Pleasure Point: The Complete Series

by Evans, Jennifer

  “But you live in Santa Cruz. Waves here are some of the best on the coast.”

  She turned to face me. “Not everything in life is about the waves.”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t say it was.”

  Rosalyn’s voice became high pitched. “You don’t know what it’s like, raising a kid, and …”

  I placed a hand on her arm. “Well, let me find out then.”

  “How? By taking my baby out in that dangerous ocean?”

  “He’s not a baby,” I said. “He’s thirteen.”

  Rosalyn looked out the window. “Maybe this was a mistake.”

  I was getting nowhere. “It’s not a mistake. Why’re you being this way?”

  “I’m not having a good morning, Jax. If you want to know what’s going on, the truth is I don’t sleep much anymore.”

  I cleared my throat and gripped the steering wheel tight. “I’m sorry.”

  Her voice was a whisper. “Jax, Eugene is all I’ve got.”

  So I let it go.

  We fell into a routine over the next few days of me driving everyone to school and shuttling the boys to their band practice. Eugene and Nelson had been playing in a band with two other boys, one who played drums and another who played guitar. They practiced in the garage of one of the kids whose dad had about a million tattoos on his arms and a German Shepherd so full of energy that every time I pet her, she peed all over herself.

  This life, filled with peanut butter and honey sandwiches, family dinners, and carpools, was so different from what my life had been no more than a week prior. Far cry from the Ritz-Carlton, I thought wryly.

  I still couldn’t believe that I had a son. Eugene was a sweet boy on the verge of becoming a teenager. I smiled. He even had peach fuzz on his chin. Every time I looked at him, I tried to find Rosalyn, tried to find myself. I wanted to hug and hold him, wanted to know every single thing about his life. What was he like as a baby? How was it when he took his first steps? What did he feel on his first day of school? What inspired him to become a musician? I thought of Tyler again, who had always felt music and always interpreted life through the songs he wrote. I swallowed, a lump in my throat.

  Rosalyn’s child. My child.

  In those thirteen years we’d been separated, I’d somehow gotten on with life. But all it took was a few minutes in Rosalyn’s presence to make me realize that I’d never gotten over her. I knew my life would be changing radically, and I embraced the thought.

  I was so in love I could barely concentrate.

  The day before, she’d walked out to the front yard where I was screwing my surfboard fin into the fin box of the board. I’d stared at her delicate bare feet caressing the grass, her shapely legs, and then her gorgeous bedroom eyes when my hand slipped, and I cut my other hand. She’d run and gotten me a bandage but all I wanted was for her to kiss it and make it better. As she tenderly applied the dressing to my hand, I gazed at her luscious lips that I’d kissed so many times, and all I wanted was to kiss her and make everything better.

  Rosalyn put up a good front, making dinner, helping Eugene with his homework, even putting in a few hours at work every day, but I saw how much of that poppy seed tea she drank at night, and she’d been hitting the bong pretty hard. Heck, she’d always hit the bong hard, so nothing new there, I thought with a grin.

  Every time I thought about Rosalyn’s predicament, my chest became tight with panic, so I tried not to think about it. Instead, I surfed.

  During the day I’d paddle out to the lineup at The Hook, Steamer Lane, and Pleasure Point, enjoying the brisk Santa Cruz ocean, the abundance of sea life, and baby sea otters popping up next to my board, their whiskers twitching, their eyes inquisitive. I surfed for so many hours that I thought my arms were going to fall off from paddling.

  I’d been there almost a week. One day, I picked Eugene and Nelson up from school.

  “You guys want to go to the pier?” I asked.

  “Does a chicken have a pecker?” Nelson said. “Heck yeah, we want to go.” I shook my head. I remembered what I had been like at Nelson’s age. I had wanted to work swear words and off-color jokes into conversations with friends. He must have felt comfortable enough with me.

  We drove to the Santa Cruz wharf, a place of arcades, novelty shops, and touristy restaurants, some of which overlooked Cowell’s and Steamer Lane surf spots. We strolled along the boardwalk that day, the warm sun shining down on us, a few sun-weathered fisherman intent on catching their dinner.

