Air (3 page)

Half an hour later, Anders called. “Panic over. He's gonna make it. Puked up a whole lot of blood from ruptured capillaries in his lungs, poor git, thanks to some extreme breath-holding, but apart from a bust knee and a couple ribs ripped off his spine, the lad's right as rain.”

Zeke exhaled, thanked Anders for letting us know, whooped and did an actual somersault. Then he did another one.

When he'd returned to standing, and I'd gone from being elated that Burnsy was going to pull through, to amused that Zeke had apparently been hiding secret gymnastic abilities, I said, “Thank God he's all right.”

Zeke raised his eyebrows and replied, “Yeah, you said it.”

There was an awkward moment, where I knew I was being reproached. Zeke seemed to be waiting for me to say something more, so I went with, “Since when can you do a backflip?”

“Since always, I guess. The airs I pull on waves the big alley oops and rodeo flips? Basically the same thing, except there's a board under my feet.”

Zeke's aerial surf maneuvers were legendary. Somehow he'd find the right ramp of white water, take off and, hallelujah, he'd spin through a big rotation and land it. It was beautiful to watch, that moment when he'd hang in the air, tail high, and then stomp it on the face of the wave without falling. It was like watching a snowboarder. Or a skater in the half-pipe.

“Well, now you're just showing off.”

I still hadn't got the hang of airs. Barrels, cutbacks, carving hacks, snaps off the lip and big tail throws weren't a problem, but airs I had not mastered. If I managed to stick one, it was generally a fluke; most of the time my board shot out from under me and I ended up getting worked. The problem was partly timing, but also my survival instinct. Airs can mess you up. All the air-game surfers I knew, including Zeke, were really susceptible to injury in the lower extremities, often seriously damaging their knees, hips and ankles. Which explained why a lot of older surfers in their forties had replacement knees they'd totally battered their shock absorbers. One of the things I'd discovered on my travels was that my body was really reluctant to get hurt, and launching airs felt too much like asking for trouble, like picking a fight with fate, so at the last second I hesitated. Game Over.

“You wanna take the boards out now?” Zeke said.

We turned and looked at the little lime-colored waves, which had faces of two feet at most, and Zeke said, “It could be fun. Amber waves.”

“What waves?” White waves, green waves and blue waves I'd heard of, but never amber ones. Perhaps it was some weird wave traffic-light system, I thought, bored.

“Amber. After Chase's sister.”

“The guy we're supposed to be meeting today?”

“Yeah, when we were growing up, his sister would only surf waves like this. Anything over two feet and you could count her out.”

“Does she live in Miami now too?”

“She's some sort of swimsuit model here, I think. You'll like her. I think Chase is bringing her to the cabana later.”

“Great,” I said, recognizing the tension in my voice.

“Come on let's get a few good ones before the wind picks up too much.”

“Fine, but I'm using the Shark Shield,” I said, unpacking it.

“Good idea.”

So we surfed, and by a few waves in I had almost forgotten the uncomfortable feeling that had been nagging at me for the past few weeks. I didn't even quite know what it was, but it was there, vague and formless, slipping away every time I tried to grab it.

After barely an hour, the wind made what surf there was too messy to be worthwhile, so we paddled back in and made for our beach towel.

I was getting out of my rash vest and into a fresh bikini top, when Zeke blurted out, “Iris. You ever wish you didn't meet me?”

“Err, of course I don't wish that, Zeke. Why would you even ask that?”

“Phew. You know you're the best thing that ever happened to me, right?”

I didn't know how that could possibly be true. Zeke Francis, one of surfing's most promising sons, had the world at his feet; how could I compete with the world?

But there was something in his face a longing that seemed to suck away all doubt, all air, reducing the distance between us to nothing.

I smiled at him, and he reflected it back at me; morning sun on the horizon.

“Aw, thanks, Zeke,” I said. Which was my way of saying,
You're the best thing that ever happened to me too.

“If I ever die out there, Iris, you'll move on, right? Don't let me ruin your life.”

