James sighs into Sydney’s mouth, and caresses his soft lips with his own, tasting Sydney’s lost words on the tip of his tongue. The way Sydney’s kissing him, the urgency in his mouth, it’s almost like he thinks this is the last chance he’ll get. It stings James somewhere deep in the pit of his gut. He wants to tell Sydney it’ll all be okay. But the plane . . .
James places one last gentle kiss on Sydney’s wet lips before pulling back and resting their noses together, drawing in the warm scent of his skin—the salt of the ocean embedded in the freckles on his cheeks.
He takes a final deep breath before pulling away, slapping his hands once on his knees and shaking out his shoulders.
“Alright,” he says in a too loud voice. “Fuck. Let’s go.”
Sydney blinks for a second, frozen like he forgot how to speak, then cracks his neck as he shifts up in his seat. He smirks as he revs the engine and pulls back out onto the dirt highway. “Not gonna cry again on me, old man?”
James huffs, boldness burning through him. “Did I seem like an old man to you when my dick was down your throat?”
Sydney doesn’t answer, but James looks over just in time to see the goosebumps rising on his skin.
They park in the same place as yesterday, and James has to remind himself as they step down out of the Jeep that it really was only just goddamn yesterday. They move as a synchronized team, unloading Sydney’s extra board and their bags in quick, easy silence, nodding stiffly at anyone who passes on their way down to the shore.
James hikes up the board under one arm and slings the knapsack over his shoulder, then turns to face Sydney, thinking of what to possibly say. He grimaces as his eyes scan the brimming town and shore. There’s far too many people here today for the Finals; kissing Sydney would be like a death sentence screamed across the beach.
Immediately James wants to hop back in the Jeep and drive somewhere private where he can kiss the living daylights out of this man. This man who’s already got his sunglasses in his hand like a shield, and whose very skin seems to prickle under the weight of the sets of eyes already staring at him from afar. James steps closer so their bodies are just barely obscured by the back of the Jeep, then reaches out to take Sydney’s hand. He already looks so much stiffer, completely alone.
And it’s the Billabong Finals.
“Don’t fucking leave my sight,” James says under his breath. His heart hammers so hard he fears it’ll burst through his thin ribs.
Sydney gently threads the tips of their fingers together. James watches him also scan the crowds, and he thinks he sees disappointment sag his lips.
Sydney grimaces. “Pretty sure I’ll have to take a piss at some point today. While I’m at it, might find a nice man to make out with, so it could be a while . . .”
James rolls his eyes and gives Sydney’s fingers a final squeeze before walking away, emblazing the image of Sydney’s soft, warm smirk into his memory.
“You’re a fucking looney,” he calls back over his shoulder.
He almost doesn’t hear Sydney’s response over the noise of the crowd—old friends greeting each other, car horns honking to try and find parking, the rushing crash of the waves, an old Eagles song blaring somewhere from a cheap, crackling stereo.
But James does hear it. And he feels the ghostly press of Sydney’s lips against his forehead as a shiver sends its way down his spine, tattooing the words onto the veins beneath his skin.
“Surf like hell, James Campbell,” Sydney calls.
~
James finds a small patch of free sand within the crowd and kneels to fish out the wax from his bag. The other surfers are more tense today—less talkative as they each sit and stand in their own private bubbles, gazing out at the waves and memorizing their every curve and swell until the clock ticks down enough for their own turn to soar across the water.
James prefers it this way—anything to escape the half-hearted attempts at small talk he’d had to make all of yesterday while casting secret glances at Sydney from across the beach, standing tall and apart and godlike on the sand, attracting the gaze of everyone within fifty feet and not even twitching in acknowledgement.
He shifts to bury his knees deeper in the already-hot sand and blocks out the sound of everything but the rough swish of wax over the surface of his board and the crush of the waves onto the shore. The barrels are huge today—Sydney’s prediction was right. The familiar spark of fear James always gets when faced with monster waves flicks to life in the back of his mind, clearing his head of the chaos around him and focusing his mind on one thing only: surf. And survive.
