That night, we headed for a pre-dinner surf and as we walked across the sand, we saw someone else already out there and not someone we recognized.
“Is that a chick?” Dean asked, as he squinted against the sun.
“Yeah.”
As Dean was all about the girls these days, I saw as he flexed the bicep holding his board against his body and did that breath smell test thing against his hand.
“Dude, what are you doing?”
“Look at the moves on her.”
I looked back to the ocean, and the closer we got the more I could see just how surf gifted she was. She was like an angel floating about on the water.
She was stooped low, cutting back and to across the waves, low enough for her hand to trail beside the board and into the water. Her hair was a crazy mass of wet curls, so crazy that the weight of the water didn’t drag them straight. I could see the muscles in the thighs of her sun-tanned legs and even though she wore just a rash vest and board shorts, my eyes zeroed in on her flat stomach.
Dean made it to her first. “Hey!”
She ignored him and surfed by.
I sat on my board, content to just watch her own the water around us, but Dean was chasing her down like he’d forgotten he knew a person by the name of Charmayne. When she ignored him again, he decided to force her into acknowledging him.
“You asshole!” were the last words out of her mouth as she crashed and burned when he got in her way. When she breeched the water’s surface with a face like thunder, I felt my heart clench.
“I tried to be pleasant.” He smiled smugly.
“What? I don’t have to talk to random weirdos.”
He laughed. “I can tell you’re fighting it. You want to talk to me.”
“I’d like to drown you, but I guess murder here is as illegal as it is in Hawaii.”
That explained her tan and skills.
As she piled her body on top of her board, I caught sight of her ass cheeks. Perfect.
Dean waded over to me and we both watched as she paddled back to the shore without giving either of us a second glance.
“I think I’m in love,” he sighed.
“You’re already supposed to be in love.”
“Charmayne?” He snorted. “That’s just lust, but her? I could really lose my shit over someone like her.”
Dean always acted like I was his virginal best friend. I wasn’t and he knew it, but I was discreet when it came to the girls at school. Dean fucked around with the cheerleaders, mainly Charmayne, and I played around with a couple of the strikers on the girls’ soccer team. Having joint skills practice was both a blessing and a curse. You could hook up, but if you weren’t discreet you both risked being kicked off the team. Unlike Dean, I picked like-minded, level-headed girls, who could be relied upon to treat things like they were—just a fuck. Whereas Charmayne was hell in a handbasket and if she knew Dean was cracking onto random female surfers, she’d remove his left bollock, cover it in breadcrumbs and serve it back up to him.
He went to paddle after her. “Oi! Stalker, leave the girl be. If love is meant to be, you’ll find her again.”
Dean agreed with me, and we both watched as she got to the shore, climbed off her board and got to her feet. When she shook and rung the water from her hair, I felt my dick harden.
“What the fuck?” I muttered as she walked towards the back of Cody’s house.
“Seems you’re right. Looks like she won’t be hard to find. Let’s go meet the new neighbor.”
He took off like a rocket on his board and I followed.
I was just as keen as he was to find out who she was.
The next morning, she was waiting by the bus stop.
“You gonna speak to me this time?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Oh, come on! It’s fate.”
She was wearing denim jeans cropped at the ankles and a plain yellow-colored vest top. Her hair was tied up in some elastic thing and there were loads of rope and leather bracelets around her wrist.
I couldn’t decide if Dean was creepier with his over the top need to engage with her, or if I took the trophy because surely she thought I was mute. I had to rectify that, especially if we were neighbors.
“What my lame ass friend is trying to say is I’m Reef, he’s Dean and I think you live in the middle of us.”
Dean looked at me and groaned. “Dude… that visual. I’m hard now.”
“As you can also see, he’s a little short on brain power. He doesn’t have enough to operate both his mouth and thought process at the same time.”
Finally, she laughed. Her teeth were white, and her smile was breathtaking. Before she could engage in return conversation, the school bus arrived. Surfer girl got on first and took an empty seat, Dean went to lower his ass on the spot to next to her, but I stuck my foot out, half tripped him and pushed him into the one behind.
“Fucker!” he mouthed at me.
As the bus trudged forward, my fingers itched to touch her hair. The window beside her was open and the air streaming through it picked bits up and made it sparkle in the sunlight. Every so often, the smell of lemons would assault me and make that desire to touch her stronger.
Dean leant forward and put his elbows on the seat next to her. “You got a name?” he said close to her ear.
She jumped, said, “Yeah,” and went back to looking out of the window.
“Yeah you do? Or Yeah is your name?”
She looked at him with a raised brow and ignored him again.
He leaned back in his seat, completely dumbfounded. No one, especially someone with a vagina, had ever made him work this hard for it.
When we arrived at school, she walked off towards the office and I had to pull him back as he tried to follow her. Fortunately, Charmayne was waiting for him, and with one look at her tits almost spilling out of a top that was so against school dress code she may as well have been naked, he forgot our new shiny neighbor.
