“How you doing? You okay? Nervous at all?”
“I know this is gonna sound like I’m trying to flex, but I’m not,” I chuckled. “But I don’t get nervous. I don’t feel fear. It’s a whole thing.”
She looked at me, surprised. “Wow, really?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I process fear as excitement. When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand what held people back from doing epic shit, and my mom had to literally explain what fear was to me.” I laughed, and Sylvie looked impressed.
“Well, we clearly hit the jackpot with you, Summers. You’re gonna go places in this industry.”
I beamed at her, giving her a dimple-popping smile.
“I hope so! This is like a dream come true.”
“What the fuck isthisjoker doing here?” a nasty voice interrupted our conversation, and I turned around to see Kyle Tully glaring at me.
Oh yeah. Forgot about this guy.
“Bro, close your mouth; you’re gonna burn someone’s retinas off with those teeth,” I grumbled, trying not to smirk at how red his face got.
Sylvie snorted next to me, and we exchanged an amused look.
“How the fuck did you get into this competition? You didn’t even try out! I wouldknow.My dad organized this!” He puffed out his chest like nepotism was something to brag about.
“Relax, Tully. Don’t hurt yourself. Save that aggression for the waves, yeah?” I brushed him off, already bored with whatever this altercation was.
“Kyle, focus!” a man who I assumed was his coach barked.
“No! I want to talk to someone about this. That manassaulted me!He shouldn’t be allowed to compete.”
Sylvie raised an eyebrow at Kyle but then spoke directly to his coach.
“Get him under control. This is unprofessional.”
Tully’s coach nodded, grabbing him by the arm and tugging him away.
“Let’s go, Kyle. You’re gonna get yourself disqualified.”
I had to resist the urge to flip him off as his coach manhandled him to the other side of the lineup.
Somehow, I didn’t thinkthatwould be professional.
“What a little prick,” Sylvie muttered, scribbling something down on her clipboard.
“Tell me about it,” I mumbled when the official headset man finally started talking.
We were all assigned to our respective heats. If you don’t know what a heat is, it’s basically a timed set where multiple surfers compete at the same time.
As I was officially a Goliath athlete and they were the competition’s biggest sponsor, I was given a big fat shiny number one.
I cheered silently to myself about the fact that I was going to be up first. However, my excitement was squashed when Tully was assigned to the first heat. Likely because of *nepotism*. Yay.
But I didn’t let it get to me.
He could eat my ocean spray. I was gonna set the bar so fucking high they would be naming the next competition after me.
Sylvie walked me to the shoreline, running me through how the process was going to work.
She pointed to the west side of the beach. “Line up starts there; they want the first heat out in five. They’re running with a flag system,” she explained. “Green flag means heat is in progress, and y’all can catch waves. Yellow flag indicates the last 5 minutes of the heat, signaling you need to wrap up your strategy. Red flag means the heat has ended; no waves you catch after this are going to be scored. Got it?” she asked, and I nodded, basically bouncing on the balls of my feet in anticipation.