He waxes his board in slow, steady circles and goes back over everything Sydney’s told him about his competitors in his first round, about the swells and the strategy, weaknesses and strengths. For ten minutes, he successfully remembers Sydney’s words and advice. “Let Florence chicken out on his own, watching you take on one of the first bomb swells. The barrels today will be tighter—don’t spend as long in the pipe. Take your hand off the face and let the water propel you out before it closes in on you. Let Trent have smaller, frothy waves so he’ll try to pull off a trick. He’s not used to the velocity of the Banzai and he’ll wipe out.”
Then, out of nowhere, ghosts of Sydney’s hands are on his wet, naked shoulders, rubbing soap into his skin as a voice rumbles deep in his ear. The whispering steam of the tiny shower cocooning their heat. The hair between Sydney’s thighs, around his full cock, growing thick and heavy with streaming water . . .
James grits his teeth and blushes down to his chest as his skin replays the physical memory of Sydney’s wet, open kisses down the center of his stomach, and the soft sheets against his back, Sydney’s shoulders spreading open his thighs, his wet lips sucking down his—
Tension in the air, tightening like a drum. James he looks up just in time, tongue numb and sweat on his brow, to see every other surfer’s gaze zoom to James’ right. James follows their stares, nearly moaning out loud in relief that they weren’t looking at him, then he gasps through his nose.
Danny Moore is jogging through the thick crowd towards the shoreline, holding a board up over his head that James knows immediately has been stolen (“borrowed” Sydney’s voice supplies in his mind).
But Sydney Moore is gone—completely subsumed by Danny’s puffed chest and high chin and slicked back curls. James stands there in shock; he tries and utterly fails to picture this man’s hands on his own skin, falling asleep with his nose tucked into the crook of James’ neck, holding him by the shore as he wept, cupping his palm to James’ cheek just an hour ago in a Jeep pulled over to the side of the road.
He can’t. It’s equal parts fascinating and sad. James stares at the dichotomy as the rest of the beach swarms to murmuring life, feeling sick to his stomach watching everyone look at the charade he too had once gazed upon with intimidated, shivering awe. The spectators part before Danny as he effortlessly glides across the sand with leaping strides, aviator-covered eyes staring straight ahead at the booming waves.
“Well fuck me, Danny Moore is surfing in this now?”
The other surfers around James are starting to whisper and fidget, gathering into a standing clump to watch as Danny plunks the tail of his board into the sand, rips off his shirt, and then throws the board under his arm once more as he runs out into the waves.
The murmur of whispers around James grows into a chorus, crushing him with the weight of their sound.
“Did he add more to that tattoo? Looks even fucking bigger than last—”
“Couldn’t let somebody else have a chance for a year? Feel like I just time-traveled to three years ago . . .”
“You know what that fairy said to me last year? Told me I was gonna lose before we even got in the fucking water, some shit about my left ankle—”
“You heard what he did in the bathroom in Laguna, yeah? Fucking si—“
“Think he really has the guts to go after the Big Wave record next week?”
“He’s just having fun,” James says over the chorus of the crowd. He sets his feet apart in the sand and holds his ground as the surfers around him turn to stare. Sweat prickles under his arms, and he scratches at the beard of two-day stubble over his jaw.
A man James recognizes from a competition last year in San Diego speaks up next to him. “What’s that, Campbell?”
James clears his throat. “He isn’t surfing in the competition. He’s just having fun before it starts. Look.”
James gestures with his head out towards the waves, and the guys around him follow his line of sight. Danny’s paddling out in front of a powerful rushing wave, oblivious to the crowd holding their breath on the shore as he lets the rising swell raise him up towards the sky. In one swift movement he pops up and soars down the face of the open barrel, cutting a massive wall of spray. The crest of the wave curls around him and crashes into a smooth, glittering pipeline, and the crowd of spectators release an open gasp across the sand as more spray shoots out from the opening of the barrel like a rocket.