I looked at him sharply and said, “Don't say that. Don't even think it.”

But he wasn't to be put off.

“Promise me.”

“All right, I promise.”

“OK, good.”

“And ditto.”

He rubbed sand out of his eyes, looked at the sea and said, “Come on, we need to do something, get out of our heads.”

“Agreed.”

He looked back at me and, for a split second, I could once again see the boy-Zeke, a child of excitement and hope.

“Wanna surf a fast wave?”

“Uh, where? Because Amber waves or not, quite frankly I've seen better dribble in a baby's mouth.”

“Ha ha, follow me.”

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

Zeke had a determined sort of stride and I struggled to keep up with him. From behind I could see that his neck was sunburned and I let myself worry about what my mum said about the ozone layer and made a mental note to check him over for dodgy-looking moles before the day was through. If anyone was likely to get a melanoma, it'd be the blond boy from Hawaii who'd surfed in board shorts almost every day of his life.

He turned and looked back at me, where I was struggling with my board and my overstuffed beach bag, and he took the bag from me, slinging it over his shoulder. The effect of my six-foot-one, scruffy surfer-dude boyfriend carrying this orange bag covered in an orchid print wasn't even comical; somehow he made it work.

When we finally reached the car park, sweat pouring off me, I saw a crowd staring up at a huge blue plastic monstrosity.

“Told you,” Zeke said. “Surf's up, yo . . .”

As he said it, I saw a small figure get sucked up toward the top of the FlowRider. Wipeout.

“Uhh . . .”

“You never rode a FlowRider before?”

I shook my head. Wherever there was a FlowRider, hundreds of people were sure to clump together and gawk. Today was a case in point. It was one thing wiping out a hundred yards offshore, but smashing my head on a lump of plastic in front of a cheering crowd? No, thanks.

“For real, I love these things,” Zeke said, handing me my bag, his phone and room card and walking straight up to the man in charge of the line.

He didn't even have to introduce himself; the man recognized him right away and announced on the mic, “Wow, put your hands together for Billabong star rider Zeke Francis, here to show us a little Hawaii style.”

In a flash, Zeke was out of his flip-flops and T-shirt and on a shortboard, skimming up and down the FlowRider like he wasn't even trying, then breaking into deep carves and 360-degree helicopter spins. He looked super-bendy, as he maintained his balance through whatever the FlowRider chucked at him I got a video for Kelly, since she had this line about Zeke being so flexible she was sure he'd been filleted.

I looked around me, and saw that pretty much all of the people watching had a look of awe on their faces, and I couldn't help feeling a tiny bit jealous.

Then the thing happened that I should totally have expected.

Zeke skimmed over to the edge of the FlowRider, jumped off his board, grabbing it in one swift movement, and got the guy in charge to hand him the mic.

“Iris, get up here!”

I kept completely still. No one would spot me, because no one would know what I looked like.

I considered backing slowly the whole way across the car park.

“Iris Fox, Face of Billabong UK, is in the house! Come on, girl!”

People started clapping and looking around, and then a middle-aged woman in a headscarf shouted, “There she is.”

Before I even knew what was happening, I found myself being jostled to the front of the crowd and climbing the stairs to the FlowRider.

It was a weird sensation, more like skateboarding a half-pipe than riding a breaking wave toward shore, but I quickly got the
hang of it, staying low and keeping my weight on my back foot so that I kept control, despite the sheet of water gushing toward me at thirty miles an hour. I hadn't even come close to falling off, when it happened.

The first odd thing I noticed was a couple of lads in the front row laughing. And then ripples of laughter spread backward. Hands shot over faces, hooting started up, and several older gentlemen and parents with children walked away. I couldn't figure it out. I hadn't fallen. Both boobs were safely behind fabric, and I was kicking ass on the FlowRider.

It took Zeke to point out what had happened, with a wordless demonstration.

The fabric of my new bikini bottoms had stretched in the water, and the front panel had gathered at my leg crease. In other words, I had exposed a crowd of three hundred people to a perfect view of my undercarriage.

