Beyond the Break Read online

  “How’d you get here so fast?” I ask.

  He points to the Honda at the curb.

  I nod.

  He tilts his head. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You’ve been—did I do something?”

  “No.” I fiddle with my handlebar.

  “One of those . . . weeks?”

  Everything warms inside of me, and I smile. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  Now what? He’s here because he knows I’ve been avoiding him. I want to ask about Hannah. There’s the small possibility that they’re back together, but my bet is on Kelly misinterpreting things. Instead I blurt, “Sorry. My parents busted me with wet hair—I played it off, but—I haven’t been in the ocean since, and it’s made me—I’ve been really off lately.”

  His tension releases. “That explains it.”

  “Yeah.” We stand quietly for a minute, the bike between us.

  He inhales again. Uh-oh. “Your curfew’s eleven, right?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Can I take you somewhere tonight?”

  “No,” I say quickly. Of course I want to go out with him. But I can’t fight against my feelings if I keep encouraging him. He steps back, which makes me soften. “I mean, I can’t because it’s Friday. Lydia.” There’s no way she’d let me get out of the Venue.

  “I mean afterward.”

  I want to say Kelly wouldn’t approve. I want to say we have to stop hanging out one-on-one because it’s not going anywhere, but I still have a crush that needs to go away. And that before he came into my life two weeks ago, I was loving God just fine, and now he’s an idol, and the ocean’s an idol, and I’m a bunch of don’ts, and Mom thinks I’m having sex. Just say no. Easy peasy. N. O. Two letters. I open my mouth. “Maybe.”

  He grins. “Pick you up at nine? Back kitchen entrance?” He walks backward toward his car.

  I nod feebly.

  “Good.” He unlocks his car door. “I mean, unless you’ll be inside working on your fashion-model dance moves.”

  He lifts a hand, juts a hip out, and freezes, striking a pose.

  It takes every facial muscle I have to resist smiling. “No, I’ll be there. I mean, maybe.”

  “Good. See you then.” He gets into his car and starts the engine, rolling down the window. The corners of his mouth lift slightly, and he adds, “Maybe.” I rest against my bike as he speeds away. What just happened?

  Chapter Twelve

  During Family Dinner Friday, I usually talk more, but my nerves are abuzz about tonight. My parents ask me about my week as I pick at my food.

  “Good,” I say.

  Mom squints. “Dad asked if you had homework.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  Then, it’s like something registers on Mom’s face. She winks at me and asks how “swim” is. Seriously.

  At the Venue, Lydia’s in another fight with Kaj, so she takes up two hours of dishwashing time telling me and Uncle Joe about who said what and when and can you believe that? It’s in rapid Spanish, and Uncle Joe says, “¡Híjole!” a lot. I only get every fourth word or so, but I’m relieved. Thanks to Kaj and how many different ways Lydia’s gonna kick his A, I’m able to avoid any questions about my status with Jake. She knows I only side-hug guys, and she’s already asked ten times this week if we’ve gone “breast to breast” yet. (We haven’t. Hugged face-to-face, that is.) She’ll mention him soon; I’m just glad it’s not tonight because I don’t know how to answer.

  At 9:00 p.m., as soon as Lydia shimmies onto the dance floor, I slink out the back entrance. Jake’s there waiting, his Honda humming in the deliveries driveway. He’s wearing boardshorts and a short-sleeve button-down. Without thinking, I sprint over—all plans to play it cool, gone.

  It makes him smile, and I melt at his dimple.

  I look down at my jeans and long-sleeve T-shirt. Red drops of splattered spaghetti sauce decorate my top. “I’m underdressed,” I say, rubbing the stains.

  “It’s fine. You’ll be out of that in no time.”

  “What?”

  He laughs at my panicked face. “You’re too easy, mannequin. Relax. I’m not taking off your clothes.”

  I’m not used to being around someone this easygoing. Kelly’s uptight and worried, and Lydia’s impulsive and emotional. He slaps the roof of his car twice and gestures to me with his chin to get in.

