The Surfer Solution

by Cathy Yardley

  “Because now I know how to control my stressors and my responses,” she said. “I haven’t had a panic attack since. It was rough going, but I’ve finally learned how to manage my anxiety. I just have to think of the ocean. Or think of you.”

  “So, you’re going to make sure you have time to spend with me, and time to do stuff you love,” he said, and he sounded approving. “You’re still keeping boundaries.”

  “Pretty much,” she said, biting her lip quickly.

  His gaze bore into her like a power drill, and she sighed.

  “Sean, the first few months are going to be tough,” she admitted. “I mean, it’s going to mean some juggling, timewise, and I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to surf. That’s why I wanted to do as much as I can this weekend.”

  “With surfing, and with me.” The bitterness in his voice was overwhelming. “So, you’ll work until you hit the breaking point, and then you’ll grab your board or grab your boyfriend until the feeling passes, is that it?”

  She gasped, and actually stood up, her heart pounding. “You can’t be serious with this. What, did I stumble into a daytime soap opera and not realize it? Is this As the Surf Churns or something?”

  “You tell me, Allison,” he said, standing up, as well. He didn’t bother with a sheet, though, so she was momentarily sidetracked by the cut of his swimmer’s physique. His eyes were raging with pain and anger, and his jaw could’ve been carved out of marble. He looked angrier than she’d ever seen him. “You tell me. Where, exactly, do I stand in this picture of yours? Because when I’m in a relationship, I make it first priority. And I don’t make my job my life.”

  “You’re going to be busy, too, aren’t you?” She tried a new tack. “I know you don’t think that the job is that important, but you’re going to be starting that new job with your friend’s company. There’s going to be a learning curve with that. Sure, it won’t be as stressful because you won’t let it be, but I know you. You love what you do. I don’t see you just slacking off because you’ve got a girlfriend.”

  “If the girlfriend is you,” he said, and the intensity in his eyes almost drove her to her knees, “then there’s no way I put clocking in before you. No way in hell.”

  She felt small. He didn’t understand. He absolutely didn’t understand. “So, what do you want me to do, Sean? Do you want me to quit, just so I can be your girlfriend? Is that it?” Please, please don’t say that!

  “Of course it isn’t,” he said. “Give me a little credit.”

  “Well, I just don’t see where the problem is!”

  “I’m not saying you have to put me before your job,” he said. “What I’m saying is... you have to put you before your job, damn it. I’m not going to put everything on hold just so I can watch the woman I’m falling in love with self-destruct!”

  “Aren’t we being just a little—”

  “No,” he said, stepping up to her and taking her into his arms. “No, we’re not. And the scary thing here is, I see it, and you don’t.”

  “So what would you do?” she said. “You’re taking a job you don’t like. Sacrifices have to be made sometimes. That’s just part of life.”

  He sighed. “I didn’t take the job, Allison.”

  For a second, nothing computed. “You...didn’t?”

  “They offered it to me,” he said, his voice heavy. “But I just couldn’t. It wasn’t right. Not for me.”

  “How are you going to live?” she found herself asking. The words jumped out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

  “I’ll have to figure it out, and fairly soon,” he said. “But I know that I will.”

  She stood silent for a second, digesting that fact.

  Surf bum. Out for what he can get. Just using you.

  And here he was, accusing her of just using him.

  She didn’t like the way this was going. Not at all.

  “You’re going to have to figure out something,” she repeated.

  “I know that,” Sean said, and he was the one who released her, running his hands through his hair and looking stressed. “I’m not a complete loser, Allison. Although I’ll bet you anything that’s what your parents were trying to point out.”

  It had come full circle. It was so far from how they’d started, but they were back at each other’s throats... She, the type-A overachiever. He, the stereotypical surf bum.

  How in the world can this work?

  “What are you thinking?” Sean said. “I can see it in your eyes, on your face. What’s wrong?”

  “Can’t you tell?” She laughed a little, only it sounded more like a low sob. “I thought... I didn’t know how this was going to work out, but I really, really wanted it to. And all that’s hitting me this morning is, we don’t really know each other at all. We’re from completely different worlds. There’s just no way that this can work, is there?”

  Now Sean looked sad. “I don’t know.”

  She was a problem solver. She was dedicated. When she had wanted something, absolutely nothing had stopped her.

  Until now.

  She got up, got dressed. Looked at him.

  “Where are you going?” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed with the comforter around him.

  “Home,” she said. “I’ve got a full week coming up.”

  “We should talk about this,” he said, even though he still looked troubled.

  “What else is there to say?” She really wanted to know, but he didn’t seem to have an answer to that.

  “Allison. Come on. We should talk.”

  “Do you think we can work it out?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  And that was the deciding factor. She grabbed her purse. She could problem solve, she could fight, she could believe in love overcoming all the odds. But here he was, a man who waited for answers to come to him. Who waited for things to be handed to him. Who wanted her to be like that.

  I can believe in love, she thought.

  But I can’t believe in it enough for the two of us.