Sat in homeroom, the door opened and in she walked.
“Class, we have a new student, a transfer in from Hawaii.” All the boys looked at her like she was prey while most of the girls sneered. Hawaii was the only place in our big old country that could possibly out-sunshine California. “Would you like to introduce yourself to the class?”
She looked like she’d rather have an intimate conversation with a rattler. “Uh… Malia. Malia Kyler.”
She even had a cool as fuck name.
“Take the empty seat next to Reef please.”
The boy’s eyes stayed on her as the girls all looked at the seat next to me. Malia shuffled forward down the aisle between the desks and lowered her ass next to mine, the scent of lemons quickly becoming my favorite smell ever.
Dean, sat directly behind me, waited until our homeroom teacher began to talk again before leaning forward. “Malia, better name than Yeah.”
“Are you like a double act?” she returned.
“Not a chance. I don’t share,” he quipped.
As the day progressed, the three of us had a lot of classes together and nearly all of them ended up with her sat next to me. On the bus ride home, I decided to put myself out there. “We surf every day after school. You coming with?”
The bus pulled to a stop and she still hadn’t answered. As we all climbed off and walked in the direction of our houses, she finally replied. “You don’t own the ocean, so yeah. See you out there.” Malia and I continued in silence, while Dean prattled on about utter shit, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the person in the middle of us was a girl, it would have felt like Cody was back.
We were three again and lucky for us, we’d found someone who loved surfing just as much as we did.
Malia
I didn’t want to be here.
In this house.
At the fucking school.
I didn’t even want to be in fucking California.
The only saving grace was that I still had the sea. If Mom had
moved us to somewhere in the middle of the country, I think I would have tried to end it. It was bad enough that I had to leave my friends and family, but that was just something else my dad’s wandering eye had caused.
We’d been happy in Hawaii, or at least I thought we had.
Then Dad came home and announced he’d met someone else. He and Mom had been together since college when he’d knocked her up. He did the right thing, but that right thing only had a limited life span apparently. Now, he’d knocked someone else up and it was time to do the right thing by them instead. The punch in the gut was that Mom knew her. She was a family friend. Mom and Dad tried to do the right thing by me; they tried to keep it all together, but no one ever factored in Mom’s devastation at watching another woman grow his child. His deceit and lies took shape and the friends they both had were divided.
It was tough and ugly.
Then she was offered a job here in Cali and it seemed like the break of fate she needed. Truth be told, I’d have been happy to stay with Dad, but that made me as heartless as him. So, I did the right thing and upped my fucking life so she could rebuild hers.
As soon as I was old enough, or she was settled, I planned to head back to Hawaii. Whether it was for college or a job, home was home and this place wasn’t it.
The house we were in was pretty. Mom’s employers had arranged it for us, but it lacked that touch that made it a home just yet. And, while she continued to work long hours to get a good start on her new job, it wouldn’t get any homier.
I dumped my backpack, threw on a two piece and rash vest, and grabbed my board.
My two new neighbors appeared at the same time.
“See, we’re in sync,” said the pushy one, Dean.
“He always like this?” I asked Reef.
“Always. He’s like a puppy. Just pet him a few times and he’ll run away satisfied.”
“Hey, if we’re talking petting and satisfying, I like how that normally goes for me.” Dean waggled his eyebrows. Despite his insistence, he was actually kind of funny.
“See what I mean?” laughed Reef.
“Yeah.”
We got to the edge of the ocean and Dean was off like he’d been caged for a day, which from what I thought about the school we attended, wasn’t far from the truth.
Reef hung back and waited for me.
“You’ve got some crazy skills, Malia,” he complimented.
“You have to. You can’t live in Hawaii and not surf. They’d kick me out.”
We both lay down and started to paddle out to the waves.
“That how you ended up here?” he asked.
“Something like that.”
I put my head down and dug my hands either side of me, scooping my palms until my body and the board propelled forward in the water. I joked about them kicking me out of Hawaii, but between my mom and dad, that’s pretty much what it felt like.
I felt Reef on my heels and then the mood took us. Dean was already catching and riding waves, and Reef had made a start. Both of them were brilliant surfers, and had they been at my local beach, we’d have been instant friends.
Then the realization hit me.
We were now at my local beach and these boys could be my friends. We had the same interest, they were both funny in different ways, and it would make school a hell of a lot easier.
An hour passed and every so often we stopped to float on the water and chat. It was easier and I felt less like the center of attention when I could wander off and surf when the mood took me. They told me all about their friend who had lived in the house before me, and it kind of made me feel lucky that my parents had only split. At least they were both still alive.
“I better go. I need to get dinner started before Mom gets home,” I told them, and surfed away.
“Let us know if you need anything—you know, help with school work, a cup of sugar or a date to the prom,” Dean shouted after me.
Like I’d been doing for most of the day, I laughed to myself and ignored him.
Mom was late, really late.
I served up two portions of pasta and sauce, and left hers to congeal on the kitchen counter. She hadn’t even called to let me know.