  “Can we go in here?” Nelson said when we came to a place called Marini’s.

  “Sure,” I said, and both boys ran ahead of me.

  Marini’s was an old-fashioned candy shop with glass display cases that held a wide assortment of handmade chocolates and other sugary treats.

  “Yuck,” Eugene said, pointing to a rack that held freshly made chocolates. “Chocolate covered bacon.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Nelson said. “Bacon’s cool on its own, but with chocolate?” He made a face and stuck his finger in his mouth like he was going to throw up.

  “Can we get some cotton candy?” Eugene asked.

  A teenage boy stood behind the counter smiling broadly, displaying a mouth full of braces. “Make it while you watch.”

  Both boys got blue cotton candy because, they informed me, pink was for girls, and we sauntered down the dock. When we made it to the end, we heard the distinctive barking of sea lions. There, on the pilings that support the landing, lived several families of sea lions and walruses. They slept in a big tangle of dark, blubbery skin, whiskers and teeth. We stood looking over the side of the jetty as the animals slowly flapped their fins and rolled over. Two even got into some kind of heated argument that included baring their teeth.

  “Did you see that?” Nelson said, jumping up and down. “That big one almost took a hunk out of the other one. Sick.”

  Eugene gazed at me, his green eyes peeking out from behind his dark hair, plucked a mouthful of cotton candy off the stick, and said, “My mom never lets me have this kind of stuff.”

  And then Nelson said, “Your mom’s cool, but she’s kind of a buzzkill sometimes. Jax, when you gonna talk her into letting us surf?”

  “Wish it were my call, but she seems pretty protective.”

  “Can’t you at least talk to her?” Eugene said.

  “I can try, but I’m not making any promises.” When I was Eugene’s age, I was already dropping into double overhead waves on the biggest days at Sunset Cliffs during winter swells.

  “You really drop in on fifty foot waves?” Nelson said.

  I smiled. “Yep. It’s a rush, that’s for sure.”

  “Freakin’ awesome is what it is.”

  I told them about all the places I’d surfed, and some other places that I advised I’d have to kill them if they discovered because the locations were top secret.

  “Shoot,” Eugene said, picking another piece of cotton candy off of the stick and stuffing it in his mouth, “I’ve never even been to Mavs, and it’s so close. You’re lucky. What’s it like?”

  “Not for beginners.”

  “One of these days I’m going. I don’t even care what my mom says. There’s buses that go there, you know. She can’t tell me no.” He stared at the ocean. “She can’t stop me.”

  “And what’re you gonna do there, bonehead?” Nelson shoved his friend.

  “Just … nothing. I don’t know. I just want to see it.”

  We drove home. I couldn’t tell if Eugene was warming up to me or not because he was pretty shy.

  When was Rosalyn planning on telling Eugene about Tyler, about her diagnosis, about me?

  When we got home, I asked, “Hey, you guys want to help me wax up my boards?” If Rosalyn wouldn’t let Eugene surf, the least I could do was show him my surfboards and educate him.

  Nelson’s face lit up. “Heck yeah we do.”

  The boys crowded around, and I grabbed the boards I’d brought out of the back of my truck,
laying them out one by one on the grassy area in front of Rosalyn’s house.

  I unzipped the protective cover off the first board. “This is my Pearson Arrow, Jay Moriarty Gun for charging big waves.”

  “You tow-in on that?” Nelson asked.

  “Nope. Tow-in boards have straps for your feet. This is for paddling into a wave.”

  Eugene’s eyes grew wide. “You mean you paddle with your arms into those big waves?”

  I smiled at him and said, “Yep. Tow-in’s cool, but whatever it takes to drop into a big wave is all I care about.”

  I removed the next board from its cover. “This is my Jeff Clark, Formula Four, Four Fin Gun.”

  “Dude! You mean Jeff Clark shaped that board?” Nelson said.

  Jeff Clark was a Mavericks pioneer. Nelson had been doing his homework.

  “Yep. And he would know how to shape a big wave gun. Surfed Mavs before anyone else. For fifteen years. By himself.”

