I’m pretty sure he was about to break up with me on the beach, and now I wonder if I should have just let him do it. Rather than sit in my room so I could stress and obsess, I call Sophie and ask her to meet me at the pier for some intensive training.
“What’s wrong?” Sophie asks when she sees the expression on my face.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” I say. “I just want to work.”
She nods. “Okay. Let’s work.”
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but my new surfboard doesn’t just look amazing. It is amazing. Mo told me that because our styles are so similar, she knew just how to shape it. (We’ll call that the understatement of the year.) It’s perfect in every way and feels like an extension of my body whenever I’m in the water. At first I was worried that it had too much curve to it, but that curve has opened up my ability to attack my cutbacks. That’s what I’m working on today and the reason I called Sophie. She’s great at them.
The cutback is probably the most important surfing maneuver of all. As the energy of the wave pushes you forward, you can get too far in front of it. When that happens you have to turn, or cutback, into the wave and go against it until you’re closer to the power source. It lets you ride the wave longer and gives you the power to do bigger and better turns and maneuvers.
If you do a cutback right, you look like you belong in the Bolshoi Ballet. If you do it wrong, you look like my Uncle Barry doing the chicken dance at a wedding reception. After thirty minutes I’m looking more like Barry than Baryshnikov. I think this is partly due to the fact that I’m trying to add some flair to the maneuver in order to look good for the judges, but also because of my Ben funk.
“So tell me,” I ask Sophie as we sit on our boards in the lineup, waiting for the next set of waves. “What am I doing wrong?”
She gives me that Sophie smirk and asks, “Are we talking about surfing or Ben?”
I think about it for a moment before answering. “Surfing.”
“I think you’re trying too hard. The thing that’s so great about your technique is how smooth it is. But today you look uncomfortable, like you’re fighting the waves.”
I nod as I make mental notes.
“When you drop down into that turn, try leaning back more, right up to the point where you feel like you’re going to fall into the wave. And then picture big round circles in your mind as you start to whip around. It will make the move more fluid and help you pick up speed. No wasted energy.”
I think about this for a moment. “Okay,” I say. “That all makes sense. I think I can do that.”
“I know you can do it,” she says, with just the right amount of enthusiasm in her voice.
We look back at the ocean and all we see are pancakes. There are no real waves coming our way, so we just bob quietly for a few moments until I break the silence.
“All right,” I say with a smile. “What am I doing wrong with Ben?”
She thinks about it for a moment. “The same thing. I think you’re trying too hard. You look uncomfortable.”
“It’s not just a look,” I say. “I am uncomfortable. It used to be that when we walked on the beach our hands fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It was just perfect. But ever since he came back from Wisconsin, there’s been a distance between us. Physical and emotional. I keep hoping it will go away, but it doesn’t.”
“Do you think it’s because of what happened when he went home?” she asks. “Is he freaked out because of his parents’ divorce?”
“Maybe.” I shrug. “I have no way of knowing. He doesn’t talk about it, and I’m too scared to ask.”
“I understand him not volunteering it,” she says. “But you can’t be scared to ask him something. If you’re a couple, you should be able to ask him anything you want. Don’t be shy. You know what happens to timid surfers?”
“They wipe out.”
“You bet they do. It’s the same with boys. If you’re timid, you wipe out. Now show me that cutback.”
I see a set of waves coming right at us and pick out the one that’s just for me. I catch it, and as I ride along the shoulder just ahead of where it’s breaking, I think about the advice that Sophie gave me. I lean back farther and farther. At first it feels like I’m going to fall off the surfboard, but instead of falling I start picking up an amazing amount of speed. I shoot out in front of the break and do a wide sweeping turn known as a roundhouse. I can hear Sophie squealing with delight and cheering in the distance. After another hour of practice it’s almost second nature.
By the time we’re done, I’m exhausted. The practice has taken my mind off Ben, and the fact that my cutback has improved so much at least gives me something positive for the day.
“You own that move,” Sophie says as we carry our boards back toward the shop. “You need to be that bold with Ben.”
“I’ll try,” I say honestly. “But that’s easier said than done.”
“All the great things are.”
Throughout the week I try my best to be bold with Ben. It’s not my default setting, but I’m determined to do whatever I can to make things right. It works best one morning when I convince him to come out for another lesson. At first he’s reluctant, but I’m able to fill the lulls in conversation with surf talk. Then the instruction starts to pay off, and he catches a few waves in a row. This is without a doubt the happiest I’ve seen him since he’s come back from Wisconsin. And best of all, he doesn’t pearl and end up with a bloody face this time.
I try to extend this emotion when we finish, so I tell him that I’m taking him out for lunch to celebrate his success. When he says that he really should get to work, I say, “I won’t take no for an answer.”
This is me being bold. This is also me being stupid, because he really does have a lot of work to do. We’re only a few bites into our pizza when he gets an angry phone call from his uncle, wondering why he’s late for work. Lunch ends abruptly and this blah vibe carries over into everything we do for the next few days. I pick a movie for us to see and it’s terrible. I arrange a picnic on his lunch break and we get rained out. And unlike the movies, there’s no romantic gazebo to hide under. Karma is doing everything it can to keep us apart.
On Tuesday we hit rock bottom.
Ben arrives at Surf Sisters with the summer campers, but we can’t let any of them in the water because there’s a rip current. It’s hard because everything looks fine on the surface of the water and the kids don’t understand. This makes them cranky, and when I try to convert the lesson so that it works on the beach, it all falls flat. Their bad mood boils over into mine, and I wrap up the lesson a half hour early.
“We’re done?” Ben asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve stretched it out as much as I can without going in the water.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?” he asks. “The van won’t be here to pick them up for another thirty minutes.”
I’m sure that I will look back on this moment as a lost opportunity. But my funk keeps me from coming up with any creative solution to the problem. So, instead of saying, “We can go shell hunting,” or something like that, I say, “I’m sure you’ll figure out something.”
He shakes his head and asks, “Why are you being this way?”
“Because I can’t change the ocean current,” I snap. “And I can’t magically put kids in a good mood. And I sure can’t seem to make you happy about anything.”
It is totally irrational, and I can’t believe it as I hear the words come out of my mouth. But that’s what I say. I can’t really read Ben’s reaction. I’m not sure if he’s angry or just confused, but I am totally off the rails. Luckily, Sophie has come down to help with the lesson, and she distracts the kids before they get to watch me break down.