Surge : A Stepbrother Romance (11 page)

Chapter
20 Mick - Recovery

        The next few months are very hard. Slowly, but
surely, I fight my way back to health. With the support of my physiotherapist,
and of course, Sam, I am able to make it. I walk with a limp and lost a lot of
mobility in my leg, but I just keep reminding myself that I was alive. One
thing’s for sure, though: I will never again step into the ocean.

        The relationship that Sam and I share has grown
a great deal, and though we never really talk about the fact that Sam is pregnant,
I’m ready to be a dad. Sam starts to teach at the surf school again, and I have
a lot of unanswered emails and questions from fans and sponsors that need to be
addressed. I’m procrastinating and not wanting to have those conversations. It’s
too painful to think that the thing I loved most is over. I have not even been
back to my house since the incident in the water. I wonder how bad it is.

        Sam walks into the kitchen where I am sitting.
“Mick, can we talk?” I know what this is going to be about. I’m not ready for
it, but if my life is going to move forward, it needs come out.

        “Sure, Sam. What’s up?”

        “What are you going to do?” As she asks the
question, I realize there is no way I can deal with this.

        “What can I do, Sam? I am half of a man now. I
have no plans, nothing to fall back on—all I have ever done is surf.”

        “I’m not saying you have to get back into the
water again. I know you don’t want to.”

        “It is not that I don’t want to. I
can’t!”

        “Okay, Mick. I’m not looking to make you upset.
At some point, you are going to have to face the world and make a decision
about your future. I don’t care what you do. I just want you to be prepared. Make
the decision yourself before someone makes it for you.” Her words enrage me. To
think that someone else would decide my future!

        “I want to go home, that is what I want! I
can’t stand this constant pestering!”

        “Don’t be like that, Mick. You know that isn’t
fair. I am just trying to help.”

        Without another word, I storm out of her
house. Sam chases me down the street, due to my now gimpy leg t doesn’t take
her long to catch me. Now she is begging me to come back, but I am leaving. I
feel hurt and betrayed, but mostly, I felt worried about my future. This is not
about me and Sam—it’s about my inability to know how I am going to support
myself and my impending child.

        I take a cab back to my house and I’m shocked
to see that it was vandalized. I slowly get out of the cab and survey the
damage as I make my way inside. All along the floor are empty bottles of beer. The
windows are smashed and the walls spray painted with graffiti. I feel very
taken advantage of. Sick to my stomach and weak. The way I feel about my career
is now echoed in the halls of my home.

        From the depths of my stomach comes a guttural
scream. I have had enough! I am sick and tired of feeling afraid. I am sick and
tired of feeling like I have been taken advantage of. Mostly I was sick and
tired of being a passenger in my life. It is time to take control.

Over the next few hours,
I make calls to disaster recovery companies to come and seal my property. I
still have lots of money and they are not going to take my home. Then I dial my
father’s number.

        “Hi, Dad. It’s Mick.”

        “Mick, how are you? How’s the leg?”

        “It’s all good. Listen, can I stay with you a
while?”

        “You know you are always welcome here. What
happened to Sam?”

        “Things are just complicated right now. I
don’t want to talk about it.”

        “Yeah, no problem. Come over anytime.”

        “Thanks, Dad.”

        I go into the garage and get out my old beater
that I love so much. In the back are a few surf boards staring at me, waiting
for some type of response. I get out of the car, rip the boards out, and smash
them into as many pieces as I can. My fit of rage has all but exhausted me. My
injuries have left me in a shape that was less than ideal. Any type of physical
activity exhausts me. As I stand over the pile of Styrofoam and shards of epoxy,
I breathe heavily. I’m not sure why I needed to do that, but part of me feels better
that I did.

        I wait impatiently by the door for the disaster
recovery team to come by and I throw the supervisor the keys while rolling out
of the driveway. I don’t even stop to talk to him. He looks at me in disbelief.

        “You have my number, call me and tell me what
it has to cost.”

He blinks. “Uh… okay.”

I speed out of my
driveway with a full mind. How did my life get to this point, all because of
one shark? My phone begins to ring and as I look down I notice its Jaime. Jaime
has been calling me nonstop for the past few months and I still have not
responded to him. I also have not responded to my sponsors, or the rest of the world.
I have become a complete recluse.

Pulling into the San
Onofre parking lot, I roll slowly in so I can spot my father’s “house.” This is
no house—it’s a beat-up old mobile home. I love my dad, but the way he chooses
to live does not resonate with me. I park right beside his old Junker as he comes
out to greet me.

