“If I say no are you going to ask me anyway?”
Rolling her eyes, she scoffed. “When’s the last time you were on a board?”
Gripping the steering wheel, I tried to suppress the surge of anxiety that came with the thought of surfing. “No time.”
“But you loved it so much. You can’t tell me you don’t still crave that thrill. Ripping a wave. Shredding the water. You were so good. One of the best.”
I was good. And truthfully, I missed it. But that didn’t stop the panic from creeping up my throat. Being in the water evoked too many memories.
Even the good ones hurt like hell.
“I mean, maybe if you found an outlet for all that aggression you wouldn’t be so…”
“So what?”
“Intense.”
She had no idea how intense I could really be.
A wicked grin morphed on her pretty face. “You know what your problem is?”
“What?”
“You take yourself way too seriously. You should laugh sometimes. My mother always said laughter is the best medicine.”
“Not much to laugh about these days.”
“Of course there is. You just haven’t been hanging around the right people.”
She punched a few buttons on the radio until she found a song she liked. Cassidy cranked up the volume and started singing at the top of her lungs about a small town girl living in a lonely world, animating her face and hand gestures with every lyric. I found myself harboring a foreign smile as I glanced back and forth from her to the road. The tension in my shoulders eased a bit and my tight grip loosened on the steering wheel.
Didn’t mean she was right.
It only confirmed what I’d been telling myself all along, that she had the power to make me feel alive.
And destroy me.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head, refusing to give in, and returned my attention back to the road.
Thankfully, Cass fell asleep somewhere between Kentucky and Tennessee and didn’t wake up until we pulled up to a hotel just outside of Nashville. We checked into a room with two beds this time instead of one, then Cassidy suggested we hit the Mexican restaurant right across the street.
She ordered a frozen margarita and I had a Modelo. We ate, talked, our conversation flowing just as easily as the alcohol.
“You like what you do?” I asked, genuinely curious about her. I knew so much yet so little.
“Yeah, I do. It gives me the freedom to work anywhere I want and I get to set my own hours, but it’s not my dream job. I mean, I love it, but it just kind of fell in my lap and I ran with it. What I really want to do is open a surf school for underprivileged kids.”
I sat back in my seat, shocked by her revelation. “You surf?”
She nodded, pride gripping her smile. “Does that surprise you?”
“Considering you never wanted to go in the water when you were younger, yeah, it does.”
She leaned forward, her mocha eyes capturing mine. “Do you remember that time the three of us drove up to Ringwood to go cliff jumping?”
“How could I forget? It took Bodie and me forever to talk you into jumping off that first cliff.”
