The one activity he’d tried but never mastered but didn’t fail at because as long as he didn’t quit he was still in the learning stage. Since high school, his drive to get up on a surfboard had defined him. Didn’t matter that he was too tall to have a good shot at success. Or that he didn’t feel the waves in the way he should. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t balance on the board long enough to ride a wave even if he managed to get on top of one.
What mattered was that he didn’t give up.
That he pushed himself to do more. Try harder. Face waves that no beginner should ever be on. He wasn’t a beginner. He just wasn’t what the world considered to be good at surfing.
For his purposes, he was all-star.
Because surfing reminded him that if he quit trying, he failed.
And every time the board slid out from under him and he went under, he experienced the feeling of failure, without having failed. And those seconds underwater, that feeling of not succeeding, were enough to spur him on to not let the sensation become reality in his everyday life.
No one, not even Sage, understood why he kept purchasing the latest and greatest in the surfing world, why he signed up for master classes, and spent so many hours trying to perfect a sport he hadn’t mastered in over fifteen years.
But it made complete sense to him.
He did it because surfing made him the best at everything else he did. Helped him excel in law school. Spurred him on to passing the bar exam first time out.
It would also light the fire under him to lose his attraction for Iris. To get his ass back to the place it had been in her world before Sage’s wedding. It was a case of mind over matter,and surfing beat into him the best and worst there, too.
The best because he kept going back and giving it his all.
And the worst because he hadn’t yet ridden one wave into shore.
Surfing without mastering the skill was dangerous. For Scott, failure was more so.
And because if he didn’t get himself in line soon, he was coming up on a failure of a magnitude he’d never before faced, he got up before dawn on Saturday morning, intent on surfing waves that were larger, more dangerous, than any he’d taken on previously. He drove up the coast. Joined a couple of master surfers for an early-morning, wet-suited display of…pure humility.
Forced himself to stay there, trying again and again, until he was the only one left trying. And, bruised, but not showing it, attended the private black tie gala he’d been invited to Saturday night. Celebrating a well-known prosecutor from the attorney general’s office who’d recently been elected to a superior court judgeship.
Sunday was a Saturday repeat. Different beach. Different waves. Same flying board and underwater forays into fight or flight. Strengthening his determination to choose fight every time.
He took on the waves again and again. Fought his way up to the surface, swam to collect his board, and cold, even in his wet suit, would call up a mental image of Iris, and get hard.
Which sent him back out again. As though he could beat the damned thing out of himself.
With the board in position, every part of his body at the ready as he’d been trained, he waited for the swell that would challenge a good surfer to stay on board, and when it hit,gave his all to it. Thinking that he was going to stay up. To ride…
The wave slammed against his board. A hard punch hit his lower back, something sharp stabbed his left knee and Scott went under.
* * *
Iris was just getting out of the shower after a morning of lounging on Sunday when her phone rang.
Dripping wet, she held a towel to herself while she read the screen lying on her counter.Sage.
Sage? Calling in the middle of her family-moon?
She grabbed the phone with one hand, running the towel over herself as best she could with the other. “Hello,” she said, tension gripping her. Barely holding back theWhat’s wrong?that was on the tip of her tongue.
“Iris?” One word and fear struck Iris, forcing her to lean against the counter, towel clutched to her chest, just from Sage’s tone. “I just got a call from the hospital,” Sage continued before Iris even had a chance to confirm that she was on the line. “Scott’s been in an accident…”
No!
No. No. No.
“…he’s insisting on leaving and they can’t make him stay, and I need you to go get him, Iris. Please. You’re the only one he’ll listen to…”
Leaving? Insisting?
