Jace
Steph’s fingers slide along the scar tissue, from knee to hip, with that steady pressure I know by heart. Six years of Tuesdays. Same table, same white light overhead, same foam bolster under my knee.
I stare at the wall across from me. One corner of the ACL poster has been curling up for at least three months. No one’s fixed it. I notice it every week.
“You’re tense today,” Steph says, not looking up.
Her fingers move back up the outside of my thigh.
The tissue is thicker under her thumbs, like a hard cord stitched into the flesh.
Steph follows the ridge methodically—presses, releases, presses.
Some spots are numb. Others are barely waking up, a vague tingling, like a limb left too long in one position.
“No more than usual,” I say.
Steph doesn’t answer. She never argues when she knows I’m lying.
Her fingers travel down toward the inside of my thigh, where the tissue is densest. I turn my head toward the window. The blinds are halfway down. Outside, the light has gone the coppery shade of late afternoon.
“The tissue’s still dense here,” Steph says, pressing harder. “But it’s gotten more pliable since last month. The work’s paying off.”
I nod. This isn’t the part I dread.
She moves back up. Her fingers trace the top edge of the scar, where the nerve decided to come back to life two years ago. I could’ve done without it. Steph slows down. Her pressure changes—more precise, more careful.
And she presses.
My fingers grip the edge of the table. I close my eyes; my jaw locks. The pain is sharp. Steph holds the pressure, then releases.
I breathe out.
“Sorry,” she murmurs. “But it’s a good sign. It responds better than it used to.”
I pry my fingers off the table. There are nail marks in the vinyl. Mine, probably.
Steph goes back to work, lower down, on a numb patch. The contrast is almost worse than the pain. A piece of me that doesn’t respond anymore.
“If you didn’t come in every week,” she says, pressing the area with both hands, “this scar would be twice as stiff. The tissue would contract, your mobility would drop. You couldn’t surf the way you do.”
I couldn’t surf at all.
“After what you went through,” she goes on, “a lot of people would’ve quit.”
I don’t say anything. I’ve never known how to take that line.
“Most people would never have gotten this much mobility back,” Steph continues, eyes on the scar.
Maybe. But mobility doesn’t hand you back a career.
I can still throw a bottom turn or a cutback. The power’s there—it’s the back leg that drives, and that one’s intact.
The problem is the front leg. The one that absorbs, that holds, that takes five hours of a session and three days of competition. The one that tells your body you can go again tomorrow.
Mobility is the bare minimum. It’s what still lets me surf, teach lessons, keep the school running.
It doesn’t change a thing about the goddamn accident that keeps me pinned here while my sister travels the world doing what I always wanted to do. The accident that swallowed the money Noah was supposed to use for med school.
Steph works a warm cream over the whole area. The smell of eucalyptus mixes with the disinfectant.
“We’re done,” she says gently. “You can get dressed.”
I sit up on the edge of the table. The towel slips down my thigh; I tug it back up on autopilot before my eyes can land on the scar. I don’t look at it. I haven’t looked at it in a long time.
I pull on my boardshorts and flip-flops. Steph writes her notes in my file.
“See you next week, Jace,” she calls. “Same time.”
“Tuesday night, seven,” I say, not returning her smile.
I pass the front desk of the medical center. The receptionist nods at me.
Under my shorts, the cream sticks to my skin. Eucalyptus and something greasy, medicinal. The smell of my Tuesdays.
I’m wiped, like after every session. All I want is to get back to the trailer, lie down, and think about nothing for eight hours.
I push the door open.
Outside, the air is cooler. On Main Street, the streetlights come on one by one.
The scar pulls a little more than usual—Steph focused on the upper part today, the one that’s waking up. It’s a dull tension, not real pain. I can ignore it if I keep walking, but not if I stop.
I freeze.
Ryan Caldwell’s gray Porsche is parked right across the street, in front of Salt Vine, top down. Ryan comes out of the bar. He’s wearing a white shirt and leather shoes. He holds the door like Salt Vine is some Manhattan restaurant.
Summer’s right behind him.
Light blue dress, heels, hair loose over her shoulders, makeup on. She doesn’t look like the girl in jeans and Converse who was on her knees pulling weeds in the yard this morning. She looks like what she really is—a New York girl, clean, polished, calibrated for a world that isn’t mine.
Ryan puts a hand at the small of Summer’s back to steer her toward his car. That way he touches a woman like she already belongs to him… I want to cross the street and break his fingers. Summer doesn’t pull away. Maybe she doesn’t even notice—or maybe she likes it.
She gets into the convertible. Ryan goes around, settles behind the wheel. The engine turns over with a low growl, completely out of place here.
I don’t move.
My fingers find my thigh through the shorts. The scar pulses under the fabric—the same spot Steph worked ten minutes ago, the same burn. Except this time, nobody’s pressing.
The convertible pulls away down Main Street. The engine noise blends into the sound of the waves, far off, behind the rooftops.
It doesn’t even surprise me.
Summer Hayes. At seventeen, she was already out of my league.
Daughter of a college professor, a promising figure skater.
She read on the beach while I screwed around in the waves.
She talked about New York the way other people talk about their own neighborhood.
She had a plan. She was aiming for the top schools.
I had sand in my hair and pathetic grades.
I had a plan too. Surfing, the pro circuit. It was the only thing I was ever good at, and the ocean took it from me.
Today, Summer climbs into a Porsche in a long dress and heels. Me, I’m in flip-flops and shorts. I live in an old trailer on a beach. The school’s bank account only stays afloat because of my sixteen-year-old sister’s sponsorship deals.
Of course she got in that car.
Ryan Caldwell, with his agency, his plans for the town, and the smile of a man who’s never had to wonder whether he could cover the check. Who smells like aftershave, not PT cream. Who books tables at wine bars and knows what to say to a woman when there aren’t any waves to do the talking for him.
I start walking again—another fifteen minutes to the trailer. The scar pulls with every step. The evening air smells like fried food and jasmine.
Summer and me, it never made any sense when I was eighteen. It makes even less at twenty-four. We never belonged in the same world.
Back then, I was just dumb enough to believe it didn’t matter.