  The boys were practically salivating over the boards. “Let’s see the next one!”

  “And this,” I said, carefully removing the next board from its cover, “is my Harbour Nose Rider. You guys know who Rick Harbour is?” They both shook their heads. “Well, he’s been shaping since 1958 in Seal Beach, and this one is meant for walking the board, hanging ten, and nose riding. Do you know what that is?”

  “I think so,” Eugene said.

  “It’s where you walk up to the front of your board and, just like it sounds, ride the nose, or front of your board, usually with one foot forward.”

  “You know how to do that?” Eugene said, gazing at me with wide eyes. Those eyes. I thought of my brother, and my throat constricted. I swallowed hard.

  “I’ve been in the water for as long as I can remember,” I said. “And this is my Joel Aron Tip Master longboard.” I’d saved my favorite, because it was so artistic, for last. Joel was a young kid from Capistrano Beach, and when I say young, I mean in his early twenties. He was one of the most creative surfers I’d ever met, not to mention a highly talented artist. His one-of-a-kind paintings sold for a nice chunk of change and were worth every penny. “My buddy Joel knows how to do fin-first takeoffs, headstands, helicopters, and he shapes one heck of a board.” I showed them the geometric design in bright yellow, red, blue, and purple gracing the nose of the board. “Joel says, life’s too short to go through it without color.”

  I handed out bars of Sticky Bumps cold water surf wax and showed the boys how to properly wax a surfboard.

  “I can’t wait to do this for reals when a big swell hits and I’m ready to paddle into a forty foot wave,” Nelson said.

  It would be a while before Nelson was ready for that.

  * * *

  After dinner that night, Rosalyn and I sat on the front porch, our feet gently swaying with the swing.

  “Light this for me, will you?” she said, holding her bong up to her mouth. I lit the bowl. She took a toke, held it, and blew it out. “You never told me what you were doing in Half Moon Bay.”

  “Surfing.”

  She laughed. “Why am I not surprised? Was it fun?”

  “Well, yes it was. Until—”

  “Until what?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “You remember that kid with a peg leg who used to surf Sunset Cliffs?”

  She screwed her face up. “I think so.”

  I swallowed hard. “He almost drowned that day you called. That’s part of why I was so short with you when you called. It had just happened and I was trying to get to the hospital.” A hand flew to her chest. Rosalyn listened patiently while I told her the whole story.

  Her eyes grew wide in horror, and she gripped my arm. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “Yes, he’ll be okay. He trains hard for days like that.”

  “But Jax, that’s scary! He could’ve died that day. You guys have to be careful.”

  “We are.”

  “You can’t just go out there and …” She set her bong aside, put her hands on her face, and then peeked up at me and said, “And then you got the call from me. You’ve had one hell of a week.”

  “Nothing I can’t deal with.” I looked straight ahead, avoiding her gaze. I didn’t want to talk about Butch or the dangers of big wave surfing. “What’s going on with the loan you were getting from your boss?” I said. “Any luck there?”

  “Well,” She smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle out of her skirt. “It doesn’t look like he’s going to come through.”

  “How much of the cash do you have?”

  “Not much.”

  “How much is not much?”

  “I’m about eighteen thousand short.” She looked at me with those big brown eyes.

  “Oh, Roz. Will you let me help you?”

  “Only if you want to. But Jax, it’s a lot of money. Maybe not my business to ask, but how are you doing financially?”

  Most of the money I’d made from the escort service had gone to the travel I’d done to train on big waves, for rent, and my general expenses. I had a savings account, but the answer was, not great.

  I fiddled with the top button of my flannel shirt. “I do okay.”

  “I mean, how much money do pro-surfers make?”

  “We can do okay if we’re on top.” Which I wasn’t.

  “And those who are not on top?”

  “I do okay.”

  “I don’t mean to pry, but Jax, you may have to raise Eugene.”

  “Don’t say that. Rosalyn, you can’t give up.”

