"The lineup was as good a place as any to sit and stew."
It wasn’t until the bar of wax slipped out of her hand, turning over several times before finding itself covered with sand, that Sam realized she’d been lost in thought. The sound of wax skipping over the deck of her board was usually something she couldn’t ignore. The welcomed silence of a dawn patrol session was always short-lived, ruined by the sound of one, two, then (too) many surfers readying their boards for the water. If her session had taken place later in the day while the city was awake, the waxing of her board would become a white noise that combines with the sounds of the whitewater and yields a temporary illusion of solitude. Today was different, though. When you’re in your own head, you hear nothing but yourself. You see bad times played over and over like some tele-novela where the female lead threatens suicide if her family tries to stand in the way of her love: a handsome stable boy, who, when he stares deep into her eyes, sees her true essence instead of her fortune.
As she paddled out, Sam wondered if tele-novelas had happy endings—never having actually watched one before. Before she could once again lose herself in questions surrounding blame, a small peak rose, heading toward her. It was still early enough to take the wave she was gifted without resorting to a whistle, a yell, or a potentially uncivil discussion about surf etiquette. She paddled harder than necessary, expecting the high tide to cause the shoulder to evaporate before it reached her. Upon realizing the shoulder would, in fact, hold, she slowed her strokes and angled left, deftly springing to her feet expecting a quick trim and kick-out before the wave, as usual, folded over on itself with a loud crash. Crash it didn’t. At least not immediately. Sam was instead greeted by a longer than average ride, which allowed her to take it all in – much the way the brain functions when it assumes death is imminent: a quick autobiography flashes before our eyes.
As she stepped closer to the nose, trying to outrun the whitewater and staying with what little shoulder remained, her present life, the life of today, yesterday, and the days when their union began to crack at its foundation, passed before her eyes. It was getting harder to look him in the eye; there was no there there. They both wondered if their marriage was worth fighting for. He thought it was. Sam believed differently, wanting instead to move on – freeing them both to exhale through teeth that would be, for the first time in years, unclenched.
Sam didn’t mind the swim in to retrieve the board.
A surfer without a leash is a surfer who likes to swim.
Someone once told her that, thinking himself clever in his sarcasm and somehow superior to the female surfer who had finally tired of his pointless flailing and taken what he deemed his wave, only to lose her board in the shore pound after executing a simple cheater five. A maneuver that he—who would quit surfing a year later after adding a larger board and a paddle to his arsenal—would never attempt to master. Her board washed onto shore face down against a large rock, as if posing for an especially graphic centerfold shot that accentuated its shape. She stared at its lines for a bit, carefully fondled its rails and thanked the surf gods for sparing her board . . . this time.
For a second or two, Sam debated whether she should just go home. Her heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t care if she surfed long peelers or Victory-at-Sea garbage. She didn’t care about much of anything anymore. There was too much complicating her life…too much threatening to bring her to her knees should she let down her guard long enough to allow the turbulent, warring emotions to set up housekeeping when she wasn’t looking. Sighing loudly, as was her habit once things began to fall apart, Sam tossed her board back into the water. The lineup was as good a place as any to sit and stew.