        “My boy! Come on in.”

        “Hey, Dad.”

       
        I feel like his child again as I walk into his mobile home that he
affectionately refers to as his wife, and he gives me the tour as he always
does. I will never understand why he wants to show me around. It’s like it gives
him a sense of pride.

        Above our heads is my board, strapped to the
ceiling. That board means so much to me, but now it feels like it means nothing
at all.

        “Have you been riding it, Dad?”

        “That board? No, the only feet that should
ever touch that board are yours. Do you remember your first ride?”

        “Not really Dad, no.”

        “Let me tell you about it.” I’m not in the
mood to hear it, but as he continues to talk, it makes me very sentimental. “You
were here, at San Onofre. You wanted nothing more than to surf. It was all you
talked about. The only problem was you couldn’t be out there alone. So every
morning, you had to wait for me to get up, take your board out, and help you
surf.

“The first time though,
was something special. I woke up, only to find that you were gone. Scared as
any parent would be, I woke your mother to tell her. She frantically ran out of
the motorhome to find you with your board in tow. You were dragging this very
board to the water—you must’ve been five years old. Your mother was about to
yell at you when I stopped her. I told her to wait and see, you knew how to
swim, and maybe this was your time. She watched you while biting her
fingernails as you made your way to the surf. You never noticed—you were too
focused on your goal. You have always been that way.

“Once in the water, you
continued to drag the board out, fighting the small waves, that were so big to
you. You were so tiny. When you got to the spot you wanted, you hopped on the
board and waited. That board was more like a boat to you. A wave came and
caught your board. Just like that, you were off. You stood up on the board with
a smile on your face the likes of which I have never seen since. As you caught
a glimpse of us, you started to cheer and yell. Your mother, with her hands
over her face, began to cry. So did I. That is my fondest memory of you, boy,
and I will never forget it.”

        “You never told me that story before. How
come?”

        “You never needed to hear it until now. It’s
not the shark in the water that you’re afraid of, son. It’s the sharks on land.
Don’t make the same mistakes I made. Go live your life. It is, after all,
your
life.”

       
My father has never confessed a fear to me before. He must have been afraid of
the corporate world, so this is his escape. He’s right. I’m not afraid of
surfing. I just don’t want to deal with the backlash, or not be as good as I
used to be. I love to surf. I need to get back in the water.

        We leave the motorhome and walk down the beach
to the water. This is as close to the water as I’ve been since the attack. It feels
like it’s time to do something, I just don’t know what. My heart pounds the
closer I get to the water. I look over at my father and his expression doesn’t waver.
He keeps the proud smile on his face the whole time.

I creep to the edge of
the water, the waves gently licking my toes. The water is cold and refreshing. My
heartbeat slows and I close my eyes, just enjoying the sounds, the smells, and
the sensations all around me. Something feels very right about this. This is
where I’m supposed to be.

        A voice rings out from behind us. “Is this a
party for just the boys?”

        It’s Sam. I’m happy she’s here, and as I turn
to see her, she smiles. In her hand is my board. Decision time has arrived.

Chapter
21 Mick – Learning to Fly

        Sam has a wicked smile on her face, and I know
what she wants. She wants me to get into the water. As she holds out the board
for me to take, fear overtakes me. A kneejerk statement ricochets out of my
mouth,

“I am not going back into
the water.”

“No one said that you
have to go back in the water, Mick,” she replies. “Don’t go if you don’t want
to, but at least leave on your own terms. If you never want to surf again, I’m
fine with that. All of those years, though. You put in all of those years, only
to leave because of what happened. Surf one more time, Mick. Not for your fans
or sponsors or me. Not for your father, but for you. Make it your last surf,
celebrate your life of surfing, and then put it to bed forever.”

That sense of finality is
something I never thought about. I don’t want to be done with surfing. I want
to be done with the business of surfing. I hate that part of it, and this is just
an excuse for me to get out.

I snatch the board out of
Sam’s hand and limp my way out to the water. It feels good to be in the water—in
fact, it feels great. As I paddle into my first wave, I realize I no longer
have the strength in my back leg to get up. I stumble and fall.
Okay, okay.
That’s okay. It was my first attempt.
I try again to get up on the next wave,
and I can’t. I try the next four waves to get myself up, and I can’t do it. Storming
out of the water, I toss my board down and walk past Sam and my father. I am
embarrassed and angry and want to be left alone.

“Mick, it’s going to take
some time. Let me teach you.”

