“So that was a full-on lie.”
“No, when I was first in LA I worked at a gas station in Venice, pumping gas and fixing cars. This old guy Manny owned the shop and I kept checking in on him after I didn’t work there anymore.”
“That’s not fixing cars.”
“A few years ago he was in financial trouble so I bought the place and hired him to run it. And I do go by sometimes to help.”
I lean back in the booth, taking him in. Wyatt. The goodest of all the good people I’ve ever known.
“So where do you want to look for waves?” he asks.
50
We secure our surfboards to the top of Marion’s station wagon and make our way along the coast. Wyatt drives to Garnet Bay, to the same spot where he told me he loved me for the first time. I wonder if he remembers this as clearly as I do.
At the shore, we take off our shorts and T-shirts and avoid looking at one another. We carry our boards into the ocean and paddle out to waves that are bigger than I expected. Most of the surfing that I’ve done in the past decade has been this summer, and currently my whole life is off-balance, so I’m relying on muscle memory and good luck.
Wyatt takes the first wave he likes, and I wait. He paddles back to me. “What are you waiting for? An invitation?” He splashes my board.
“The waves are kind of intimidating,” I say.
“You’ve got this, Sam. Come on.” He turns away from me and paddles out, like he’s not going to entertain my nonsense. He thinks I’m still that girl who’s great at Capture the Flag.
I take the next one that comes along and fall pretty quickly. But it feels good, and when I come up for air, I am smiling.
“See?” he says. And we paddle back out.
I fall a bunch of times, but I don’t really care. I like the feel of the water on my skin. I like the feel of the sun warming me just enough that the water feels cold when I go under again. The soundtrack of the ocean is in my head, and it replaces my to-do list and my nagging fear of waltzing in a box. I can move however I want in the ocean. I’m completely free.
Wyatt paddles over to me. “You getting tired?”
“A little.” We’re on our stomachs, and he’s holding on to my board the way he used to, keeping us together. Out here on the water, it feels like we’re outside of time. We lock eyes, and in the actual world, this would have felt uncomfortable after a while. But out on the water, Wyatt and I are both the past and the present. I am the girl who wasn’t afraid of anything, all grown up without having been broken. I can feel the strength of that girl and I think he sees her. I don’t want to look away.
“I’m going to take one more,” he says finally, and lets go of my board. A wave comes and he glides right in. He seems to be able to feel the ocean beneath him and move along with its rhythm. It makes me think of our bodies together, and I push this thought away.
He’s getting out of the ocean and I want to follow him. My body is tired, but I take the next wave anyway. I’m not steady as I pop up, and then I am underwater, and I’m tumbling. My forehead scrapes something sharp in the sand and I wince in pain. See? This is what happens. My surfboard tugs at the leash on my ankle, and I’m too confused to stand up.
Wyatt grabs my arm and pulls me to standing. He quickly unleashes me from my board and puts his arms around me. I’m catching my breath as I lean into him, my head on his shoulder.
“You okay?” he asks, gathering my hair into a ponytail and wringing it out.
“I think so,” I say. I don’t want to get out of the ocean.
He pulls away and looks at me. “You’re bleeding.”
My hand flies up to my forehead, where I felt something sharp.
“Don’t touch it. It’s not that bad. Let me just rinse it with some salt water and cover it up. You okay to walk?”
“I’m fine, just disoriented from the water. Or reoriented. I don’t know.”
Wyatt grabs my board and takes my hand to lead me. “Please don’t start talking crazy.”
I laugh. I walk slowly because I’m a little dizzy, but also because I want to memorize this moment—the feel of Wyatt’s hand in mine, the water at my ankles. The ocean floor is soft beneath my feet and the sun warms my back. My senses record every second of it.
Wyatt lays out our towels and shakes out his gray T-shirt. I sit down and he kneels over me, carefully folding the T-shirt and pressing it on my wound. His face is above mine and his bare chest fills my line of sight. I wonder why it’s socially appropriate for people to wear so little when they are on the beach.
