“And when you get embarrassed your cheeks turn red.” He uncovers his eyes and looks right at me. “Like they’re doing right now.”
Of course the fact that he says this makes me blush that much more.
“The first time I saw it was when I asked you how the poster looked and you started to say ‘awful’ but tried to change it to ‘awesome,’ and it came out ‘awfslome.’”
“You noticed that?”
He nods. “I notice everything about you.”
“Well, I can’t help but notice that all the things you just pointed out—wrinkly chin, inconsistent eye color, and the oh so sexy blushing—are in fact flaws. So again I say that you’re kind of proving my point.”
“You cannot believe that,” he says. “You know they’re not flaws.”
“Well, I admit that you manage to present them in a way that’s kind of amazing, but—”
“Maybe this analogy will work for you. Before you got to the garage, Mo showed me all the different types of surfboards. She really opened my eyes. Who knew there were so many?”
“I knew,” I joke, but he ignores it.
“Girls like Kayla are like factory boards. Shiny. Smooth. Pretty. They look great but they look alike.”
“And girls like me?” I ask.
“There aren’t girls like you, Izzy. There is a girl like you, singular. You’re like this custom board that Mo showed me. She shaped it herself, and it has all these little details and indentations that make it special and unique. They’re features, not flaws.”
I look at him and am totally speechless. On the list of the greatest things that anyone has ever said to me, this is the entire list. Nothing else is even close.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, you could say something about who you are. For once don’t make me do all the talking.”
“I’m really not trying to be difficult; I just can’t think of anything.”
“Tell me why you won’t surf in a contest.”
“I already did. It’s just not my scene.”
“Sorry, wrong answer,” he says as he makes a game show buzzer noise. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Is it because you’re shy? Is it because you think you’ll lose?”
“Maybe . . . but there’s more to it than that,” I try to explain.
I think about this for a moment, and he waits patiently for an answer. I look out at the water and try to put it all into words.
“For me surfing is completely pure. It’s just me and the water and my board. It’s almost spiritual. Actually, it is spiritual. There’s no one watching, no one judging. It doesn’t matter who’s popular or who’s pretty, and it’s not about being better than anybody else. It’s just about the quest for perfection.”
“And what do you mean by perfection?”
“Think about everything that goes into creating a wave: the gravitational pull of the moon, the wind and weather thousands of miles away in the middle of the ocean, the contours of the ocean floor. It’s an amazing cosmic event that is hidden from sight until the last possible moment. The wave only breaks the surface for such a short period of time, and perfection is the tuning fork that rings in your heart when you catch it the moment it comes to life and ride it until the last bit of it disappears. It’s the feeling of knowing that the forces of nature all came together and you were there to fully appreciate every last bit of it.”
He considers this for a moment, and this time I wait patiently.
“Was that perfection yesterday morning?” he asks. “When you caught that last wave?”
I close my eyes and think back to the wave. “Absolutely.”
“And did it ruin it for you when you found out that I saw you do it? Did my being there make it imperfect?”
“No,” I answer. “Of course not.”
“Then why would other people ruin it? I think you should get over this fear. Better yet, I think you should compete in the King of the Beach contest. It’s not like girls don’t enter. Mickey and Mo both won it. Why not you?”
“Because,” I say, as though that alone were enough of an answer.
“That’s it? ‘Because’? That’s not a good enough excuse.”
“It should be,” I reply a little prickly. “You wanted to know something about me and I told you. And the first thing you’re doing is telling me to change that thing. It’s not a fear. It’s just the way I’m wired. You watching me surf is different from a crowd of people watching me. It’s the most personal thing I can share. I don’t think you understand that.”
“I don’t think you have any idea how great it is to watch you. I don’t even understand surfing and I think it’s amazing. Yesterday morning, watching you, that was mind blowing. Without a doubt it was the best forty-five minutes I’ve had since I’ve gotten here.”
“Really?”
“There is nothing I can do as well as you can surf. When I first got here, I thought surfing was a hobby. Then, after a few weeks of talking to you, I began to think of it as a sport. But yesterday, when I was watching you, I realized that it’s an art. You’re an artist, Izzy.”
You can now add this to the list I just mentioned of the most amazing things anyone’s ever said to me.
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Okay,” I say shyly. “Then that’s one thing that you know about me. But I’m not looking to share that with the world, okay?”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll stop pushing you.”
We both share a smile, and he reaches over and slips his hand into mine. I feel a charge crackle through my body. Neither of us says anything for a moment, and I give his hand a little squeeze in return.
“Now I want you to tell me something,” I say.
“Anything.”
“Why did you kiss me yesterday?”
He thinks about it for a moment before he answers. “Because I was tired of imagining what it would be like. I just had to know.”
“You’d been imagining it?” I ask. “Imagining kissing me?”
He nods. “Big time.”
“Since when?”
“Since I met you.”
“Right,” I say with a laugh. “When I had the guacamole stain on my shirt?”
“I like guacamole and I respect a girl who can pull it off as a fashion statement.”
I turn to look at him, and the sea breeze blows my hair in every direction. He reaches up and gently moves it out of my face, and I tuck it between my neck and shoulder.
“And what was it like?” I continue. “Kissing me?”
He flashes the smile I see in my mind whenever I think about him.
“Even better than I had imagined. Which is saying something, because I had set the anticipation bar pretty high.”
“Do you . . . maybe . . . want to try it again?”
“I . . . do,” he says, but with some hesitation. “I . . . really . . . do.”
“Why do I sense another ‘but’ coming up?”
“It’s already July first and I go back to Wisconsin on August twenty-fifth. That’s—”
“Fifty-five days,” I interrupt.
“Wow, you came up with that quickly.”
“I’ve already done the math. All of it. Fifty-five days, seven weekends, six more summer camp classes.” I shrug. “You’re not the only one who’s been imagining.”
This makes him smile.
“I want to kiss you very much,” he says. “But if I do, I know that it will hurt unbearably bad fifty-five days from now. Maybe worse than anything’s ever hurt before. And that makes me wonder what I should do.”
Now I turn my whole body and lean forward so that I am just inches from his face. “What you should do? Don’t I have a say in this?”
“Of course you do,” he answers. “What do you think we should do?”
“I think it’s like a wave,” I say. “But that’s just me. I always think everything’s like surfing.”
He has a perplexed look on his face. “How is it like a wave?”