The last few days at the Boot Camp passed in a blur of therapy sessions, treasure hunting, and sneaking away to see Todd every chance I got. On my second to last morning, Todd asked me to meet him by the surf shed at sunrise for dawn patrol, a term used by surfers to describe getting out into the ocean before the sunrise.
According to Austin, dawn was the only time of day when the temperature of the water equals the temperature of the surface of the earth, creating a perfect equilibrium for wind and waves. The ocean was typically less choppy in the early morning hours and the swells more predictable. The downside, of course, is that the sun hasn’t had a chance to do its job and warm up the sea and air yet. When I stepped outside my bungalow, the thermometer read 67 degrees. I zipped up my NYU sweatshirt and headed down to the beach.
Todd was waiting for me outside the shed, holding two to-go coffee cups. He was already wearing his wet suit, but I needed to borrow one from the surf school.
“Morning, beautiful,” he said, handing me one of the coffees. “You’re in luck, the beach break should help us be able to get in a good set this morning.”
“Beach break?” Even after two weeks in Topsail, I still didn’t have my surf lingo down.
“See right there?” he said, pointing to a large mound coming up from the seabed. “The sandbar that formed last night means the wave will break closer to the shoreline, and we won’t have to paddle for miles to reach some decent swells. The downside is that beach break waves don’t always crest as softly as point break waves, but the upside is that wiping out on a beach break tends to be a lot more forgiving than the alternative.”
“If I can stay on the board for at least half the time I’ll be a happy woman.”
“You know what they say, you can’t stop the waves, but we can choose which ones to surf.”
“Very profound.”
He laughed and unlocked the shed. “If you want to hand me your board, I’ll get it waxed while you change into your wet suit,” he offered.
A few days ago, I had decided even though I could rent a surfboard from the resort for the rest of my trip, I wanted my own board as a keepsake from my time in Topsail. The town had a few surf shops, but Emmy highly recommended Eat, Sleep, Surf, a small boutique owned and operated by a former Navy Seal who retired to Topsail to run the store and give private surfing lessons. She’d bought her own board there a couple of days ago and couldn’t stop raving about the experience, and also about Carl, the Seal.
Carl explained buying a surfboard was like buying a great pair of jeans. If you chose well, the board could last a lifetime. He measured my height, asked a few basic questions to assess my skill level, and asked me to wait while he went to get the model he had in mind from the back room of the store.
“You’re a real petite thing, aren’t ya?” he said, towing a few surfboards behind him.
“I’m 5’2, I think.”
“You look smaller than that to me.”
Carl was easily 6’4 or 6’5, so anyone would look small to him.
“I brought out a couple of options, but I have a feeling I know which board’ll be the one,” he said.
I felt like Harry Potter at Olivanders, getting matched to a magic wand for Hogwarts. Carl seemed to have a similar sixth sense about the whole thing. “How do I test them out?” I asked.
He retrieved the first board from the stack. It was covered in hand-painted tropical flowers. He laid the surfboard down on the floor and motioned to it. “Just gotta hop on.”
I got down on the ground and did a mock popup onto the board. It felt pretty stable beneath me but not quite right.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I scrunched my nose. “I don’t think it’s the one,” I said, stepping off.
“I didn’t think so. Give this one a go next.”
He laid the next board on the ground. This one was a blue ombre design, starting with a deep navy at the top of the board and fading to a baby blue at the widest point on the bottom. The surfboard reminded me of the way the ocean looked from my Retreat House bungalow, the dark sapphire color way out toward the horizon giving way to a lighter blue the closer you got to the beach.
I popped up and onto the blue board, closed my eyes, and imagined steering the board through a huge swell to the shore.
I picked the board up from the ground. “Now this is the one. I’ll take it.”
A smile broke out on Carl’s face. “I knew it.”
I still hadn’t quite figured out how I was getting the surfboard back to New York City, or how I would store it once I got it there, but I didn’t care. I wanted a piece of Topsail with me always, and now I had it.
