Page 33 of Dropping In
Chapter Sixteen
Nala
Christmas morning in San Diego is not like Christmas morning in the northeast, or anywhere else cold.
There is no sledding, no fresh powder, no snowmen building, or snow-angel making. There are no gray skies and cabin fever. There is water, and surfing, and a cool breeze blowing off the Pacific as the sun rises over the water and makes even the most hardened of hearts believe that this was Santa’s real gift.
For all of her hippie, non-secular ways, my mother has always allowed me to have Santa Claus, and my Christmas mornings have always been the same.
Rise early, though never early enough to beat Mom out of her room. Toss on a suit and an ugly Christmas sweater, and meet Mom in the kitchen for tea, cake, and surfing. She always does three runs with me, welcoming Christmas morning like the sea welcomes the sunrise, and when she goes to put together some awful meal that I’ll eat with a smile, I surf longer, enjoying the mostly empty water and barren beach.
This Christmas morning is no different.
Mom left the water an hour ago to get ready and put together some last minute presents to take over to Carmen and Juan Carlos’s house. I’m the only person on this stretch of beach, everyone else either on their own deserted beach, or at home, looking through stockings and goodies left by Santa. When the sun is high enough that most of the dawn has burned away and left gray skies, I push forward on my last wave.
It’s not beautiful, but I don’t need beautiful. It’s the routine, the water, the exhilaration I feel each time I race the crash and pull of the water. I keep my feet, though my last cut is hard and I almost overbalance.
“You manhandled that last one.”
Looking up from the knee-high water where I’m stepping off my board, I see Malcolm standing just outside of the reach of the waves, his casted leg sitting carelessly on the sand, his weight resting on his crutches. The goosebumps popping out all over my skin are no longer just from the wind and the fact that it’s fifty degrees outside.
He isn’t wearing a hat, and his hair whips around his face, a face that’s not quite as thin as it was four weeks ago. He’s wearing a black hooded Volcom jacket, unzipped, over a dark gray button-down and black shorts that stop just above his cast.
Mal rarely wears color other than black and gray—even his tattoos are all variations of those two colors. I once thought it made him look like a dark prince, the one from the real fairytales where happily-ever-after doesn’t come at the end. Now, I look at him and see a warrior—the kind that fights even when the loss is inevitable, because that’s all he knows: to fight until he can’t anymore.
“And you still haven’t learned the value of a wetsuit.”
This breaks me out of my reverie, and makes me laugh, because it’s an old argument, one that precedes that time when I hated him and goes back to the simpler time of when we were just friends. Like now.
“I go in the water to feel it and be a part of it, not shy away from it.”
I give him the standard line I’ve been handing him since I was twelve, the same one my mom handed me when I started surfing. To this day, I don’t know if she believes those words, or if she just couldn’t afford a wetsuit for me when I was growing up, and she had to make herself believe them. I think it might be a little of both.
“Yeah, well, I drop onto the ramp to own it, and look how well that turned out.”
“You make a fair point.” My board is under my arm, and I’m wading through the shallow surf up to the sand where he’s standing. I don’t miss the way his eyes follow my every move, and I wonder if I notice because I’m seeing things differently after what we’ve put out in the open the last two weeks, or he’s purposely being more obvious.
I gave in to the weather this morning and added a light blue rash guard over my suit, which is helpful in the water, but out of it, the extra material only serves to keep me wet, so my skin is one ball of gooseflesh by the time I reach the shore and drop my board. Mal already has my towel out of my bag and open, so I only have to step into it.
Instead of releasing it so I can wrap it around myself, like he used to do when we were kids, he holds onto it, wrapping it around me and forcing me closer to him so it can close.
“Thanks.” I pretend the breathless sound of my voice is from the surfing and cold, not the fact that he and I are inches apart, and we aren’t mad at each other, aren’t yelling, aren’t even talking. We’re just looking, like two starved individuals gorging themselves on details we’ve missed for so long, learning new ones, like the slight scar on the right side of his temple, and another one right above his collar bone.
“You must be freezing.”
“You say that every time.” If I could bite my tongue off right now, I would. Malcolm, understanding perfectly, smiles, and oh wow, it’s a real one.
“Well, the beach is empty for a reason.”
“Because it’s Christmas?” I venture, grateful for the lifeline.
“Because it’s fuckingcold. Now get your clothes on, woman, so we aren’t late. Isa was very specific about what time we better be at her parents’s house. And frankly, she’s a little scary, so I don’t want to test her.”
Turning, I reach for my bag, but Mal already has it over his shoulder. “I’ll get this; you grab your board. We can put it in the bed of the truck. You walk down?”
I nod, loosening the towel so it falls to my waist where I secure it, and heft my board under my arm. “Yeah. Mom left an hour ago. I was going to walk back and ride to the Rojas’s with her.”
Mal crutches to the truck,FRONTSIDE CONTRACTINGemblazoned on the outside, my bag slung over his shoulder. I observe him while we walk, noting that he’s smoother in his movement, his leg more like a part of him than dead weight he’s trying to cart around. “I stopped at your house this morning and let her know I would get you. She’s going to swing by Rose and Vanessa’s house and bring them.”