It’s also the part of him that he had willingly hurled out into the sea, knowing that Sydney Moore’s arm would be there to steady him if he fell.
James listens to the voice telling him to run out there into the waves like a man listening idly to the radio, feeling the ghostly muscle memory of the tide yanking on his bones. And then he shuts off the station, and thinks of the look on Sydney’s face when they’d placed the lei of flowers around his own neck, and suddenly the need to go out there and prove himself, to feel the rush of danger burn fire through his veins, fades away to a soft, clear mist.
He takes in a deep breath of biting wind and buries his toes deeper into the sand. His lack of sleep the night before is pulling at his eyelids, making them swollen and heavy. He looks back over towards the surfers one last time and immediately locks eyes with Sydney through the swarming crowd.
James nods, gesturing out towards the sea with a look he hopes means, “Go ahead, I’ll be here.” And the smile Sydney Moore reveals for only him makes James feel like he’s just won the Billabong Pipeline Masters all over again.
~
James is roused from his doze by a cheer rippling across the warm beach. He flings open his eyes and desperately, before his brain can even realize why, searches out Sydney in the crowd. His heart hammers in his chest, pumping hot sludge through his limbs. He frantically scans the beach, the shoreline, the water and sand. Checks the two little specks of surfers already paddling out into the menacing waves to see whether either of them has a head of dark curls.
He thinks one of them might.
With his heart in his throat, James starts to stand, thighs shaking and palms gripping handfuls of sand as he struggles to his feet, still blinking off sleep to realize that Sydney Moore just fucking surfed out into the Waimea waves without even saying goodbye, that absolute motherfucker, and James never even told him, never got the chance to hold him and say—
“James! James, I’m right here. I’m not out there.”
Sydney jogs towards him across the sand, brow scrunched with worry. James flops back down into the sand and releases a shaky sigh, running his hands over his face and trying to hide his embarrassment that something as simple as Sydney being in the water just made him lose control of himself more than he’s ever experienced in his life. More than the moment Auntie Cath told him to pack up all his things, that the trailer wouldn’t be home anymore. More than the first bomb in the mud.
Sydney reaches his side and leans down, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry—didn’t mean to scare you. I was just running over here to see if you wanted to watch with me. We picked straws and I’m up last with Hank.”
James still can’t talk. His mouth is dry and his limbs sag frozen into the sand, heavy and limp. He hadn’t realized just how scared shitless he was of watching Sydney paddle out into those waves until he’d thought it had been happening right before his very eyes, and now the realization that he’ll actually have to watch that in a matter of hours barrels down on him like black mud, choking him off from the gorgeous beach air, the breeze and spray coming off the water, the swish of palm fronds at his back covering the green mountain.
Sydney’s hand is still on his shoulder, waiting. Finally, James clears his throat and opens his eyes, forcing himself to look up at Sydney and hoping his terror isn’t showing on his face.
Apparently it is. Sydney frowns and drops into a crouch. “James,” he whispers. He pushes his sunglasses back up into his hair. “James, I would never go out there without knowing you were here watching my back, you know that? I . . . I couldn’t do it without.”
James swallows hard and nods, still loathing that he was so affected by a mere two fucking seconds of not knowing where Sydney was. He feels young and helpless, as if Hank and all the other surfers should be babysitting him in the sand.
“I know that,” he says, wishing he believed it. “I know. Sorry, I just thought—”
He can’t even finish the words, and Sydney twists his mouth, moving his hand up briefly to cup James’ cheek in the shade of the fronds. “I know,” he says low, with eyes that suddenly look twenty years older. “And I’m telling you that would never happen. Never.”
Sydney squeezes his jaw before trailing his hand away, and some of the youth starts to burn back in his face. He smirks. “You’re stuck watching my sorry white ass now whether you like it or not.”
James forces a smile and looks back down the beach. “So how do you know Hank?”
Sydney wraps his hands around his knees. “School, surprisingly.”
“That long?”
Sydney shakes his head. “His dad was military, stationed at the Harbor like mine. I don’t think we ever actually spoke in school, not until we recognized each other later on the circuit—comp in NorCal, actually. His family had moved back to New York. Same year I . . . stopped going. To school, I mean.”
James flashes him a stunned look before he can stop himself, and Sydney gives a thin smile, then briefly lifts his hands. “Never really graduated. Must’ve slipped my mind.”
James schools his features and places that startling fact in the back of his mind to look at later, when Sydney isn’t about to hurl himself down a deadly wave. Then he waits, sensing that more is coming, disbelieving that simply attending the same high school a few years apart would have caused Sydney to go out of his way to make a friend. Sydney looks at him and grins as if he can read James’ thoughts.
“He started it,” he says. “Our school was swarming with Army brats, but . . . he stuck out, for obvious reasons, and I . . .” Sydney grins, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well, you’ve seen how I get along with people. Guess we were the two outsiders. I didn’t even know at the time he surfed, but he’d read about me.”
“Your fame does precede you,” James says, mock seriously.
Sydney shoves him with his knee. Off in the distance, the two specks of surfers have now made their way to the breaking point after agonizing minutes spent swimming over and duck diving under the roaring waves.
