Page 35

After we’ve eaten our weight in fish, we return to the beach.

The waves that pound against the shore start far out in the bay, blue swells that tower twenty or thirty feet above the ocean’s surface before the top curls, foaming, crashing downward.

At our back, the scrubby desert stretches away toward the mountains, all barrel cacti and nondescript bushes, but no one looks inland when the ocean is running.

The waves sweep in, one after the other, carrying the surfers to the beach.

We walk up it, past palapas and pickup trucks. There are pop-up tents and boards stuck in the sand, a two-story hotel with a red tile roof that rents wetsuits and coolers to the underprepared.

“I wasn’t sure you’d go for this.” He gestures at the beach with our joined hands. Yes, I’m holding his hand. My palm is glued to his. They’ll have to pry him away from my cold, dead fingers. Poor Pandora, she just couldn’t take a hint and held on too long .

“I like beaches.” I sound defensive.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to come out of the restroom earlier.”

“You thought I’d move into a cantina bathroom? It’s an interesting retirement option. I’ll add it to my Pinterest board.” I squeeze his hand to remind him that I’m teasing.

He squeezes back. “I was more thinking you’d go out the window, head down to Cabo and wait out our trip there.”

“I’d hotwire Berta. Drive her recklessly down the highway. It would be the perfect getaway.”

In our travels today, we passed an honest-to-God steer with massive horns.

It had a baby steer-bovine-thing accompanying it, and I was terrified either mama or baby would sidestep onto the highway and we’d all die in a fiery ball.

There is way too much cow action for me to contemplate a mad road race.

Plus, the potholes are the size of meteor craters.

Anything over thirty miles an hour is risky.

“I know how to move fast.” Another hand squeeze. We have our own personal Morse code.

I imagine him cutting across the ocean, the grace it takes, and the balance, his body bending, twisting, ducking inside a barrel and flying toward the beach.

Sometimes I think I’d like him to come after me with the same intensity, like I was the biggest thrill, the best challenge he’d ever met.

Other times, like now, it scares me. I don’t do relationships for a good reason: I don’t know how, and it’s stupid to color outside the lines of your expertise.

When I don’t respond to his teasing, his tone turns coaxing. “Walk with me on the beach. Talk a little. It’s a twenty-minute commitment, Panda.”

His voice is a husky rumble. It’s a dick, not an engagement ring , he said the first night I had sex with him. Nothing has changed, I remind myself, and that’s a good thing. He’s a player. A hot guy. I don’t want to be a casualty in his Instagram comments.

I’ve forgotten how much I love the ocean. Beach trips as a kid were challenging. I had meltdowns when it felt like we’d only just arrived, and then we had to go. I’m better now at transitions and at managing my expectations.

The waves that wash around our ankles are an icy shock. They didn’t get Ozzy’s memo that the water here is warm. Out in the bay, the surfers wear wetsuits. The sand is brown and not the powder-soft stuff, but it’s pleasant.

We dutifully take our TripFriendz pictures. Look! We’re on a beach! We’re having SO MUCH fun. I already know what people will see. We lean into each other. His arms are wrapped around me. We look like we belong together, and we do, just a little.

I’m not the only person on the beach watching Ozzy.

Not only is he built like a hot lumberjack, but he’s likeable.

People are drawn to him, some of them because they seem to recognize him, but others just because he’s Ozzy.

Maybe hanging out at a surf break with a famous surfer isn’t my best idea.

I’m questioning the algorithmic results again.

We buy paletas from a guy selling ice creams out of a pushcart. They’re deliciously cold and creamy even if there are zero ingredients listed anywhere and no protective packaging. I guess you have to live a little.

I nibble on mine. There may be inappropriate porn star noises. Beach ice cream is the best, and these are creamy, icy goodness.

He pulls me down onto his lap. I’m happy to sit on him. He’ll be the one who ends up with sand in his crack. “I’m jealous.”

“Oh?” For an awkward moment, I’m sure he means of me. That he wants me all to himself, just his, no take backsies. Then he leans and playfully nips at my ice pop and reality dawns.

“You sound so happy.”

I moan deliberately. “Do I?”

“I’m not competing with an ice pop for your attention.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I lick it just because I can. And also, because I’m feeling just a little bit mean. “What are your plans on that front?”

“Share with me, Panda.” He holds his paleta up to my mouth so I can taste it.

His is strawberry, pink and white goodness with a heart-shaped slice of fruit at the bottom.

I lick it from stem to stern and he groans.

We pass the paletas back and forth like they’re sex toys.

Someone gives us a look as he wanders by.

“Jealous,” I whisper around the paleta I’m sucking on. “He’s just jealous.”

Ozzy nods and clears his throat, examining the leftover bits of frozen dessert with unwarranted scrutiny. He fidgets with the wooden sticks. Inhales. Exhales. He’s got this.

“I’m not an indiscriminate dater.”

“Quantity and quality are your thing, got it.”

