white ocean spray hits me in the face.
A split second later, I’m underwater.
For the length of a heartbeat, the world around me is blue-green and serene. Deafeningly silent, the way it gets at home when the music is off and the noise from the street below has died down.
Then I’m being flung around, clinging to my last breath as the water works me like I’m in a washing machine’s rapid spin cycle.
I kick for the surface, so exhausted by the last hour that my limbs feel ready to fall off, lungs just seconds from collapsing.
I’m one wave away from my entire body atrophying so bad I get swept into the depths.
Which is an alarming reality when going the distance in a surf event will have me in and out of the water all day.
I surface in white, foamy water and slide back onto my board, disoriented, searching for Parker. He’s floating a ways away, squinting over the top of his waterproof camera. His body relaxes when he spots me, the same way it has every damn time I’ve wiped out this morning.
“What happened there?” Parker says when I’m within earshot. I push up to sit on my board the way he is, our feet dangling off the sides.
“Kicked out late. Again.” I shove a strand of wet hair, loosened from my braids, off my face.
Waves don’t get too big here at Crystal Cove—six-to-eight-foot walls of water that never form a barrel quite big enough to stand upright in.
But the second one of them comes, and I start to fit behind the falling curtain of water…
I tried to bail, did it late, and paid the price.
“Why are you kicking out at all? You’d get barreled by waves twice that size at Pine Point all the time, even in the junior league.
” Parker squints at the tiny screen on his camera.
“I could break you in half with all the tension you’re carrying in your back.
We’ll build some yoga into your program. It might be that’s the problem.”
“Maybe.” I don’t mention that this morning has felt off in a way that transcends the stiffness in my body. I haven’t felt so out of sorts in the water in years, so disconnected from my board. And the barrels…
Well, no manner of picturing Denny’s demise, my triumphant exit from town, or the looks on its gossipmongers’ faces as I win Surf’s Up could motivate my ass to stall into a barrel. The second the water falls over me…
“You’re exactly where you need to be in the early stages of training. This is where the work starts.” Parker’s using his reassuring trainer voice, the one we wield in the face of athletes feeling down on themselves.
I nod because he’s right. I should know better than to count myself out on day one. I’ve got weeks to go before the first event at Rocky Ridge, then two more events to pace myself through.
And hopefully an entire tour after that.
The morning sun has made its way higher in the sky now. We bob on our boards, mere feet apart, legs brushing underwater though there’s an entire ocean of space up for grabs.
“We’ll have to get you swimming laps, too, which…” Parker wipes off his camera lens, but it’s doused in water by the next rolling wave.
“Which is a little complicated seeing as you’re now banned from the only aquatic training center in a three-hour radius?”
Parker pulls a face. “I’ll think of something. Let’s call it for today and head to Brooks’s for a workout before you go to work.”
I nod. “What time is your session with River?”
He’d grumbled about it, but listening to Parker tell me about his impromptu meeting yesterday had been a relief.
I’d been so worried about what I’d be coming over to when I went back to his place for a rom-com last night.
But Parker had his nose in a textbook, deep in planning for their next session.
Maybe he’d gone the entire day without eating a meal, but he’d filled the time with something productive.
Hell, just the fact that he let Colin Nowak convince him to leave his apartment was a triumph.
And he got up before dawn today. For you.
I flip a mental middle finger to the desperate girl inside me, trying to lead me down a fantastical path where that means something it doesn’t.
“I have my doubts River will show up at all.” Parker snorts. “Might be for the best. I’m pretty tired.”
I twist around to get a better look at him. He stares into the distance with unfocused eyes, and more than anything, I wish I could exist inside his head with him. Keep all the nasty thoughts at bay, the ones that have him looking for safety in his bedsheets.
“Do you like it out here?”
Parker nods. “I can see why you do this. It’s not a bad reason to get out of bed.”
“No, it’s not. I missed this. After everything that happened with Denny…” He took a lot away from me. My desire to surf. My self-esteem. “It was hard to get out of bed for a while, between not coming here and fighting with you. But I found other reasons to do it.”
Parker hesitates, then asks, “Like what?”
His question cuts into me deep. I know it’s not rhetorical—it’s his way of asking for help.
“Like… the next day was a Monday. Which, according to my carefully crafted schedule, meant my newest cans of Diet Coke had been sitting in the fridge for exactly two days. And you know what that means.” I wiggle my eyebrows and Parker shakes his head, failing to kill a smile. “Perfectly crisp soda awaits.”
“You do realize that’s all in your head, right? It tastes the same on day one as it does on day fifty.”
“You’re wrong. Second-day Diet Coke is worth getting out of bed for.” I shrug, watching beads of water drip from his hair onto the back of his neck. “Your turn.”
“Something worth getting out of bed for?” Parker’s grip tightens on his board when the edge of a small wave pushes us toward shore. “Honestly? I’m drawing a blank.”
Those words cut me even deeper. What I wouldn’t give to bridge the watery distance between us, wrap him safely in my arms and never let go. “Well, today I’m looking forward to my morning blueberry donut.”
Parker’s head whips around. “I haven’t asked Wynn for those all week.”
“Me neither, for obvious reasons. But you’re going to procure me a few when we get back to town, as a thank-you for teaching you to stay alive in the water.”
His eyes spark, and suddenly he’s here. My Parker. “Wait until I tell him you were tossing them in the trash a couple weeks ago.”
I gasp. “You wouldn’t dare! Resident Homewrecker has nothing on Donut Trasher. I’ll have my face plastered on wanted posters on every light post within town lines.”
“Then we’ll leave town. Fuck ’em all.”
My stomach pinches uncomfortably because that’s exactly the plan. And I’ll tell him. Soon.
“Sheffield’s donuts,” Parker says after a while.
“Worth getting out of bed for?”
He holds my gaze, and we grin at each other while bobbing on our boards. “Worth getting out of bed for.”