Beyond the Break Read online

  “That’s fine. And praise God that He’s healed you and gotten you ready. But—”

  “Praise God, indeed,” Candy interjects, conveniently overhearing as usual, with no idea what we’re talking about.

  “But,” Kelly says again, shaking the mustard, “what does Jake have to do with that?”

  I peel more meat apart and load up the bread. “He, uh, he’s been sort of encouraging me to get back on my board.”

  She snorts like I’m ridiculous.

  “Listen, Kelly, he’s not actually dating Hannah anymore. They just talk as friends.”

  She taps the mustard on the table before continuing. “Coulda fooled me.”

  I’ve gotta try a different route. “Look, even if he messed up with the way he acted toward you, we mess up all the time, Kells. You know that. We love a God who knows that, too, and thank GOD He doesn’t treat us like our sins deserve.” I ignore the mmms and mm-hmms Candy’s adding as she leans over Dave to hear. “We’re pretty crappy to Him most of the time. But what does God choose?”

  “Love,” she mumbles.

  “Right?” We’re both in a rhythm, slapping cold cuts and moving down the rows of bread quickly. “So, I’m giving surfing another chance. Maybe you should give Jake another chance.”

  She pauses, and Dave bumps into me. I feel a huge piece of lettuce on my shoulder. He removes it delicately. “Maybe,” she says. “I dunno. I’ll pray about it.” And then, “Ew! Dave! Come on, babe!” She takes the piece of lettuce off a sandwich and throws it into the trash. “That was on Lovette’s shoulder!”

  “Three-second rule,” he says.

  “No,” Kelly and I say simultaneously and then giggle. It reminds me of my parents last night, how they spoke in unison, and I wondered about my future husband. I love moments like this, when God shows me that He heard me—He knows what I want—so He gives me little mini versions, like my friendship with Kelly, as gifts along the way.

  * * *

  It’s five o’clock when we finish packing the lunches into the trucks that deliver to tent city, Skid Row, and the Los Angeles overpasses where the homeless congregate. The sunset’s orange and yellow through the hazy sky, reflecting off the distant skyscrapers.

  Kelly, Dave, and I are walking back to Kelly’s car when Jake appears.

  “Hey!” I say. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Brett had me on dumpster duty most of the day.”

  “Gross.”

  “Yeah. Good thing we don’t hug.”

  I laugh. “See? God’s so good to me. Maybe He put the no-hugging rule in my heart because He knew this day would come.”

  He chuckles. “Good one.” He pulls something out of his jacket pocket. “Hey, catch.”

  It bounces off my stomach, but I snag it. “Ow!”

  “What is that?” Kelly asks, looking at the fist-size gray clump in my hands.

  “Sex Wax,” Dave says, and I’m surprised he knows.

  Kelly’s alarmed. “Sex?”

  “That’s the name,” Dave says. “It’s surf wax.”

  She scrunches her nose. “Looks like pigeon poop.”

  This pigeon poop feels like a diamond ring. I know what Jake means by it.

  “We should start practicing Monday.” His hair’s sweaty, and he has grease stains on his shirt and grime under his eye, but I’ve never wanted to hug him more than I do right now. Instead, I wrap my fingers around the wax. He sees my tight grip, and it’s like he understands. He smiles. “Old Man Mike’s. Six in the morning.”

  “Six in the morning,” I repeat.

  Kelly claps once. “Okay, time to go.” Her tone’s a little rude, so I mouth, Love, remember?

  She rolls her eyes. “Thanks, Jake, for your gift of wax.” Her words are clunky, but she’s trying. Well, almost. She still doesn’t wave at him as we exit the parking lot.

  * * *

  When I get home that evening, Matt’s already left with some old high-school friends to shoot pool somewhere. I sleep with the ball of wax on my pillow, kneading it and feeling the grains of sand from previous use. “Do you really hate dating, Jesus?” I say, staring at the ceiling. “I mean, of course you don’t, but I promised you I wouldn’t date, so I shouldn’t go back on that, right?”