“Ha! You, teach me?! I am
the best surfer in the world!”
Are you sure Mick? You can’t even stand up on
a board.

“You could have fooled
me.” Sam yells. I know Sam is just trying to get to me now, and she is. I am so
angry, I could spit.

“I am done, Sam! Done!”

I storm away and
into my car, I need to get away from that whole scene.
My life, my fucking
life!
I have no idea where I’m going, but I know I am going away from here.

I’m driving around
town, going nowhere, continuing to reflect on my first day back in the water.
Who
does Sam think she is, telling me she is going to teach me how to surf? I don’t
think so.
Then I realize, a possible solution.

Of course, I may
need to change some things to relearn how to surf, like my stance. I do have
more strength in my other leg. I am going to have to try that. I am going to
have to try and surf the other way, but there is no fucking way that she is
going to teach me how to surf.

I drive around town all
day, searching for something. I have no idea what it is, but it is something. I
drive by my house to see how the work is coming along. After talking with the
contractor, I find out it is going to be a huge bill to fix all that needs to
be fixed. It needs to be done, I’m just not sure that after not working for a
few months, I still have enough money to cover it. I am, after all, going to
have to give up my career. I can’t even stand on a board, never mind compete. If
this reno is going to exhaust all my money, I’m better off just to sell the
place. I better call my accountant.

Sam was right. I’m going
to have to figure out what to do next with my life. As night falls, I make my
way back to my father’s motorhome. Parking my car, I see him sitting by the
fire pit, beer in hand and a bag of chips in the other.

“Hey, Dad.”

        “Hey, Mick. You all right? I was going to
call, but I figured you just wanted to be left alone.”

        “Yeah, I guess I’m okay. Well, as okay as
someone can be with everything in his life ending.”

        “Hm.”

        I glare at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

        “Ah, nothing, just thinking.”

        “What are you thinking about? Spit it out!”

        My father shakes his head. “Son, I have given
you a lot of advice over the years, though I have tried to stay out of your
romantic relationships. This woman, though, is different. Sam is special. She
nursed you back to health, she stayed with you when you were with someone else—she
has tried to help you on your feet in any and every way possible. Your response
to her is essentially a fuck-off. That woman is not deserving of that.”

        “She doesn’t know me, Dad. She thinks she does
because she’s my stepsister, or whatever, but she doesn’t. What the hell am I
supposed to do? How can I support myself, or her?”

        “A man always finds a way. We cannot always
control the things that happen to us, but we can control our reaction to them,
and as far as I can see, you have not done well at that.”

        “Hm,” I mutter.

        My father smiles. “I can say to you only this,
for whatever reason, don’t let the good ones walk away.”

        I watched as my father dramatically got up and
walked away. He was as always right. Sam was a hell of a good woman and I was
not treating her the right way. If she wants to teach me how to surf, why
should I not let her? She is a great teacher and I can use the support now more
than ever. What I needed was to apologise to her, before it was too late.

“Don’t live your life with
regrets, son. It’s not what you do for a living. It’s how you do your living.”

        Sometimes, I hated his wisdom, but there is no
denying he’s right. I owe a debt to Sam, and I need to repay that. I pick up
the phone to text her.

        “
Sam, meet me tomorrow for breakfast? I
want and need to see you.”

       
The
response comes swiftly.

        “
OK”

       
I’m about to call
it a night and go to bed when I realize that
now
is the right time to
see Sam. I walk to my car and drive over to Sam’s house. All the way there, I think
of her bright smile and beautiful eyes. I feel like a heel for the way I
treated her, and realize that I never even thanked her for all of the help she
had given me throughout this whole ordeal. There’s much I have to be ashamed
of, but the worst part is how ungrateful I’ve been.

        I pull up to Sam’s house rehearsing what it
was I was going to say to her.
Sam, I wanted to thank you… No, no. Sam, I
think I am in love with you… Ugh. Forget it. I’ll just wing it.

Slinging myself out of
the car isn’t as easy as it used to be due to my weak leg. I have been able to
stand with a little help from my arms, however. I walk up to the door and ring the
bell. Sam answers wearing a robe.

        “Mick, what are you doing here?”

        “I know it’s late, but I had to come and see
you.”

        “Well, now is not a really good time.”

        “I know, but this won’t take long. I wanted to
tell you…”

       
        A man’s voice rang out. “Sam? Who is it? Who’s at the door?” He came up
behind Sam, wearing nothing but boxer shorts, and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Can we help you?”