But now she was older, and she could guess at how lonely her father had been all these years. Lisa was nice. She was pretty, even beautiful, she was smart, and she was kind. Beth could understand why her father liked Lisa.
But Lisa was Theo’s mom. Would Beth be as upset about her father dating Lisa if Theo was still out on the West Coast or married to someone else? And why was Beth so adolescent over Theo anyway? He was handsome, but was she shallow to care about that? No. No, even in high school she’d crushed on Theo Hawley. He was kind, never a bully. He was smart, too, though not a super brain like his sister. If anything, now that Beth was searching her memories, she thought Theo had been kind of…lost. He’d been everything—prom king, football quarterback leading the team to victory, head of the Clean Team that walked Nantucket’s beaches and streets, picking up litter. But she remembered an occasional melancholy in his eyes.
It had always been Theo for her, but she’d hidden it, because she didn’t dare let anyone know her feelings. Atticus chose Beth, and all her girlfriends were crazy with envy and curiosity, because Atticus was mysterious, the dark prince, the tortured poet, his black curls hiding half his eyes, those eyes as blue and deep as the sky. He needed her, and that was a powerful pull. Atticus had confessed to her his most secret fears, his depressions, his anxieties, and toward the end, his discovery of OxyContin.
After Atticus died, Beth discovered that for her, grief felt like fear, as if she herself were trapped in the earth, but alive, unable to claw her way to air. For a long time, she lived every hour and minute with the words if only scratching through her mind. If only she had slept with Atticus, would that have kept him from wanting to die? If only she had pressured Theo to help Atticus, maybe together they could have saved him? If only she had told Atticus’s parents that he was using OxyContin, buying it from some older guy who hung around the high school, shooting hoops. If only she hadn’t really wanted to be with Theo, because Atticus had been so sensitive, he probably had guessed her true feelings.
Now here they all were, so many years later, and when she’d been alone with Theo in the Ocean Matters office, she had wanted so much to touch him. To take his hands and talk to him for hours, about everything. To kiss him.
He’d seemed pleased enough to be around her. Sometimes when their eyes met, his look stopped her heart. But Theo stopped every woman’s heart. She was too serious and he was too lighthearted to make a long-term relationship work.
She came out of her reverie to see her father sitting there, waiting for a response.
“You’re right, Dad,” Beth said softly. “It’s cool that you’re happy.” She rose from the couch, took her mug to the sink, dutifully rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher, kissed her father good night, and went up the stairs to her room.
She wouldn’t allow herself to be involved with Theo—big freaking chance. Theo could have any woman he wanted, plus he loved the ocean on the other side of the country and would no doubt return there where the women were all fit and tanned. She needed to knock herself sideways, off her obsession with Theo, and she had to find a way to do it.
In her bedroom, she studied herself in her full-length mirror. She was on the slim side and she was pretty enough. She was not completely unexperienced with men. There had been two, and she had almost loved them. Just not quite. Besides, she planned to live here all her life, though that didn’t mean she had to settle down right now. She could play around, she could experiment, she could be frivolous—maybe she could have an affair with Ryder! He was handsome, and they’d be seeing each other often, and there wasn’t a chance that he’d be serious with her, but she didn’t want serious, she wanted fun. Summer fun, just like everyone else!
nineteen
Theo slept late again and woke grumpy. He showered and pulled on board shorts and a tee. He was aware of Juliet in her bedroom talking to someone on the phone. In the kitchen, he brewed himself a cup of coffee, made toast, and used up most of the jar of strawberry jam. As he ate, he heard Dave and Tom chatting and laughing in the living room.
Loneliness and a sense of uselessness nibbled at him. He put his toast back on the plate, suddenly ashamed of pigging out on the great glob of jam.
The only thing Theo considered himself good at was surfing, and he was hardly an ace at that. Surfing was always challenging, even dangerous, and while they might look the same, each wave was different. A few times, Theo had caught the tube, surfing inside the barrel of a humongous wave, with water around him in a loop as he sped just in front of the crash. In those moments, he’d experienced the almost religious high of being part of the spectacular unnamable energy that created the wave and lit the wave from the sun and made his body and the sun and the wave one quantum whole. Those few times he’d felt exalted, way out of body at the same time he was totally in his body. He’d felt touched. Chosen. Blessed.
But those rides in the tube were few and far between. He’d never belong to the elite core of surfers, no matter how many years he tried. And when he was slammed into the ocean floor, he’d felt more than hurt—he’d felt rejected. Dismissed. Damned.
Without surfing, what was he? He worried about whether or not he would ever feel brave enough to surf again. His mind played over and over in an endless loop the shock of that monster wave slamming him into the ocean floor. The knockout punch bashed the wind and all sense out of him, and for a long moment he’d squeezed his eyes shut, knowing he was about to die. He didn’t die. The water lifted him up, and he swam to the shore, his leash tugging his board with him. Everything hurt. He’d never wiped out like that before, and he was embarrassed and angry at his weakness.
Often when someone wiped out, the guys gathered around, slapping one another on the back, shouting encouragement or sarcastic insults meant to get a surfer back up and in. This time, Theo’s left arm hurt like hell, and he couldn’t shake it off. Finally, Eddie drove him to a hospital where the fracture was diagnosed and his arm set in a brace and a sling, and he was actually glad, because Eddie could tell the others that the wave that slammed Theo had broken his arm, allowing him to retain some kind of dignity.
The doctors said not to try to surf until he’d had his arm x-rayed to check that the fracture was healed. That had been fine with Theo, but now he hated himself for just sitting around doing nothing.
For being a coward.
He was afraid of going into the ocean. The waves on the east side of the country were tame compared to San Diego, but still, Theo felt no pull. He didn’t even want to swim at Sesachacha, which was a waveless pond. The summer was getting hotter but he had no urge to cool off even in the shallow shores of Jetties Beach.
Maybe this fear was temporary. Maybe.
Pushing away from the table, Theo rose and wandered into the living room. “Hey, guys.” He was impressed by Dave and Tom, how contained they were, how deliberately they moved. They looked to be in their early forties, probably married with children, and Theo felt like a douche around them.