  I think of Jephthah in the Bible, the warrior who rashly told God that if God gave him victory, he would sacrifice the first thing that walked out of his courtyard, assuming it would be an animal. But when he returned, who walked out first but his dancing daughter to say, “Yay, Dad!”

  Talk about a buzzkill.

  I whisper my prayers that night, as if talking at full volume is too bold—too much like Jephthah. “God, are you holding me to something I swore off in seventh grade? Are you teaching me to watch my commitments? Are you, like, ‘So you swore you wouldn’t date? Aha! Well, then, may I present to you . . . drumroll, please . . . walking now through Jephthah’s gates: Jayyyyke Evans, the hottest and most amazing guy you’ll ever meet in your life!’”

  I search the night sky through my blinds. “You’re not like that, are you, God? Can I change my mind? I don’t think I hate dating anymore. I still won’t have sex, of course, not a chance. But it’s okay to hang out with someone you like more than a friend, right?” I remember the first night, when I asked if he and Hannah still talked. “Every day,” he said. “Never mind,” I tell God. “I can’t match what they have.” I mutter an amen and turn away from the window.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, Matt has to leave early to drive back up north, so he comes into my room to say bye. I reach my arms up for a hug, but as he leans down, his eyes flicker to my mattress. Before I can react, he grabs the ball of wax.

  “What’s this?” he asks, even though he totally knows what it is. What he really means is, “What are you doing with surf wax?”

  “Um, it’s Jake’s,” I say quickly.

  He nods like he gets it. “I love it when Brooke leaves behind one of her shirts in my bed.”

  “Ew! Matty!”

  “What? She smells nice.” He sits down on the edge of my bed. “Real talk. Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  “I’m not having sex.”

  “I don’t care about that.” He holds up the piece of wax. “I mean this. Our parents would shit a brick if you ever went back out there.”

  I prop myself up on my elbows and look at him earnestly. “Why am I being punished for what happened to you?”

  “Punished? Don’t be selfish. They’re so good to you.”

  “Says the guy who gets a new car and his full tuition paid.”

  “I’m in college.”

  “Did you have to ride a bike everywhere as a senior? Or work a day of your life in high school?”

  He stands up. “Wow. Just wow, Lovette.” I’ve struck a nerve, but I don’t know why. I’m annoyed with my parents, not him. “Yeah, I did work,” he says, facing my window. “I had a job at the hospital for a year and a half learning how to say words like balloon and Pop-Tart all over again. And no, I didn’t ride a bike everywhere because, guess what? I lost all. Of. My. Balance.”

  I’m the worst. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that.” But he’s already at my bedroom door. I sit up in bed. “Please don’t leave mad.” He stops. Glares at me from the doorway. “Look,” I try again. “I’m sorry. Please.”

  “Can’t you find another sport?”

  “What if God’s made me for this sport?”

  He looks like I told him two plus two equals five. “God”—he puts God in air quotes—“has nothing to do with this.”

  “Or everything.”

  He groans and throws his head back. “Talking to you’s like running on a hamster wheel. How about this? Next time I come visit, if I see so much as a grain of sand in the house, I’m telling Mom and Dad.” He slaps the doorframe. “See you next m
onth.”

  A few seconds later, the front door slams behind him, and I throw myself face-first into my pillow and scream.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Monday morning at 6:00 a.m. isn’t exactly romantic.

  For the millionth time I lose my balance, plunking like a boulder into the wave, my ankle tugged by my leash through the white water until so much seawater shoots up my nose that I gag.

  I emerge, sputtering and coughing, and grab hold of my board. Jake doesn’t ask if I’m okay. He’s sitting on his board away from the break, arms folded. “Again,” he says, just loudly enough that it bounces off the surface of the water, his tone colder than my numb hands. Even though I can’t see his eyes from the glare of the sun, I know they aren’t twinkling.

