Air (8 page)

My face must have registered my disapproval. Zeke looked supremely uncomfortable and Chase said, “Hey, I'm kidding. He just shared my weed sometimes. But, you know, Zeke's a reformed toker these days, so no cause to stress.”

I looked at Zeke and he was actually blushing, like a kid whose mother had just caught him doing something unspeakable.

“Chase got you into dope?”

“Dope?” Chase said, looking scandalized. “Hell no. Just pot.”

“Dope
is
pot,” I said, not understanding why Chase would need clarification.

“Dope can also mean heroin here, Iris,” Zeke said gently. “Can we not talk about this? It was a long time ago.”

Since Zeke was only nineteen, I guessed it wasn't all that long ago.

“I wasn't some Walter White, yo,” Chase said. “It was dime bags of pot that I split with my best friend. No one ever died of pot.”

I wasn't sure about that. People said marijuana was a gateway drug, and Zeke had definitely gone through that gateway. In fact, from what I'd heard about his life before he met me, about ten gates had slammed behind Zeke. He'd rehabbed like crazy and by the time I came along he was clean, but I knew from his family that it had been a hard, long fight. And here we were, hanging out with the guy who'd led him down that path.

Zeke put his arm over my shoulder and leaned over to kiss me, properly this time, and once again the worst of my doubts vanished. Funny how that always seemed to happen.

“You guys wanna ride to the Everglades tomorrow morning? I have to go see a man about an alligator.”

“Totally.”

“We probably won't have time,” Zeke said. “After tonight, Iris has to train for New Smyrna. It can be a tricky wave.”

And that was that: language switched to surf-speak.

“Yeah,” Chase said. “It has a sketchy little lip that's hard to figure out—even the top seeds who compete there don't always progress to the next round.”

“Hell yeah, it's so inconsistent out there. Some of the waves are closing out, some are running, some of them that you
think
are going to be shockers turn into good ones. The best surfers in the world struggle; you have so many yellow jerseys taking out the reds there, it's crazy.”

But I didn't think it was just a diversion tactic. Zeke sounded genuinely worried about me surfing New Smyrna. He often tried to give me insider knowledge on certain breaks, and sometimes he'd get out old heat sheets and talk me through previous
contest drama. He'd look at those numbers and remember it all. It reminded me of
The Matrix
, with the guy monitoring the computer code and seeing redheads, blonds and brunettes, except Zeke did it with heat sheets and waves.

I wasn't actually too worried. The biggest problem, I thought, apart from the many, many sharks, would be wind chop, but I'd surfed plenty of blown-out breaks in Cornwall, so I was sure I'd manage. As the saying went,
Bad surf is the best teacher
, and the thing I'd noticed about the Hawaiian and Australian girls was that they were so used to pristine peeling waves that they panicked at the first sign of poor conditions. Whereas, for me, it was business as usual.

Anyway, the thing I wanted to talk about was the Everglades, which I still really wanted to see. A unique subtropical wetland, home to alligators and turtles, was worth another half-day of slacking, surely.

“Who knows when I'll be in Florida again? It's not far. We could just go down there for a few hours, couldn't we?”

“Maybe, but I don't think it's gonna be possible to swing it with our schedule.”

“OK, OK,” I said. “You win.”

“So when you paddling the Cortes Bank, brah?” Chase said to Zeke. “Word on the street is Greg's putting together a crew.”

Greg Long was the most famous of the big-wave surfers and Zeke completely idolized him. The Cortes Bank was a reef a full hundred miles offshore with a fearsome reputation. It was basically a shipping and navigation hazard, because when the bank broke from a storm swell it could kick up waves with faces of a hundred feet.

Surfing that wave was definitely a risk, and because it took twelve hours to get there by boat, if a surfer got into trouble there, that surfer was probably dead. But Zeke was experienced with giant waves, and to him the high of riding that wave would be worth the risk.

“I can't go. I promised Iris.”

