Page 50 of Under the Waves

“Yeah,” he sighed, pocketing his phone and looking down at the fragile girl fast asleep in his lap. “I know.”

I looked at him. “What are you going to do?”

He shrugged like this was the most casual affair in the world. “I’ll let them stay until they have to go. I’d fucking keep them all here if I could but…yeah.”

I barely nodded before turning back to the fridge. “Yeah.”

As soon as Lia woke up, she’d try to leave, even if the last place she wanted to go was back home. She didn’t want to be a burden and would convince herself she was until Jakson let her go. I could already see it playing out in my head.

After I finished eating and loaded my plate into the dishwasher, I headed upstairs to shower and get dressed. As I walked up the stairs, I could hear the faintest hush of whispers. The closer I got to the kids’ room, the louder the voices became. Stopping straight outside, I peered in and what I saw made my heart shatter.

Belle and the twins had made a little fort with the pillows and covers, and I could hear her whispering to the twins about a story she’d made up. Smiling to myself, I closed the door quietly behind me and walked down the hall into my room.

I showered and threw a towel around my waist, throwing on a pair of black swim shorts and one of my gray compression tops. Heading downstairs, I grabbed one of the smoothies from the fridge that Jakson likes to have on standby and said goodbye as I walked out the door.

As I walked past my house on the way back, guilt churned in my stomach, bile painting the back of my throat. My mom’s car was already gone. It was my fault she could barely make it two steps into the house without collapsing from exhaustion from being on her feet at work all day and night. Even though our relationship was good, like all mother and son’s, we did arguehere and there. Mostly about finances. I promised her I could pay for my own surf equipment and everything else but she had convinced herself that she needed to do it. Everyone in this town made her feel shit about herself for being a single mom, but they could all go to hell because she’d sacrificed everything for me and there wouldn’t be a day where I wouldn’t let her know how grateful I was.

As I made my way up to the surf school, my thoughts trailed to Daniel. The guy was like a father to me. Him and his wife, Isa, had moved here from Chile a few years ago after his surfing accident left him with a fucked spine and hips, meaning that surfing was out of the question for him now.

Isa used to tell me how miserable he was without surfing, about how he used to pretend that he was okay for her but she knew him better, so together, they started a surf school so that he could still be close to the waves without being on a board. Their story captivated me, and some days, more often than I cared to admit, I wondered why they had taken me under their wing. Out of pity? The very thought made me nauseous, anger churning in my stomach.

There had always been this hole in my life, a gap that could’ve only been filled by a father’s love for his son. When you were absent from that, it felt like the entire world was your battleground. I taught myself everything: how to shave, how to take care of my body, how to take care of mymind. Even though I felt proud that I didn’t need help from anyone, especially a father to do so, deep down, I always felt like I was missing something. Like you could look at me and immediately tell I had an absent father.Fuck. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had a tag line over my head like a fucking Sims character.

There was a special, isolated space in the universe for children who had grown up without feeling the love of a parent. A place where silence allowed you to detect the precise sound of footsteps and the bloodshot eyes of another. You could earn the pitiful glances, the sad smiles, the small nods, but in the end, you will never fill that hole, no matter how many times you try to.

“Jassy!” a young voice yelled before I felt a huge force collide with my legs. Pushing my hands against the table to stabilize myself, I looked down at the boy hugging my legs and grinned.

“Hola, Pepe,” I smiled as I knelt down, ruffling his hair withmy fingers.

“Me puse de pie en mi tabla,Jassy.Lo hice tal como dijiste!” he rambled, grasping my hand and attempting to pull me to my feet.

I stood up on my board,Jassy. I did it just like you said.

“You did?Estoy tan orgulloso de ti chico!”I’m so proud of you kid.

He grinned widely up at me, his soft brown curls falling over his forehead. If you looked closely, you could see the small mole above his left brow, identical to his mother, and those bright green eyes, just like his father.

“That’s right,” Daniel announced as he walked into the room, his very pregnant wife following in behind him, “our boy is going to smoke all those kids next week, aren’t you?”

“Damn right I am!” he smiled proudly up at his father.

“Language,mi amor,” Isa warned, glancing between her husband and her son. It was that moment I realized I had never felt like my family, well, what was left of it, would ever be like theirs. A love so intangible, it surpassed every law of physics known to man. You could see it in their eyes, the adoration, the worry, thelove. Pepe looked so much like his parents, and it made me happy for him that he had such a supportive family.

“¡Vamos!,” he yelled, tugging me towards the backdoor, “I want to show you!”

I sent a quick glance to them both, a silent question. Our lessons didn’t start for another twenty minutes, give or take, but there was no harm in starting early.

When both his parents nodded, I had my answer.

Throwing him up onto my shoulders, the sound of his laughter a cure to every sour thought, I slid open the door and walked over down the sandy wooden planks that made up the small balcony that overlooked the ocean.

Climbing down my back, small bare feet pressing into the sand, I watched as he ran over to where his small board was perched against the wooden beams. The smile tugging at his lips was a reward I didn’t even deserve to have.

Nodding to his questioning eyes, he picked up his board and walked over to me, throwing his small green t-shirt over the stair rail.

“Are you not coming out?” he asked, an unmissable accent striking every word. It was the most adorable thing I had ever had the blessing of witnessing.

Rage grew like clenched fists as I remembered that day when I had come over to collect my new schedule and I saw him curled up at the foot of his bed, cheeks stained with floods of tears. After a lot of chocolate and a lot of Marvel movies, I managed to glean that some kids at school had been picking on him, calling him names just because he was different. It had taken everything inside me to not go over there the next day and show those kids a lesson, but I knew, in the end, it wouldn’t solve anything.