by Mia Terry
“Industry secret, sometimes we do that because it’s funny watching people look like idiots.” Rhys laughed at the look on Ollie’s face. “You’re an athlete and a smart boy who knows what surfing is supposed to look like. Right foot forward and keep those knees relaxed. Anyway, I’ll be next to you ruining all the surfing Zen by calling out instructions.”
Ollie’s confident demeanor meant he shrugged his shoulders and obviously accepted that. Rhys figured he was a quick study and while demonstrating on the sand was cute and all, for most of the time a surfing beginner forgot all those carefully taught drills when they actually faced wave and water. Rhys was going to be calling out instructions for the next hour, so he was glad to look at the spot he had chosen and find it empty. He might have sounded like he was joking about disturbing the surfing Zen, but he really did hate to ruin someone’s quiet morning surf with them having to listen to his tuition. Also, a brand-new beginner wasn’t up to the cutthroat scene where everyone dropped in on their wave as was common on any of Byron’s busier breaks.
It was still early enough in the morning for the sea to have a cold snap as they made their way in.
Ollie’s indrawn breath as they got struck by their first wave was audible.
“Duck under the next wave with your board,” Rhys instructed, as he demonstrated what he meant. “Once you’re completely wet it doesn’t feel as bad.”
“I’m a rower,” Ollie replied. “If I’m wet by this time in the morning it usually means someone has fucked up and tipped up the boat.”
Ollie might have been complaining, but his easy strength in the water went some way to reassuring Rhys. He’d already checked Ollie’s leg rope was secure and given him the lecture about hanging onto his board. There were few things more frustrating and dangerous to a surfer than a wave and someone’s stray board heading towards you at the same time.
They paddled out to the beginning of the break and both sat up on their boards, facing the incoming waves. The sun had already risen, but it was still early enough that the haze of golden light was diluted and pretty. The waves were coming in messily. However, they were small enough and had enough shape that Rhys didn’t doubt Ollie would be able to get up, if given the right opportunity.
Okay, embarrassing demonstration time. Rhys was glad they were still alone out here today. The shit talk that happened out on the waves when there were any surfers he knew watching him do this stuff was always immediate and just a tiny bit mortifying.
“Eventually we’ll teach you to do this.” Rhys pushed himself to his feet on the stationary board with the same grace that had at one time marked him as a cut above the other professional surfers. He heard Ollie’s indrawn breath and felt a moment of pride he hadn’t lost this particular ability. “However, today there aren’t any medals for speed and ‘look mum no hands.’ So you’re going to get up one step at a time.”
This time Rhys’s easy movements were a lot more laborious as he demonstrated hanging onto the board as he got to his knees and pushed himself into a stand-up position.
“So, I’m going to be doing the uncool version,” Ollie said.
“Basically yeah,” Rhys replied. He leaned closer and arched his eyebrow. “That’s why the lack of witnesses on this beach is my kindness to you.”
“Maybe you could look away the first time I try this,” Ollie requested.
“I think that would defeat a lot of the teaching principles involved.” Rhys’s smile was wide. He didn’t think Ollie was actually joking with his request. The man did say he didn’t like looking stupid. Too bad looking stupid was a relatively common side effect of learning a new skill.
They waited in silence for a few minutes before Rhys saw the right type of wave rolling towards them.
“Start paddling,” he called over to Ollie.
Ollie looked anything but stupid when his arms found a familiar rhythm and he accelerated strongly enough to catch the momentum of the wave below him. Rhys loved the pure joy in his smile when Ollie got to experience the exhilaration that came with harnessing that sheer power for your own purpose.
“Start standing up,” Rhys yelled.
The look of concentration that followed was equally adorable and, yeah, awkward could definitely be a descriptor. Ollie braced his hands around the curve of the board and with slightly shaky legs got to his knees and then into an awkward stance.
