Malibu Rising: A Novel, Taylor Reid [best fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

the break room in the back of the restaurant and June sipped her Cape Codder, they spoke of nothing but the water. June, with her cup in hand, listened patiently as her children described wave after wave. June kept them talking, asking questions about even the most trivial facts of the day. None of the kids stopped to wonder whether she actually found them fascinating or was just very good at pretending. But the truth was, June simply adored her children. She loved their thoughts and ideas, loved to hear about their personal discoveries, loved to watch them as they began to take the shape of fully formed people.

She thought of her children like the magic grow capsules you got at gift shops at the science museum. These tiny little nothings that you drop into water and then watch as they slowly reveal what they were always destined to be. This one a Stegosaurus, this one a T. rex. Except, instead, it was watching them become dependable, or talented, or kind, or daring.

June knew that her children had found a previously undiscovered part of themselves that day. She knew that childhood is made up of days magnificent and mundane. And this had been a magnificent day for all of them.

That night, they went home and watched Adam-12 together and then dispersed. Kit went to bed. Jay and Hud went to their room to read comics. Nina got under the covers and pretended to read a book from the summer reading list.

But all of them felt as though their bodies were still rising with the surf.

For Jay, the feeling was almost an obsession. His brain couldn’t stop focusing on how it had felt to ride a wave with that much power. To glide that smoothly. To ride, to float, to soar. He was lost in the thought of it when he heard Hud speak up from his bed.

“If that board’s not there tomorrow,” Hud said, “what are we going to do?”

Jay sat up. “I was wondering the same thing. Should we try to sneak out? And go get it so no one else does?”

“No,” Hud said. “We can’t do that.”

“OK,” Jay said. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Jay lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. They were quiet for a moment and Jay knew Hud was still considering it. When Hud didn’t speak up, Jay knew it was final.

“It was awesome, though,” Jay said.

“I bet we looked so cool,” Hud added, his head on his pillow.

“Yeah,” Jay said, smiling. “We totally did.”

The two of them fell asleep soundly, both hoping and planning.

Kit, meanwhile, had drifted off to sleep the moment her head hit the pillow, dreaming all through the night of the four of them surfing together on their own boards.

But it was Nina who was consumed by it, living the experience in her body. Her chest could feel where the board had been. Her arms ached from the resistance of the water. Her legs felt like rubber from the force with which she had slammed them down, used them to propel herself forward. She could feel both the ocean and its absence across her skin.

She wanted to go back. Right then and there. To try again. She wanted to stand up on the board like Jay had. She was determined now. She remembered a photo she’d seen in a magazine a few months ago, a guy on a surfboard somewhere in Europe. Was it Portugal? She wondered if she could be that sort of person when she grew up. A real surfer. Who went places just for the waves.

She tried to make herself fall asleep. But well after ten, still wide awake, she walked down to the kitchen and saw her mother sitting in the living room, sipping vodka right out of the bottle while watching the Saturday Night movie in her pajamas.

When June saw her elder daughter, she moved the vodka onto the floor, sliding it behind the sofa’s arm with her foot.

“Can’t sleep, honey?” June said as she put her arm out, inviting Nina onto the sofa with her.

Nina nodded and curled into the side of her mother’s body, the cradle that often felt like it was hers and hers alone. Her mother smelled like Shalimar and sea salt.

“Can I get a job working at the restaurant?” Nina asked.

June looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe I could earn money,” she said. “And buy us all surfboards.”

“Oh, honey,” June said, as she rubbed her daughter’s arm, pulled her closer. “I will get you all surfboards, OK? I promise.”

“You don’t have to, that’s not what I meant.”

“Let me get you surfboards. Let that be my job.”

Nina smiled at her and put her head back on June’s shoulder.

It was not easy, being a parent. It was not easy raising your four children on your own. But what made June the most frustrated at her husband—her twice ex-husband—was that she had no one to swoon over her children with.

Her mother would listen, obviously. Christina loved them. But June wanted someone on the couch next to her at night, to smile with her when they thought of the kids. She wanted someone who would laugh with her about Kit’s attitude, and commiserate with her about Jay’s stubbornness, who would know how to teach Hud to stand up for himself a bit more, and teach Nina to relax. She, especially, wanted someone to light up along with her on a day like this, when her kids had found a sense of wonder and joy in the middle of her chaos.

Oh, what Mick was missing, wherever he was.

He did not know how good it felt for your eleven-year-old daughter to want nothing more than to lay her head against your shoulder. He did not know how good it felt to love like this.

She knew that when it came to the two of them—she here with these kids and he out there somewhere with God knows who—she had the better end of the deal. She