Air

by Lisa Glass

  “Really? I never knew Zeke to have a girlfriend before. Truth is, I always wondered if he was gay, although it turns out that was his brother!” She followed this with a little laugh, that made me feel uncomfortable. “Oops. I hope I haven’t just outted someone!” she said, and laughed again.

  “Not at all. I know Wes really well, and his boyfriend Elijah too. They’re awesome.”

  “What’s your name, hon?”

  “Iris. Nice to meet you. Thanks for inviting me.”

  She smiled at this, and I realized that she hadn’t invited me. Chase had. She hadn’t even known I was coming.

  “Veronica. Enjoy the party,” she said. “Oh, did you make your donation to the charity yet?”

  “Zeke has the check in his wallet.”

  “Well, don’t forget. That’s why we’re here. It’s not just an excuse to wear pretty nightshirts in public, you know,” she said.

  “What is the charity? Chase said it was something to do with depression?”

  “Teenxiety. Our target for tonight is thirty thousand dollars. Here’s hoping.”

  It was an ungracious thought, and I knew it, but once again it occurred to me that maybe this fundraiser wasn’t the best way of getting money to the charity, given that the sound equipment, cocktails and buffet probably cost more than that. But who was I to criticize people raising money for charity?

  “Go dance. Be merry.”

  And talking of dancing, Zeke already was.

  It was no secret that Zeke liked to dance. He made out that he didn’t, but all it took was one beer and he’d start throwing shapes. Two beers in and he busted out the big moves, but I liked that he didn’t give a toss what anyone thought of him and just went for it.

  He spotted me hanging around by some empty chairs, danced over and grabbed my hands.

  “I just need a bit more Dutch courage first . . .”

  “No, you don’t. Get over here.”

  As we danced to Katy Perry I tried to imagine how it must feel to be Zeke, self-confident and free enough to do the twist in public without his head providing a running critique on how he must look to anyone watching.

  Three whiskies in and Zeke got up on stage with the DJ and did a karaoke rendition of “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.”

  Listening to him belt it out, I could see that the song actually meant something to him. He even did the whistle part at the end, although he stopped halfway through to laugh and he couldn’t recover.

  “Nice one, Zeke. I loved that.”

  “Yeah, it’s kinda my jam.”

  “Really? Because, let’s be honest, if you’re watching the tide roll away, you’re generally in it.”

  He laughed. “Well, you know, I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who could relax more.”

  Chase appeared in between us, a hand on each of our backs and said, “Duet.”

  “I don’t sing in public,” I said, feeling as if I’d already made quite enough of a spectacle of myself on this trip.

  “Yo, I meant Zeke and me.”

  “Oh, in that case, knock yourselves out.”

  “What song?” Zeke asked.

  “I’m thinking we stay retro,” Chase replied.

  “‘House of the Rising Sun’?” I said.

  “Uggh, nope. Way cooler. Guess again.”

  Chase’s version of “way cooler” transpired to be the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” and somehow, and I would never ask how, Zeke knew all the words.

  They followed this up with Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time,” which was surprisingly touching, and people clapped along as they gazed into each other’s eyes and did a slow waltz around the pool.

  Sweaty but happy, Zeke turned to Chase, who was cracking open his second bottle of eight-hundred dollar champagne, and said, “Can we swim in the pool?”

  I butted in. “Neither of us has a cossie, Zeke.”

  “So we’ll wear this.”

  “All right, if you want everyone’s outfits to go completely transparent.”

  “Definitely,” Chase said, giving me some comedy creep-eye.

  Zeke gave him a light punch on the shoulder and said, “Don’t make me hurt you, bro.”

  “Ha, I love that you see that as a possibility.”

  “You may punch harder, dude,” Zeke said, “but I’m faster.” He got his fists up and started ducking and weaving.

  “Yeah, at running,” Chase said.

  “Hey, you remember the time you busted up my bike and launched it into the ocean, and Garrett and Wes stripped you naked and threw you in a patch of wood-nettles?”