  “But you might. And I need to know—”

  I turned to face her so quickly that I almost knocked her bong into her face. “It’s going to be fine. I have sponsorships, and I’ve got surf lessons, and I’ve got …” What did I really have? Not much. There was the $50,000 prize for the surfer who rode the biggest and best wave of the year, and I thought I had a pretty decent shot at that because I was in the best shape I’d ever been in. After Mystic Seaweed dropped me, I’d made it my business to train like a badass, and I felt confident. But that was a gamble. “I’ve got some great ideas about how I can start my own business taking surfers out on adventure surf trips.” It was something I’d been pondering for years, but hadn’t followed through on.

  She nodded slowly. “Well, that sounds cool. Think people would be interested?”

  I chuckled. “Yes, I do. I may not seem like a celebrity, but you’d be surprised how many surfers want to bro-down with a big wave surfer. I know all the spots to take them. But let’s take things one day at a time.”

  She looked at me, her eyes overly bright and feverish. “It’s all going to be okay, isn’t it?”

  I patted her knee gently. “Of course it is. I should be able to get the money together.” But it wasn’t just the money I was worried about. Rosalyn had to live. When I thought of the alternative, my throat became dry, and my stomach clenched. I would’ve done anything to turn back the clock, to have had a life where I made sure Rosalyn and Eugene were safe, to somehow protect Rosalyn from cancer. But how could I do that? I forced a smile, and when I spoke, the words barely came out. “We’ll get through this.”

  That night after everyone was asleep, I sat on my makeshift bed and made a call to Sandy Farnsworth.

  “To what do I owe this extreme pleasure?” Sandy said in her sultry voice. “And when are you coming back?”

  I smiled. “Sandy … I have a favor to ask.”

  “Shoot.”

  I sat up and combed a hand through my hair. “This is kind of important.” My eyes darted around the room. “What I’m doing in Santa Cruz is staying with an old girlfriend.”

  “But you’ve got new girlfriends. Who’s this person, and what’s the favor?”

  “Before I met you,” I said. “Actually, a lot of years before I met you, I had an affair with her. We lost contact and …” I did not want to tell Sandy all the details. It was none of her business. I put my head in my hands. “Sandy, she’s sick.”

  “What’s wrong?”
>
  I should’ve broken off my employment with Sandy right then and there, but I didn’t. I’d handle one thing at a time, and right then, I needed the money. I told her about the situation with Rosalyn’s health and about the Trinity program. She listened patiently and then said, “Oh, Jax. I’m sorry. So, what do you need?”

  “Twenty thousand bucks. That I can pay you back with interest.” Sandy was silent. “You still there?” I said.

  She let out a low chuckle. “I don’t know if this is a good idea, but if you weren’t so goddamned hot, not to mention sweet, I would say no. You know how many sessions this is going to put you in debt?”

  “Around twenty?”

  “This is against my better judgment, but you caught me in a good mood. What else have I got to do with my money besides give it to you? Just tell me where to transfer the money, babe.”

  I fell back against the pillow, my hand covering my eyes. “Thanks, Sandy. I really owe you one.”

  “I like you, Jax, and I’ll help, but you need to pay me back.”

  “Of course I will. With interest.”

  “Interest can come in lots of forms if you know what I mean.” She was silent for a moment. “If you want to know the truth, babe, money’s made my life pretty easy. But there are some things money can’t buy.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the kind of time you and I have together.” She laughed a low laugh. “I guess money has bought me that, hasn’t it? What am I trying to say? Me and the girls, we’ve gotten pretty used to having you around.”

  “It’s great for me too, but at least for now, I’ve got to take care of my old girlfriend.”

  Sandy let out a sigh. “I’ll help you, but I want that money back.”

  “Of course. I really owe you one.”

  “And I plan on collecting, surfer boy. I always get what I want. And don’t you forget it.”

  I had no idea how Sandy covered her tracks financially and in her personal life when it came to her time at the Ritz-Carlton, but it wasn’t my business.

  I gushed a few more thank-yous to Sandy and ended the call.

  I opened my Facebook app. I scrolled through and smiled when I saw that Butch had changed his profile picture. It was the photo of him and Dr. Bryant that I’d taken in front of the hospital. I texted him.