  I slide into the front seat and buckle my seatbelt. “So.”

  “So.”

  “So where are you taking me?”

  His eyes twinkle, and he presses his lips together. He’s not gonna tell, but he looks like he’s going to explode with excitement. It’s contagious, and my heart flips.

  * * *

  The windows are down, the ocean air tangling my hair, music blasting, and I’m sitting next to Jake Evans, who keeps smiling at me with that dimple that makes the world better. I’m in a movie.

  We coast north on Hermosa Avenue until we come to North End, a locals’ bar where the LA Kings hang out, then turn right and drive up to Manhattan Avenue. As we approach all the restaurants of South Manhattan Beach, he turns the music down low so I can hear him. “I thought maybe you weren’t talking to me because of Kelly.”

  I don’t want to answer him, so instead I ask, “How was poetry night?”

  We come to the stoplight at Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue. The iconic ice cream and candy shop on the corner, the Manhattan Beach Creamery, has a line out the door. A group of club-ready ladies in high heels and short skirts weave their way toward the bars by the pier, shouting and cackling.

  “I mentioned Hannah,” he says finally, and the light turns green.

  “Did you say you broke up?”

  “I didn’t get the chance! Probably better she doesn’t know. She got all weird after that. Said I shouldn’t lead girls on and that I should protect their hearts and treat them like ‘King’s daughters.’”

  Oh no. I was hoping she didn’t go there, but she did. “What’d you say?”

  “I told her, ‘I thought you just asked me to poetry night. Were you asking me to prom?’”

  I slap my forehead. “You didn’t!”

  “I was kidding! Trying to lighten her up. And technically”—he looks at me when he says this—“you’re the one who asked me to check it out. But yeah. She was intense.”

  “Yeah, she’s really . . . uh, Christian.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Of course! Sometimes—sometimes—” I’m struggling to explain how Kelly and I love Jesus the same but it’s different. “Like, if she wants me to go somewhere with her, she won’t say, ‘Hey, I want you to go.’ She’ll be like, ‘I’ve been praying about this, and the Lord’s placed it on my heart that you go with me.’”

  “Can’t really argue with that one.”

  “No, you sure can’t.”

  He pulls into a metered parking spot on Highland and Twenty-seventh, just past Bruce’s Beach, the two-block stretch of grassy hills sloping down to the boardwalk.

  “This is close to Old Man Mike’s,” I say as we walk the pathway toward the ocean. “My friend who lets me store my suit in his side yard.”

  “I know.” When he sees my brow furrow, he adds, “You told me—Twenty-sixth and Ocean—remember? Good thing, too, or I’d have to be knocking on a lot of doors.”

  Before I can ask more, he’s loping down the grass of Bruce’s Beach, and I’m following. We stop at Mike’s property, and Jake veers down the alley where the entrance to Mike’s side yard is. He unlatches the waist-high gate, which means he’s been here before. As if he can read my mind, he says, “I might’ve peeped in a couple of people’s side yards before I found a wetsuit your size.”

  I follow him into Mike’s tiny side yard patio with its skateboards, surfboards,
towels, and lounge chairs all crammed into the narrow space. There, on the side rail, my wetsuit hangs as usual, and next to it, a larger wetsuit. Jake’s.

  “Are we swimmi—” But I stop when I notice that Mike’s surfboards, his shortboard and his Fish, aren’t alone. Stacked next to them are two longboards, leashes attached, waxed and ready to go.

  Jake walks behind one and reaches down near the fins, presses something, and the inside of the board lights up a blue as bright as a neon sign.

  “What the—”

  “My friend’s dad from Hawaii makes these. He has a shop up in Ventura. It’s for night surfing. Cool, yeah?”

  “But how?”

  “RGB LEDs. They’re lined into the surfboard before the glassing. Then a computer connection, some stoppers, and O-rings to avoid the water. It’s safe.”

  I gawk at the beautiful light coming from inside the board, three lines in the center and one around the perimeter, outlining its perfect shape.