He runs a hand over his head. It’s the paleta -free one, fortunately. “I don’t get around anywhere near as much as you seem to think I do. I don’t have an open-door dating policy.”

Does he expect me to quantify how many ladies and gentlemen are too many? He’ll be waiting awhile. And yet…

And yet.

Even as I need this genuine, slightly awkward, sweet Ozzy to be the real man, I’m not sure it can really change things. We’re on a road trip. This relationship has an expiration date, and we’re chugging down the road toward it.

A group of young twentysomethings in wetsuits skid to a halt in front of us. They’re smiling, clutching phones. Unbearably enthused. I want to jettison them out the hatch into outer space. Moment? Ruined.

“Hey, bro,” the wetsuit-wearing Thing One on the left says. As conversational openers go, it’s mediocre at best. “Are you Ozzy Wylder?”

Ozzy jams his paleta stick into the sand. I could grab it. Sharpen it into a prison shank and stab Thing One in the knee. He’d go away then. “Yeah.”

We’re apparently going to be social.

Thing One and Thing Two take turns high-fiving him. “Wow! This is awesome! It’s so great to meet you! Are you coming out to the break this afternoon?”

Being rude, inconsiderate, paleta -party-crashing nincompoops, they don’t even wait for his response. They launch into competing monologues, words like backdoor, bailing, and crest spilling out of them. It’s a foreign language. Ozzy speaks it as well as he speaks Spanish.

“You’re my inspiration!” Thing Two has tears in his eyes. “I admire your hustle. I’m thinking I should drop out of community college, buy a van, and drive it all the way down the coast here. I could surf Cabo. All the great Baja spots.”

Thing One nudges Thing Two in the ribs. “This dude would drive a van to Hawaii or Tahiti if he could.”

They hee-haw laugh far more than is warranted.

Ozzy laughs politely. He signs their T-shirts. A ball cap. Someone’s suspiciously pristine longboard. I’m not sure black Sharpie is that waterproof, but I keep my mouth shut.

More people collect around us, because Thing One and Thing Two are painfully loud in their admiration of Ozzy. There are requests for selfies. I scuttle out of frame. Ozzy looks apologetic.

One of the newcomers watches my crab imitation and puts two and two together. “Is this Pandora? Holy shit!”

Ummm… what ?

All eyes swivel to me.

“You guys are totally a couple, right? Do you surf? You have to surf!”

I keep it simple. And surprisingly honest. “Nope.”

My interrogator looks disappointed but bounces back. He redirects his attention toward Ozzy. He’s a resilient one. I’m sure it helps when he’s ricocheting off the ocean floor after a bad fall. “So you’re teaching her? Are you coming out to the break?”

“Not today,” Ozzy says. Then repeats himself again. And again. His answer is an unpopular one.

The ladies in the group crowd around so he can sign the front of their wetsuits. This goes better than the longboard signing, because they’re dressed like tropical parrots in lime green, bright pink, blue. The black ink stands out when he scrawls his name across their clavicles.

Sorry , he mouths to me. Uh-huh. I feel the need to autograph him later tonight. Let him sign his name on his favorite portions of my anatomy in return.

“Let’s move it along,” I tell them. “Give the man some space.”

They blink. Thing One looks taken aback. Perhaps he’s already mentally sharing the Maui house with Ozzy and they’re best bros. Too bad.

“Chop-chop,” I prompt when they don’t immediately move off.

Hedgehog superpowers activated! It takes me another ten seconds to run his stalker-fans off, but even so, he still gets handed a number.

It doesn’t hurt that the ocean-water-swell-huge-waves thing happening out in the bay is apparently truly amazing and only a surf-hating idiot would stand on the beach rather than hop on a wooden board in shark-infested waters.

Ozzy and I are left in sole possession of the beach and a phone number scrawled on a paper napkin.

“I thought they might stoop to kidnapping,” I tell him when it’s just us and the seabirds. “Maybe they’d tie you to a board and take you for a forcible paddle.”

“Yeah. Good thing you were here.”

To his credit, he crumples up the napkin and impales it with the paleta stick. Boom. Game over.

“Does that happen often?” I’m still feeling grumpy. “Do they have some reason to believe that you’d be up for a big sex orgy out there in the bay?”

Ozzy flushes adorably. “I had a little too much fun when I was seventeen. And also when I was eighteen. Then when I won my first big competition at nineteen—”

“Too much fun,” I finish for him.

He nods sheepishly. “I had some money, people were paying attention to me, and winning is potent shit.”

I think about the surf stars on Instagram.

The endorsements. The fact that it was an Olympic sport in freaking Tahiti.

It’s got all the glamor of water polo, but with sexy Australian accents and laid-back, shirtless sex gods.

And goddesses (although they mostly keep their shirts on).

It seems crazy-good, but it’s not my life.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket.

Ozzy’s goes off.

The TripFriendz mothership is calling.