She lay on the board and paddled, albeit a little awkwardly, and then pushed herself into a standing position. It was a little slow, but she could work on it. She had good instincts. “Let’s practice in the water,” she said.
“You sure?” I asked.
Adrianne nodded. “I want to do it for real.”
“For real” was a bit of a disaster. I helped her onto her board and threaded the strap around her ankle before I climbed onto my own. We paddled out into the break, and I grabbed the nose of her board and helped her to turn so that we were facing the beach. “Now what?” she asked.
“When I tell you, start paddling in hard, and then I’ll tell you when to pop up.” She nodded, determination set into her features, and I looked behind me at the coming swell of waves. I let a few waves roll beneath us—they weren’t right—but then the perfect wave started to roll toward us. “Go, go!”
Adrianne began paddling in. The wave began to crest, and I shouted, “Pop up!” She stood, but the movement was too slow, and the board pushed out from beneath her. She fell backward into the water. The board flew up. When she didn’t surface right away, I pulled off my ankle strap and dove beneath the waves.
The roar of the waves was muffled here, and I pushed through the water quickly. I wrapped an arm around Adrianne’s waist and aimed up at the surface. I heard her suck in a lungful of air. “Are you okay?” We hit sand, and I let her go. “Adrianne?”
Even though she was panting, she grinned. “Let’s do it again.”
“Are you sure? That was a pretty nasty fall.”
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
We rescued the boards and paddled toward the breaks again. This time, when the right wave came along, I paddled in with her. “Pop up!”
We stood at the same time, and for a handful of moments, Adrianne stood on the board and sailed over the crest of the wave. She was like a sea goddess overseeing her domain.
Then, she fell into the ocean—a little more gently than before. She surfaced pretty quickly and got ahold of her board. I rode out the wave and then sank into a seated position and paddled over to where she was floating. “How did that feel?”
Adrianne beamed. “Amazing! I didn’t know I could do that.”
“Just think about where you could be in a couple of months with some practice... riding the board for thirty seconds or more.”
She splashed at me. “You look hot on that board, Foster,” she said and grabbed for the side of the board and tipped me over. The cool blue surrounded me for a moment. It was total peace. And then Adrianne was grabbing me and hauling me back up. “Foster! I’m so sorry!”
I like her holding me like this, I thought and smiled. “I’m fine, Princess. Let’s go in and grab a snack.” We each threw an arm over our board and paddled in. We dragged the boards up the beach, and as we reached the blanket, she collapsed beside Ethan. “That was... graceful,” he said.
Adrianne waved a hand at him. “I stood up on the board,” she said. “It was the most amazing feeling.”
I kissed her temple. “You tell him, baby.”
Callan opened up the picnic basket and grabbed out the snacks that we had packed. We sat, the four of us, and enjoyed the food and stretched out in the golden sunlight. “Every day should end like this,” Adrianne said in a dreamy sort of way.
“On the beach?” Callan asked.
She glanced at him, completely fond. “With you all,” she said. “You’ve completely cured my bad mood.”
We were silent for a moment. “What happened this morning?” I asked.
Adrianne’s face twisted, and Callan kicked at me, spraying sand across the blanket. “Nice going, dick,” he snarled.
“No, it’s important,” Ethan broke in. “We need to talk about it.” He glanced at Adrianne, who shrugged but nodded, nonetheless. “The production company wants her to be photographed with Ryan Jacobs in public.”
“They want you todatehim?” The thought was inconceivable. We were already hiding what was growing between us as is, and watching her kiss the man for a movie was painful. I didn’t think I could handle it if it was for real.
“Not in so many words,” she said. “But they want me to ‘lean in’ to the image of it. Be photographed with him, hang out in public.”
Callan swore out loud, but Ethan spoke before he could argue. “She’ll lose the movie if she doesn’t agree. It’s absolute bullshit, but she can’t get fired, either.”
Absolutely not, I thought. “That won’t happen,” I said. “We won’t let that happen.”
Adrianne played with the blanket. She was having a hard time looking at any of us. “I don’t want to lie about being in a relationship with him.”