Return to the Beach House (6 page)

Eventually this behavior became her unconscious pattern, a quilt she cut and sewed and put together as easily as she breathed.

“You said there were bikes in the garage?”

“Yes.”

“And we can use them?”

“Yes.”

“Mind if I take off for a while?”

A half dozen warnings darted through her mind like bees at a hummingbird feeder. She’d planned to have him take her to Monterey to pick up her car, but it could wait until after dinner. Kyle had purposely parked it at the back of the lot in case she got tied up and couldn’t get back earlier.

“Of course not,” she managed.

He grinned. “Good job, Grams—not one ‘be careful’ or ‘wear your helmet’ or ‘be sure to take a water bottle.’ ”

He’d started calling her “Grams” six months ago instead of the more formal “Grandmother” he’d used all his life. She was getting used to it, but that didn’t mean she liked it. “I’ve got my finger in the dam. You better get out of here before it breaks and all my tired clichés start rushing out.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Would it help if I told you I’ll be careful and that I’ll turn on my phone in case you need to reach me?”

“Immensely.”

Before heading to the garage, Christopher dropped his duffle bag in the bedroom and changed into an old pair of shorts and a faded T-shirt with R
OCK
THE
V
OTE
printed on it.

His grandmother had texted him a dozen pictures of the house and the beach, but none had done them justice. There were views of the ocean from every room at the back of the house. For a kid who’d lived his first eight years in New York and the next nine in the middle of farm country north of the city, he’d never understood why being near the ocean felt like coming home.

He went to the window and stared out, seeing up close what he’d caught glimpses of from the plane as it circled in a holding pattern, waiting its turn to land. The shore here wasn’t like Long Island, where he and his mother and grandmother had spent at least part of their summers every year in a rental house. This was more like the part of Maine where James had his summer home, where he and Christopher’s mother had been married.

From what Christopher had been able to glimpse on the ride to the beach house from the airport, the shoreline was covered with rocks, with an occasional narrow ribbon of sand—a long way from the Hollywood version of California.

This was the first place he’d gone where there would be no stories of his father or grandfather. Virgin territory. According to his mother, neither of them had ever spent any time on the West Coast. That gave him at least three states where he could be himself, where he could find the Christopher who was nothing like his father or grandfather. Where he could explore and discover the bits and pieces of himself hidden behind the need his mother and grandmother had to see the men they loved reflected back at them whenever they looked at Christopher.

The doubt that kept him awake at night was the scary possibility of discovering there wasn’t anything to find.

Expecting bikes rescued from a secondhand store, Christopher was impressed when he discovered two brand-new Novaras, the same bike he used at home. A cupboard over the bikes held an assortment of helmets, and a note tacked to the cupboard door warned that helmets were mandatory in California.

Starting out slow in order to take in his surroundings, Christopher stopped at an overlook and sent a text to Alison telling her that he was heading south to do a little exploring and would be back before dark.

“Dinner?” she answered. “I could go to the store and pick up anything you’d like. Is there something you’ve been craving?”

“Sandwich is good.”

“I have a book that says there’s a bike trail that runs along the shoreline. Great views. Should b amazing. Have fun.”

“Already am.”

“It’s been too quiet. I’m really glad u r here. Any plans for tomorrow besides taking me to Monterey to get my car?”

“Me too. Talk about plans L8R.”

“Yes. Of course. You need to pay attention to traffic. Lots of people on bikes around here, but lots of tourists who don’t pay attention too. Pls be careful.”

“K.”

“Bye.”

Knowing she would wait for a response that none of his friends would expect, he texted: “B4N.”

It had taken him six months to get her to use her iPhone for something other than making calls, and another six months to get her to give Angry Birds a rest and send a text. She’d taken to it faster than he’d expected, but he still had a ways to go in teaching her the benefits of brevity.