“Woohoo,” Rhys yelled, after Ollie had precariously balanced himself and was actually riding the wave. He made sure to do it when he could see Ollie was at the end of his skill and about to ditch in the water, so he didn’t break his concentration. Sure enough, seconds after Ollie had turned to smile in his direction, he lost control and tumbled into the wave.
Rhys leaned forward on his board and watched carefully for the man to surface. New surfers could do themselves some damage even in gentle surf like today. However, Ollie quickly surfaced, and Rhys was pleased by the way he quickly grabbed his board to gain control of it and then started paddling back towards where Rhys was watching from past the break.
Okay, there was some technique that could be worked on here, but the man was athletic enough and the smile before he wiped out showed he might hang around long enough to learn some skill.
“How did you like that?” Rhys asked, when Ollie got close enough he didn’t have to yell.
“Fun.” The glow from Ollie’s smile confirmed it was the truth. “I was lame and could only exit the wave upside down. But fun.”
“Come on. You were a bit Bambi-footed, but you got up.”
“For a second,” Ollie said.
“Like eight seconds. And as for the wipe out, I still do that occasionally. Admittedly in surf a bit bigger than this.”
The men shared a laugh even as they maneuvered over another set of waves heading towards them. The comradery as you sat waiting for another good set of waves was up there among Rhys’s favorite aspects of surfing. Even nicer was that the man who sat beside him seemed to love the water, judging by the murmur of contentment Rhys heard.
Another appropriately small set of waves rolled in and Ollie managed to get up again, even managing a little longer on the third rolling trip to the shore.
Ollie had a fair amount of natural coordination, but it was impossible to learn a new skill without a fair amount of goofiness and Rhys couldn’t help a giggle when he watched Ollie trip over his own feet as he tried to exit the wave. He was more confident in the man’s water skills now so didn’t feel the need to worry as Ollie surged to the surface and easily muscled his moderately heavy surfboard back under his body.
“Good job,” Rhys said, when Ollie joined him behind the break. “You might be ready for the general public next time. I might even take you to someplace other surfers are.”
“Maybe we need to wait until I can properly get off a wave,” Ollie replied, his smile still wide from the exhilaration of his run.
“More weight on your back foot next time. You’re actually pretty close to being there.”
Ollie looked at him sideways through heavy, dark lashes that glittered with drops of water. The effect was appealing enough that Rhys had to look away.
“So am I a favorite student for this month at least.” The flirtation in Ollie’s teasing voice indicated he had probably noticed the flare of attraction in Rhys’s gaze before Rhys tried to hide it.
“Umm… Well you’re definitely better than the guy who wanted to have pictures taken of every second of his surfing lesson for his Instagram.” Rhys chuckled, remembering. “He made me add a go-pro on my board and had his girlfriend waist deep in the water as the day’s official photographer. I was a professional surfer with sponsorship obligations, and I swear I have less photos of me surfing the Hawaii pipeline during competitions than this dude wanted from his one lesson.”
“Please no photographic evidence of my wonky surfing. Did the guy even look good?”
“He made you look very coordinated. The go-pro footage would have been unusable, bu
t hopefully he felt the lesson was worthwhile because his girlfriend got some shots in the split seconds between him getting up on the board and swallowing half the sea.”
Ollie’s laugh rang loud. “I can totally imagine. The last twenty-five-year-old I fucked started taking naked pics of me minutes after sex.”
“Seriously?” Rhys asked. “Totally ick.”
Ollie rolled his eyes. “After I grabbed back his phone and deleted the hell out of what he took, I had to give him a lecture about consent and privacy. I felt like I was twenty years older than him rather than just five years. It’s not like my phone is dick pic free, but who just takes nude photos of someone without asking.”
“Apparently the young guy crowd. That’s what you get when you shag the just graduated demographic.” Rhys smiled, probably a little too smugly for a man who had slept with a few conquests who fit that particular description himself. “Yeah, there is a very old-man-yelling-about-getting-off-his-lawn feel to complaining about people’s obsession with the Insta moments. I’m not totally immune myself, but I have managed to not need a full-time photographer to document my life. I do love the couples on the beach though, with the devotion to spend half an hour posing for the perfect pic.”
