Lorelie Brown - Riding the Wave

He took the wave in return, poured in every bit of his frustration and upset. Slammed down the front, dug in a rail. Flipped a sharp turn at the bottom and rode his momentum up. Up and out until he was floating over the moment. He hovered in the air, his heart rising to the back of his mouth. He was a god.

But a god without a destiny.

His arms spread for balance, he slammed back to earth, cut across the top of the seafoam as the wave broke. Slowed. Dropped back to his board.

He knew he’d done it. Won. He felt the immediate rush of perfect wave plus perfect ride.

His eyes cut to Avalon first. Behind the housing of her camera, he couldn’t see her, not the way he’d wanted to. Not the way he needed to. The way her eyes lit up for him on practice runs, he knew this one would be epic. She’d fucking explode.

Or she would, if he hadn’t fucked all that up.

After he rode the wave all the way in, the throngs of people rushed toward him from the beach. It was something to put down in the record book—two championships, during his first and last competitions, and exactly ten years apart. The odds of it ever happening again were slim. He might not be Kelly Slater, but he had this year. He had his place.

As Sage and his mom slung their arms around his wet back, he couldn’t help himself. He looked past them both, over their heads.

Avalon walked out of the waves. Water clung to her curves, even though she wore a pair of unrevealing board shorts and a dark green, silky rash guard. The camera dangled from one hand. From some deep depth, she pulled out a weak smile. The two fingers she tipped to one eyebrow were a salute, but it didn’t feel mocking.

It felt right. There was no reason in the world why she shouldn’t be a part of the best moments of his life.

He missed her.

He wanted her back.

On some level, he’d have to admit that he’d flipped out about the Mako thing because he’d been beyond scared. Cut-his-balls-off-and-bury-them-in-the-sand-level scared. Avalon was strong and brilliant and fascinatingly creative, while Tanner could be her rock. Be her calm in the storm. He’d just been too damn afraid he’d turn into his father and put his own ego and wants ahead of his relationships.

And he didn’t know if he could get over that.

Then he didn’t have any choice but to pay attention to the crowds. Sage laid a big, fat kiss on his cheek, and his mom did the same in quick succession. Mr. Wakowski was right there, grabbing his hand in a hard shake.

Avalon slipped away. Her narrow back wove between two beach bunnies in tiny suits.

And he didn’t stop her.

Something sick took up residence in his stomach, even as he thanked everyone and accepted their congratulations.

Jack appeared in front of him. He held his hand out. Dark blue eyes narrowed at him in direct opposition to the wide smile. “Congratulations, man.”

Tanner shook, though they kept it fast. “Thanks.”

“About everything.”

Tanner held his hands up, palms out.

“I wanna say I’m sorry. You deserve this win.”

Tanner nodded.

Really, he was fucking exhausted. His brain had short-circuited right about the same time he’d spotted Avalon on the sand. His knees were weak, his thighs hard-sprung with leftover adrenaline, and his back felt like it needed to pop back into place. He wasn’t a young man anymore. The win couldn’t have come at a better time.

Part of that had to mean letting go of the things held on to by the younger version of himself. He nodded, clapped Jack’s wet shoulder. Hard, of course, so the other guy staggered under the blow. Certain male things couldn’t be left behind altogether. But he smiled. “It’s all good. Water washes it all away. We’re even.”

Because hell, if he couldn’t be the bigger man when he was flying high on a win, when the hell could he?

A few minutes later, he found himself high on a podium. He hefted the golden cup over his head. Thousands of people looked up at him.

He owned the moment.

Even if Avalon had managed to hide herself out of his line of sight.

The press went first, spattering questions at him. The release of that perfectly timed magazine article meant that plenty of them were about Hank Wright and his hidden family, as well as the young age of Mako’s mother. Tanner ignored those questions as if they’d never been asked, and answered the ones about how it felt to win. How it felt to be the champion.

Speeches came next. Most of them slid by in a blur. He wasn’t even sure what he said during his own except that the words thank you echoed a lot. Repeatedly. As in over and over again, until he figured he pretty much qualified as babbling, because he was afraid if he stopped talking he’d cry.

There was no way he’d cry on stage.

