Ripped

  As I slide into the driver’s seat and pull out of the garage with my surfboards in the truck bed, I put on Pandora and smile when “Is This Love” by Bob Marley comes on. It reminds me of the brief time between when I broke up with Lindsay and moved to Wrightsville Beach nine years ago. The days when Yuri and I used to hang out at his apartment in Durham every weekend, back when Lena worked as a preschool teacher.

  If Yuri wasn’t competing that week, we’d kick off the weekend every Friday night with a few well-packed bowls. Then we’d go out somewhere and get shit-faced drunk until I found some poor girl to take back to Yuri’s place so I could fuck her in his guest room. Come Monday, I’d head into work at Parker Construction in Wilmington, and try not to feel like a failure for having given up on my surfing career. For having given up on myself, really.

  It wasn’t until I got arrested for assaulting Kaia’s father, Nathan Jennings, and moved to Wrightsville that I began to feel like maybe I didn’t have to be the man my father wanted me to be. I didn’t have to take over the family construction business. That wasn’t my fate.

  I was destined for a lifelong love affair with the ocean. There is seawater pumping through my veins, of that I’m certain. And no one, not my father or Carlos Ferreira or even Lindsay, can change that.

  Lena asked me to meet her on the beach today instead of picking her up at her house. When I arrive at our usual spot about 150 yards north of the pier, I find her sitting cross-legged on a green blanket on the sand with her eyes closed and her hands resting on her knees, palms facing up. I quietly set my boards down on the sand a few feet downwind, then I sit on the sand and wait for her to notice I’ve arrived.

  The breeze picks up and carries the scent of coconut-pineapple sunscreen to me. I smile as I think of how my ex-girlfriend Claire used to meditate in front of me sometimes. She was actually addicted to it, though. I’d almost forgotten about that.

  I try not to think of Claire when I’m home. Something about allowing my mind to wander back to past relationships feels sort of like mentally cheating on Lindsay, even though I harbor no romantic feelings for any of my exes. If I were to tell a marriage counselor about this, he or she would probably tell me that this stems from the fact that both Lindsay and I have been unfaithful in the past.

  I’ve never seen Lena meditate before. I guess all the problems she’s having with Yuri must be really getting to her.

  I allow myself to think back to the times I watched Claire meditate, and I remember she used to picture the ocean. Now that I think about it, there’s probably no better place to meditate than the beach, especially for someone like Lena, who loves the ocean as much as I do.

  It takes about ten minutes for Lena to realize I’m sitting a few feet away from her. When she opens her eyes and looks at me, the serene expression on her face melts into a bright smile.

  “About time you got here,” she says with a smile.

  “What are you talking about? I’ve been sitting next to you for about two hours,” I reply, standing up and grabbing my board.

  Suddenly, she peels off her T-shirt, exposing a coral string bikini. “Oh, so that smell was coming from you?”

  I laugh as I watch her push her shorts down. “I told Lindsay she needs to stop feeding me eggs in the morning.”

  Lena grabs her board and nods toward the waves. “First one to catch a wave gets a free lunch today.”

  Once we paddle out, I feel the need to go easy on her and let her catch the first wave, but she quickly calls me out on it as we lie belly-down on our boards near the lineup.

  “I’m not a newbie, so don’t treat me like one, Adam,” she says, fixing me with a piercing glare as a wave lifts our boards, rolls under us, and drops us on the surface before it races toward the shore. “Imagine I’m Carlos. It’s down to me and you. And the next one to catch this wave wins the whole fucking tour.”

  “You’re much better looking than Carlos,” I say before I can stop myself. “I didn’t mean to say that. I—”

  I’m about to apologize when she begins paddling out toward the crest of the wave passing underneath us. My thirst to win kicks in and I paddle out after her, quickly gaining on her. She laughs as I shove her aside so I can catch the wave, which I ride for only a couple of seconds before I intentionally bail so I can head back to meet her at the lineup.