I looked at him, frowning. It was true that right after his accident he'd said he'd avoid big waves in the future, but I hadn't really believed he'd keep to that and I hadn't tried to make him promise. Ever since I'd met him, Zeke had been frothing to surf the Cortes Bank, and I didn't expect him to walk away from that opportunity just because of me.

I was figuring out how to put all that into words when Chase said, “You said no to Greg? Wow. It must be love.”

“Must be,” Zeke said, looking at me with a suddenly serious expression.

“But don't you feel like you're letting Greg down?” Chase asked.

“Are you kidding? Tons of guys will be lining up to fill my spot.” A look passed between them and I could tell they wanted to talk without me there.

“I'm going to the loo,” I said. I'd had a few glasses of white-wine spritzer and a mojito, and my head felt funny.

The house had so many different rooms that I kept getting lost, but eventually someone directed me to a bathroom suite that was bigger than the whole downstairs of my home. It actually had a dressing table, where three girls in camisoles and French knickers were redoing their make-up.

I went through to the toilet, which weirdly turned out to be two toilets side by side, locked the door and resisted the urge to lie back against the cool cistern.

When I came out, two of the girls were bent over a table snorting up some white powder through a rolled-up banknote. I froze.

They looked up at me, their eyes glazed, not seeming the least bit concerned.

“Line?” one of them asked me. She had long yellow hair in a braid down to her bum and what appeared to be purple contact lenses.

“No, thanks.”

She said, “You don't do drugs? But you're with Zeke, right?”

“She's, like, sixteen years old,” another girl said with a laugh.

It took me a few seconds, but then I recognized her as Amber's friend Inga.

“I'm seventeen in two days,” I said, “And Zeke doesn't do drugs anymore.”

“Maybe not around you,” Inga murmured.

I stared at her hard. “Not around anyone, actually.”

“Well, that boy used to party real hard,” her friend said. “Guys like that don't change.”

“Word,” another girl said. And then, “You know this girl, Inga?”

“Kinda,” she said. “This is Iris Fox. Yeah, you won't have heard of her. She's trying to make it as a pro-surfer, like Zeke.”

“Zeke has changed since you knew him,” I said, still eyeballing Inga.

“Guess he'd have to since he shacked up with Pollyanna. You ever taken an illegal substance in your life, girl?”

I thought about it. Apart from Daniel smoking weed around me and me possibly inhaling some of his smoke second-hand, I was clean as a whistle. It wasn't like there were many opportunities to get hardcore drugs in Newquay. Not unless you knew the right people, and I didn't. Most of my friends were like me: surf junkies, addicted to the stoke of a great wave.

But then, even though it was stupid, I thought,
Maybe I should
. Zeke had all these experiences that were mysteries to me, and if I had some experiences of my own, perhaps I'd understand him better.

“I guess that's a no.”

“I didn't say that,” I said, when the door swung open and I heard a posh grammar-school voice ring out, “Iris Fox, what in the name of holy hell do you think you're doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Don't give me that rubbish,” Saskia said. “You're Zeke's girlfriend; you know how he's struggled with drugs, and you're shoving coke up your nose?”

“I haven't done anything!”

“And even if she did, Zeke would be the last person to judge,” Inga said.

“Oh, I see you've met the super-tramp,” Saskia said, looking at Inga. “I should give yourself a thorough delousing tonight, Iris. Unless you fancy a case of trailer lice.”

“You think I live in a trailer?”

“Apologies. I meant kennel lice.”

“What is your problem? Why are you always such a little bitch?” Inga asked, rolling her eyes.

“Sas, please don't say anything about this to Zeke,” I said, because suddenly I absolutely did not want him to know. “It'll only stress him out.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you started snorting narcotics with Bimbos United.”

Like a snake striking, Inga lashed out and slapped Saskia hard on the side of her face.

Saskia looked completely furious and for a second I thought she was going to hit Inga back, but instead she said, “Which does rather prove my point,” and she sailed out of the bathroom like a queen.

I chased after Saskia, but she said, “I really don't want to speak to you now.”