“We’re not really friends, I guess,” Sydney finally whispers, almost to himself.
It sounds like he’s apologizing for actually having a connection with another human being, and James is about to say just that when Sydney shakes his shoulders and sighs, like a period to the conversation. “Well, but you know . . .” he says with his typical shrug.
James swallows down his million questions and hums, then takes Sydney’s offered hand to rise to his still-shaking legs.
“Come on,” Sydney says, turning back towards the punishing waves. “Watch with me. And then you can pretend to be in charge and force me to eat or stretch or some shit. Feel useful.”
James rolls his eyes at the same time a wave of gratefulness washes over inside him. Gratefulness that Sydney somehow knows him well enough to know that he just heard screams and bullets as he sat panicking in the sand, and that he desperately needs to pretend that what just happened hadn’t happened at all.
“Oh gee, thanks for giving me purpose in life,” he smirks.
Sydney casually sticks his hands in his boardshort pockets as they walk back towards the crowd gathered along the beach. The floral breeze of the rising mountains gently pushes at their backs, mixing with the salty spray of the waves beyond.
“Well, jobs for vets are shit these days,” Sydney says. “So I’m just doing my part. You could be my manager. Like those guys that holds the clubs for the golfers, fetch them their towels and water and keep track of their shit.”
James slaps his arm and tries not to laugh. “You don’t ever fucking stop, do you? You’d think by now, after . . . everything, you’d stop being an asshole with me at least.”
“Oh no, James, now I have to be the biggest asshole to you. Can’t have you thinking too highly of yourself that you snagged Danny Moore.”
James sucks in a breath and glances around them quickly, hoping nobody heard. He sees Sydney blink once, like he was surprised by the words
out of his own mouth. They look at each other, heat crackling in the air for an eternal beat, when James realizes that nobody could give a shit about what Sydney’s muttering to him under his breath. Not when two surfers are paddling their way out towards the tallest waves Waimea Bay’s seen in years.
He relaxes his shoulders, wanting desperately to reach out and wrap his arms around Sydney’s warm, firm waist. “You’re something else,” he whispers, and Sydney looks over his shoulder to shoot him a wink before pulling his sunglasses back down over his eyes.
The crowd is nearly silent after the initial cheer that followed the first two surfers paddling out past the breaking point. Everyone is holding their breath, eyes never straying from the two little black dots bobbing and weaving through the towering swells. The surfers both paddle out to the side, just off where the waves are fully breaking, and pull up next to each other on their boards, probably talking through which sets to go for, what routes to take.
James follows Sydney around the edges of the crowd, cringing at himself for being afraid to even look down for fear he lets Sydney out of his sight, no matter what Sydney just promised him not five minutes ago. The three inches between their shoulders buzzes and thrums. It’s all James can think about. How if he just leaned slightly to the right, if he just shifted his weight in the sand, he could feel Sydney Moore’s warmth on his skin, a reminder that he’s here and alive and breathing. Not floating pale and limp in the black deep with seaweed covering his face.
Sydney calmly watches the surfers while the wind off the waves picks up speed, clinging to his shirt and wrapping it around the contours of his chest and stomach. James forces himself to do the same, ignoring the electric space between them and instead watching the sets, trying and failing to come up with what his own route through the chaos would be.
Some of the waves are tall enough to partially block out the sunlight, casting the water in shadow like a sudden night. They crest and break over on top of each other without pause, waves as tall as three-story buildings smashing down into the foam, breaking over hidden rocks and surging against the palm trees tucked into the sides of the craggy rocks on either side of the bay. The sound is deafening, and the air is thin. James watches, and tries to breathe, and waits.
Hank eventually walks up next to him and stares out to sea without saying hello. “Betcha Don’s gonna take that swell forming out on the horizon line. If he waits any longer, he knows he’ll lose his nerve.”
Sydney hums from the other side of James, still looking out at the waves. “It won’t be a record-breaker, but it’ll hold a clean face for him. Won’t break too soon.”
Hank chuckles under his breath. “Won’t even ask how the fuck you can tell all that this early, but I been there, done that with doubting your little head.”
Sydney just smirks.
James holds his breath as Don starts to paddle like hell out in front of the incoming wave, far sooner than James normally would for any of the smaller waves he’s caught along Los Angeles. The ocean seems to rise towards the sky behind him, heaving up in one great surge to fling him up into the clouds.
The beach is silent. Every person frozen. Don paddles as the wave pushes him higher and higher up towards the building crest.
“Shit, man, I wish we had Chris out there with his raft,” Hank whispers.
“He’ll be fine. The current will take him straight down the face and he’ll be well out before the crest breaks,” Sydney says back, voice calm. “Got enough speed.”
Don perches at the top of a thirty-foot wave, grabs both sides of his board, looks down over the edge of the towering crest, and pops up to his feet.
The beach gasps, and James leans to his right to press his shoulder up against Sydney’s as Don rockets down the face of the wave, spray flying up behind the tail of his board—just a black speck against a wall of moving water being hurled back down to the earth.