  She’s straddling her board when I paddle up next to her. “I guess chivalry is dead.”

  “Hey, you told me to pretend you were Carlos,” I say, spitting out a bit of salty seawater as I climb up onto my board so we’re both sitting next to each other, facing the shore.

  I feel like I should mention the fact that she’s usually not in the water with me while training, but I guess it’s difficult to tell—at this stage in the competition—how much of my success this year has come from working with Remy in the past, how much has come from working with Lena this year, and how much comes from my own hard work. Maybe it’s okay for her to be out here, seeing everything from a different angle. I must admit, it’s nice to be out here with her, enjoying the waves before the beachgoers start hitting the water in an hour or two.

  She pulls her dark hair up away from her neck and yanks a hair tie off her wrist to secure it in a messy ponytail. “All right, you have to practice that rodeo before—Ah!” She yelps as she loses her balance and falls off her board. “Shark!”

  My instincts kick in and I slide off my board into the water. Immediately, my foot smacks against something hard under the water. “Swim to shore!” I shout at her as I kick my feet furiously. “Hurry up!”

  Holding my board in my right arm, I spin around and around, trying to find whatever it is that I just kicked, whatever it was that knocked Lena off her board. Then I glimpse something dark swimming up toward my left arm. I kick my legs out again and connect with the underside of the shark’s jaws, but this hardly stops its momentum. When it’s about to reach me, I lift my arm in the air and bring it down hard as its snout breaks the surface of the water.

  I can’t tell what kind of shark it is, but the blow to the nose sends it thrashing. The shark’s tail smacks my leg as it begins to swim away. I take that as my cue to also get the fuck out of the water.

  “Holy fuck,” I breathe as I stumble onto the wet sand and drop my board. “I’ve seen sharks in the water, but never that fucking close. That was fucking close, wasn’t it?”

  “I think that shark wanted your phone number,” Lena jokes, but her face is still pale from the close call.

  “Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

  She nods. “You… You probably just saved my life.”

  I laugh at this. “I may have saved your foot, but we’re not far enough from a hospital for you to die from a shark bite.”

  She sinks down onto the sand and covers her face with her hands to hide her tears. “I’m sorry. I’m just… kind of all over the place right now.”

  I sit down next to her and that’s when I notice she has a small puncture wound on her right calf, so small it’s barely bleeding. “Looks like you got clipped,” I say, touching the spot on her leg. “You should go get that cleaned up.”

  She stares at my finger on her leg, her gaze following my hand as I pull it away. “I don’t feel any pain,” she says, swiping her finger across the drop of blood running down her leg.

  “Lena, please don’t take this the wrong way, but… do you think maybe you need a few days off? Do you want to sit out Trestles?”

  She wipes the blood off on the sand and shakes her head. “I don’t need time off.” She looks up at me, the tears gone and a resolute expression hardening her features. “I need to get away for a while. Yuri’s not the only one person with needs right now.” She shrugs as she digs her hands into the sand. “Maybe the time away will make him appreciate me more.”

  I sigh as I stand up and offer her a hand to help her up. “I just don’t want to be the source of tension between you two. Yuri’s my best friend. We agreed you’d only be my traine
r so long as it didn’t interfere with you two.”

  The moment she’s on her feet, it seems the pain in her leg becomes more real, as I notice her trying not to put weight on it. I slide my arm around her waist to help her, but she pushes me away.

  “I can walk,” she insists as she limps toward the green blanket where she left her beach bag. “And I can decide whether or not the training is interfering in my love life. It’s not.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.” I follow closely behind her, expecting her to drop any second. “But I’m taking you to the emergency room. They need to clean that leg up properly so it doesn’t get infected.”

  She agrees to my terms, but by the time we reach my truck, she’s almost hopping on one leg from the pain. She tries to grab on to the top of the passenger door to pull herself up, but the door swings inward, almost closing on her tiny body.