The traffic light turned red. He turned right and three blocks later was at the ocean. Right away he spotted the trail his grandmother had told him about that ran along the top of the cliff. This time he turned left and a couple of miles later wound up in a large parking lot filled with SUVs, vans, and cars with racks on their roofs. Half had surfboards being loaded or unloaded by people in various stages of putting on or taking off wet suits. A quick look at the shoreline confirmed that the other half were in the water.

Christopher threaded his way through the gathering, looking for a place where he could lock the bike and watch the action. Here was the sand and surf he’d anticipated. And it was everything he’d hoped it would be.

For him, this was the California of his dreams. He had no trouble ignoring the Hollywood scene or the cities that had songs written about them. He could even take a pass on Yosemite and the other parks that drew bumper-to-bumper tourists. And it wasn’t as if he’d never seen an ocean.

What he’d imagined when he found out he was going to California was the freedom to wear his hair long or grow a beard or bus tables at a seaside restaurant where everyone understood it was more important to hit the waves when the surf was up than it was to clear dishes.

If he was ever consumed by any real ambition other than riding, he wanted it to be lit by a fire of his own making. He didn’t give a damn about controlling the money in the half dozen investment accounts that would come to him when he turned twenty-five. It wasn’t his money. He hadn’t earned it. And yet he was going to spend the next five years learning how to make that money grow even faster than it already had—and the rest of his life doing the same thing for others.

It didn’t matter whether it was bars of gold or an elephant sitting on his chest, the result was the same. Suffocation.

“Hey, just like my friend’s. What do you think?”

Christopher looked up to see a kid with a wet suit unzipped to his waist checking out the bike.

“It’s okay,” he said, high praise in his circle of friends.

The kid was a walking, talking California advertisement—the kind Christopher had pictured when he thought about what it would be like to grow up out here. He had sun-streaked blond hair that hung below his shoulders, a surfboard tucked under his arm, and a look that said his dream was to ride the biggest badass waves on every continent that had them.

“I have a friend who’s selling his,” he said, “but I think he wants too much for it.”

“Wish I could help, but as long as it gets me where I want to go, I’m satisfied.”

“Yeah, that’s all I’m looking for too.”

“What’s it like out there?” Christopher asked.

“Mostly ankle-snappers, but you take what you can get.”

“No—I mean, what’s it feel like?”

He studied Christopher for several seconds. “I wouldn’t have picked you for one of the summer people.”

Christopher decided it was a compliment—of sorts. “Thanks. I guess.”

“It feels like I’m able to take a deep breath for the first time in months. A little like fresh powder in backcountry. And a whole lot like being with my own people again. But you have to understand, I spent the last nine months on a campus filled with people who think if you’re not batting or throwing or kicking a ball, it’s not a sport.”

“Where back east?”

“MIT. Stanford was my first choice, but MIT was my dad’s.” He grinned. “He said he thought I should see what another part of the country was like. He was worried about me cutting classes whenever the surf was up. My mom was terrified I was going to dump school entirely and work the waves at Ghost Tree and Cortes Bank until I got good enough to be invited to Maverick’s.”

“Were they right?” Christopher knew Maverick’s was a premier, invitation-only surfing competition up the coast from Santa Cruz, and he assumed the others were places with waves big enough to give surfers a chance to make a name for themselves.

“Yeah, probably. I’m going to give it another year, and if I still haven’t found anything that makes me want to stay, I’m going to transfer to Caltech. Cost’s about the same, and if this is supposed to be such a great time in my life, seems to me I should at least like where I’m going to school.” He picked up his board. “Gotta go. My friend’s loading up.”

“Take it easy,” Christopher called after him.

“You too.”

“Thanks.”

Christopher went back to studying the surfers, ending up with far more questions than answers. What determined how far they paddled out? How did they know which wave to catch? At what point did they leave the wave? And why did some surfers face right and others left?

It wasn’t long—or at least it didn’t seem like a long time—before there were only a handful of boards still on the water. Christopher turned back to the parking lot, saw that it was almost empty, and realized how late it was. He unlocked the bike and reluctantly headed back, reaching the house at the same time a van pulled into the driveway next door. A girl with incredibly long legs wearing flip-flops and short cutoff jeans came around the van and opened the cargo door. She reached inside for a bright yellow, three-fin surfboard.