  “So.” He leans back on the waist-high gate and crosses his arms casually. “He loaned me two, but I haven’t met anyone else to test them out with me.” He waits a beat. “I mean, except for you.”

  My heart sinks. Every part of me wants to. I trace the longboard with my finger, touching its bumpy wax across the middle and the sides. I can still remember how the board felt on my stomach when I was a kid, how it bobbed so mellow over the rolling tide, the way it glided through the crests of waves as I paddled out, splashing water over my head and waking up my insides.

  “I can’t.” I close my eyes but don’t cry.

  “I thought you might say that. Your parents, right?”

  I force myself to swallow the painful lump in the back of my throat. “I can’t . . .” I start again. “It’s bad enough I swim. I can’t do that to them.”

  “Which is why we’re not going to.”

  Huh? He throws my wetsuit at me, the thick neoprene slapping my stomach as I catch it. I shake my head and step back, like standing near the boards is sinful, but he stops me with a hand in the air.

  “No one said anything about surfing.” He takes his wetsuit off the rail. “Surfing involves standing up.” He unbuttons his shirt and slips it off. “Think of it as bodysurfing, which you do every night. Only there’s going to be a board under you.”

  “That sounds like justifying.”

  My eyes are fixed on his shoulders, but he doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind. I’ve seen guys with their shirts off before—I live at the beach—but there’s something about his chiseled chest that tells a story. Military kid to the core. The kind who’s up before dawn to get in a set of push-ups, weighted pull-ups, and a run even before he surfs. Is it guilt that pushes him? I’m concerned, I tell myself. That’s why I’m staring. I hear God saying back to me, “That sounds like justifying.” I turn away.

  “If you see someone riding a surfboard on their belly, do you ever call that surfing?”

  That gets a little laugh out of me.

  “Look, your dream’s in direct contrast to your parents’ wishes,” he says. “I can’t tell you how to fix that. But I can get you as close to your dream as possible, especially since I can’t get remotely close to mine.”

  “What’s yours?”

  He presses his lips together and shakes his head. I’m deflated that he doesn’t want to share, so I offer my best guess.

  “Hannah?”

  “Huh?” It looks like I just slammed a frying pan to his face. “No, actually.” He starts shoving his legs into his wetsuit, tucking his boardshorts in.

  “Hey, don’t get mad. You said you talk to her every day.”

  His tense shoulders, almost touching his ears, relax. “That’s fair.” He pulls up the back zipper and turns his back on me. When I realize it’s so I can change into my wetsuit, I’m mortified. Usually I have my bikini underneath.

  No big deal, no big deal. I wrap myself in an oversize towel and shrug my wetsuit on in record time. “Okay!” I practically shout when I’m done. He turns around and gestures at the two boards. I pick up the longboard, and it instantly feels like an extension of me, like I’ve never stopped picking it up.

  “You ready?”

  I lift the board and wedge it under my armpit. “Not even close.”

  “Good.” He kicks my jeans and tee underneath one of Mike’s lounge chairs, grabs the other board, then pads barefoot toward the dark ocean without looking back to see if I follow.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I’m jittery, and not from the cold. At the shoreline, I’m strapping the leash to my ankle, readjusting it just so I can hear the Velcro rip. The ocean, true to its nature, has used its magical ability to make everything okay again. It sounds so beautiful and soothing that—

  “A family that’s not fucked up.”

  I freeze, mid–Velcro rip.

  “That’s my dream. There.” His words hang thick in the air, making everything else seem unimportant. I drop my leash, turn my full attention to him.

  “Sorry,” he says, his words soft. “Didn’t mean to be a buzzkill.”

  I adjust the neck of my wetsuit. “Well, I wouldn’t know. I mean, I don’t drink.”

  He chuckles at my bad joke, and I think there isn’t a better feeling in the world than making him laugh. But his dream for his family feels like a lead anchor, sobering my smile. “Anyway,” he mumbles, “of course you’d think Hannah. How were you supposed to know?”