  I shake my head as I scoop her up and set her down gently in the passenger seat. She glances at me as I pull my arms out from underneath her, then she quickly looks away.

  We drive in silence the four blocks to her and Yuri’s house. When I pull up in front of their bungalow, she slides out of the truck before I can make it around to the passenger side to open her door.

  “I’m fine. Stop fussing over me,” she says as she scoots around me.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?” I ask as I watch her limping toward the front steps.

  “I’m positive,” she insists. “You go back out there and practice. Yuri will take me.”

  I glance back in the direction of the beach. “Eh… I think I’ll go to Wrightsville. Hopefully, the sharks there are a little less bitey.”

  She smiles and suppresses a grimace as she climbs the two steps up to the porch. “See you tomorrow. Same time, same place.”

  “See you then, shark bait.”

  As I watch her disappear inside the house, I feel a strange need to stick around and make sure Yuri takes her to get medical attention. It’s not a large cut, but it’s probably a pretty deep puncture wound. There are a lot of organisms in the ocean that can infect that kind of injury.

  I shake my head as I climb into the truck. Of course Yuri will take care of her. He’s taken care of Lena for the past twelve years. She doesn’t need me to make sure he does his job.

  For a moment, I consider going home instead of practicing today. A shark attack is a perfectly good reason to take a day off. But I decide to continue on toward Wrightsville Beach. I can take a day off in December, after I become the next world champion.

  Five

  My eyelids flutter open, squinting through the morning sunlight that floods our bedroom. The first thing I hear is the sound of the shower running in the master bathroom. The first thing I see is Mila’s wispy dark-blonde hair just inches from my face. Man, I’m going to miss this little devil when I’m in California in less than two weeks, I think as I brush her hair off her glowing baby skin.

  At two and a half years old, Mila’s hair is barely long enough for Lindsay to pull into two curly pigtails. Her hair has gotten progressively darker over the past two years. She’ll have my sandy-brown hair by the time she’s five. She’s lying on her back, the front of her Belle the Builder pajama shirt displayed proudly, mouth hanging open, eyeballs moving restlessly beneath her lids.

  What are you dreaming about, little one?

  I think I know the answer to that question. At least for Mila the answer would probably be puppies and pancakes. For Kaia it would be Jason Greene, the star of her favorite Disney TV show, Charmed Life. For Lindsay, it would probably be me, cooking dinner and doing the dishes. And for me, it would be a forty-foot wave with a barrel that never ends.

  Well, the only one of us who’s having their dreams come true today is Kaia. I convinced Jason Greene to come to our house today for Kaia’s tenth birthday party so we could perform a skit together. I, of course, am going to play the part of Jason Greene’s onscreen love interest, Annie, and he will play his usual role of Grayson. I actually met the seventeen-year-old—and his bodyguard—last night in their hotel room so we could practice the skit. He seems like a good kid¸ and anyone who’s willing to go to such great lengths for my baby girl is okay in my book. Apparently, he’s a huge fan of mine, so it only took the offer of a brief cameo appearance on Charmed Life for him to agree to this.

  I brush a wisp of sunlit hair out of Mila’s face and she scrunches up her eyebrows as she slowly opens her eyes. She squints at me through the hazy glow, then she shakes her head and turns away from me, hiding her face in the pillow.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead. Today’s your sister’s birthday. You have to take a shower and get dolled up. Remember I told you there would be a special surprise today? Don’t you want to know what the surprise is?”

  She mashes her face into the pillow as she shakes her head. I reach over and tickle her side to get her to turn over. She giggles as she squirms away, crawling toward Lindsay’s side of the bed. My reflexes kick in when I see her head rocketing toward the corner of the bedside table. Grabbing a fistful of the back of her pajama shirt, I stop her from the head-on collision as I sit up quickly and pull her into my lap. She’s still laughing and trying to scramble away from me, completely oblivious to the fact that she almost cracked her head open. I swear this kid is going to give me a brain aneurysm by the time I’m forty.