  I don’t know what’s wrong. Back in elementary school, I never thought about balance when I surfed. Now, it consumes my every thought: Don’t fall off, don’t fall off, don’t fall off. I’m wobbly and disconnected from my board. I’m nervous that Jake’s watching, and I can’t seem to replicate how easily I rode that first night. Granted, the surf was calmer, but I’m supposed to be good. I was good. What happened?

  I paddle out and turn my board for the next wave. I stroke hard and feel my board catch, take a quick look down the line to see how it’s breaking, and pop up. The tip starts nose-diving, and I try to correct by stepping back, but it’s too late. The nose of my board’s diving down, I’m catapulting forward, and the board’s shooting back up like an arrow, sailing through the air above me as I crash into the water. Again. I strike the water with my fist and pull myself back onto my board.

  “What was that?” says Jake, who’s paddled up beside me.

  “I dunno,” I mumble.

  “You don’t know? Since when do you stand so forward?”

  “Since maybe five minutes ago!”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  Why’d I do it? What kind of a dumb question is that? “Maybe I was just dying to pitch myself forward and look like an idiot.”

  He gives a half smile, not amused by my sarcasm. “Well, now that you’ve gotten it out of your system, go back out there and do something different.”

  I inhale slowly through my nose. I hear the edge in his voice. He’s frustrated watching me, too. Whatever.

  Every time I mess up, I do worse the next time. That’s how my brother used to be, not me. Some days Dad would say to him, “You gotta be okay not being okay.” Matt would make a dumb move, overcorrect on a cutback—nothing even that big—but he would get so frustrated that the rest of his time out there, he’d look like a beginner.

  I remember once Dad said, “Look at your sister. She doesn’t get nervous.”

  “She’s ten,” Matt said, annoyed.

  “No. She just doesn’t care what people think. You’ll get yourself hurt if you start becoming a head case.”

  The irony.

  “Hey!” Jake interrupts my memory. “You just missed a perfectly good set!”

  I’m over it. I see a little wave forming, and I paddle to catch it, but it rolls right under me and dies. “Seriously?” he shouts. “Why’d you go for that one? Read the wave!”

  I remember praying to Jesus to help me lose feelings for Jake. He’s good at answering. If I’m ever struggling with feelings for someone in the future, I’ll make them my coach. It’s an instant cure.

  Instead of standing, I ride the next wave on my belly and hop off in the shallow water, ripping my leash off and slapping it onto my board. I lift my board and walk onto the dry sand. When Jake catches up to me, he says, “We still have fifteen minutes.”

  I shake my head. “I need to rinse off in the beach showers and look at my physics notes before school.”

  He doesn’t buy it. “So that’s it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “What’s going on with you today?”

  “Me?” I can’t believe him. “You’re the one barking like a sea lion.”

  “I was coaching.”

  “Yeah, well, your coaching sucks.”

  “You had a bad day.”

  “Ya think?”

  He doesn’t fight back. “Fine then. Tomorrow.” I’m heading for the showers when he calls out, “Lovette? If I seem edgy, it’s just—”

  I turn to him. Hug my board. “What?”

  He shakes his head. Of course he’s changed his mind.

  “Call Hannah later,” I say, stomping away from him through the sand. “I’m sure you can tell her.”

  * * *

  Tomorrow isn’t any better, or the next day. Every morning we go out for forty-five minutes, and every day I get worse. My legs are shaky, I’m scared on every pop-up, and the second that I feel slightly off balance, I dive off my board into the still-crashing wave. Jake’s instructions get shorter and snippier as the week continues. At school, we don’t talk much. I don’t know what’s gotten into him, but he’s moody this week, and even my friends notice. At lunch on Tuesday, Kaj tells a story about accidentally dropping his cheeseburger out the window last night when he was adjusting his side mirror.

  Everyone’s laughing except for Jake, who’s kind of staring off at a corner of the cafeteria. Kaj stops mid-story and asks, “You okay, bro?”