“True love in the Instagram age.”
Rhys could see Ollie’s paddling to stay in place against the slight offshore current was getting a little lackluster. He’d done well to last as long as he had. “Enough chitchat.” Rhys announced. “Next wave we’ll see if you can get out of the wave without swallowing it.”
It didn’t take long before he was watching Ollie coast down the front of a nice break. There was a tinge of pride in Rhys’s gaze as Ollie more confidently got to his feet and actually surfed the wave the whole way in. Even more impressive was the way that, at the end, he popped off the wave and got back into a paddling position.
Rhys met Ollie halfway back to the beach. “Star pupil today. You are definitely eligible to be out in public with those skills.”
“Do we get a fancy beach on the next lesson? I’ll feel honored,” Ollie replied, as he followed Rhys to the shore.
“You totally should feel the weight of that particular honor. People will know I’m teaching you, so those feet better be nimble,” Rhys teased.
They walked up to where they had dumped their towels near the sand dunes and almost simultaneously pulled off their confining rash shirts.
With the ease of long practice, Rhys gathered his towel and shook out the sand without putting down his board, and Ollie mimicked his actions.
They were lucky enough to have a cold-water shower at this beach so getting the salt off both themselves, and their boards, wasn’t a hard task. Rhys knew he wasn’t supposed to concentrate on the way the water ran down Ollie’s very-well-formed chest and abdomen, but when the man closed his eyes against the flow of water, Rhys could no more look away in that moment than he could fly. Fine wet bodies were surely a gift from the universe, and only the ungrateful would refuse to enjoy this particular offering.
Ten minutes later, with the boards stowed in his truck and their shorts half-dry, they were standing outside the very successful coffee truck, drinking a flat white which wouldn’t be out of place in a cool inner-city cafe.
“Was it being in the water that made it more delicious or was that just a really fabulous cup of coffee?” asked Ollie, appreciatively.
“I should say being in the water made in better, but I’ve had enough shitty coffees after a surf to know that’s probably false. Nah, it’s a good cup,”
Coffees in hand, they went and leant on the fence that had been erected to protect the delicate eco-system of the bushes clinging to the dunes.
“It’s a pretty good morning routine,” Ollie observed. “Do you do it on the regular with a boyfriend or girlfriend, or just your clients?”
Yeah, the boy was too confident to bother trying for subtlety. Rhys respected his approach enough to go for a straightforward answer. “No boyfriend since I got back to Byron. So mainly just me and my clients, unless I can convince my dad or one of my mates to join me down here for a surf.”
Ollie had started smiling at his answer. “In that case we’re here for the week. Do you want to have dinner with me?”
Damn it, Rhys was very sorry he had decided a while ago there just wasn’t any point fucking the tourists. He wasn’t saying every sexual encounter had to lead to a happy ever after, but he had decided it also shouldn’t always end with the definite expiration date of a holiday fling.
“Sorry,” he said, genuinely regretful. “I’m not saying I’m looking for a husband, but hooking up for a few days is a little too aimless for my current tastes.”
He was part embarrassed, part proud, as the words came out of his mouth. He knew any date could be just one and done, but he didn’t need to start anything where, no matter what the connection, the good-bye could be measured in days. The fact Ollie was more appealing than any other man he had met in the last year made him regret it, but somehow made his willpower feel more impressive.
Ollie was too well mannered to try to argue the point and Rhys liked him more for it. He just simply raised his coffee in salute in Rhys’s direction and put on a playful pout. “I get that, I do,” Ollie said. “It can’t be easy living in a town where most people are here on a constant rotation.”
“Yeah, the local scene is thin on the ground,” Rhys admitted. The fact they were looking out at the beach made it easy to be open with this man who for all intents and purposes was a new acquaintance.