“Shit, man, that’s the biggest fucking bomb we’ve seen all morning,” one of the other surfers says under his breath.
They all nod. The wave is easily twenty feet tall, towering above the rest of the horizon line and blocking out enough of the sun to cast a shadow along the shore. James’ ears pick up the sound of the announcers cutting through the thick, tense silence on the beach.
“—not surfing this year, but our own reigning champion Danny Moore is deep in this barrel, folks, and boy is it a beauty.”
“I’m getting a little worried we haven’t seen him pop out, yet . . .”
“It’s always tense to wait, any second now—and Danny Moore emerges from the barrel! And look at him fly! Cuts back along the crest for some massive spray and grabs the nose of his board for a tap across the lip.”
“This ride is to the max! Fits in a third cutback . . . oh, and Moore isn’t done yet! Look at him squeeze every second he can out of this monster wave!”
“And a soaring, one-eighty turn to end his ride right at the end of the shoulder.”
“Folks, you’re all giving this ride standing applause and we have to agree—Danny Moore may not be surfing in this Billabong, but I think he’s just reminded us all that he is still the champion of these Oahu shores. What a treat, my ladies and gents. What a thrill!”
James’ heart is in his throat, sweat on his palms, when he realizes the surfers around him are cheering.
Cheering.
“Fucking hell, Moore, that was a beauty!”
“Son of a bitch can ride, can’t he?”
“Powerful, man. That was insane.”
James can’t believe it. This group of surfers around him who were practically lining up to give Danny Moore shit are now standing here respectfully clapping one of the biggest waves of the year, not an “asshole” or “fairy” or “fag” to be heard.
James can’t even bring himself to join in the applause. He watches breathlessly as Danny emerges from the waves, saltwater dripping in sheathes down his bare, muscled chest, his soaked board shorts clinging to every contour of his thighs. Danny straightens the aviators still magically over his eyes and runs his hands back through his dripping curls, then jumps, and raises a hand once to the crowd in acknowledgement as if he just noticed other people were there. He calmly glides back through the chaos, hands the board back to a bewildered local spectator, and disappears off into the trees lining the beach without uttering a word.
It takes every ounce of James’ self-control not to drop his things in the sand and chase after him. A rushing mix of adrenaline and shame flood his system—adrenaline that he himself kissed that powerful surfer only that morning, and shame that James’ kiss has made half the terrible rumors about Danny Moore true.
And God, Sydney looked like he didn’t even break a sweat, wasn’t even panting when he came back to shore. James wants to taste the fresh saltwater on his lips, and shove him against a wall, and fucking own the Billabong Pipeline Masters champion. Hold down the incredible power in his limbs and press into him, press into his heat—
Ah, back to the nausea. James forcefully swallows down his train of thought just as Sydney’s words from that morning float to him on the warm, floral breeze:
“Tonight I’m gonna have sex with a Billabong Pipeline Masters Champion.”
James’ stomach thuds, tied in knots. Nervous sweat prickles over the back of his neck as the heat times start to be announced across the buzzing beach. He’s up in thirty minutes.
He wants to panic. Wants to swim out into the sea and dive beneath the waves until he finds the bullet casing. Wants to clutch it in his palms and think of how easy it all was just two weeks ago when he was sitting in the sand with Rob and looking out over the familiar Hermosa swells, his only care in the world wondering if anyone down below on that beach knew about the scar on his chest. If he would win enough money and points to surf in only the next competition.
Now he has a professional status to prove, and a fucking semifinals heat to not embarrass himself in, and a man—a gorgeous, soft, warm man—to somehow convince to still be around him after he inevitably loses. He has a plane ticket sitting in a long-abandoned hotel room back by the Honolulu airport that he needs to force himself to forget all about for the next twenty-four hours.
Sydney’s absence from the beach tugs fiercely at the back of his mind. It nags him incessantly as he finishes waxing his board and starts stretching off to the side to prepare for his heat. There’s a pull at the center of his chest—a knot around the warmth inside his skin that’s connected to a long string which Sydney Moore wears effortlessly on the tips of his fingers, pulling him helplessly along in his wake.