James can see his legs shaking with the force of the wave from here—the way his board pumps and bobs against the face as it tries to carve in a steady path. The wave starts to break ten feet behind him as he zooms straight down, threatening to crash on top of him and bury him in thirty feet of solid, rushing water and foam. Hank curses under his breath, one hand covering his mouth, and James almost does the same. Sydney alone out of everyone on the beach stands calm and unaffected, lips not even pursed.
For one blinding moment, Don is swallowed up by the mist and spray, disappearing into churning ten-foot-high walls of rushing foam. Someone on the shore yells Don’s name, cheering him on. The two lifeguards—James hopes they’re lifeguards—stand calf-deep in the shallows, ready to run.
And then, like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds, Don reappears, backed by walls of whitewater and flying out towards the shoreline, still standing tall on his board. The crowd lets out a wild cheer as Don pumps his fist into the air and then dives off his board into the calmer water, staying under for the bulk of the wave to roll past before surfacing again to crawl onto his board and get some air.
James lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and Sydney presses back briefly into his arm.
“Well shit, my man, you were right,” Hank says, shaking out the tension from his arms.
Sydney finally breaks his gaze away from the water. “Are you surprised?”
Hank grins. “Nah, I learned that lesson your second Billabong.” James notices Hank quickly look between the two of them, as if James’ very presence at Sydney’s side is still a question niggling in his mind, then he stretches his arms behind his back and whistles. “I need to stretch, gonna go say my last rites and shit. Moore, see you out there.”
Sydney holds up a hand, and James gives Hank a nod as Hank heads off towards his board stuck in the sand, still shaking the muscles in his arms and shoulders loose. James hates that he feels a wash of relief at watching him go—that the way Hank’s eye had flickered between him and Sydney had been like a punch to his gut, sweat under his arms.
James stands next to Sydney, barely speaking, for the next three rounds. Two surfers a round, just one successful wave each, if they even manage that. Nobody has the endurance to try to catch more than one of these waves in the span of thirty short minutes. The beach feels oddly quiet without the blaring airhorn, or the crackling announcers, or the sounds of hundreds or thousands yelling, laughter spilling across the warm sand.
No—everything is calm. Understated. Surfers start and end their heats with a cheer, and a blanket of silent focus hovers over the shore the rest of the time. Sydney tries to call each ride under his breath as it’s happening—which wave they’ll take, how tall it’ll be, what will happen. Three surfers wipeout, but all of them happen early enough in the wave to simply dive through the face and surface on the other side of the crest, missing the deadly crash of the breaking point.
James almost forgets that Sydney will eventually take up his board and join them—that he won’t just spend the whole day standing by his side predicting the future before taking James’ arm and leading them back home to their porch, and their gentle, safe waves, and their bed.
Then Sydney clears his throat and uncrosses his arms. “I need to get ready,” he says.
James freezes, mouth dry.
“James?”
With an effort, he forces himself to turn and look at Sydney, standing beside him, looking infuriatingly beautiful with the sunlight reflecting off his aviators and the salty wind blowing in his curls. The warmth of the sand glittering across his tan skin.
James can’t say anything. He licks his lips and nods. Sydney reaches out to tightly grip the top of his arm through his sleeve.
“I’ll find you before Hank and I head out, okay?” Then he’s off into the crowd, striding towards his board so he can wax up and stretch as if he isn’t about to do something absolutely, deathly insane.
James fights back a moan as he watches Sydney walk away from him down the stretch of shoreline, framed by mountains of rushing w
ater on his right and mountains of green velvet on his left. He looks back out at the surfers paddling up and over the gigantic swells across the horizon and tells himself that everything will be totally fine. They haven’t had any major accidents today. Nobody’s drowned. Nobody’s died. These guys know how to surf this beach, have been training for it for years.
And that’s when Dickie drops in on his chosen wave. And the towering force of water behind him caves in on top of his tumbling body, crushing him under the foam while his board soars clear up into the air, ankle strap broken.
The crowd on the beach lets out a collective gasp, waiting with bated breath for a tiny speck of a human to surface from the crashing, churning whitewater. The lone board slaps back into the water, and the roar of the wave is loud enough to tremble through the sand, pulsing against the soles of James’ bare feet.
And then a second wave hits, even taller than the last. And that’s when the other surfers start to run.
Sydney sprints ahead of them towards the shoreline, board held up high over his head before he throws it down into the shallows and paddles out with quick, powerful strokes, dolphin diving under the incoming swells. James takes two trembling steps forward in the sand, wanting to cup his hands around his mouth and scream for Sydney to come back, to let one of the other surfers go after Dickie caught in the walls of gushing water, to get his ass back on the sand and come and let James crush him into his arms so he can’t fucking throw it all away before they’ve even begun.
But Sydney paddles out, Don hot on his heels. James tracks Sydney’s soaked white t-shirt through the rises and falls of the battling swells; Sydney hadn’t even changed into his wetsuit yet. James wheezes breath in and out through his mouth and tries not to sink to his knees in the sand. The crowd has moved closer to the shoreline, and the two lifeguards—God, why couldn’t the fucking lifeguards be the ones paddling out on their boards—are up to their waists in the water, treading through the breaking waves as they stand ready with a thrown-together first-aid kit.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 46