I went into the shed and immediately spotted the navy point. I wrestled it out from underneath a pile of surfboards and carried it out to Todd.
“Whoa,” he said. “Who’s this good-lookin’ lady?” he said eyeing the board up and down.
“Oh, you like my new surfboard?”
“Like it? That thing’s sweeeeet. When’d you get it?”
“A couple of days ago. I wanted a souvenir to take home with me.”
He suddenly turned uncharacteristically quiet.
“What? What’d I say?”
“Nothing. Of course, I know you’re going home Saturday, but I guess it didn’t seem real until you just said it.”
“I have to leave, to make room for the next slew of brokenhearted women who need to heal. There seem to be a lot of us out there. Way more than I realized.”
“So, did you? Heal, I mean?”
I shook my head. “Not completely. Not yet. But I’m in a much better place than I was, and I know now the things I need to work on.”
“Where does that leave us, then?”
I’d been dreading this exact conversation from the moment I kissed Todd in the kitchen. Todd was a wonderful guy and maybe if we lived in the same city or I wasn’t coming off such a fresh breakup it’d be worth exploring the relationship further. But there was too much stacked against us and I just couldn’t see how we’d make us work in the real world.
“I think that leaves us here, doesn’t it? I live in New York. You live in Topsail. We just met. Maybe if circumstances were different, we could see where this might go, but I don’t see much of a point in pretending we mean more to each other than we possibly could after just two weeks, do you?”
He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “No, no, I guess I don’t.”
I reached out to touch his forearm. “You agree with what I’m saying, don’t you? I’m trying to save us a both a lot of heartache.”
“Sure. Yes. Completely.” He clapped his hands together. “How ’bout this, why don’t you go get changed into your wet suit, and we’ll try to get a set in before I have to go prep for breakfast.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We hit the waves hard. Todd was a far more experienced surfer, but he never left my side. He was as steady as the waves, coaching me through each and every break. He’d lie on his board watching the swells, and when a big one would come, he’d yell to me to steady my board and be ready to pop up.
It was a perfect morning, and as the sun rose up and over the horizon, we savored the salty air and the fact it seemed as though we had the entire Atlantic Ocean to ourselves. Finally, when Austin showed up with the students from the surf school, Todd called it, and we headed back to shore.
He passed me a towel and laid out a second one for us to sit down on. We settled into the sand and watched as Austin led the class through a series of warm-ups.
Todd turned to me. “Did you and the ladies ever end up finding the buried treasure the other night?”
I shook my head. “No. We discovered the last clue and thought we were looking in the right spot, but we never found it.”
“What’d the clue say?”
“It was a Tennyson poem called Crossing the Bar. We searched the Sunset Sandbar restaurant high and low looking for the treasure chest and came up empty.”
“You know, I’ve been reading that Blackbeard book you gave me,” he said.
“Is it interesting?”
“Very. Did you know most of his so-called buried treasure wasn’t made up of gold doubloons or jewels? He stole everyday household things like tea and feathered mattresses, candles, and soap. Items that were worth quite a bit back then, but nothing that’d be worth much now, beyond their historic value.”
“One man’s trash,” I teased. “Really, though, think about all those people who wasted their lives in pursuit of a lie.”
“I’m not sure they’d agree with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Half the adventure’s in the pursuit. The chance you could possibly uncover a prize is enough to sustain most people.”
“Well, not this person. I’m disappointed to not be going home with the Retreat House treasure.”
“Think you’ll ever make your way back to Topsail to reignite the search?”
“I’d like to say yes, but I don’t think so. Topsail’s a world away from the rest of my life.”
He nodded and cupped my chin in his hand. “Think you can stay here in my world, just a little bit longer? I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet, are you?”
I looked into his handsome face and could almost imagine throwing away my whole life and moving to Topsail. I’d spend my mornings surfing and my nights in his arms. But it was a pipe dream and like all summer romances, this one had a shelf-life.
I snuggled into his chest, “No, I’m not ready to say goodbye, not just yet.”