“Please don't tell Zeke.”

Gabe appeared at our side and said, “This party blows. They don't even have pizza. What is
this
?” he said, holding up a tiny salmon canapé.

“I agree,” Saskia said. “Let's go.”

“You're leaving?” Zeke said, and drowned the dregs of a beer.

“No question,” Gabe said. “Twenty different kinds of cocktails, but no food bigger than a quarter? The insanity must cease.”

“Chase has a driver who'll probably give you a ride,” Zeke said.

“It's fine,” Saskia said in a frosty voice. “We're perfectly capable of making our own way back.”

“Everything OK, Sas?” Zeke asked.

I waited for her to mention the coke incident, but she just straightened the straps of her nightgown and said, “Oh, everything's wonderful.”

Before she left, Saskia kissed me on both cheeks, but did it without a word or a smile, which Zeke missed, as he was looking over his shoulder toward the bar, now ten deep in waiting guests.

He turned back to me, positioned his mouth so it was right over my ear and said, “You wanna come for a walk with me?”

A walk sounded like bliss.

“Do you know where you're going, or are we planning to get lost?”

“Golf course.”

“To do what?” I said, a bit suspicious. On the few occasions we'd slept together outdoors, it had never gone well. On one particular occasion, both of us drunk, we'd been messing about on a beach in South Africa when a young bloke carrying a fishing rod and a bait bucket spotted us from a distance, got out his phone and took a photo.

“Talk.”

“Just that?”

“Yeah.”

“Won't Chase mind if we bail?”

“We're not bailing. We're coming back; we're just taking a walk first.”

And so we walked until we found the green, where we lay back and looked again at the sky, which lasted five minutes at most, before the kissing started, and from there other things. Suddenly Zeke stopped, and we both sat up.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“You said you wanted to talk.”

“I was thinking about Arron.” He closed his eyes.

“Yeah, I've been thinking about him too.”

“Chase said I can have a job here, if I want. In his dad's firm.”

I cocked my head, unsure if he was serious. “In Miami? Doing what?”

“Real estate. He works high-end, makes between fifty and a hundred grand commission on every sale.”

“Are you taking the mick? You want to stop surfing and become an estate agent?”

“I could still surf here, but I know, it's crazy. I was just thinking about it, is all. Obviously I'm not gonna do that.”

“Good! For one thing you'd have to get a haircut and wear a suit every day. Although you could use the haircut.”

“It's more money than I make now. A lot more. And Chase thinks I'd be good at it.”

“You probably would, but you'd hate it, and who in their right mind would give up the best job in the world to make a bit of extra money? Madness.”

“Yeah, you're right. And anyhow, it's likely just Chase being Chase.”

I was sitting cross-legged, and Zeke stretched out and laid his head in my lap.

We stayed like that for twenty minutes, both of us lost in our thoughts, when, finally, a dozen of the other partygoers spilled out on to the greenway.

It was only when I said, “I think we should go now,” that I realized he was asleep.

“Really, Zeke?” I said, not able to hide the frustration in my voice. “Again?”

“Too many whiskies,” he said, sitting bolt upright, like he'd been caught out doing something reprehensible. “But I feel better now.”

“You wanna blow off the party and find a club?” he said, his voice normal again, the mask of
I'm OK
firmly in place.

“Yeah,” I said. I'd had just about enough of the lingerie party.

We walked hand in hand back to the house, and relayed our plan to Chase.

“You can't go clubbing in boxers,” Chase said, “Not even in Miami.”

“Ya think? Can you lend me a shirt and pants?”

“What about me then?” I said. I unbuttoned my shirt to show Chase what I had on underneath, and he appraised the vest/shorts combo.

“That's tame by Miami standards. Lose the shirt and you're all set. Or I guess my mom might have something you could borrow . . .”

I looked at Chase's mum, who was at least two sizes bigger than me, and said, “Um, we're not the same size.”

“How about Amber?” Zeke asked. “She can probably loan you a dress.”

“She's about two sizes smaller than me.”