  Chase winced and said, “They’re still on my hit list for that.”

  I felt it again—the closeness they had, the history, and I missed Kelly so badly that I considered sitting down with my iPhone and flipping through old ussies of the two of us on Fistral.

  “Come on, I wanna show you something,” Chase said, linking arms with me and Zeke.

  We walked through a corridor busy with cocktail-drinkers and into the kitchen, where Zeke started inspecting the units. “What wood is this? Koa?”

  “Yeah, Mom had it imported from Hawaii.”

  “Nice.”

  “The cabinets are handmade. Blue marble floor. I actually helped design this kitchen,” Chase said, looking proud of himself.

  “If you ever remodel, call me,” Zeke said. “My pop always built his cabinets from scratch, with, like, eucalyptus and coconut wood, and I used to love helping with that.”

  I had nothing to contribute to a conversation about kitchens, and when “Thrift Shop” came on the sound system, I said, “We should totally dance to this.”

  “No can do,” Chase said. “Didn’t you see me earlier? I was tripping over Zeke’s feet. I dance like a cinderblock.”

  “Really? I thought you’d be a great dancer.”

  “And that is what the people call judging a book by its cover.”

  “But even your name makes you sound like a good dancer. Chase,” I said, doing a weird little wiggle dance that made no sense whatsoever.

  “Ah, Chase is actually not my birth name. Zeke knows it, but he’s sworn to secrecy.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “Bet I get it out of him.”

  “No, I made a promise,” Zeke said. “It’s been eleven years and I’ve never told a soul.”

  “Yeah, but you can trust me. I won’t blab, will I?”

  “Iris, he made a vow,” Chase said. “You can’t mess with that.”

  I was smiling, but Zeke and Chase both had serious faces on, as if the mere idea of Zeke telling me Chase’s birth name was scandalous.

  “What? Come on, tell me!” But Zeke just shook his head.

  “What can I get you guys to drink?” he asked, sliding off the countertop where he’d been perched.

  Chase jumped in first with, “Surprise me.”

  “Really? You’re like the pickiest drinker on the planet. How about you, Iris?” he said, turning to me.

  “Half a Coke. Thanks.”

  “Get her a real drink,” Chase said. Then he turned and sang at me, “You’re in Miami, girl.”

  “Alcohol is not her friend. She already had some tonight and she usually gets drunk off of vapors, then spends the next three hours puking or running to the john.”

  “Rude. I’ll have a mojito.”

  “Whaat?” Zeke said, looking pained. “Anders was pretty insistent you stay off the liquor. He’ll have a coronary if you wind up getting busted for underage drinking.”

  “What a tool,” Chase said, picking a piece of olive out of his teeth with the edge of his credit card.

  “Zeke,” I said, “you’re underage and you’re drinking! Why is there one rule for you and one rule for me?”

  “Because I can have three beers and not fall over.”

  “Stop stressing,” I said. “You only live once.”

  Zeke couldn’t really argue with that, since he bas
ically had it tattooed on his back.

  “OK, one drink. After, you think we should head back to the hotel?”

  “You guys aren’t leaving yet,” Chase said. “The night is young.”

  I shrugged, like it was nothing to me either way, but I secretly felt a shiver of nerves. When Zeke had suggested this holiday, in a super-fancy hotel, I thought it was to get some uninterrupted, decent alone time together, since Anders usually made us get separate accommodation during our contests, saying something like, “Let’s try to keep up an appearance of decency, shall we?” which I thought was ridiculous, since anyone who knew about professional surfing knew me and Zeke were together. The sort of together where you sometimes wake up together. Since arriving in Miami, apart from those brief moments in the marquee and the alley, we had not exactly connected, and in the hotel room it was as if an invisible force field was running up the center of the bed. But there was something in Zeke’s face that made me think that could be about to change.

  As if deliberately dispelling this idea, Zeke touched my arm and said, “Just promise me you won’t throw up. I’m, like, emetophobic or something. Blood I can handle. My baby cousin’s dirty diapers I can handle. Pee, no problem. But vomit? Count me out.”

