Killer Swell

10

I opened the sliding screen door to my place just before one in the morning, the smell of jalapenos and nacho cheese immediately burning into my nostrils.

“Honey, you’re home,” Carter Hamm said from the sofa amidst a pile of beer cans, plastic wrap, and tortilla chips.

“How did you ever convince me to give you a key?” I asked, shutting the door behind me.

“I didn’t,” he said, wiggling his enormous frame into a sitting position. “I stole one.”

“Ah.”

He grinned, looking like a humongous Cheshire cat. “Ah.”

Carter had played center to my small forward in high school, pulling guard to my fullback and juvenile delinquent to my better judgment. Despite our differences-the main one being that I thought the law should be obeyed and he thought the law was a pain in his ass-we had remained surfing buddies, occasional coworkers, and good friends.

He stretched out his legs, the bottom half of his six-foot-nine body unfurling like a damp straw wrapper. His bleached white hair glowed in the dark room, his black eyes shining against his tan skin. The white T-shirt said DO ME in big black letters, and long red shorts hung loosely to his knees. His size-sixteen feet were bare, his sandals most likely buried somewhere beneath the tornado of crap he had created on my sofa.

He lifted a paper plate in my direction. “Nachos?”

“No thanks,” I said, tossing my keys on the kitchen counter. I walked to the fridge, pulled out a Red Trolley, ripped the cap off, and drank half of it.

Carter let out a low whistle. “Dude, if I had known we were gonna be drinking, I would’ve waited for you.”

“We’re not drinking,” I mumbled, staring out the back door. The whitecaps in the ocean did nosedives under the moonlight.

I felt Carter’s eyes on my back. “You alright?”

“No, not really.”

“Gonna tell me?”

“Not now.”

“Cool. You wanna hit the water?”

I watched the ocean shiver and shake a hundred yards away, empty and navy blue in the dark. I knew that some time on my board trying to decipher and outsmart the waves might temporarily salve my wounds.

I finished the beer and set the empty bottle on the counter.

I turned to Carter. “Let’s go.”