But when they hustled him to the staging area in back, he sucked in a harsh breath as he stepped down from the stage. The press of bodies was gone. Mostly his manager and a few WavePro people remained. Plus his mom and sister, of course.

He pressed cold, tingling fingers to his eyes to stave off the pressure there.

He wished his dad were there to see it. And not in some fucked-up, revenge-tinted way. But really, truly wanted him there. Hank would have gotten such a kick out of a random, record-book kind of moment like this.

His dad had made mistakes. A lot of them, it seemed. The anger he’d left in his wake was overwhelming and almost epic. But he’d been just a man, and he’d been Tanner’s father. The dad who’d raised him and taught him to surf and ingrained the drive to win. Things had gone downhill later, but Tanner had been lucky enough to get that much of him. He wished Mako had gotten more of Hank, seen his good side.

Under the wish, a decade of anger sloughed off.

Only one thing would make this moment actually perfect. Avalon.

Avalon had always liked her bedroom in the Wright house. When she’d left her mother’s tiny apartment, it had felt like moving into a castle—one almost on the beach, to boot. Coming back after school and Matthew, it had been a safe haven. The pale blue walls always made her feel better and the high four-poster bed had that touch of whimsy that every teenage girl lived for.

Of course, back then she’d decorated the walls with cutouts from every surf magazine ever published. Now the walls were covered with prints of her own action photographs.

Except the biggest print, the panoramic she’d labored over, was simply of the waves—the ones that were less than a quarter mile away. The same ones Tanner had dominated to seal the championship two days ago.

And she hadn’t seen him since.

The ache had gotten worse when she had to pick through a month’s worth of photographs of Tanner too.

God, he was such a beautiful man.

She paused on a shot from a day trip they’d taken to San Onofre. Tanner had a wetsuit on, but he’d peeled it down to his waist, and he was holding a bottle of water as he stared out at the waves. Thick slabs of muscles etched him with the solid strength she’d known up close and personal. The sharp line of his lats, arching over the side of his ribs that she’d grasped as she exploded. Those heavy arms that had wrapped around her in the dark of night.

And also the steady trust in his eyes. He knew the waves and he knew himself and he let everything else be. She wanted that. Needed that in her life and in herself.

But it didn’t mean she was wrong to have tried to help, did it? After all, the visible proof was in Eileen. She didn’t look happy, not exactly. But she wasn’t walking around as shell-shocked as she had been.

This morning she’d greeted Avalon and Sage with a smile, then made them whole-wheat pancakes. She’d made her mind up on selling the store. Said she was done with it, that between what she’d make and Hank’s life insurance, she could take early retirement.

With slow, deliberate clicks, Avalon shut the picture on her screen. She put the last pictures meant for WavePro on a disk, then added the last batch to the external drive she’d been gathering for Tanner. He deserved his own record of the win.

Plus she had to admit she had an ulterior motive. A tiny, petty part of her wanted to make sure Tanner never forgot her. If he picked one of these pictures, framed it maybe, kept it as a memento of his ten-year-span win? She’d be part of his memories forever. A fixture in his life, even if he eventually forgot the rest of what they’d had.

Because Avalon was pretty damn sure she’d never forget Tanner. What he was to her would never fade into the background of their other truths. Friend, brother of her best friend, coworker—and the man she’d always love.

The disk slid out the side of her computer; then she snapped it in a case and marked the dates spanned. The drive she slipped in an outside pocket of her smaller camera bag.

Downstairs, the house almost echoed with quiet. She put her stuff down on the island counter, then set about refilling her iced coffee. Eileen had left the air conditioner off and opened every door and window, so she couldn’t have gone very far.

Swirling her coffee so the ice could do its job, Avalon stood in front of the sink and looked out at the back patio. The afternoon sun wove between latticed vines, leaving a dappled pattern across the flagstone. A pair of feet stuck out from the lounger, with sandals dangling off the end.

Avalon slipped through the back door. “I’m going into the WavePro offices.”

Eileen didn’t open her eyes, but she smiled. Her face was tipped up toward the sun, but Avalon knew she’d have already slathered on SPF eleventy million. “Will you be home for dinner?”