       

  SEAN WAS STILL MULLING over the way Allison left one week later. It wasn’t even as if they’d broken up, he supposed—you had to be in an actual relationship to break up, didn’t you?

  Don’t kid yourself. You were definitely in a relationship. It might’ve been brief, it might have been confusing, but it was definitely a relationship. One of the most intense he’d ever been in, if it came to that.

  Which made him wonder how long it would take to get over her.

  He was out at the beach. He had been out here a lot, when he wasn’t on the phone with surf shops. He’d been given several offers, and even though he knew that the pay they were offering was at the high end of the scale, as far as retail jobs went, he still couldn’t help feeling dissatisfied. He knew several of the owners, and even liked many of them. But Tubes had been special, on several levels.

  So not only had he turned down a good-paying job because he loved working for a surf shop, it couldn’t be just any surf shop.

  Have you ever considered the fact that maybe you ’re a loser who just doesn’t want to work, period?

  He dove out into the waves, letting the cold water numb him temporarily from the sting of that thought. It wasn’t what Allison said, but he’d read between the lines. He’d realized that much, at least.

  Probably because, on some level, he agreed with her.

  He paddled out half a mile, before turning back to catch a few waves. He caught a few big ones in on the way to shore. As he got closer, he saw people...some surfers, guys he knew. He waved, and they nodded companionably.

  “Heard Tubes closed,” one of the guys, Edgar, said without a greeting. “That true?”

  “Yeah,” Sean said, feeling the melancholy hit him.

  One of the other surfers, Daniel, shook his head. “That sucks. That was one of the last good surf shops in the South Bay, you know?”

  There was a general
muttering of assent at that remark. Sean felt a little better—he wasn’t getting overly sentimental about the store. Other people recognized it was special.

  “What I want to know is,” Edgar continued as Daniel grabbed a wave and sped off, “how is it some of these slick, weak, lame stores stay in business when a store like Tubes can go under? It just isn’t fair.”

  Sean didn’t have an answer to that. Strangely enough, the guy to his right, a surly, relatively new surfer named Tom, did have an answer.

  “It’s easy,” Tom said in his slight British accent. “Tubes didn’t want it badly enough.”

  Sean immediately took offense. “The guy, the owner? He was having some money trouble. And he wasn’t a businessman.” He shot Tom a challenging look. “It’s easy to say he didn’t want it. Even guys with MBAs can have businesses that fail.”

  “Whoa, whoa, easy,” Tom said, holding a hand up. His scowl was still present, though. “Wasn’t trying to insult your friend.”

  “So what were you saying?”

  “I’m just saying, plenty of people with no business experience whatsoever become big successes. It’s not just luck, either. It’s just they want it more. If you want something badly enough, you figure out a way to get it.”

  Sean now had a matching scowl. He wanted to beat the guy up. What did he know? He didn’t understand anything. This wasn’t one of those “positive attitude” nonsense solutions. He might feel like a loser, but he knew that much.

  “Listen, sorry I said anything,” Tom said, even though from his expression, apology seemed like the furthest thing from his mind. “But look at me. Two years ago, I was just a disgruntled Welshman who was freezing his ass off, hating his job. Now... well, look at me.” For the first time since Sean had seen the guy, he broke into a smile. “People say it’s freezing when it gets down to sixty degrees, and my office stares out on the ocean. I’m not saying it was easy. I’m just saying.. .you want it badly enough, you can get it done.”

  With that, he signaled, grabbing the next wave and riding clumsily but happily down the shore, leaving Sean surprised, disgruntled.. .and determined.

       

  TWO WEEKS AFTER the fateful New Year’s Eve presentation to Kibble Tidbits, Allison sat at her desk. She’d been working late and coming in early, nothing really new there. She wasn’t having anxiety attacks anymore, but she was continually exhausted. She was more than exhausted, if that was possible. She was having some trouble sleeping. She was running herself into the ground.

  On the plus side, she was hardly thinking about Sean at all.

  Oh, that is such a lie.

  Gary knocked on her door frame. “I’m all packed up,” he said, taking off his glasses and wiping them on the edge of his shirt. “I can’t thank you enough, Allison.”

  She grinned, feeling at least an infinitesimal relief. She’d managed to get one thing done in the limbo since they started waiting for the account. Gary’s promotion had gone through. “You deserved it,” she said. “Do you have your cubicle all set up?”

  He nodded. “And they’ve given me one of our accounts to focus on anyway, one you had me helping you out with, so I should be hitting the ground running.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I’m just sorry that this leaves you in the lurch, without an assistant.”

  “I’ll hire somebody. We’ll post the position any day now.” She stood up, and gave him a hug, which surprised both of them. “Good luck, Gary. You deserve it.”

  He looked as if his eyes were misting. “Gotta go,” he said, and fled for his new cubicle, almost knocking into Frank, who was headed Allison’s way. He didn’t look amused by the near run-in. In fact, he looked angry, which was unusual since he’d been in a jovial mood for the past two weeks—something of a record for her high-strung and often angry supervisor.

  “Whoa. What happened to you?” she asked when he swept into her office.

