Bobbing under the water from time to time as she swam out, Julianne was so immersed in the adrenaline rush that she barely felt her body collide with the board of another surfer waiting for a wave.
“Oops. Sorry about that, I’m a newbie,” Julianne apologized, laughing at her awkward collision and wiping water out of her eyes as she looked up. When she saw the face of the board’s owner, her jaw dropped.
“Oh my God!” It couldn’t be. It was just too surreal.
She’d met this guy for five perfect minutes at a party, and now he was popping up again the next day? These things only happened to Cinderella.
Remi’s eyes were the size of silver dollars and his eyebrows were knitted together in confusion. He was wearing board shorts, and his hair was still damp from his last dunk. He sat astride his surfboard with his bare calves dangling into the water, and his fingers absentmindedly drumming on the board’s surface. Jules realized with a shock of adrenaline that he’d been in the pack of surfers she’d been admiring earlier. He kept opening his mouth mechanically but no sounds came out.
“Um. Wow. Um. Just … um … wow. What are you doing here?” Julianne stammered.
Remi opened and closed his mouth a few more times. He looked like a goldfish reaching for his fishy-flakes. A particularly hot goldfish.
“Are you okay? Are you lost? Are you suffering from sunstroke?” she went on, half-laughing, and fully hoping that she wasn’t hallucinating from the sun herself.
“I’m, uh, fine. Totally fine. Just … surprised.” Remi recovered quickly, running his fingers through his dark hair. Even squinting into the sun, his eyes were huge and liquid.
“Yeah, me too. If I remember correctly, you don’t usually make your big entrances upright.” Jules laughed, trying to play it cool even though her heart and her stomach were tumbling over each other and leapfrogging up into her throat.
Remi blushed, which of course made Julianne blush.
He looked slightly off his game—antsy and utterly unac-customed to the sun after a long, gray, Seattle spring.
Even in the bone-melting heat, Julianne felt a chill run up her spine.
“Were you … ?” Remi’s voice trailed off, but Julianne followed his eyes toward the shore and knew what he was asking.
“Yeah, actually. Do you … ?” She laughed and tipped her head back toward the beach.
“Sure.” Remi beamed, sliding off his board and back into the cool water.
As they swam toward the sand, Julianne was delighted that talking to Remi still came just as easily as it had at the Malibu party.
“The waves were awesome today,” Remi noted happily.
“They’ve been beautiful so far this summer,” Jules agreed. “It’s a good sign.”
“Is there some sort of Palisades folklore about what you can learn from a summer of good waves? Some sort of Southern Californian old wives tale?” Remi teased.
“Oh, yeah, definitely.” Julianne played along. “See how the waves are more rounded today?” Remi stopped paddling and looked to either side of him before nodding. “That means there’s only a fifty percent chance of a shark attack,” Julianne intoned dramatically before making a sudden grab for his arm. Startled, Remi let out a yelp. “Gotcha!” Julianne winked.
Remi laughed and splashed Julianne with an armful of water. “You learn something new every day around here.” He winked back before hefting himself onto his board and beginning to paddle. “Race you to shore!”
As Julianne and Remi walked out of the ocean and onto the beach, seawater trailing from their hair down their backs, Julianne pointed out some of the Palisades beach highlights. “Over there is where the Labor Day carnival used to be held every summer.” She pointed to a pier about a hundred yards down the beach. “Now it’s held on the boardwalk by the Fishtail. Have you been to the Fishtail yet?” Remi shook his head. “Oh, you definitely have to check it out. Everyone hangs out there in the summer. They have awesome live music. Let me know if you want to check out a show or something,”
she finished shyly, casting her eyes toward the sand under her feet. “Oh! And over there …” Julianne started the tour back up again, her enthusiasm for the beach and for her town overwhelming any awkwardness. She pointed up the beach toward a cliff, under which a bunch of younger kids were playing Ultimate Frisbee.
“When we were in elementary school, we would have our ‘girls-only club’ meetings in the rocks under those cliffs. The ‘boys-only club’ was, like, three feet away.”
She grinned and shrugged as they approached her easel.
“So, we’re here.”
“Well, thanks for the tour.” Remi grinned. “Would you mind some company while you do your thing?”
“I don’t know,” Julianne teased. “The element of surprise has really become the hallmark of hanging out with you. I don’t know if I could do without it.”
As she was finishing her sentence, Remi turned and started walking away. “Hey! Where are you going?”
Julianne called to his back. Just as suddenly as he’d walked away, Remi turned around and strolled over to Julianne’s easel.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Remi started again, feigning shock. “Do you come here often?” He arched his eyebrows, clearly amused with himself.
Julianne met his line and raised him a cliché. “Sure, I come here all the time, just hoping to run into someone tall, dark, and clumsy.”
“Run into, eh? Didn’t your sister say the same thing the other night?” Remi cocked his head toward her and squinted, as if hoping she wouldn’t vanish into thin air if he blinked. Julianne knew that look—she was wearing the same one.
“Probably. It’s the Kahn sense of humor. Gives us away every time. I think it’s the by-product of seventeen years spent in a very small space together—eventually we’ll turn into the same person. Me, my dad, and Chloe will all morph into one huge Mega-Kahn.” She absentmindedly picked at the stickers covering her water bottle, peeling the edges away so that the Nalgene logo