  “True, but maybe you could tell me more about her so I’m not always guessing.” He looks away from me and at the horizon. “Or your family?” I plead with my eyes, but he doesn’t look at me. He opens his mouth, like he’s considering, but then his eyes start glistening, and he snaps his mouth closed and clears his throat. As an answer, he presses the button on his board, lighting it neon blue.

  “They had other colors,” he says, “red, green—even purple—but blue reminded me of what you said before about two moons.”

  I crinkle my forehead. The moment is lost, but it’s okay. He tried.

  “Blue moon,” he continues. “You know, when you have two full moons in the—”

  “Same month,” I finish for him. “Which is, like, hardly ever.”

  “So yeah. Two moons.”

  He reaches down and pushes the button behind the fins of mine, and my board lights up an electric blue that matches his. Different designs, same exact color. It sends a current through me too. With nervous hands, I lift the board and wedge it under my armpit. “You know, I haven’t surfed in four years.”

  He attaches his leash and says, “Well, good thing you’re not surfing.”

  I grin and charge at the water. I toss my board over the first set of white water and flop onto the waxy fiberglass. I hear Jake splashing behind me. We glide through the water, floating over the rolling swells, letting the ocean do the talking. We paddle in sync, left arm then right, and my shoulders already ache, but I don’t care. I feel the water, how it flirts, lapping over my board, and then dips, causing my board to drop and then slap it.

  The blue lights from our boards make the water shimmer, reflecting an eerie glow in the half-moon darkness. The surf’s small tonight, only one- to two-foot breakers, but our boards feel like unsheathed lances as they spar with the waves. We duck close to our boards, letting the waves spray over us. Side by side, we continue with long arm strokes until we paddle out past the farthest set. The waves and shore are behind us, and we maneuver to straddle our boards, facing the endless expanse of dark water.

  I rotate my legs under my board like an eggbeater and twirl my surfboard in a full circle one direction, then a full circle the opposite way. My eyes sting and there’s salt in my nose, and I couldn’t be happier. I tip my head back to the sky and laugh, splash the water with my fingers and slide off my board, diving under the cold Pacific. When I come up, I giggle again, and I snort some s
alt water and cough. I climb back onto the board and lie flat, my chest against her. Breast to breast, I think, and that makes me laugh again.

  Jake lies down, cheek to his board, and watches it all with his dimply smile. Finally, he speaks. “You hated it. I can tell.”

  I wipe the blurry salt from my face so I can see him clearly. “Yeah. It was horrible.” I rest my cheek against my arm and face him. I keep thinking about what he said about his family. Or rather, didn’t say. He told me his mom stayed behind when they moved, but I feel like there’s more to it than that. There’s a heaviness in the air—it sags his whole body—when we start to talk about it. Even though he’s the one who cussed, I feel like it’s me who owes him an apology. “Sorry your family’s”—I wonder if God’s okay with cursing if you’re quoting someone, so I whisper—“fucked up.”

  He laughs. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear that last part. What’d you say?”

  I splash him. “And sorry I brought up Hannah.”

  We bob quietly.

  With his hand, he makes swirls and whirlpools in the water. Finally, he says, “Nah, I mean, how would you know? I wish I could explain it, but you don’t know Hannah. I can’t just cut things off.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “That’s a loaded question.”

  “Why?”

  He threads his hands together and tucks them under his chin. He rests his head on the board, not looking at me. “My dad did a tour of duty a few years back. Seventh to eighth grade he was deployed. Afghanistan.”

  “Okay.” I have no idea what this has to do with Hannah, but I don’t care. He’s actually opening up. I want to think of the right thing to say, but I don’t know what that is. Dad always says to thank every military person, especially those who serve away from their families for the greater good. “Will you thank him for me?”

  He scoffs. “Yeah, sure.” He unthreads his hands and flicks the water with his thumb and middle finger. “He came back different. And there’s stuff that only she knows. About my family. My dad. So I can call her, like whenever, like when shit goes down, and, well, she gets it. Her dad’s deployed right now, so, you know, sometimes she needs me, too. And I get it.”