by Ella Miles
She doesn’t smile as she begins walking into the ocean. Instead, she seems determined. She walks in a ways before she gets on the board and starts paddling out. The waves are pretty tame here, and there isn’t anyone out here that she has to pay attention to. No, this is the perfect spot for her to clear her head and get used to the pain she is feeling.
I just wish I had my own board, so I could join her.
It doesn’t take her long to paddle out until I can barely make out the curves in her body from where I stand.
She takes her time in choosing a wave. And then she is up on her board, surfing with obvious experience. She doesn’t do anything fancy. But the way she moves over the ocean is beautiful. She glides easily, like she has been doing it her whole life. I could watch her for hours.
The wave suddenly changes and causes Sloane to lose her balance and prematurely fall off the board. The wave crashes down on top of her with a lot of force. I know it’s not enough to keep her down for long. I know the wave wasn’t that bad. But, still, I can’t help but throw off my shirt, jump into the water, and swim out to her to ensure that she makes it out of the water. To air. To safety.
I swim as fast and as hard as I can to reach her. I try to calm my beating heart and nerves that are shooting through my body. I don’t understand the feeling. I don’t understand why I care so much if she is alive or dead. In pain or not. She is nothing to me.
Still, I swim hard, not thinking about why my heart is beating hard in my chest. Or why I care if something happens to her. I dive under the water, swimming faster until I see her body right in front of me. I grab hold of her and look up to see the wave has stopped pounding down on top of us. And then I kick hard over and over until we reach the top.
We each take a breath of air at the same time when our heads hit the surface. Sloane flips her head back to get her hair out of her face, and she scowls at me. Her eyes look unforgiving, a deep V has formed between her eyes, and her mouth turns down into more than a frown.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving you. You went down and didn’t come back up for air for quite a while. I wanted to make sure you didn’t die.”
She shakes her head as she wades in the water and rests her arms on her surfboard. “I don’t need saving or rescuing. I have surfed before even if I am a bit rusty.”
“I know.”
“Then, why are you here?”
“Because I can’t help but be near you.”
“I thought you weren’t going to hit on me today.”
“I’m not. I’m just telling you the truth since you are so insistent on asking a million questions, needing to know everything.”
She doesn’t say anything else, but I can tell she is deep in thought again, no longer here with me.
“Swim back out, and go again,” I say.
She turns to do just that. At least, now, she is listening to me instead of questioning. She pauses though after swimming a foot or so and faces me.
“What are you going to do?”
“Join you.”
“How? You don’t have your surfboard.”
I grin. “Sure I do.”
I start swimming out while she paddles on her surfboard. When she stops, I swim up behind her, guiding her toward the front of the surfboard while I climb on behind her. Neither of us says anything, and I have honestly never surfed with someone else on the same board before. But it can’t be that hard. She’s more than capable on a surfboard, and I’ll figure out the rest, no problem.
We wait through the first wave, agreeing it’s not the right one without having to say anything to each other.
When the next wave comes, I say, “Start paddling.”
We both do.
“Stand up,” I say after a few seconds of paddling.
Sloane does, and I do a second later. Then, we are both up on the board at the same time. I take a step forward and place my hands on her hips as I begin maneuvering the board through the wave. She moves with me as I move us as one. It feels different, maneuvering while having to think about someone else on the board. I can’t just do what I want. I have to ensure that she wants to go the same way as me. I have to think about her, too.
I want to show her what a surfboard can really do though, so I grip her hips harder and begin moving us higher onto the wave. She doesn’t question me. She goes with me. We surf until the wave takes us close to shore. We step off at the same time, both speechless.
Our eyes lock after such an intimate moment together. I don’t know what I see in her eyes. I’m used to being able to read people, but I can’t read her. She doesn’t give anything away with her eyes. I just know what I hope I’m seeing there. I hope it’s the same thing that I’m feeling.
I reach my hand up to her cheek. “I want to kiss you,” I say.
I wait for her to slap me. A slap always follows when I say something so bold. I brace for it. But it never comes. Instead, she leans in closer to me, like she is considering it. Like she is desperate for it. I feel her warm breath against my lips. I have to ball my hands into fists to keep from closing in the last few inches and kissing her.
I won’t kiss her though. If she cheats on Wes, it has to be her choice. That’s the only way to steal her heart, to ensure she’s mine, and then I’ll toss her aside when I’m through with her. She has to be the one who does the betrayal.
When she realizes that no temptation is going to get me to be the one to make the first move, she steps back and turns to look out over the ocean at the sun that is just now beginning to set over the ocean.
“We should go sit on the beach and watch the sunset, so we can try to dry off before getting back into my car. We forgot to bring towels,” Sloane says so matter-of-factly. Like the almost kiss didn’t happen. Like I haven’t affected her at all.
My eyes widen as I stare at her walking back toward the shore. I begin to follow her. I walk until I’m standing right next to her on the beach. She’s staring at the sunset while I’m gaping at her.
“What are you doing?” she asks, still staring straight ahead at the sunset, while she wrings out her wet hair.
