Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Shooting officially begins tomorrow, but even knowing my workday will likely begin before dawn, I’ve got one more place I want to take her.
Fizzy and I blow down the freeway, windows open, wind whipping. The orange globe sun hangs heavy and seductive at the horizon. It’s our last joy outing—at least the last one we’ve planned, and I’m sure the plan I’ve made is actually quite daft. We will be alone, it will be dark, with the sounds of crashing waves all around us. I can already imagine Fizzy running barefoot on the sand, tackling me, pushing through the pathetic restraint I’m clinging to.
Torrey Pines is a four-and-a-half-mile stretch of coastline located between Del Mar and La Jolla. Traffic is uncharacteristically light, and we make it to the parking lot just as the sun is beginning to dip into the water. As I park and meet Fizzy at the front of the car, I’m unprepared all over again for the sight of her in simple jeans and a T-shirt, sneakers, and a fuzzy sweater tucked over one arm.
There is so much riding on the show, but there are moments like this when I look at her walking toward the sand and can’t remember what any of it is. When she talks about something she’s passionate about or bursts out laughing, when she hands someone their ass or lets her tiny fissures of vulnerability show, I find myself rationalizing the reasons I should just give in. Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe nobody needs to know. Maybe I’m overthinking and it won’t ruin everything. We’re both adults; we’ve both had sex with people before and it was just sex. Maybe I can compartmentalize.
During the day, gliders and parasailers launch themselves from the red sandstone cliffs in the distance, and sunbathers, surfers, and swimmers crowd the beach. Tonight it’s mostly empty, with only a few stragglers along the shore or straddling their boards in the ocean, bobbing along with the incoming tide. The sky seems to change by the second, a melting canvas of blue to purple to red to orange.
“So.” Fizzy stretches, revealing a swath of skin between her shirt and the waist of her jeans. “The beach.”
I smile at the disdain in her voice. “Not a fan, I presume?”
“Oh, I get it, it’s beautiful.” She sits on the sand. “But it’s a little like sex on your period. It sounds like a lot of work, and you definitely don’t want to do it every day, but once you get going, you’re like, ‘Hey, this isn’t too bad.’ ”
“Oh my God, Fizzy,” I say with a small laugh.
She looks up at me. “What?”
I sit down next to her, swallowing down the way infatuation rises like a sleeper wave in my chest. “I’m not even going to touch that one, I think.”
She laughs, slipping off her shoes and wiggling her toes into the cool, damp sand. “Now that we know how I feel about the beach, tell me what we’re doing here.”
“Well, I grew up on the water, so I brought you here because I feel very peaceful at the shore, but tonight’s not about the beach specifically. It’s a moment.”
She tucks her knees to her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs as she listens. Around us the sun has dipped below the horizon, the sky darkening like a bruise.
“My weekends with Stevie can be pretty routine,” I explain. “We go for a bike ride, take Baxter to the park or somewhere he can run and play, we watch movies and do homework and cook together. Basic stuff. When she was about six, Baxter had surgery on his paw and couldn’t come with her for the weekend. We decided to try something different. We packed a picnic and came to watch surfers and ended up staying most of the day. We should have gone home once the sun set—it was getting cold, and I knew she’d be a bear the next day—but she was having so much fun just running around and doing cartwheels in the surf that I decided to stay a bit. It got dark and we were just getting ready to leave when I saw this blue spark in the water, and then another. When the waves crashed it was like there were hundreds of fireflies in the surf.”
“Oh, I know this one.” She snaps her fingers, trying to recall the word. “Bioluminescence. It’s algae, right?”
“Right. Some types of algae use bioluminescence to avoid predators, so when it’s disturbed by something moving through the water, or even something getting too close, it produces this burst of blue light to scare them off.” I point. “Look over there.”
She leans in and follows my gaze to where a surfer is leisurely cutting across the surface on their way to the shore, leaving a swirl of blue light in their wake. “It doesn’t look real,” she says.