  “I promise.”

  chapter fourteen

  Two hours later, when Zeke and Chase were fully over the high of serenading each other in front of four hundred strangers, and Saskia and Gabe had locked themselves into one of the bathrooms, we were into the chill-out portion of the evening, stretched out on sunloungers under a sky full of stars.

  “So, buddy,” Chase said to Zeke, under his breath, “you get it yet?”

  I could have sworn Zeke did that thing where you pretend not to hear something, just to buy yourself more time to answer.

  Zeke and I were sharing a sunlounger, and I was nestled into the side of his body.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “You get it yet?” Chase asked, louder this time.

  “Get what?”

  “Buddy, come on, you know what I’m talking about here.”

  Zeke shrugged.

  Zeke never did that. You asked Zeke a question, he answered; no bull, no front.

  “Is that a no?” Chase said, confusion in his eyes. He looked from Zeke to me and back again.

  “What haven’t you got?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Zeke said. “Nothing important anyways.”

  Did Zeke get what exactly? Something secret? Something for me? A birthday present?

  “Me and my big mouth,” Chase said, looking sheepish.

  “What am I missing here?” I said to Zeke.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Zeke said. “For real, it’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  Zeke and Chase reached across the void between our loungers to fist-bump, their touch gentle, and I felt totally outside. They’d known each other for years and had history that I could never be part of.

  “So how do you guys know each other?”

  Chase laughed, “I was Zeke’s best friend since kindergarten. Oh, and I was also his dealer, but, you know, not until a few years later.”

  chapter fifteen

  My face must have registered my disapproval. Zeke looked supremely uncomfortable and Chase said, “Hey, I’m kidding. He just shared my weed sometimes. But, you know, Zeke’s a reformed toker these days, so no cause to stress.”

  I looked at Zeke and he was actually blushing, like a kid whose mother had just caught him doing something unspeakable.

  “Chase got you into dope?”

  “Dope?” Chase said, looking scandalized. “Hell no. Just pot.”

  “Dope is pot,” I said, not understanding why Chase would need clarification.

  “Dope can also mean heroin here, Iris,” Zeke said gently. “Can we not talk about this? It was a long time ago.”

  Since Zeke was only nineteen, I guessed it wasn’t all that long ago.

  “I wasn’t some Walter White, yo,” Chase said. “It was dime bags of pot that I split with my best friend. No one ever died of pot.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. People said marijuana was a gateway drug, and Zeke had definitely gone through that gateway. In fact, from what I’d heard about his life before he met me, about ten gates had slammed behind Zeke. He’d rehabbed like crazy and by the time I came along he was clean, but I knew from his family that it had been a hard, long fight. And here we were, hanging out with the guy who’d led him down that path.

  Zeke put his arm over my shoulder and leaned over to kiss me, properly this time, and once again the worst of my doubts vanished. Funny how that always seemed to happen.

  “You guys wanna ride to the Everglades tomorrow morning? I have to go see a man about an alligator.”

  “Totally.”

  “We probably won’t have time,” Zeke said. “After tonight, Iris has to train for New Smyrna. It can be a tricky wave.”

  And that was that: language switched to surf-speak.

  “Yeah,” Chase said. “It has a sketchy little lip that’s hard to figure out—even the top seeds who compete there don’t always progress to the next round.”

  “Hell yeah, it’s so inconsistent out there. Some of the waves are closing out, some are running, some of them that you think are going to be shockers turn into good ones. The best surfers in the world struggle; you have so many yellow jerseys taking out the reds there, it’s crazy.”

  But I didn’t think it was just a diversion tactic. Zeke sounded genuinely worried about me surfing New Smyrna. He often tried to give me insider knowledge on certain breaks, and sometimes he’d get out old heat sheets and talk me through previous contest drama. He’d look at those numbers and remember it all. It reminded me of The Matrix, with the guy monitoring the computer code and seeing redheads, blonds and brunettes, except Zeke did it with heat sheets and waves.

