The Night the Waves Were Electric
Page 7
“I’m... what?” I said, looking at my parents.
“Don’t you dare,” my father said, coming around the breakfast island. I was afraid he was going to shove Felix, but Felix bounded around him nimbly, pulling open the curtains, twisting the lock, and sliding the glass door aside.
Out he went, dashing across the sand toward the sea, and I followed, desperate to get out of the conversation with my parents, desperate to see what had Felix so excited.
“Foster!” I heard my father call as we ran, but we were soon out of earshot, and a quick glance over my shoulder told me he wasn’t following.
“What’s going on?” I shouted ahead to Felix. He turned and slowed, running backwards, showing off. He was grinning wildly, excitedly, in a way I hadn’t seen yet, his entire body vibrating with unbridled joy.
As I caught up to him, he said, “Don’t you see it?”
“See what?” I asked without looking, and then I stared past him at the ocean, drawing up short.
The waves were blue.
Not the kind of blue that waves normally are during the day, with sunlight shining off them. Oh, no.
It was pitch-black out, no artificial lights on this part of the beach. Most of the ocean was a shapeless void, an emptiness that stretched out into infinity. But the waves were lit up blue. They were glowing. Every time another wave crested, it illuminated from within, glimmering, glittering.
“What the hell?” I said. We were nearly at the waterline.
Felix pointed down by our feet. Every time we stepped, every time we kicked up said, our footprints glowed, too, electrified, like we were walking along a fantasy landscape made of light. I laughed in spite of myself, disturbing as much sand as I could while I walked, marveling.
“What’s going on?” I said, near-shouting to be heard over the sound of the waves crashing around us.
“Bioluminescent algae!” he crowed triumphantly. “Remember the red stuff that was floating around us before? It hit me what it was! It lights up at night!”
And then he tossed his knapsack onto a dune and dove into a wave, disappearing beneath the glimmering water. I watched, and when he re-emerged farther out, he was surrounded by a shining blue halo.
I ripped off my shirt and dove in after him, colliding with a cresting blue wave. I didn’t even brace for the cold. It was still relatively warm, anyway, and I was too overcome with wonder to worry about the temperature. Electricity seemed to zip along the crest, starting where the wave began to break and then arcing out along the churning water until the whole thing shone bright blue.
I swam toward Felix’s patch of light, leaving a shining trail with every stroke of my arm. There was no sandbar this time; he was just treading water. When I reached him, he tilted, floating on his back, creating explosions of light any time he splashed a little.
“This is incredible,” I said. Out here, caught between the stars and the glittering, electric-blue water, it felt as though we were floating in the universe itself, space and time seeming to stretch and contort around us.
He looked ethereal floating there, his impossibly blue eyes glinting with the light of the impossibly-blue waves we were surrounded by.
After a few minutes laying on our backs looking up at the stars, he swiveled around and pulled me in to his chest, holding me up while we kicked to stay afloat.
“Thanks for coming out here with me,” he said. “I couldn’t resist, once I realized what was happening and once I heard how your father was talking to you.”
“Felix, I want to tell you something,” I said. “About why I was crying this morning. About why I left New York.”
He met my eyes, radiating support and empathy, and held me tighter, keeping us afloat.
“I dated someone for two years and a couple of months ago, he...” I hadn’t said this out loud since it happened, had barely even let myself think it, and now I found myself struggling to put it into words. “He... overdosed. And they think it was on purpose.”
“My god, Foster,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Was I crying? I wasn’t sure if the saltiness I could taste on my lips was from the ocean or my own tears. Maybe both.
“I’m so grateful I met you,” I said when I found my voice again. “For the first time since that all happened, today I feel like things might be okay again someday.”
“It will,” he said. “I swear.”
“I know dead boyfriends aren’t exactly the sexiest of the baggages...” I grumbled apologetically, and he cackled, that carefree, open-mouthed laugh that made me want to spend the rest of my life giving him reasons to show it to me.
He kissed me, and in his lips I felt the promise of a thousand more kisses just like it.
But for now, for a while, he just held me. His arms felt strong and reassuring, and I felt safer there in his embrace, enveloped by him and by the water and the light, than I had perhaps in my entire life.
About The Author
AJ Lucas
A.J. Lucas is the pen name of a 30 year old living in Los Angeles. He's a first-time romance novella writer, although he's published other things under a different name. He loves the genre, and once the characters of Foster and Felix came to mind, they wouldn't leave him alone until he got them down on paper!
Books In This Series
Venice Nights
A m/m romance series about a surfer named Felix and the college boy, Foster, who he falls in love with on the sands of Venice Beach.
The Night Before We Met
The night before he met Foster, carefree usually-dominant surfer Felix had a wild time in bed with a burly, strong man, exploring his submissive side. In this prequel short story to the Venice Nights romance series, meet Felix before Foster, before he believed he could fall in love, back when his appetites were ravenous and he spent his nights chasing men as much as he spent his days chasing waves.