I pulled my bikini bottoms back to their correct position and left the FlowRider, with Zeke right behind me.

There was no way to put a good spin on it. Even the guy on the mic was wiping away a tear of laughter, which was, I felt, deeply unprofessional.

Embarrassing myself like this was bad enough, but doing it in the coolest part of Miami, right in front of Zeke and hundreds of strangers, was absolutely excruciating.

It would have been better if Zeke had outright laughed, but instead he patted my back and gave me a look of pure pity.

“Tough break,” he said.

“Can we go? I think I've had enough now.”

“Chase is meeting us with a bunch of friends at six. We can't just blow them off.”

“What if your friends were in the crowd? What if they saw that? Zeke, I can't be chatting to people who've seen my pubes.”

“Hey, they weren't in the crowd they have to work, remember? Don't sweat it. So a few people saw two seconds of you sorta naked. Who cares?”

I cared. My epidermis had cared itself scarlet.

“‘Sort-of naked'?” Completely naked would've been better than just flashing my bush. “Honestly, Zeke, I'm just not feeling it. I want to go.”

“You're making me crazy. We can't just leave we got shit to do. You shouldn't care so much what people think.”

“Pardon me for feeling mortified.”

“Look, you gotta put it in perspective. I guarantee there are people online right now saying all kinds of mean things about Burnsy's accident. Calling him a wannabe, saying he shouldn't surf those waves cos he can't handle them, or he's too little, or whatever, but screw the haters. What are they surfing, except the Internet?”

“I know, Zeke, but—”

“But what? You can't control that stuff. Let it wash over you or you'll drive yourself crazy. Your first time and you were doing great up there. Maybe don't check YouTube tonight, but don't be embarrassed. It's nothing to the universe. Try and forget it.”

“OK.”

Times like this, it felt as if Zeke was on a different planet to me. How could you put something massively humiliating out of your mind just because you wanted to?

Finally Zeke broke the silence and nodded at one of the festival marquees, “Hey, you don't wanna be all stressed out when you meet my friends for the first time, right?”

“Exactly. That's why I'd rather we just called it a day now and met them tomorrow.”

“Not necessary. I got just the thing to make you feel better.”

“A time machine?”

“Ha ha, nope.”

“Does the plan involve alcohol?”

“There might be some lame-ass fizzy wine,” he said, looking dubious.

“I'm in.”

His warm hands worked their way across my shoulder blades. They circled around a tender spot in the muscle, finger rubbing hard into the knot, flattened palm sliding across coconut oil down to the small of my back.

“OK?” he said.

“
Uh-huh
,” I mumbled into the pillow.

“The pressure's good? I'm not hurting you?”

“No, it's fine.”

He'd given the massage therapist a hundred bucks to take a break and we'd taken over the therapy tent.

“You're super-tense.”

“No shit.”

“Just try to clear your mind.”

“My heart's still racing, Zeke, and all I can think of is YouTube.”

“This will help. I promise.”

For the first five minutes I was completely anxious. At the ten-minute point, my mind started to wander from stupid
FlowRiders and the people who found them entertaining. Fifteen minutes in, I felt a bit better.

His hands got further and further down my spine and then he withdrew them, and I felt them on the backs of my thighs.

My breathing was weird and ragged, and I wondered if I was the only one here
really
getting into it.

“Turn over.”

“Turn over?”

“For your shoulders and the fronts of your legs.”

He'd seen me in the nude plenty of times, but somehow turning over seemed like something I just couldn't do. It was one thing to be seen naked by Zeke in the heat of the moment, but I didn't want to be inspected in bright daylight.

“Iris?”

But he wasn't looking for flaws. He was my boyfriend and he cared about me. I screwed up my courage, turned over and saw him looking down at me. As if reading my mind, he handed me a towel the massage therapist had left folded on a chair. He also hit Play on the sound system and the tent was flooded with meditation music.

