If I didn’t, I definitely wouldn’t tell him. “Sure.”
The musty scent of elbow bush for awkwardness creeps from his direction. It eases my own awkwardness to smell some on him, too. He slings my collection bag across his own body, then secures the leash dangling from the bottom of the board to my ankle. “Always find the board if you fall off, okay? And try to relax.”
“Got it.” I take his neoprene-covered arm with my gloved hand, and into the ocean we go. The water shocks me again, but I grit my teeth and keep moving forward.
When the water comes to my waist, he drops the board. “At least it’s calm.”
“This is calm?”
He lifts his chin toward the open ocean beyond our cove. “Sure. Compared to out there, this is a swimming pool.”
I stare at the board, suddenly worrying that the dings in the side came from sharks. Big-teeth sharks whose sense of smell rivals my own.
But I don’t have time to obsess on it further because Court’s already rolled onto the board and now it’s my turn. I put one hand on the edge and the other on top of his waist, then hoist myself up. My top half lands in a crisscross over his midsection and I quickly try to scoot the rest of me on top. The board bobs, but he uses his arms to keep it in one place as I maneuver myself in fits and spurts.
I yelp as a wave splashes me from the side. But soon enough, I’m all the way on top of him. We float for a moment like a hastily made sandwich, and I worry that I’m crushing him, but then he paddles us off.
“Anchors aweigh,” he says.
More freezing water hits me in the face and stings my eyes, so I rest my cheek between his shoulder blades.
I never imagined I’d be this close to SGHS’s star soccer player, but if I had, it would not have been in this particular configuration. Or in this particular outfit. The warmth of his body makes even my hair tingle. I wonder if my inexperience with human touch makes me that much more sensitive to it, or perhaps it’s simply Court who, despite the two layers of neoprene, is setting off every alarm bell in my body. If I can feel every single bump, ridge, and dip on his body, then he can feel every one on mine. I stiffen. Just focus on finding the plant and getting the heck out of the water.
“Which way?” he asks. At least one of us is still using his brain.
I sniff. The miso-soup smell comes from somewhere farther right, near the rock with the sea lions. I lift my hand off the board to point. “Over there.”
Paddling with strong, even strokes, Court bears us toward the rock. It lies about twenty yards away, with the open sea another ten yards beyond. The movement of the water coming into the cove causes turbulence around the rock, forming mini-whirlpools.
Water sprays into my mouth, burning my tongue with its saltiness. I cry out.
“What’s wrong?” He looks over his shoulder at me.
I spit to rid myself of the taste and wipe my mouth on the shoulder of my suit, though that only makes my lips sting. “It tastes terrible,” I say, panting.
The water splashes my face again but this time I clamp my mouth shut.
The going is slow since the ocean wants to push us back to the shore. If our motor had not been a varsity soccer player, we might be at a standstill altogether.
Ten yards out.
A large swell shoves us at an angle, but Court counterbalances it with his weight. Suddenly we’re moving toward the greater ocean. The water’s fickle, and it’s hard to know if we’re coming or going. My stomach roils at the topsy-turvy movement as we flatten out again.
“You do this for fun?” I gasp.
“You’d like it better if you had your own board.” He glances back at me again. The water collecting on his eyelashes drips onto his cheek as he winks. “But I wouldn’t.”
Oddly, his flirting eases the queasiness in my gut, but I don’t let on.
He starts paddling again and after a few more yards, I spot it, a small tangle of black kelp with hollow bulbs that grow in intervals like Christmas lights. It’s some subspecies of bladder wrack, a kelp commonly found in the Baltic Sea. The tangle floats in a four-yard-wide channel between the sea lion rock and the high volcanic walls that surround the cove. Water churns like a giant washing machine around the rock and through the channel. We couldn’t go through that. The water would toss us around like a pair of socks.
“See that blackish stuff tangled in the giant kelp?”
He stops paddling and lifts himself up to see.
“I should’ve brought a fishing pole,” I mutter.
“I’ll swim it. But that means you’ll be on your own for a minute.”
“Are you sure? It looks kind of rough.”
“Piece of cake. I’m a certified lifeguard.”
I remember the lifeguard sweatshirt he was wearing the day of the bee sting. Still, even seals drown.
“I’m going to slide out from the right.”
“Okay,” I say dubiously.
Shifting one limb at a time, I uncage him. He barrel rolls into the water in one smooth motion, then quickly resurfaces. As he holds the board steady, I spread myself on top of it.