Page 87 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry
Except ye cannae fucking surf.
“Not as easy as it looks, is it, good buddy?” Nat said.
Callum muttered under his breath before hauling himself back onto the board, feeling the drag of his full-body wetsuit against the textured surface.
“Oh, don’t mind him,” Jory said, pulling herself onto her own board. “He’s a sore loser. Always has been.”
Callum glared at her, which only made her smile as she flicked water off her fingertips at him.
“Something you should know about your business partner here, Nat, is that if he’s not good at something right away, he quits.”
“I dinnae quit!” Callum protested.
“You do!” Jory said with a laugh. “You do! If you don’t master something thirty seconds after starting it, you abandon it completely.”
Callum scoffed. “Name one thing.”
“Fishing.”
“I fished!”
“No,Ifished. And remember when you were going to start making your own weapons? You built a forge behind the house and used it exactly once.”
“I didnae have the time!”
“And what about the time you decided you were going to make tallow candles?”
He would have blushed if he could have. He remembered the basket of candle wicks that he’d bartered for, the vat of tallow he’d gotten in trade. He remembered the forge, too, which he eventually put walls onto and used as a barn for the horse and chickens. The failed fishing attempts. The abandoned loaves of bread. Monuments to his failures. The artifacts of these mis-attempts, discarded almost immediately, had taken up space in corners and under furniture until Jory had finally gotten rid of them.
And then there was his home in Scotland, where the greatest monument to his greatest failure of patience of all hung on the wall in a glass case. He swallowed thickly and hung his head at the thought.
Jory paddled over, bringing her board directly next to his so that their thighs touched. She reached out and gripped his forearm.
“Hey,” she said, her voice soft and warm. “I was only teasing you.”
He lifted his chin and looked at her. “I havenae given up everything I’m bad at right away.”
“Oh, really?” Jory said, a smile quirking one side of her mouth. “Do tell.”
“I havenae given up trying to win you back.”
The full moon was a silver disc in a velvet sky, casting sharp, glinting slices of light on the water’s surface. The glow shone on Jory’s face, her eyes bright and alive.
“Callum,” she started, but he didn’t want to hear what she would say next. He didn’t want to hear her let him down easy or make promises she couldn’t possibly keep. And so he grabbed her waist and hauled her onto his board, onto his lap, her legs wrapping around his hips as she straddled him. He kissed her, a press of lips that softened and deepened with the same rhythm as the sea.
Their bodies rocked into one another as the waves rocked against the surfboard, lifting from beneath. And as he kissed her, he appreciated that weightless moment at the crest before the board slipped down the other side of the wave, the same weightless moment when she slid her tongue against his before retreating.
“Thank you,” she said, resting her forehead against his.
Somewhere between the talk about armor forging and Callum wanting to eat Jory alive, Nat had left. Callum was going to buy him more suits than he’d be able to wear in a year.
“I hope you had a good time, mo cridhe,” he said, his hands resting on her thighs, feeling her muscles shift and bunch beneath his palms.
“The best time. I love the ocean.”
She always had. It made even more sense now. He remembered sitting on the beach and watching her swim, his heart in his throat when she went out so far from shore that he could barely see her head. More fish than woman, he’d thought to himself as he sat and repaired nets on the sand, anxiety clawing through his body like a rabid animal until she returned to him. How she was happiest by the water, in the water. How she’d been sitting on the dark beach when he’d found her, when he’d…
He pulled her against his chest, and she went easily, wrapping her arms around his waist and holding him, letting herself be held.
