Tracy

009:

The wet-suit pulled tightly as if she'd grown since she last wore it. That was confusing, since none of her other clothes fit differently, and she struggled with its tightness until like before, the hand was just there to help.

She startled up, having not heard him pull up even. He easily, and way too familiarly, settled her sleeves, and then stepped back companionably. "Hi."

Tracy's heart did not settle like her sleeve. Here he was---- the same dark good looks--- but minus the uniform--- he seemed less authoritative--- and more in a different ball-park. Like he didn't belong on the beach with her in the dark contemplating night surfing in the aftermath of a storm.

Thank God, he was dressed in a wet-suit--- the top hanging down, exposing his chest--- she looked down and settled the suit around her ankles, and zipped the sides. She did not want to analyze that chest.....

"Thanks for coming out with me."

"You asked me out, remember?"

She stood up, pulling the clinging suit out of her bum cheeks. "Well, I said I needed a surf buddy."

"You asked me out." He stated firmly and with a genuine smile in his voice. She knew he was teasing her, flirting with her. She knew how to flirt back, in different settings of course. This was unprecedented.

"If you want to look at it that way, then yes. But really, I just needed a surf buddy." She had stacked the two boards against the station wagon and now hefted one into her arms. Raine eyed her in amusement and she knew what he saw even if he was too polite to say so. She was too small to actually look good hauling the full-size board. It had always been this way. She hadn't grown much since she was thirteen and she'd been surfing with a full-size board since she was twelve.

She knew what it looked like... a walking surfboard with feet.

He didn't say anything.

She did hear him blow out his breath at her statement. "If you think that's why I'm here...."

"Aren't you?" She knew he wasn't. It would have been a nice fantasy to think he just wanted to be her friend and had come out of the goodness of his heart, automatically understanding the way her mind worked after eight years of twisted abuse and stardom.

Her feet hit the sand and she sighed in bliss. Something about her feet digging into that rain cold packed sand sent a shock of release through her body--- as she'd known it would.

She propelled herself toward the waves knowing another release of tension and stress would be forthcoming. The promise of the ocean had never let her down.

The streetlights disappeared behind them, and made the shoreline very hard to see, especially as it dipped down to where the water met the pebbly shells that rolled to cracked and pointed shards right before one plummeted onto their board and dipped cupped fingers into frigid water, getting splashed in the face, taking one for the hell of it, as another wave built far too close.

White water sparkled and shimmered---- glazed with foamy illumination. Tracy paddled quickly, the pressure of unused muscles and the rejuvenation of tired, cranky, sore mental faculties clashing into one thunderous ecstatic moment. That moment when all the cares of the world melted into the background and she was just a piece of the ocean, one minuscule particle. Nothing more, with no expectation except to flow and drift and float, swaying, taking what it dished without reserve. Nothing held back.

She could hear music, her ocean music, dull, background noise compared to the up to the minute radio station she played inside her head the rest of the time her feet touched land. Oh! Nothing compared.

She remembered too late, as she topped a swell further out past the breakers, that she was with somebody. She looked around and found him, kind of far away, sitting his board, not surfing with her. She lay back down and paddled over to him calling out now that her mind and body had relaxed and drained of unwanted energy.

"Sorry, I left you! The call of the sea was too strong! I had to be a part of it!"

Raine was sitting his board, legs dangling, hands resting lightly. "That's okay." He tossed his wet hair, sending off sparkles of moonlight.

"Thanks again for coming out here."

"My pleasure."

"So, you're an officer. Tell me again?"

"I'm Lieutenant Raine Maverick of the United States Navy. I'm twenty-nine. I'm currently on leave from my squadron to be an aviation instructor at the base in San Diego."

"At Miramar?" She didn't want to seem too ignorant... but she knew she was. All things military went right over her head. But she did know about Miramar. Her adopted brother, Sam, had always wanted to be a pilot and go to Top Gun, the prestigious aviation school at Miramar.

Raine paddled closer than the current allowed, and kept himself there, watching behind him for larger breakers.

"We just got off a float in the Mediterranean Sea."

"A float?" Tracy paddled closer also, smiling because they were floating right now and the words had double meanings.

"It's what an Air Craft Carrier does. We go on floats." His tone wasn't patronizing, although it easily could have been. "I'm currently part of VF 143 The Pukin Dogs."

"Pukin Dogs." She repeated slowly, not with a laugh like he might have expected, but with absolute lack of understanding why anyone would call themselves puking dogs.

His laugh rang out over the water and bounced off the pillars of the pier and the waves frothing there. "Pepper's Alignment? Why would a band call themselves that? It's just a name, Tracy."

"Pukin Dogs? If I saw a band called the Pukin Dogs I think I'd go another direction." She lay back down as she felt the pull of a good sized wave coming, and started paddling toward it. She was out here to surf, conversation was a sideline.

Waves at night looked different than in the day. They looked bigger than they were, and they blocked the hazy light of the moon or the stars or the highway. Tonight none of those things even made a dent in visibility. Tracy went by pure feel.

And this wave felt... like a mountain.

Half the battle of climbing a mountain was knowing when to give it your all, when to push and shove and claw and slide. Tracy did all of those things now. The tow yanked her quickly, the spray filled her fingers, and she trusted the wave to tell her when to fly.

She'd heard surfing described as letting go-- she did. Becoming one-- she did. Ethereal-- it was! Euphoric-- definitely. Time ceases to exist-- it did.

Before she hit the crest a million thoughts plagued her. As she paddled into the rushing water, less and less thoughts formed, and finally as she balanced and flew in ecstasy only one thought remained. Bliss! Pure bliss!

She rode the wave without another thought and then slid down it, came out the other side and pulled up and over the top. Another wave was close. She crested it, paddled out further and looked around for Raine Maverick.

He was there, distant, and silhouetted against the shore beyond her, standing, balanced, enough she could relive that fiery moment. She paddled toward him gleefully, ready to share that feeling with him, if no other.

Another wave called to her. Tracy turned and paddled out, catching it, soaring with it, trailing a hand in the backside of it, as she allowed the ocean to wash all her cares away, take her pain and her frustration and plunge them deep into inky blackness, below-- where the heavy weight of the sea captured them and kept them.

She wasn't sure when she realized she was in the water alone and that Raine had got out and was sitting on the tip of the wet sand with the board planted up like a shadowy beacon telling her he was done for now. Disappointment flared briefly but she was adult enough to know there was a give and take to these things. He hadn't come out here to surf. He'd come out here to meet her and talk.

It was time to go in.

******