  I manage to wrangle Mila in and she happily helps me wake up Kaia so they can both take a shower. Lindsay helps them get dressed while I shower, then I head out the door to pick up Jason and his bodyguard at their hotel in Wrightsville Beach.

  “Where are you going?” Lindsay asks when she sees me grabbing my car key out of the shallow bowl on the table in the foyer.

  She’s wearing a simple pair of skinny jeans with a fitted yellow tank top she bought in Oahu last year, which shows off the smooth tanned skin on her arms. She hasn’t put any makeup on yet, and her hair is still a little damp from the shower, but she looks absolutely stunning.

  “We don’t have any disposable cups for the party,” I reply, my gaze naturally falling to her breasts, then her small baby bump. “I’m going to the store. You need anything?”

  “Can you take Mila? Kaia and I will get ready faster if she’s with you.”

  I think about how Kaia will feel knowing that Mila got to meet Jason Greene before she did. Her ten-year-old mind might not appreciate that. But Lindsay has a point. I don’t want to come back in an hour or so and find that Kaia isn’t ready for her big surprise. She’ll be very upset if she doesn’t have a chance to meet him when she’s looking her best.

  I take Mila off her hands and she smiles when Mila immediately lays her head on my shoulder. “We’ll take our time so you ladies can put on your faces.”

  “Day aweddy have faces, Daddy,” Mila replies.

  “I know, baby, but they’re hideous. They have to put on their pretty faces today.”

  Lindsay narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t teach her that.”

  “She doesn’t know what hideous means,” I reply, leaning over to lay a kiss on Lindsay’s cheek. “I’ll be back in an hour or so with some cups and a little something else. Love you, baby.”

  “Bring some more chips. I don’t think I got enough.”

  I nod as I head out the front door. Once Mila is strapped into her car seat in Lindsay’s Mercedes SUV, I pull out of the driveway and head to the store. Mila and I take our time in the grocery store on my way to Jason’s hotel room around ten a.m. After an uneventful trip to the market, where I may have allowed Mila to get a bag of M&Ms, we arrive at the Homewood Suites in Wilmington.

  “Daddy, this is not home. I don’t wanna go here. I wanna go to the party,” Mila says as I carry her into the hotel lobby.

  She looks at me with her eyebrows raised, as if she’s questioning my sanity for forgetting where we live.

  “Mila, this is where we live now. It’s just you and me on the lam.”

  “No!” she shouts. “I wanna g
o home!”

  I glance at the woman behind the front desk and she returns my awkward smile. “It’s getting harder and harder to kidnap kids these days,” I say with a shrug.

  “Daddy, I wanna go home. This is not my home!” Mila whines.

  “Sweetheart, I was only kidding. You know what a joke is. Don’t you remember? I told you how to tell a joke.”

  “No jokes, Daddy.”

  I shake my head as I hit the call button for the elevator and the doors open right away. “Okay, how about just one? How do you make an egg roll?” I say as I press the button for the third floor.

  She scrunches up her face in disgust. “I don’t like eggs.”

  “You know how to make an egg roll? You push it. Get it? You push the egg and it rolls. That’s how you make an egg roll.”

  She doesn’t even crack a smile.

  “You’re starting to remind me of your mom.”

  “I’m not your mom!”

  I try not to laugh at her response because she’s clearly in a bratty mood, and I don’t want to encourage this behavior, but it’s so difficult to keep a straight face. This is what I love the most about Mila. She’s still too young to understand most of my jokes, but instead of asking questions or looking confused, she gets angry because she automatically assumes I’m the one who doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I know I should correct her, and sometimes I do, but most of the time I find her self-righteous toddler brat-titude too adorable to intervene.

  When I knock on the door of Jason’s suite, I’m surprised that I don’t hear any movement or voices inside. I knock a few more times without an answer and Mila starts rubbing her face on my shoulder. She must not have slept well in our bed last night if she’s already jonesin’ for a nap.