  Jake looks at him and smiles. “Yeah, why?”

  Kaj shrugs, not pushing it, and I’m thankful because Jake’s clearly not okay, but he’s definitely not ready to share. Whenever he picks me up in the morning, he turns up the music, and we drive in silence to the ocean. On Thursday, I ask him about arriving to my house ten minutes late. He says one word, “Traffic.”

  “From Redondo?”

  “Been driving up from the base this week.”

  He sounds like he doesn’t want to talk about it, but I can’t help it. “Why?”

  He’s quiet for a long time, gnawing on his lower lip. “Had to stay with my dad for a few days.” Obviously he had to stay with his dad if he was driving up from the base. But why? Did his aunt have company for the week? Or was it something with his dad? He looks like he might talk about it, but then he looks away and out the window.

  It does explain his tired eyes. Getting to my house at 6:00 a.m. means for the past couple of days, he’s been leaving before 5:00 a.m., which means waking up in the fours, which is practically the middle of the night. No wonder he’s been cranky. It’s still not okay. I didn’t ask him to lose sleep and come early. Just because I stink at surfing, it doesn’t give him the right to yell at me, no matter how bad other things in his life are. And by Thursday, it’s mostly yelling.

  “What the hell was that?” he shouts after I pull out of a perfectly cresting wave.

  “I haven’t done this in five years!” I yell back.

  He paddles up to me so he can yell in my face. “So?”

  “So my body’s five inches taller. Everything feels wrong!”

  “It didn’t the other night!”

  “Maybe I got lucky!”

  “Or maybe you just tried harder!”

  “I AM trying!”

  “Bullshit!”

  His curse word shocks me into silence, and he can tell. His face softens, but mine doesn’t.

  “I obviously don’t remember how to surf,” I say coldly.

  “Yes, you do.” His words are tender, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him talk nicely to me all week.

  “What do you know?” I snap.

  His eyes flicker, and the moment’s gone. “You’re right. What do I know?” This time, it’s Jake who gets out of the water first. Our session is over, at least if I plan on getting a ride to school.

  I know there’s so much churning inside of him. I know he’s not just mad at my crappy surfing. But as long as he stays locked up, there’s not much I can do except be a punching bag. I guess I should be thankful it’s showing up now rather than later. I s
till think of him during my quiet times in the morning, but my prayers have changed to, Thank you so much, God, for revealing this to me early on in our friendship.

  Friday morning, he doesn’t show up. I wait outside my house for thirty minutes before I get a text from Lydia.

  Jake says to tell you he’s not coming. Why doesn’t he have your #?!?!

  I still haven’t given him my cell number, which is weird because everyone else has it—all my guy friends—but with Jake, it feels like a bigger deal. After this week, I’m glad he doesn’t have it.

  It only took four days before he gave up. That must be a record somewhere. I’m about to get my bike when Lydia texts that she’s on her way with Kaj to pick me up.

  On the way to school, Lydia asks, “So what’s up with your novio this week?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Kaj jokes, “You not putting out or something?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I repeat. “And there’s just a lot going on with him.”

  “Like?”

  “I wouldn’t know. He only talks to his ex about it.”

  They don’t say anything to that, and I’m thankful, because I don’t feel like explaining.

  When we pull up to Lydia’s usual parking spot at school, Jake’s standing there waiting. Great. He’s wearing sunglasses even though it’s not bright out, and it reminds me of the guys who try too hard. How was I so blind to this before? Note to self: Feelings can really mess with your perception of reality. When we get out of the car, Lydia and Kaj disappear so quickly, you’d think they were fleeing a fire. Jake approaches, and I’m face-to-face with the guy who stood me up. The guy who won’t share anything with me but then yells at me for all the stuff he’s not sharing, pretending it’s my surfing that’s making him so angry. The guy who’s wearing sunglasses for no reason. He doesn’t take them off, either, which makes me bristle.

  He says, “Sorry for not getting there this morning. I would’ve texted earlier, but—”