Page 60 of The Surfer

20

COVE

The beach usedto be my safe space before the accident. My harbor. The place I can go to in order to escape and meditate on my problems.

But that was before I fell off my board in that fucking surf competition a year ago. Before that fateful day, I could walk along the beach alone in my thoughts and just be myself. But that was before the accident, before I swore off surfing forever.

The beach was always somewhere I could go to hide from the world, to let my mind recover and regroup. To think.

The beach was somewhere I could go to rediscover myself.

But that was until the accident.

Since then, I’ve avoided the beach like bats avoid the sun. I’ve never wanted to step foot on sand ever again, not until Ripley Sailor flew into my life and forced me to teach her surfing. For the last year, until that American girl swanned into New Water, I never wanted to hear the pleasant sound of waves crashing on the shore ever again. I never wanted to walk alone along a beach ever again.

The accident had changed me, frightened me off the beach for an entire year.

But now, after making love with Ripley Sailor, I can walk alone along the public beach once more. Wrapped in my own thoughts, rediscovering myself.

I'm back on the main beach of New Water.

What’s happened to me over the last few weeks? I’ve been molded. Shaped beyond all recognition.

Is this all the American girl’s doing? Is she the one who gave me the spark of courage to walk along the beach once more? It can’t be.

Surely, I’ve not been changed by a girl. The billionaire playboy Cove Finn, transformed by a girl?

Could I have really allowed someone to enter my life and transform me in the way Ripley fucking Sailor has done so quickly?

Dammit, this American girl has got a hold over me, and I don’t think I can escape.

As I walk barefoot across the beach, the wet sand soft under my toes, I come to the conclusion that yes, I really have allowed Ripley Sailor to come into my life and change it for the better.

No way, but it’s true.

Gone are the drinks, drugs, and girls. All that’s left is just me and Ripley.

Everything in my life has changed in just a few weeks. All thanks to one person.

I turn my head towards the roaring ocean crashing on the sand yards away from me and look out over the view. Surfers dance far out in the distance along waves you’d only see in a place as beautiful and as wild as Australia. After a year of recovery and avoidance of this very place - the beach - I am finally able to watch surfers do their thing with unbridled joy written on my face.

Ripley Sailor’s changed me. For the better.

I’m happy to be here, on the sand once more. I no longer care if someone I know from my surfer past, like that James prick, sees me here. I no longer care about their looks of sympathy or their snide remarks when they see the scars on my legs and recognize the infamous surfing failure with the bad boy reputation. They can say anything they want to me and my mind will just turn to thoughts of Ripley Sailor tightly wrapped around me in my bed.

Ripley Sailor is all I need.

Forget about all those other girls who came before - all those fake girls from Tide or the international supermodels or the legions of girls who relentlessly pursued the most eligible bachelor in New Water - none of them could ever match up to this geeky American girl and the way she looks at me. Or the way she talks to me. Or the way she smiles at me. Or the way she melts my cold heart.

She means everything to me.

But she’s too kind, she’s too caring. I know, as a hundred percent fact, that I don’t deserve her in my life.

I really don’t deserve her.

I’m the one who failed a year ago, and I need to live with the consequences. That’s my punishment. I’m the one who let my whole family down at that surfing competition, and I have to live with that shame. Those long scars on my legs are my fault and I have to live with them for the rest of my life. I do not deserve Ripley, I do not deserve her love at all.

She’s too good for me.

And the hardest part is that she’s giving her love to me unconditionally. She’s done so much for me in the last few weeks, things way above what my Dad has paid her to do. She’s utterly stripped away my layers and totally exposed my innermost self. A side of me even I haven’t seen before.

I’m a better person because of Ripley Sailor.

I don’t deserve an angel like her to fly into my life.

I lean over and scoop up a handful of sand. This beach. This is my land. This is my home.

In a reversal of what I say to her every day before I lead her by my hand down to the secret beach… I trust her. She’s the one who pulled me from the brink.

And I don’t deserve her.