“Cheers. I was feeling weird there,” I said. Not just weird. Exposed and vulnerable was more like it. Which was crazy, because this was Zeke, the least judgmental guy I'd ever met.

“Hey, don't apologize. If I overstep, just tell me, so I can take a step back.”

I closed my eyes, relaxed into the softness and took more deep breaths as Zeke moved his hands up and down my arms, soothing away the tension from training and surf sessions. He was working my hands, moving into the spaces between my
fingers, and then circling my palms. I had flashes of tropical seas and a feeling of floating over water until I was flying in one long slow spiral toward a bright sunset.

I woke up with a snort, opened my eyes and Zeke was grinning down at me.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

I knew I'd been snoring. Even worse, the side of my mouth was wet and a pool of my own drool had formed under my chin.

“See, you were tired too!” he said, grinning.

I put my hand over my eyes and willed my face to stop blushing.

Why? Why did my body have to keep humiliating me at every opportunity?

“Aaargh.”

“I'm kinda proud I made you so relaxed you crashed out. Feel better now?”

I was feeling better. Even though I couldn't have been asleep for long, I felt totally refreshed, and suddenly a bit of flashing didn't seem like the worst thing in the world.

Zeke touching me like that also felt super-romantic. Being with Zeke all the time had unexpected consequences: he was there when I was drowning in snot and sweat from flu, he was there after a dodgy curry wrought havoc with my digestive system, and he was there when I wanted to pluck the mutant hair out of my cheek. That sort of stuff wasn't exactly conducive to great romance, but being with him in the marquee absolutely was.

“Is there a fastener thing on the door?” I said. “Like something you can tie?”

“I don't know,” he said, walking to the fabric doorway, which he started inspecting. “I don't think so. We could put a chair in the way of it, like that time in Portugal?”

“Well, we
could
do that, or we could just chance it.”

I gave him what I hoped was a winning smile and pulled him on to the very narrow bed. He hesitated for a second, said, “What the hell?” and kissed me.

I reached up and kissed his collarbones, and his body relaxed. He slid his hands under the towel, as I moved a hand further down his chest and his breathing got heavier.

When we first met, I felt awkward even holding his hand; ultra-conscious of my own sweaty palms; wondering if the way our hands fitted together was comfortable for him. His fingers were much longer than mine but almost as slim, and sometimes he caught me staring at them. I didn't even know I was doing it. Once those fingers had been inside my clothes, I wasn't able to look at them without remembering.

I had wriggled down and moved my mouth to his belly button, when a young guy wearing a weird hat walked in.

“Shoot. My bad,” he said, backing out. And then he said, “
Zeke?
” and failed to leave.

“Chase! Dude!”

“Friend, I don't know where to look. Put on underwear.”

By this time, I was wrapped in the towel and getting dressed underneath it, thinking that I should just give up any attempt to be dignified and accept a life of constant embarrassment.

Zeke pulled on his T-shirt and board shorts, and said, “Wow, it's so good to see you. I thought we weren't meeting you guys
until later. Don't you have work? This is my girlfriend, Iris, by the way,” he said.

“I see that.”

“Hello!” I said, aiming for bright and breezy, despite the ongoing mortification. “Nice to meet you.”

“My dad gave me the day off to come to the festival.”

“Good guy. Are the others outside?” Zeke asked.

“No, they're coming later, along with a whole bunch of Amber's friends. I'm supposed to be grabbing a quick leg rub. Goddam capoeira.”

“Oh, I did that earlier while Zeke was crashed out!” I said. Chase had an olive complexion, gray eyes, and when he smiled at me, I became aware of excellent dimples.

“Can you still walk? Because my leg muscles are somewhere between pulled pork and shredded crab. I guess the masseuse bailed already.”

“I paid her to take a walk,” Zeke said. “She'll be back in fifteen minutes if you want to wait.”

“I ain't going nowhere near that table. What is it they say on CSI? ‘Biologicals.'”

“Hey, there's no biologicals from us,” I said, offended.

“Except a little drool from when she was sleeping,” Zeke chipped in, and I punched him in the arm.