“I have no idea what I’m doing, by the way,” he says.
“This all seems very professional to me.”
He pulls the T-shirt away. “It’s not too bad, the bleeding stopped.” He sits back down on his towel, putting some space between us. We lean back on our elbows at the same time, stretching our legs out in front of us. It is shocking how undressed we are.
I say, “Have you ever thought about how much time we spent sitting together in our bathing suits growing up?”
“We lived at the beach.”
“And we were half-naked all day. The two of us alone down at the cove all the time. I’m surprised it didn’t happen a lot sooner.”
Wyatt smiles at me. “It happened a lot sooner for me. I was just waiting for you to give me a sign.”
“I gave you a million signs.”
He looks back at the water. “I wanted to be sure. I had a lot to lose.”
“I know.” I have no idea why I brought this up. We’re quiet now; all the lightness has been sucked back into the ocean.
“I’m really sorry I hurt you,” he says finally.
I don’t say anything.
“I think you can imagine what a mess I’d have to have been to walk away from what we had.”
I sit all the way up so that I can fold into my knees. “I could have helped you.”
“I would have pushed you away. I was reeling, and so angry with your family. I couldn’t control it. The only thing worse than losing you would have been unleashing that on you.”
I’m looking at my feet, which are getting sunburned. I scoop some sand over them.
“By the time my head cleared, you were so angry at me. And it was too late. Seems like such a waste.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you forgive me.”
“Of course I forgive you. It was forever ago. It doesn’t matter.”
Wyatt sits up and runs his hands through his hair. He looks away and then back at me. “It mattered, Sam. It may be over, but it mattered. So stop with that.”
“I know.” Of course I know.
He’s quiet for a while. He looks at me and looks back at the water. “The way we felt that summer, it changed me. Like knowing that love could make a person that happy opened up something in me. It’s why I can write songs. It gives me a lot of hope, that it’s possible to feel that way. If what we had didn’t matter, then my whole life is based on nothing.”
I lower my forehead onto my knees and laugh a small laugh. If it was real, then nothing in my life since then makes sense.
“What?”
“Thinking it wasn’t real, sort of acting like it was a dumb teenage obsession, was the only way I could get through it,” I say.
He’s quiet for a while. “We both turned out okay, right?”
I smile at Wyatt, who has turned out better than either of us ever imagined. I think of the trajectories we were on that summer, Wyatt with his laser focus on his music, and me just wanting to try everything. Wyatt’s worked really hard to make his dream happen, and I’ve worked really hard to create a life that requires I try nothing.
“I might need to quit my job.”
“For sure,” he says. And we both lie down and take in the sun.
51
I can’t sleep. I don’t have any feeling of anxiety at all, more like excitement. I feel really good. It’s that kind of good you feel when you’ve had the stomach flu and you wake up the next day and it’s over. You forget how good it feels to be well. I spent practically the whole day outside. My muscles are the right kind of sore, and my skin feels alive from the sun. I try to think of how I can bring this feeling into my real life. I want to make room for surfing. I want to try things, wobble and fall down.
I look up at my tree of life, lit slightly by the moonlight. I don’t like to critique my nine-year-old self, but it’s a bit childish. One shade of brown for the trunk and all those branches. My dad was right, it needs texture. I rub my forefinger and thumb together to conjure the feeling of wood and remember the dead-tree museum in the dining room.
I get out of bed and knock on my parents’ bedroom door. When there’s no reply, I go in and tiptoe to my mom’s side of the bed. I kneel down and put my hand on her arm. “Mom? Everything’s okay.”
“Why are you talking to me?”
“Do we have a glue gun?”
“Of course. Over the microwave.”
“Can I have the sticks in that basket?”
“Of course,” she says, and turns over.
I smile looking down at the two of them sleeping. The only two people in the world who would have absolutely no follow-up questions about why you might need a glue gun and sticks in the middle of the night.