“Gaping at how you never cease to surprise me.”
“Why is that?”
“You never behave in the way that I think you will.”
She nods. “Would it surprise you to hear that you aren’t the first person to make that observation?”
I laugh. “No, I guess it wouldn’t.”
She looks at me. “I get it from my grandmother. My unpredictability.”
I walk over and find my T-shirt that I threw on the beach before I jumped into the water. I pick it up and carry it over to where Sloane is standing on the beach, trying to dry off. I lay it on the ground.
“Here, sit on the T-shirt, so you don’t get sand all over you.”
She sits on my T-shirt, and I sit on the sand next to her.
Sloane laughs at me.
I rub my neck as I listen to her beautiful laugh that I didn’t think I would get to hear today. “You’re going to have to tell me what is so funny.”
She keeps laughing though until her whole body is rocking back and forth from the force of her laughter. “I’m sorry,” she says in between laughs. “It’s really not funny. I don’t understand why I’m laughing at all. It’s just that you thought I should sit on your T-shirt to avoid getting sand on me, but then you sat down on the sand. And, unless you are walking home, you are going to get sand in my car.”
I stare at her, taking in her laugh again that continues to force itself out of her. But she has a point. So, I get up and rinse myself off in the water. And then I march back to her.
“What are you doing?” she asks, still laughing.
I don’t respond to her basically never-ending question. I guess I should dictate everything that I am doing, as I’m doing it to satisfy her. She really is a control freak.
I plop down behind her so that I can sit on the tiny bit of remaining T-shirt that she is not sittin
g on. She squeals and laughs, like she probably would if Wes had sat down behind her.
“You’re getting me all wet,” she squeals as the water drips off my chest and onto her back.
“Damn it! I promised I wouldn’t hit on you; otherwise, I would have a great line about getting you wet.”
This causes her to laugh hysterically all over again. She throws her head back, hitting me square in the jaw.
“Oh my God! I’m sorry,” she says, still laughing.
I laugh now. “I don’t think you are the least bit sorry. You probably think I deserved it.”
“You’re right. I’m not sorry at all. You deserved that and more.”
Sloane continues to laugh until her laugh turns into hiccups. I rub her back under the guise of trying to calm her down and make the hiccups go away, but I also can’t stand to be this close to her and not touch any part of her body, except for our legs that are barely touching. Her skin is soft and warm.
“The sunset is beautiful,” she says as she leans back a little but not enough so that she is leaning against my chest, like I want.
“You’re beautiful,” I say automatically.
“That sounds like you are hitting on me.”
“Nope. Just stating a fact.”
She takes a deep breath. I can tell from watching her rib cage rising and falling.
“Thank you for this,” she says.
I don’t say anything because the hesitation in her voice tells me she needs to say more.
“I needed this. I don’t know how you knew this was what I’d need, but I did. I wouldn’t have survived being alone tonight.”
I think she’s crying, but I can’t be sure. But, from the sniffling sound in her voice, I can guess.
I don’t comfort her though. She doesn’t need that. She needs to find her way on her own.
“I don’t know why I feel her loss so much. She hasn’t been in my life in the last five years. Not really. She had Alzheimer’s, and she lived in a nursing home. I tried to visit as often as I could, but she didn’t know who I was. She’s been gone for the last five years. I thought I’d come to terms with the fact that the woman who had raised me was gone.”
She turns and faces me, and I see the full tears coming down her face.
“She’s really gone now though. Body and mind. She was the only person who ever really made me feel loved.” Her voice is shaky.
I know that there are no words to make it better for her. I can’t help her through this. She has to deal with this pain, this sadness, this new reality. All I can do is wrap my arms around her and let her know that she isn’t alone.
So, that is exactly what I do.
She resists me at first, pushing my arms away, but I hold on tighter. Not because I’m hitting on her or because I need to feel her close to me. But because I know she needs the connection to another human being right now.
She finally relaxes against my chest, as I continue to hold her in my arms. She continues to cry as we both look out over the ocean as the sun sets. We don’t say anything else. Sloane can’t get any other words out between her tears anyway. And I can’t say anything that will make her stop crying. So, we just sit until the warmth of the sun is long gone, and there is nothing but the noise of the highway behind us and the ocean waves in front of us.
“Do you want me to take you home now?” I whisper in her ear.
She doesn’t answer. I move my head forward, so it is closer to her face that is lying against my chest, and I listen to her calm breathing. She’s asleep.
I’ll have to find a way to get her back to her condo at some point. But, for now, I just want to sit here, in one of my favorite places, holding a beautiful woman who I don’t think, no matter how hard I try, I will fully understand.
I think about the last words she said to me.
“She was the only person who ever really made me feel loved.”
I don’t know if her words were true or if she was just upset and said it because she was missing Wes and not feeling loved. But I have to find out. Because I can’t really steal her from Wes if he’s never really loved her.
I carried Sloane back to her car that night. She didn’t wake up. She didn’t stir. She was too exhausted from dealing with her grief to wake up.
