THEN
13
Wyatt
The waves were never that great right in front of Wyatt’s house, but he liked to ride a few in the late morning anyway. He’d been surfing for so long that his board felt like an extension of him, and each wave felt like an opening. So much of his life had been filled with things that felt impossible—reading, math, even existing peacefully in his family. Being out on the water felt completely natural, and he wondered if his whole life could be filled with things that felt easy and made sense. Surfing, playing the guitar. Sam.
He got out of the water and found Sam in the middle of a big group, laughing. There was something about the way Sam laughed that always made Wyatt want to stop and watch. She didn’t laugh as a punctuation to something she’d just said or because the people around her were laughing. Sam laughed because something was really funny, so funny that it scrunched up her face and shook her shoulders. Sam was a person who was capable of giving herself up to her laughter, and as he stood and watched, he thought it might be his favorite thing.
Sam looked over and caught his eye. A few kids turned to see him just standing there, wet with his board. He had to say something because, otherwise, he was just a guy standing there, staring.
“I’m going to teach you to surf,” he said.
Sam jumped up. “Okay. Let me get Travis’s board,” she said, as if these were plans they already had.
When they were out on the water, Sam paddled next to him. “This is kind of hard,” she said, thrusting herself through the water.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said, pulling ahead. They paddled over small swells to where it was completely still.
They lay facedown on their boards, and Wyatt reached out to hold on to Sam’s board so they wouldn’t float apart. There was an intimacy in this huge expanse of space, even more so than when they’d been hiding in that storage cabinet, or that time he’d passed her on the narrow stairs on his way to Travis’s room. They weren’t as close, but they were intensely alone. There were no waves, so they just floated.
“Have you been writing songs?” she asked, scooping water onto his board.
“Almost constantly.”
“About what?”
“Whatever I’m thinking about a lot.”
“What do you think about a lot?”
“I don’t know, Sam.” He was flustered. She was what he thought about a lot. The way she smiled at him, the spot where her neck curved into her shoulder. The way he wanted to reach out and touch her all the time but didn’t want to risk making things weird and losing her. “Stupid stuff mostly. If I write anything good, I’ll play it for you.”
“Okay, geez.” Sam splashed him. “Are you really going to teach me to surf?”
“Do you really want to learn?” He loved being alone with Sam on the water, and if he could get her to start surfing, they could do this all the time.
“No,” Sam said.
“Yes you do.”
Sam laughed. “I’d like to be able to surf, it seems fun. But I am not going to try to stand up on this thing and fall flat on my face a hundred times.”
“You’d be a great surfer.”
“Because you think I can jump up into the air and land on a piece of wiggling fiberglass?”
“I do.”
Sam looked out at the horizon and back at the kids on the beach. “If you really think so.”
“I can’t teach you out here, especially with no waves. We’ll start on solid ground and I’ll teach you to pop up. Tomorrow morning at eight. Meet me at the beach.”