Despite the small red and white plastic cooler on the floor by my feet, making me feel even more cramped, I smile and nod and say, “Yeah, it’s sweet,” thinking maybe I should have headed back to the condo after all.
But then as we head north up the highway, Chazz points out some of the landmarks, like Shark’s Cove, asking if I’ve been snorkeling yet and when I say no he looks at me, shocked, and says that if I’m going to snorkel, I have to snorkel at the cove.
“But, um, isn’t it dangerous?”
He shrugs. “It can be rocky, sure, but otherwise you should be okay.”
“But aren’t there, like, sharks?”
He laughs, shakes his head. “Nah, there aren’t any sharks. At least, none I’ve ever seen or heard about. You go farther out, yeah, you might run into a shark, but not in the cove.”
“So what’s there?”
“Fish you probably never heard of.” He squints at me. “You like fish?”
“I’ve eaten at Long John’s Silver once or twice.”
He laughs again. “Not what I’m talking about, babe. Okay, have you ever seen a butterfly fish?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about a parrotfish?”
“No.”
“A damselfish?”
I shake my head.
He squints at me again, one hand casually on the wheel. “You ever been to an aquarium?”
“In Baltimore once, yeah.”
“Then you’ve probably seen some of those fish. Still, nothing like seeing them in the cove. You have to promise me you’ll check it out before you leave. Promise?”
“Sure.”
“Say you promise.”
“I promise.”
He grins. “Yeah, you’ll love it. They got some really awesome stuff there. Like a goatfish. You ever see a goatfish?”
“No. Does it, um, look like a goat?”
He laughs again, this time smacking the steering wheel, and I have to admit it’s a great feeling making him laugh like that.
“Not quite like a goat,” he says, “but they’ve got whiskers like a goat. Only they’re not really whiskers, not like a catfish, but these things called chin barbels that they use to feel around for food.”
“Do they scream like a goat?”
He pauses a moment, frowning. “You know, I’m not sure about that. I never heard one scream.”
Okay, so sarcasm isn’t his strong suit.
We pass Shark’s Cove and keep heading north. My hair’s not tied up and blows in the wind.
“Where are we going?”
He grins at me, reaches over to pat my knee. “You’ll see.”
He doesn’t leave his hand on my knee for more than two seconds, so I’m not sure what to read into it, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Not too long after, he turns off the highway and parks and kills the engine.
“We’re here,” he says.
I look out past the trees at just another beach. “What’s here?”
Chazz steps out of the convertible. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He leads me down the walkway to the sand. Again, I’m not a beach bunny, so one beach basically looks like every other beach on the island. I’m not sure what’s so special about this one until Chazz points out at the ocean.
“This,” he says, “is the Banzai Pipeline.”
The sky is clear and the moon is bright, making it possible to see a few people out on the water. Some of them have glow sticks attached to their boards. A few other people are on the beach, watching the water.
Chazz says, “The Pipe is considered one of the ten deadliest waves in the world.”
“You’ve surfed here?”
“A few times, yeah. But I never went full in, you know? I’d just—” He pauses, shakes his head. “Forget it.”
“No, what?”
He looks at me for a second, as if debating whether or not to continue, and then sighs. “See, I haven’t been surfing very long. It’s only been less than a year now since I moved out here.”
“Where did you move from?”
“Kansas.” He grins at me. “Can you believe it? I never even saw the ocean until I was in high school and some friends and me drove down to the Gulf of Mexico during the summer. I mean, okay, the Gulf isn’t the ocean, but it was the largest amount of water I’d ever seen.” He shakes his head. “It was amazing. I don’t mean to sound corny or whatever, but it was amazing.”
A large wave comes in, bringing with it two surfers, and there are hoots and laughter out on the water, a few people on the sand even clap, and then it goes quiet again as everybody waits for the next wave.
“After that,” Chazz says, “I started learning so much about the ocean. I learned about surfing and decided that that’s what I wanted to do someday. My parents thought I was crazy. They wanted me to go to college and take business classes.” He snorts. “Could you see me working behind a desk all day? Nah, it wasn’t for me. But I agreed to go. I applied to all these colleges in California, not because I cared about college, but because their schools were near the beach. I ended up going to Allan Hancock, which is a little college just outside Santa Barbara. Lasted only two semesters. I flunked out because I was surfing most of the time. My parents were pissed, which I guess was to be expected, and so I said fuck it and bought a plane ticket and flew out here. Say, where do you go to school?”
“Huh?”
“What college,” he says. “I’m guessing you’re here on some kind of spring break, right?”
Before I can stop myself, I say, “Georgetown.”
“Nice.” Chazz looks impressed.
I flash him a smile. “I’m just a freshman this year.”
“Ah, I gotcha. So that means you’re, what, nineteen?”
“Yep.”
“Too young to drink then, huh?”
“Unfortunately.”
Chazz looks around the beach like it’s crowded, leans in close to whisper, “Well, I got some beers in the car. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“So you come out here with friends?”
“Yeah, just some friends from school. But they haven’t been much fun since we’ve been here.”
“Do they have boyfriends? Because I can wrangle up some guys, we can all hang