  I wasn’t actually too worried. The biggest problem, I thought, apart from the many, many sharks, would be wind chop, but I’d surfed plenty of blown-out breaks in Cornwall, so I was sure I’d manage. As the saying went, Bad surf is the best teacher, and the thing I’d noticed about the Hawaiian and Australian girls was that they were so used to pristine peeling waves that they panicked at the first sign of poor conditions. Whereas, for me, it was business as usual.

  Anyway, the thing I wanted to talk about was the Everglades, which I still really wanted to see. A unique subtropical wetland, home to alligators and turtles, was worth another half-day of slacking, surely.

  “Who knows when I’ll be in Florida again? It’s not far. We could just go down there for a few hours, couldn’t we?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think it’s gonna be possible to swing it with our schedule.”

  “OK, OK,” I said. “You win.”

  “So when you paddling the Cortes Bank, brah?” Chase said to Zeke. “Word on the street is Greg’s putting together a crew.”

  Greg Long was the most famous of the big-wave surfers and Zeke completely idolized him. The Cortes Bank was a reef a full hundred miles offshore with a fearsome reputation. It was basically a shipping and navigation hazard, because when the bank broke from a storm swell it could kick up waves with faces of a hundred feet.

  Surfing that wave was definitely a risk, and because it took twelve hours to get there by boat, if a surfer got into trouble there, that surfer was probably dead. But Zeke was experienced with giant waves, and to him the high of riding that wave would be worth the risk.

  “I can’t go. I promised Iris.”

  I looked at him, frowning. It was true that right after his accident he’d said he’d avoid big waves in the future, but I hadn’t really believed he’d keep to that and I hadn’t tried to make him promise. Ever since I’d met him, Zeke had been frothing to surf the Cortes Bank, and I didn’t expect him to walk away from that opportunity just because of me.

  I was figuring out how to put all that into words when Chase said, “You said no to Greg? Wow. It must be love.”
<
br />   “Must be,” Zeke said, looking at me with a suddenly serious expression.

  “But don’t you feel like you’re letting Greg down?” Chase asked.

  “Are you kidding? Tons of guys will be lining up to fill my spot.” A look passed between them and I could tell they wanted to talk without me there.

  “I’m going to the loo,” I said. I’d had a few glasses of white-wine spritzer and a mojito, and my head felt funny.

  The house had so many different rooms that I kept getting lost, but eventually someone directed me to a bathroom suite that was bigger than the whole downstairs of my home. It actually had a dressing table, where three girls in camisoles and French knickers were redoing their make-up.

  I went through to the toilet, which weirdly turned out to be two toilets side by side, locked the door and resisted the urge to lie back against the cool cistern.

  When I came out, two of the girls were bent over a table snorting up some white powder through a rolled-up banknote. I froze.

  They looked up at me, their eyes glazed, not seeming the least bit concerned.

  “Line?” one of them asked me. She had long yellow hair in a braid down to her bum and what appeared to be purple contact lenses.

  “No, thanks.”

  She said, “You don’t do drugs? But you’re with Zeke, right?”

  “She’s, like, sixteen years old,” another girl said with a laugh.

  It took me a few seconds, but then I recognized her as Amber’s friend Inga.

  “I’m seventeen in two days,” I said, “And Zeke doesn’t do drugs anymore.”

  “Maybe not around you,” Inga murmured.

  I stared at her hard. “Not around anyone, actually.”

  “Well, that boy used to party real hard,” her friend said. “Guys like that don’t change.”

  “Word,” another girl said. And then, “You know this girl, Inga?”

  “Kinda,” she said. “This is Iris Fox. Yeah, you won’t have heard of her. She’s trying to make it as a pro-surfer, like Zeke.”

  “Zeke has changed since you knew him,” I said, still eyeballing Inga.

  “Guess he’d have to since he shacked up with Pollyanna. You ever taken an illegal substance in your life, girl?”