“The surf here looks insane,” I tell them as we walk down the stone steps toward the sand.
The ocean endlessly stretches out in front of us and Zale stops dead in his tracks as he stares at it.
“Oh, I’m definitely getting into that.”
Gabriel crosses his arms. “You didn’t bring a board.”
“Easy fix.” Zale grins, heading straight for a group of surfers gathered near the shoreline.
“Oh no,” I murmur.
We stand back and watch as Zale approaches them, chest puffed out confidently as he says something in English. They stare at him blankly so he tries again, slower and louder this time. A girl with dark curls responds in Italian and Zale freezes.
I’m positive he’ll turn around and come back to us feeling defeated, but instead he smiles wider and begins to gesture to the waves before pointing to himself, miming paddling and pretending to wipe out, throwing his arms up and falling backward into the sand as they burst out laughing.
The curly-haired girl nudges one of her friends and says something in Italian as she grins at him. Leave it to my brother to make a group of strangers laugh. He was always the class clown.
Gabriel shakes his head beside me, but I catch the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“I think he’s flirting,” he whispers.
“He can’t be,” I argue. “He doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Well whatever he’s doing looks like it’s working.”
After a few more minutes of wild gestures, and the group attempting to speak broken English, one of the guys calls out to someone further up the beach and a spare board gets lifted into the air. Zale turns back toward us, the biggest grin spreading across his face. He jogs over carrying the board like he just secured a gold medal.
“Boom,” he says proudly. “We’re in.”
“How the hell did you manage that?” I demand.
“I guess Italians just can’t resist my charm.”
Behind him, the curly-haired girl waves and holds up two more boards for me and Gabriel.
“Unbelievable,” Gabriel mumbles.
Within minutes, we’re each holding borrowed boards and heading toward the water with the group Zale befriended cheering us on.
I paddle hard, feeling the swell lift me as I pop up on my board, the wave stealing the breath from my lungs. The board cuts cleanly down the face of the wave, spray misting against my skin, and for a few perfect seconds the world goes silent and it’s just me and the ocean.
This is the feeling I missed—surfing without competition, feeling like one with the ocean. I’ve been surfing for training and competitions, but I can’t remember the last time I surfed just for me. When I kick out and dive beneath the next set, laughter bubbles up from my chest. I surface in time to see Zale wipe out, arms flailing.
Gabriel catches the next wave and I’m reminded just how powerful he looks on a board. He rides it cleanly all the way through, and even from the water I can see the passion in his expression. I hope he still feels it too, that feeling of pure ecstasy when he surfs.
After nearly an hour of surfing, we drag ourselves back to shore, breathless and completely soaked. The group gathers around us, excited as they fire off sentences none of us understand. Gabriel and I collapse onto the sand, boards beside us, while my brother flirts his way through another broken conversation with the curly-haired girl.
“Why am I so surprised that he’s somehow making friends out here,” I laugh, watching him with the group.
“I don’t know, but he’s exhausting,” Gabriel mutters.
Zale turns, as if he knows we’re talking about him, and runs up to us excitedly.
“Okay,” he announces. “I’m pretty sure they just invited us to a bonfire later tonight and I think I accidentally agreed to something involving karaoke.”
I blink. “The bonfire I can say yes to, but you’re on your own when it comes to the karaoke.”
“That is fine with me,” he grins before running back to the group.