I drove her back to my place after I realized I would never get her back into her place without waking her. I figured, after she slept for an hour or so, she would wake up, and then she could drive herself back home in her car.
She never woke up though.
I placed her in my bed and fell asleep on the couch, waiting for her to wake up.
The next morning, she was gone without a word, which didn’t surprise me. What did was how early in the morning she’d left. I’m always awake before the sun. She woke up and left before I did.
I haven’t spoken to or seen her in almost two months. The wedding was postponed after her grandmother’s death to give her time to mourn, to heal. I’ve been busy with winning a couple of surfing competitions. There haven’t been any wedding-related events that I’ve had to attend. But that’s not why I have stayed away. I’ve stayed away because I’m torn.
Sloane doesn’t make anything clear. I can’t read if she really loves Wes or not. And, since I can’t tell how she feels, I don’t know how I want to pursue her or if I want to pursue her at all. Not because I’ve had a change of heart. I still want to destroy her. I still want to steal her heart. I just need to give her time to realign her loyalty to Wes because, after that night, I know I could have had her in my bed. I laugh because I did have her in my bed. But she would have fucked me that morning if she had stayed. That is why I suspect she left before I woke up.
I also know the longer that I stay away, the more she will think about me. The more she will build up that night in her head as being either one of the most meaningful moments in her life or something that makes her hate me even more. Either way, when I walk into the church and see her again, her emotions will be amplified, which will make them much easier for me to read. The only problem with my plan is that my ability to control myself is dwindling. I want Sloane more than ever, and even if it’s not the right time to steal her heart, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to resist her.
I get out of my pickup truck and walk toward the beautiful stone cathedral where the rehearsal dinner is to be held, and the rehearsal is to take place on the beach just outside the building. It’s a beautiful building, but it is nothing compared to the beach.
If I were getting married, I would do it on the beach with as few people as possible. I laugh. Not that I would ever get married. But, from the number of cars parked in the parking lot just for the rehearsal, I know that this wedding is going to be a big affair.
I enter the church and immediately feel everyone’s eyes turn to me. I look down at how I’m dressed in the same shorts and button-down shirt that I wore the last time I saw Sloane. I thought I was dressed up enough for a rehearsal. I was wrong.
I glance around the room at the suits and formal dresses that everyone else is wearing. But I don’t apologize for wearing something casual. I’m not going to bother spending money on something that I’d wear once and then never wear again.
“You made it,” Wes says to me, holding out his fist that I bump against mine.
“Of course, man. This seems like quite the ordeal here,” I say.
Wes smiles. “Yep. This is heaven to me. Everyone that I care about is here, and tomorrow, I’ll get to marry this amazing woman,” Wes says while wrapping his arm around Sloane’s waist.
She smiles at me while holding on to him. I hate watching her with him. I hate it. But, other than picking her up, carrying her over my shoulder, and literally kidnapping her, I don’t really have a choice at the moment.
“It’s good to see you again, Sloane. Excited to get married tomorrow?” I ask.
She stands in front of Wes, and he possessively puts his arms around her, which seems strange for her to allow when she is such
an independent person.
“Of course she’s excited. Aren’t you, honey?” Wes asks.
Sloane nods, her smile never faltering. She looks like a happy bride on the brink of marital bliss as she stands in the arms of her fiancé in a white lace dress that makes her boobs look amazing and her legs long and lean. But she’s not happy. I know her well enough to know that, no matter how much she loves Wes, she’s not happy with him, and she won’t be happy marrying him.
She’s made my decision for me. I must steal her before she gets married tomorrow. I’ll actually be doing her a service. She’ll have to deal with the pain for a couple of days to avoid a lifetime of unhappiness.
“I’m sure she is,” I say, sticking my hands in my pockets to keep myself from ripping Sloane out of Wes’s arms.
The minister begins waving Sloane and Wes toward the front of the church.
“I guess that’s our cue to go,” Wes says, grabbing hold of Sloane’s hand and leading her to the front of the church where the minister stands.
I follow slowly behind, keeping my hands in my pockets and staying on the outskirts of the crowd that is gathering around the couple.
“I’m Dean, the minister who will be conducting the ceremony tomorrow. Tonight, we are just going to run through the rehearsal, so everyone knows what they will be doing tomorrow. Then, you will be able to enjoy the dinner that the bride and groom are providing you.
“There has been a change of plans due to the weather tomorrow. Due to the extreme heat, we will be having the ceremony as well as the reception inside the church.”
My eyes go to Sloane. She doesn’t give away any hint of sadness. Or at least she doesn’t think she is giving away any hint that she doesn’t want to get married inside this damn church instead of out on the beach. But the people who know her well or take the time to know her at all can tell. I can tell even if there wasn’t the tiniest bit of welling in her eyes. I can tell that this isn’t what she wants.
The minister continues to talk about how the rehearsal is going to happen and what everybody needs to be doing, but I don’t listen. All I can see is Sloane. How she kisses Wes. How she mirrors his movements. How she is anything but independent when he’s around. It’s bizarre—her behavior.