She caught him staring and stopped what she was doing. “Hi. You must be Christopher.”

Plainly Grams had been talking to the neighbors. “That’s me.”

She carefully leaned her board against the house and came toward him. “Didn’t I see you at Manresa earlier?”

How could he have missed her? “Yeah, that was me too.”

She stopped and stood with her feet slightly apart, her hands in the back pockets of her shorts. “So, do you surf?”

“Not much opportunity where I come from.”

“Want to learn?”

He blinked in surprise. It was one thing to strike up a conversation with a guy at the beach, but having a girl who looked like she belonged on a magazine cover offer to teach him to surf was tantamount to being asked by Robert Ballard if he wanted to join him on a sub to check out the
Titanic.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do,” he said before he took the time to reason it out. “You know someone who gives lessons?” He didn’t want to take anything for granted and wind up looking like an idiot if she hadn’t been offering to teach him herself. She smiled, and his knees felt like someone had hit them from behind.

“Me?” When he didn’t say anything, she added, “Unless you’d rather go through one of the shops. I used to do freelance work for a couple of them and know which ones are the best.”

“You’re fine. I mean, sure, I’d like you to teach me.”

“Great.” She ran her fingers through her wind-blown hair, trying to control the strands that covered her face.

“Now what?”

“First we’ll have to get you fitted for a rental board and wet suit, and then we hit the beach.”

“Just so I know up front, how much do you charge?” He choked on a groan when he realized how stupid he sounded. “Not that it matters. I just need to—”

“It’s okay. I pay attention to things like that too. Tell you what. Why don’t we trade. You can teach me how to ride a horse, and I’ll teach you how to ride a wave. To keep things from getting complicated, you can arrange the horse stuff, and I’ll take care of the board and wet suit.”

“How did you know I’m into horses?” He shook his head. “Never mind. I can guess.”

She laughed. “Your grandmother is really proud of you. I think it’s great.”

There were a hundred things he could say, but he settled on the one that counted. “You free tomorrow?”

“After one o’clock. I work at the nursery until then.” He must have looked confused, because she added, “My dad grows orchids.”

“Oh, that kind of nursery. I pictured you with a bunch of little kids.” He loved that she was so easy to talk to. “Should I pick you up here? Or do you want to meet someplace?”

“How about Carpos? It’s in Soquel. They make the world’s best French fries and milk shakes. The hamburgers aren’t bad either. My treat.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked you. When you ask me, you can pay.”

He nodded. If she was an example of what California girls were like, they were a whole lot different than the girls he knew in New York. “One o’clock. Harpos—”

“
Car
pos,” she corrected him.

“Carpos,” he repeated. “In Soquel.”

“If you forget, call me. All my information is in the binder I gave your grandmother.”

He wasn’t even going to ask. “I guess it would be good to know who I’m going to give riding lessons to.”

“Grace.”

“Nice name.”

“Thanks.” She took a step backward. “Gotta go. I told my dad I’d fix dinner, and he’s going to be home soon.”

“See you tomorrow.” He turned his bike toward the garage. It wasn’t until he was sure there was no way he would be seen that he allowed the grin that had been building from the moment he’d seen Grace to transform his face.

Christopher found some rags in the garage and wiped down the bike before putting it away. The second he opened the door into the house and smelled his grandmother’s spaghetti sauce, he realized how long it had been since he’d eaten. He headed for the kitchen.

“It smells awesome in here,” he said in lieu of a greeting.

“I figured you would be hungry for more than a sandwich when you got back.” Alison gave the pot a final stir and taste and put the wooden spoon on a plate. “How was your ride?”

“Great.”

She leaned her hip into the counter. “Where did you go?”

“South—along the shore.” Spotting a loaf of crusty bread, he broke off a piece and offered to share it with her.