There’s a low boil of anger churning in the pit of his stomach. Anger that he apparently can’t even focus for five fucking minutes without Sydney nearby, the previous three decades of his life be damned, and even more anger that not two hours ago Sydney had held his hand and looked him in the eyes and promised not to leave James’ sight.
And now he’s gone and disappeared entirely from the hot sand after hurling himself into the waves and stunning the crowd like James didn’t even exist. And now he’s alone.
And it’s his first pro semifinals.
Panic prickles at the back of his throat. He can’t do this. He absolutely cannot fucking get on a board and paddle out into the Banzai in front of hundreds of people and somehow surf well enough to win, or well enough to even get a sponsor. He should just quietly leave Sydney’s borrowed board leaning against a tree for him to find, pocket his wax, and leave. Nobody would even notice he was gone. Jimmy Campbell? Who the hell is he? That guy from LA that Danny Moore lost to on purpose? Out of pity?
He misses Rob, those quiet, early mornings, and his carefree laugh . . .
A harsh whistle startles James from his black thoughts, and he whips around to find its source. Sydney flicks his hand out from where he stands concealed in the shade of the nearby trees, already back in a dry t-shirt, bag slung over his shoulder.
Embarrassing relief floods through James’ system so quickly he thinks he might pass out. With a quick glance back at the crowd of surfers to make sure nobody’s watching, James jogs across the sand to where Sydney waits in the shadows, hidden in the cool, thick air of a plumeria tree ripe with blooms.
“Thought you’d gone,” James pants out as he joins him.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and hunches beneath the branches, and the rest of the beach disappears the moment he’s chest to chest with Sydney Moore. Gone are the sounds of the crowd, the buzz of the announcers, the swish of the umbrellas and palm fronds and the chorus of laughter and music. All James can hear is the sound of Sydney’s breathing.
Sydney frowns as he takes off his aviators, folding them over the neckline of his t-shirt with practised ease. “I literally just told you I’d be here. Why would I leave you?”
James is instantly ashamed for his earlier, c
hildish anger. It must show on his face, because Sydney sucks in a breath, eyes wide with realization.
“Oh, you thought I just did that to show off and then booked it out of here to escape everyone,” he says. He tilts his head. “Makes sense. You were standing right in the middle of a huddle of my particularly greatest fans.”
James can’t believe this is the same man who just utterly annihilated that wave, all dripping muscle and terrifying focus ripping across the surface of the ocean, stealing the breath of everyone on the shore in a mighty rip.
“How can you stand it?” James blurts. “Knowing what they say about you?”
“James, you’ve met me. Don’t make me into an angel.”
“Yeah alright, but—”
“Listen, that’s irrelevant,” Sydney cuts him off. He places his hands on James’ shoulders, then quickly glances back at the beach to ensure no one has noticed them. His voice when he speaks is smooth and alive, rushing over James’ entire body like a steady, soothing breeze.
“I just went out there to test the current,” Sydney says. “Rumor going around of a riptide flowing southeast right after the breaking point, but that’s total bullshit. Florence and Trent have heard about it, though, and they’ll stay clear to avoid it. Use this. Hang back farther out than you normally would and wait for the largest swells that break first. You’ll be able to catch them while they’ll just have to dolphin dive under. You’ll have to surf your ass off on them, and don’t wipeout on one of those unless you want the lifeguards pulling you out, but if you can hold it down you’ve got this round in the bag. Move on to the finals.”
A tight emotion stretches from the soles of James’ feet to his scalp. He fights back a smile as he looks up into Sydney’s eyes, blazing and alight with excitement.
“Who the hell are you?” James whispers.
There’s a sudden laugh trying to break free from his chest. It is so unbelievably ridiculous that he was so afraid two minutes ago back on the shore. He’s alive, and he’s in Hawaii, and Sydney sucked him off that morning.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 28
