In Waves | ✔️

47 | breaking point

"Hurry it up, Princess! We're losing daylight!"

"Stop calling me that!"

Nate laughs as I paddle to catch up with him. He hasn't stopped teasing me about winning Homecoming Princess all week. This surf lesson has been no exception.

I glide to a stop next to him sitting on his board, the ocean moving smoothly under us.

"As you wish." He puts on big, fearful eyes. "After all, I'm but a mere peasant among royalty. Who am I to disobey a princess?"

I shove him so hard he topples to the side, quickly finding balance to stay afloat.

"All right, I'm done! Hand to god." His grin fades as he rakes back his hair, gazing over the horizon. Entirely at ease.

This is the furthest he's taken me out to sea, and I couldn't be more on edge. Past the breaking waves, past the line where most people stop swimming, the water is stiller out here. Darker. A shark could be swimming right under us and we wouldn't be able to tell. My dangling legs are bait just waiting to be snapped off.

"I'm tired," I tell him. "And the sun's setting."

"I know. Nothing like it, right?" he muses, tilting back to take in the pink and gold hues surrounding us. "I've always thought that being in the ocean at sunset is what swimming through heaven must feel like."

"This is hell."

He doesn't look at me, he just smiles at the pessimism he expects from me out here, and I'd be lying if I claimed the beauty in what he said didn't strike a chord in me. But I'd only appreciate the beauty if I was on dry land.

"I think we should go back to shore," I urge.

"I think not."

"Nate."

"Lia."

"I'm going back to shore, with or without you."

"No you're not."

"Yes I am!" I shriek, my wetsuit constricting me more and more by the second. "What's the point of carrying on with this, anyway? All these lessons and I haven't even stood up properly! And I never will. I was kidding myself trying to surf. I'm the most athletically hopeless person in the universe, and from now on I'm just going to be a land baby like Clara!"

I lie on my stomach and begin a frantic paddle, wincing from my tender ribs. They're constantly bruised or tender these days. A result of pushing myself up on this damn board, over and over. Pushing myself to grasp a sport I will never grasp.

My hands cut through the water and I turn around before I'm met with resistance. "Let go of my board, Nathan!"

He drags it back, overpowering my paddles. "The only way you're getting to shore is if you surf there."

"Do you just tune me out when I talk?"

"Sometimes."

I throw him a glare and he smiles, moving my board next to his so we're facing each other.

He grabs my hands to stop the splashing. "I get it, okay? You're scared."

That's an understatement. It's as if a snake is coiling around my lungs, squeezing tighter the longer I look at the murky water. Sitting up, I slide my fingers from his. "I can't do it, Nate. I'm not cut out for this."

"I know it's worse out here," he says, his voice laced with understanding. "Being so far from shore would make loads of people freak out."

"Yeah, because there's valid reasons to freak out, which is why I'm going back. And not by surfing, because all I'd do is wipe out. Again. You know what surf lessons really are? Lessons in humiliation, that's what."