“You okay there, Logan?” he says, and I snap my attention back to where my fingers are still wrapped around his wrists.
“This is for balance,” I tell him, pushing on as if my every thought isn’t written on my blazing-hot face. “Point your leading arm wherever you want to go, rear arm at shoulder height and flexed with the elbow back.” I show him and he mimics the action.
“Good, just like that. Let your body move back and forth, wherever the board takes you. Hips loose, like you’re doing the hula hoop.”
He laughs. “Tell me I look amazing doing this, okay? And not as ridiculous as I’m guessing.”
“Very manly.” I make a few adjustments to his posture and stand back to see. “So with your arms, people think they need to keep them at their side, parallel with the rails, but that’s wrong. Keep them squared with your hips—” I step forward again, bracing a hand on either side of his ribs. Luke curls inward, away from my touch, and giggles.
“Sorry,” he says quietly. “Ticklish.”
“Uh, sorry,” I mumble, and have to mentally count down from ten before I can remember what I was doing. I’ve had sex with Luke, seen his naked body over and under me, from behind, and somehow this feels . . . more intimate than any of that.
My cheeks are hot as I reach for him again, and I bring my hands
down
down
down—how long is his torso?—to rest on his hips.
I never fully appreciated how low boys wear their trunks until this very moment, now that I can feel the bony ridges and hollows of Luke’s hip bones under my fingertips. There are so many shadows on his body, so many places where bone and muscle meet, and for a moment I’m back on his couch, watching these same parts of his body move and flex while he fucks me.
When I blink up, I find him watching, mouth open and hair falling gently forward across his forehead. His cheeks are flushed, too, visible even out in the sun, as if he’s thinking of exactly the same thing I am.
I clear my throat and blink away, hoping he doesn’t realize I’m not quite as unaffected as I’d like to be, and every one of his smiles is another chink in my armor.
“Stay low,” I say, voice rough as I try to get my thoughts back in order. “You want to adapt to the waves and the way the water moves under your feet. You’ll never be able to do that if you’re all tall and”—I wave in the direction of his body—“stiff.”
Luke chuckles and I roll my eyes. “Bend at your knees, not at your waist—this is the heaviest part of your body,” I tell him, and pat his chest. “You need it centered. Too far forward and you’re over the rail, see? You’ll lose your balance.” He bends forward as if to test the theory. Unfortunately this brings his face directly in line with my crotch.
He looks up at me from beneath his hair with a cheeky grin. “Like this?”
The top of his head is literally inches away from my lady parts, and I give him a gentle shove, effectively knocking him into the sand. “Just like that,” I say, and step over him. “Aren’t you glad that didn’t happen in the water?”
He jumps up, knocking sand off his shorts before getting back into position. “I might have deserved that,” he says.
I adjust his stance, hands sliding over his skin to angle him this way or that, to bring attention to the parts of his body he needs to tighten. There was clearly a flaw in my plan because I failed to anticipate there’d be this much touching in a surfing lesson.
“So a few more things before we get you in the water—”
“Do I have to go in the water?” he asks.
“You have to go in the water.”
He looks out over the ocean, worry etched in every feature. Turning back to me he says, “Tell me something you hate.”
“Like people who take too long in the shower and don’t separate their recycling, or—?”
“Something that scares you.”
There are a lot of things that scare me—Luke scares me if I’m being honest, the fact that he’s nice and funny and he makes my stomach do strange things. The idea of ever reliving what I went through with Justin . . . that definitely scares me.
“I don’t like roller coasters,” I say.
“Really?” he asks, and I nod. A tiny disbelieving smile pulls up the corner of his mouth. “Roller coasters are designed to give you the illusion of danger without any of the actual danger of death. But surfing”—he motions to the water—“out there you might as well be a tasty morsel in an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“Doesn’t make the fear any less real, though, does it?”
“No, I guess not.” He looks at the water again before turning back to me. “Let’s make a deal. I do this and you go to Six Flags and ride Goliath with me.”
I actually snort. “Fuck that.”
He reaches for my forearm, thumb brushing over my wrist. “I’m trusting you, you trust me.”
I could be wrong, but it feels like he’s talking about a lot more than roller coasters. I look into his brown eyes and there’s nothing but absolute sincerity there.
He bends at the knee to meet my gaze. “Okay?”