“Just try to catch a wave like you’re not trying so hard. Get up and then be fully willing to fall off. I mean you’re already wet, right?”
Sam knew he was right. Everything she loved to do came without force. She’d become a swimmer gradually. She’d started drawing without any particular end in mind. She opened books and just let them carry her away. The most fun she ever had happened when she acted on an idea without thinking it through. But trying to surf felt like trying to master gravity. She wasn’t entirely proud of the feelings that came up when she was considering a wave: distrust, uncertainty, fear. She liked the way Wyatt thought of her as strong and capable, the girl who could always capture the flag.
The next morning she got out to the beach at seven. There were small waves breaking in front of her house and she figured she had nothing to lose. She wanted to feel what it was like to glide along the curl of a wave, staying steady but open enough to let it take her wherever it was going. Something was happening to her, and it scared her, mostly the fact that her body acted of its own accord around Wyatt. She wanted to be open enough to let that take her, too.
The water was cold on her feet, cool on her shins, and then absolutely perfect once she was all the way in. Her body knew what it was doing. She paddled out to where the waves were breaking and waited for the right wave and her courage to emerge at the same time. A wave started forming from the south and she decided to try. She pushed up and felt the board beneath her feet. She imagined the motion beneath her went both ways, as if the ocean moved her and she moved the ocean. She was completely underwater before she realized she’d ridden that wave.
She came up for air and saw Wyatt running into the waves to meet her. “I saw it!” he called to her. He held out his arms like he was going to hug her but dropped them to his sides quickly. To her own surprise, she threw her arms around his neck. He hugged her back, and the feel of him, warm and dry, pressed against her wet body, was shocking. It had never occurred to her that another person’s skin against hers could make her feel like she was melting. Her skin felt so soft against his that she wondered if it had been changed somehow, as if the cells of his body interacted with hers to create a whole other thing. Wyatt let go first, which embarrassed her, like he’d been standing there waiting for it to be over.
“So you snuck out here and taught yourself to surf?”
“I guess. I don’t know how it happened.” She was relieved he’d changed the subject. She was afraid she might ask him how his skin felt against hers. She wanted to know.
“Let’s go back out,” he said. He hopped on his board and started to paddle. He was smiling.
15
Sam
“I have a great idea,” said Sam to the kids on the beach.
“Here we go,” said Cayla.
Sam ignored her. This really was a great idea. “Let’s camp out down at the cove tonight. All of us. Sleeping bags and s’mores and stuff. The weather’s good. And if there are waves in the morning, we can surf first thing.”
Everyone liked the idea, and they agreed to meet on the beach before sunset so they could walk down to the cove and arrive as it got dark. Sam didn’t have any particular feeling about sleeping outside, but the idea of being there in the dark with her friends and then watching the sky brighten first thing gave her the feeling that she was taking summer to a whole new level.
Sam and Wyatt found themselves walking ahead of the pack with their surfboards and sleeping bags. He was wearing a Chicago Cubs T-shirt that had been washed the exact number of times it took to make it rest perfectly over the outline of his chest. Sam had noticed this before, stealing glances at him from the passenger seat of his dad’s truck. It was strange, she thought, how distracted she could be by his body in that T-shirt when she spent half the day with him in no T-shirt at all. Wyatt shirtless looked great, but Wyatt in that T-shirt was obscene.
They dropped their sleeping bags in the woods, and Sam and Wyatt pretended to be surprised to see the array of shells surrounding the big linden tree. “Looks like they all came in on a single wave,” said Wyatt. Everyone agreed, though no one was very interested.
The sun wasn’t quite down, and everyone scattered around the cove to watch it set. Sam was watching the orange sky move into purple from behind the branches of the linden tree when she felt Wyatt come and stand behind her. She turned around and touched the bottom of his T-shirt. This was another thing she didn’t think through, her hand just wanted to run the fabric between her finger and thumb. She imagined she could feel where it was still warm from resting against his skin. She wanted to touch his stomach. She knew that you can’t just go around touching people’s stomachs, but now her whole body wanted her to run her fingertips over his abdomen. It terrified her. She looked up and he was watching her.
“I have a thing for this shirt,” she said. “And seriously, Wyatt, I’m the weirdest person ever.”
Wyatt smiled, and she turned around to watch the sun finish setting.
16
Wyatt
Wyatt told his mother he would quit surfing early so he could clean out the treehouse, which still hadn’t been done three weeks after they’d arrived at the beach, the floor still covered with leaves that had blown in over the past nine months, wet and decayed. But he’d gotten a tune in his head when he was sitting with Sam on the beach earlier, and it repeated like tunes often did when they were trying to get out into the world. He sat down with his guitar just to see if he could capture it. He started slowly and corrected himself a few times before it sounded right. He could see the notes as he heard them, over and over again.
A song was starting to take shape when Sam showed up at the bottom of the rope ladder. He smiled because it was as if she’d walked into his song. She wore jeans, rolled up at the bottom, and a white T-shirt that was the tiniest bit too short, a negligible amount of stomach showing, so little that it could have been a mistake. Her hair was down and still wet from the shower, leaving the shoulders of her T-shirt slightly see-through. It was all too much for Wyatt. He put his guitar down and stood up.
“Not much of a cleaner, are you?” she said at the top of the ladder. She walked past him and grabbed the broom off the floor.
“I got distracted,” he said, trying to take it from her.
She lowered her hand on the broom so that their hands were touching. He liked the feel of her hand over his, just that spot where the bottom of her fist touched the top of his.
“What are you doing here?” he said, and it came out too small. They stood there, holding hands around the broom, for what seemed like forever. They were too close to be just talking, but not close enough.
Sam said, “I wanted to see you.”
“Yeah,” he said. The moon lit up the space and the air between them felt thick. It was a risk to kiss her, but maybe a bigger risk not to. It ached to want something this much. He barely had to move to brush his lips against hers, and he lingered there, just to make sure. Sam kissed him back and wrapped her arms around his neck. After that, something between them took over. It was as if, after taking this step, there was only one path forward. He’d practiced this kiss in his mind a thousand times. But he was not prepared for the salty-sweet taste of Sam’s lips and the urgent way she pressed her body against his. His hands were everywhere—her hair, her neck, her hips—as if this were his one chance to touch every part of her.
“We need to slow down,” she said by the time they were lying on the damp leaves.
“Do we?” He was not slowing down.
“We have all summer.”
I want forever, he thought.
17
Sam
“I really think I should go home,” Sam said, because it sounded like the sane thing to say. It came out breathless, and she knew she didn’t sound like she meant it. She felt drunk from kissing Wyatt for so long. Just being able to run her hands along his arms and feel his breath on her neck made her wonder if she’d ever have the strength to climb back down the rope ladder.
“Don’t,” he said, kissing her again. “Or do, I don’t know. I just want you to want to come back.”
Sam laughed. “I’ll come back.”
When she finally went home, she couldn’t sleep. She wanted to text him, but she couldn’t imagine what she would say after all that.
She took out her sketch pad and started drawing. There was an image of Wyatt in her mind from earlier that night, sitting on the edge of the treehouse playing the guitar. It was a song she hadn’t heard before, and she’d followed it through the dunes and to the rope ladder. She’d wondered if she should turn back and leave him alone with his song, but she’d wanted to see him. When she was on the third rung of the rope ladder, he looked up at her but continued to play. It was a split second when he was fully immersed in his music and smiling at her at the same time. It was like he’d let her all the way in.
NOW