Page 28 of This Could be Love

“Done with training for today?”

I nodded. “And you?” I looked at his board. “Ready for some more?”

“Always,” he replied with a strange glint in his eyes. And a voice that didn’t sound like his own. Darker, huskier.

I was still wondering whether his innuendo was intentional when he said, “You ever done it?”

“What?!” I said, shocked, while my body reacted out of all proportion to his brazenness.

“Have you ever done it?” Vince repeated, nodding his head at his surfboard.

“Oh, surfing!” I sighed and began to stutter. “N-no, n-not yet. Never.”

Oh god, how embarrassing. How ridiculously embarrassing.

“You want to give it a try?”

Somehow, the look in his eyes—dark, heavy—just didn’t seem to fit his question. But it certainly fit two of our strange encounters.

“I don’t think I can.”

“There’s only one way to find out.” I watched him walk down to the water. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Well, come on!”

For some reason my legs began to move on their own.

“But I don’t have a wet suit.”

“You don’t need one,” he replied casually.

“What about the jellyfish?”

“There aren’t any jellyfish here.”

Confused, I waded behind him to a place where small waves were breaking on a natural sandbank. Vince held the surfboard inposition and motioned for me to sit down. I couldn’t believe how effortlessly I managed to do so. Tying the leash around my ankle, he touched my skin, and a shiver ran through my body. I immediately crossed my arms across my chest. Oh…wow. He wasn’t the only one with something going on.

“And now?”

“Now you’re going to learn how to sit and wait for the right wave,” he said, laughing.

But from that moment on, none came. Which was strange. Very strange. The water gurgled calmly and peacefully around my knees while Vince stood next to me and looked skeptically out at the ocean.

“How long have you been surfing?”

He thought for a moment. “Ever since our first vacation here on Hawaii. I must have been…seven or eight. Jim taught me. And you? How long have you been playing tennis?”

I didn’t have to think at all, as it was a typical interview question. “I started at four.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Of course,” I replied, a little annoyed. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have kept with it.”

“I don’t think every athlete would say that about themselves. Especially not when they had such successful parents.”

“You googled me.”

A grin darted across his face.

“I was the one who wanted to go pro. Not my parents.”