“I thought Byron was supposed to have a healthy gay scene?” Ollie asked.
“For rural Australia, it actually does. But the tourists make up a large portion of it and the local lesbians are definitely out of my dating pool. So once we discount the guys who move here as happy couples and the older dudes who are more in the daddy style of Mark and Robert, there isn’t a huge group of single men left who are datable.”
Rhys felt embarrassed at being just a little too honest. Ollie was charming, but he was a client.
“Well you have to have dinner with me and my friends then,” Ollie shared. “Billy and Luke know all about being the gay guy in rural Australia, though to be fair I’m reasonably sure neither of them dated within town limits when they were single.” Catching Rhys’s expression, he hurried on. “It’s not me asking you on a date, it’s me asking for some single guy solidarity. They are all very happy couples and me sitting at a table with them becomes a little awkward. Hey, I’ll even make you pay for yourself if that makes you feel better.”
Rhys couldn’t help the next words that came out of his mouth, even as he knew they were a tacit acceptance. “Where would we be going to dinner then?”
Chapter 3
Ollie couldn’t stop the smile that had creased his face the moment Rhys agreed to have dinner with him. Okay, so Rhys had said it wasn’t a date, but did he really mean it? Could he really resist the chemistry that sprung between the two of them every time their gazes met?
Ollie had been surprised when Rhys told him he didn’t date tourists and why. Ollie might have decided himself this year he was no longer up for casual encounters, but it certainly wasn’t because he had men in his life saying no. He wouldn’t say that word was one he never heard; it was just so rarely directed at him.
“So if I’m having dinner with your friends tonight, you better tell me about them.” Rhys asked, as they drove back to the resort. Rhys’s ute was well set up with new towels to go under still-wet board shorts.
Ollie answered, enjoying the opportunity to look over at the way Rhys’s slightly damp t-shirt strained across his wide chest. “They are good guys. Kris was my original friend in the group, but I’ve gotten close to the rest of the guys in the last year.”
“How close?” Rhys’s tone was joking, but his gaze was enquiring.
“Not that close.” Ollie immediately replied with a smile. “Jealous bastards the lot of them.”
He could have stopp
ed there, but something about Rhys encouraged him to be a little more honest than usual. “And even if they were receptive. I’ve never held much interest in being anyone’s third.”
Rhys’s smile was slow and understanding, even if he didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Of course not. It’s the competitor in you.”
There was something that moved Ollie in the confidence with which Rhys made the declaration. Most people looked at him and assumed that if the offer were wrapped in pretty enough paper there wasn’t much he wouldn’t turn down.
“Yeah, there is that.” Ollie conceded. “Anyway, Luke is a cop with a reasonably possessive nature, so I wouldn’t think along those lines if I were you either.”
“Fair enough,” Rhys replied. “Though a little bit like you, I find one man is enough for me these days. That’s when I can find a living, breathing, not awful specimen.”
“All those standards and I couldn’t pass,” Ollie teased.
“Shut up.” Rhys was blushing adorably. “You said something about some of the group being sober, so are you doing alcohol free dinners? I don’t want to offend anyone with my ordering.”
Ollie was impressed both that Rhys had remembered their first conversation and was also willing to fit in with his group. “One or two drinks are fine. Alcohol wasn’t the first drug of choice for either of them, but I think being around drunken people isn’t the easiest, so I always make sure to stay on the right side of sober. Any other type of drug is strictly forbidden in the group. No one will make a fuss, but both couples would quickly leave if any drug talk started.”
“That all sounds very sensible,” Rhys said with a quick smile. “None of that’s outside my normal Saturday night. For a surfer I’m remarkably pure these days. It might be a bit of a sad testimony of how boring my life has become, in that I’m more likely to be drinking turmeric shots than tequila. As for anything more mind altering, for a boy who came from the hills not even to have much of a taste for dope was probably a waste of geography.”