I was in bed and reading when she finally got home.
“Honey, I’m sorry.” Mom sat down on my side of the bed. “A meeting ran over and then the sales VP wanted to hear my ideas and time just flew by.” She flew into some nonsense work speak that I had no clue about and very little interest in.
I wanted to hate how happy she looked, but I hadn’t seen her like this in over a year. For once she was smiling.
“You could have called.”
“I should have, sorry.”
“It’s late. I have school in the morning.” I turned away from her.
“Of course.” Mom leaned over and kissed my cheek. I could smell liquor on her breath. She’d either been drinking in the office or had been out to dinner with someone.
That made it so much worse.
She’d stayed in Hawaii for me so I could have a relationship with my dad and still go to the same school, but now we were here, I was the one all alone.
I felt like her roommate not her daughter. I might have been independent, but she still had responsibilities and those extended way past making sure the refrigerator was stocked and the electricity wasn’t cut off.
We’d switched places and I was more grateful than ever that I’d at least found a couple of friends close by.
Mom’s promises of a fresh start for both of us left a sour taste in my mouth, but at least I still had the ocean.
Reef
“Your mom working again?”
“Yeah.”
I saw the flash of annoyance on her face.
Over the last couple of months, we’d got into a routine. Dean and I were part of a trio again. We surfed with Malia, we rode to school together, and we often got together and did school work, too. It didn’t take long for my mom and Dean’s to notice that she spent a lot of time on her own. So, our parents roped her into the family fold pretty quickly, too.
“My ‘rents are out at some thing, so I’m ordering take out. You both up for it?” Dean asked.
“I’m in,” I agreed.
“If it saves me from another TV dinner, I’m in, too. I’m done for today. Be at yours in a bit then.”
I saw Dean’s eyes light up as Malia spun her board around and headed back to shore.
That reminded me of something I’d noticed of late. “What’s the deal with you and Charmayne?”
“Deal?” I watched as he fake rubbed the end of his nose and looked away from me. It was his tell. He was a rubbish liar.
“Haven’t seen you with her publicly.”
“Things are fine, just applying the brakes a bit. Don’t want people getting the wrong idea.”
I knew exactly who he meant, and it irritated me.
“I’ve been thinking about Malia.” His head spun in my direction. “I think we should make an agreement.”
“What kind of agreement?”
“We both bow out. What we’ve got here is good as friends. We surf, we’ve got school, and with her mom being more interested in her career, she needs us.”
I watched as Dean thought through my words and I could see that he didn’t like my suggestion one bit.
“Think about it,” I tried again. “If we fuck up things between us then we’re the only friends she has. She also needs somewhere to bolt to if her mom doesn’t turn up. Our moms would fucking hate that we took that option away just to get our dicks wet.”
Dean looked at me. “Your mom’s noticed it too then?”
“Yeah.”
The cells in his brain were churning and I knew if he turned me down then the next thing he would do would be to make a move on her. I wasn’t sure I’d survive that. For some reason, this girl felt like mine.
“Seems like the right thing to do.”
Dean spun around, mimicking Malia’s motions of ten m
inutes ago, and took off. From the way his hands and feet pounded the water I knew he wasn’t happy. But the fact that he’d agreed helped me breathe a little easier.
Pizza was delivered a couple of hours later and the three of us were spread out on Dean’s living room floor. There were open schoolbooks, coke cans and half eaten pizza slices within reach of all of us.
Malia’s cell started to ring from her backpack. “Hey, Mom,” she said as she answered it. Then her face fell. “When will I see you then?” Her disappointment quickly became a resigned look of typical expectation. “Whatever,” she mumbled, and pressed the button to end the call.
“Okay?” Dean asked, getting there before me.
“She’s staying in the city.”
“Tonight?” I asked.
“Maybe two or three nights,” she muttered, her head back in the books as her hand scribbled with a pencil. Whatever emotion she felt, she was doing her damnedest to hide it. All of a sudden, she got to her feet. “Bathroom,” she muttered again. “And don’t eat all the fucking pizza,” she shouted from the hallway.
I looked at Dean, a bit lost for what to say or do, as he reached for his cell. “Hey, Mom, Malia’s gonna crash, okay?” I heard his mom’s voice in electronic form throw words back, before he finished with, “Yeah… yeah, spare room. Promise.”
“What the fuck was that?” I asked after he’d ended the call, pissed that he’d got there before me.
“You said we should be friends,” he whisper-shouted. “That’s the sort of shit friends do.”
“Like you know how to behave around a friend who happens to be a girl.”
“Mom guessed straight away that Stacey wasn’t coming home, seeing as she’s at the same function and Malia’s mom is already wasted.”
That pulled me up short.
“Anyway, you heard me promise. She’ll be tucked up in the spare room.”
He rubbed his nose and looked past me. Lying fucker.
“Don’t fuck things up,” I hissed through my teeth, the panic that he wasn’t capable of not fucking things up a very real fear.
Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 2
