“But it counts!” I said. “You surfed!”
Oliver was hanging on to the edge of his board, his legs dangling in the water, and I circled back to meet him. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Need a break?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. It was just . . . I haven’t had fun since I’ve been back. And that was really fun.”
Now I was the one whose cheeks were flushed.
“Oh. Oh, well, yeah. Of course. I like surfing and I don’t really have anyone else to go out with besides Drew, so . . .” I shrugged. “Anytime you need a buddy.”
A buddy, Emmy? Good Lord. What is this, AA or something?
“Go again?” Oliver said. “I think I’ve gotten my second wind.”
I glanced at the sun. Judging from its position, it was almost five, and I had to be home (with passable dry hair) by seven. “Two more rides,” I said. “I’m on this ridiculous curfew. I’m basically only allowed outside during daytime hours. Do you have a curfew or anything?”
Oliver shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t really go anywhere. I could call my mom. . . .” he added, but the look on his face told me that that wasn’t his favorite option.
“Two more rides,” I said again. “C’mon, let’s go. Sunset and surfing. What more do you need?”
Oliver needed a lot, I knew that. He needed more than anything I could provide on that afternoon. But right then, sunsets and surfing, just maybe, were enough.
CHAPTER TEN
By the time we got out of the water, I was shivering a little and Oliver’s lips were blue. “I thought this was California,” he said, his teeth chattering as he spoke. The sun was setting, a glorious firework of reds and pinks and oranges as it sank behind Catalina Island, leaving us until tomorrow. With the sun gone, now it was just cold. “I thought it was supposed to be warm in winter.”
“It’s all relative,” I said, wrapping my towel around my shoulders and bringing the corners up to my mouth, warming my face a little. Next to me, Oliver was doing the same thing, both of us watching the waves.
“Thanks,” he said after a minute. “Sorry I sucked.”
I shrugged. “I was terrible the first time, too. You just have to keep practicing, right?”
“If you say so.”
I shivered again as a breeze blew up behind us. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. Yeah, definitely.” Oliver opened his towel so that it fanned out behind him like a cape, the ends clenched in his fists. He looked so much different like this, not the skulking guy I saw in the hallway at school, not the little boy I used to go on the swings with back in kindergarten. He looked like a stranger, and then he met my glance, and it was like I had never stopped seeing him.
I shivered again. This time, there was no breeze.
Oliver came to stand next to me as the sun continued to set. The sand was peppered with tourists taking pictures, and locals out for walks with their dogs, and everyone looked so soft and pretty, bathed in the pink-and-golden light that only ever seemed to exist at the edge of a continent. “What island is that?” Oliver asked.
“Hawaii,” I replied.
“Shut up, it is not.”
I smiled. “It’s Catalina. There’s a ferry that goes back and forth a few times a day, but I’ve never been. I’d rather go to Hawaii, to be honest.”
Oliver nodded and I wondered if that’s where’d he rather be, as well.
And then the last sliver of sun disappeared and the spell was broken and we were still standing in the same place, whether we liked it or not.
“You said something about food . . . ?” Oliver nudged.
“Yes! Food. Starving. Must eat. Do you like burritos?”
“I like all food,” he replied.
“Follow me.”
We used the shower at the base of the stairs to rinse off the sand and salt. I peeled off the top half of my wet suit and tried to rinse it as best I could. The spray from the shower was cold and stinging, yet it never really managed to get all the sand off. “Ow!” I said as some salt got into my eyes. “I hate this shower, I really do.”
At the nozzle next to mine, Oliver was wincing as the water hit his shoulders. After much hoopla that saw him hopping up and down on one foot and me laughing hysterically, he had managed to get out of the wet suit and now held it up under the shower. “That was more of a workout than surfing was,” he said, trying to keep getting hit by the wonky spray. “Is this supposed to hurt this much?”
“They’re not the best,” I admitted, quickly pulling my dress over my wet bathing suit. “You get used to it.”
Oliver just muttered something I couldn’t hear and winced again as the spray knocked him right in the chest.
We managed to get the boards back up the stairs, where we threw them into the trunk of my car, and I reached into the back of my van and pulled out a pair of jeans for myself and some hoodies for both of us. “Here,” I said, tossing one at him. “Thank me later.”
Oliver, to his immense credit, didn’t say anything about it being a “girl” hoodie and just tugged it over his head. It was enormous on me, so much so that it was still big on him, and the hood settled on the top of his head, making him look like an overgrown garden gnome. “What?” he said as I started to giggle. “What, does it not match my jeans? Is it last season?”
“You look like a Disney cartoon reject,” I said as I tugged my jeans up under my dress. (I was definitely warmer, but wearing wet bathing suit bottoms under jeans can be filed under the category “NO FUN EVER.”)