  “Shut the door,” he said instead, and she immediately felt the usual sensations: her stomach clenching, her temperature rising.

  I am sick of feeling this wave of anxiety.

  “What happened, Frank?” she repeated, sitting down at her desk and forcing herself to focus.

  “The account. The damn account,” he bit out.

  “We didn’t get it,” she said, feeling numb. No, not numb.

  Relieved.

  “They’re trying to lowball us. Can you believe it?” he asked. “They said it’s a tie between us and McMurtan and Lowe! They want us to come up with a tiebreaker...and of course they want us to sweeten the deal with tons of extras and...”

  He kept on talking, and this time, she barely heard him. Sean had told her that she had to take care of herself. The relief that she’d felt at the idea of the account going away was acute. She had never thought of what her life would be like if she didn ’t get the account. What would happen if they lost?

  Her parents would be disappointed. They were finally starting to respect her. Her reputation would probably take a beating here at Flashpoint, and she’d have to take a different job at another company if she even hoped to have a stab at the big promotion, which would mean more hours, yet again, and more proving herself.

  Or would it?

  “Allison, are you even listening to me?” Frank snapped. “Of all the times for you to have one of your little episodes, this is the worst. So focus, damn it!”

  She stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  A new emotion started to well up in her, one that had nothing to do with fear or anxiety.

  She was suddenly, and overwhelmingly, well and truly past this.

  Something must’ve shown on her face, because for the first time, she saw Frank surprised...and hesitant. “I just mean I need you to stay focused on this,” he half muttered.

  “If I recall correctly, I was the only one who did focus on this. When I was gone, people were running around screaming in a state of mass hysteria,” she said, her voice shaking with the rage she was feeling. “So now you’re saying that because we’re in the lurch, I need to snap out of it? Because you need me to?”

  “It’s important to the company.”

  “When, exactly, has this company ever been concerned about me?”

  He blinked at that statement.

  Sean might be a lot of things, but he hadn’t given her an ultimatum because he wanted to see her fail, she realized immediately. Even if she wasn’t going to be with him, he cared about her. Her. Her health, her well-being. Herself.

  It was about time that she cared about herself, she thought.

  “You can handle the account on your own,” she said firmly. “I’m leaving.”

  Now Frank got his mental footing, and stood up, starting his blustery windup. “What, are you going to go surfing again? I’ve been pretty tolerant up to this point, Allison, and yeah, I could’ve probably handled it better, but how many times do I have to tell you how important this account is? We can’t just blow it off because you’re having some kind of personal crisis. Go to the doctor, get some pills or something, and then I swear, I’ll give you a week’s vacation when the deal’s sealed. How about that?”

  “A whole week?” Like he was conferring some kind of honor on her. The irony of it made her smile.

  He smiled back, misinterpreting. “Well, for you, sure. It’ll take at least a week for the initial paperwork to come over anyway, and you wouldn’t start working the account for another week on top of that.”

  “I quit,” she said, still smiling.

  “It might be a month before we...what?” he said as her words finally sank in. “You’re what? You’re quitting?"

  “Yup,” she said, grabbing her bag. “Right now, as a matter of fact.”

  “You can’t do this to me!”

  “I’m not doing this ‘to’ anyone,” she said reasonably, feeling her heart beat fast but her stomach relax. “I’m doing this ‘for’ me, Frank.”

  “You’re throwing away your career. You realize
this,” Frank threatened.

  “It’ll be worth it.”

  “Think this through,” he insisted. “What could possibly be worth throwing away everything you’ve worked so hard for? Huh?”

  She paused. “I am.”

  With that, she walked out the door, into the sunshine.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ALLISON STOOD OUT in the surf, staring at it for a second. School was back in session, so her boys, the “otters,” were nowhere to be seen. There were a few other surfers out there, men and women, from what she could see. They nodded at her. She nodded back, feeling completely at home.

  No reason why she shouldn’t, she thought. After all, she was a surfer now.

  She paddled out. She’d been practicing and the bracing cold still hit her, but she could enjoy it now. Besides, ever since she’d broken up with Sean, she’d gotten used to a sort of cool numbness. With the stress of the job out of the way, she felt a sort of dead serenity. That probably wasn’t the best term to use, but it was how she felt.

  She went out past the immediate crashing surf into the swells. The sounds of the ocean, the music of it, enveloped her.

  Despite feeling miserable whenever she thought of Sean, she had to say that this was the most peace she had felt in a really long time.

  She had savings put away. She was too organized not to, and she hadn’t had the time or inclination to spend what she’d been earning, anyway. And for the first time in her life, she was not worried about what was going to happen next.

  She saw the swell coming, paddled out to catch it, and stood. The only thing on her mind was her equilibrium. In that moment, stretched out between the impossible blue of the Southern Cal sky and the sandy blue-green of the Pacific, all she thought about was the ride.

  She was, strangely, perfectly content.

  It was only when she was off the board—in her now too-empty town house, say, or driving her car—that she found herself thinking upsetting thoughts. And they were almost always about Sean.