27. Britta

Chapter twenty-seven

Britta

I step into the tub, then sink all the way in, letting the hot water swallow my entire body. I can almost stretch my legs straight; the tub is that big. I squeeze my eyes shut and stay under for as long as I can hold my breath, hoping when I reemerge it will be without the crushing guilt I've felt since stepping off the High Roller and touching blessed solid ground again.

A normal person would feel guilty for not telling her family the whole truth about why she's getting married, but that's only part of what's eating me up. The main thing I don't think I'll ever get over is the fact that I got married today and didn't think about my mom once during the entire ceremony.

Maybe it's because it happened so fast or because I was ten seconds away from a full-blown panic attack through the whole thing, but I didn't miss her. And I should have. This is a day we planned together. Sure, the wedding looked nothing like my old Pinterest boards, but that's not the issue.

I'm not sure I can forgive myself for forgetting her today.

And I wonder if the main reason I did is because I had Dex by my side, holding my hand. For the first time since Mom passed, I didn't feel like a part of me was missing. I felt whole again—my heart intact—even though I was doing something that feels wrong. But right. But wrong.

I let all that's happened and all my thoughts and regrets cycle through me for a long time—until the water is lukewarm and my fingertips are prunes. I almost turn the hot water on again, so I can stay in longer, but I don't want to be alone with these thoughts anymore. I haven't found a resolution, I've just grown more used to the questions, I guess. So, I climb out and put on my pjs.

Not sexy ones, and to be honest, that makes me a little sad too. The wedding ceremony wasn't anything like what I'd pictured, but it was still amazing. I faced my fear of heights and got married in the sky with Rhys James as the officiant. I mean, come on. How could I be disappointed about that?

But the wedding night?

That won't be anything like I imagined.

Aside from not sealing the deal—as they say—I'm going to be sleeping by myself. Dex won't be holding me or telling me he loves me. We won't be talking about how happy we are that we finally tied the knot or that we can't wait to spend our lives together.

Maybe I'll have that someday, but it won't be tonight.

The lights are out when I tiptoe to the bed. As I pull the covers up to my shoulders, I listen for any noise from Dex. I can barely make out his form on the couch, but I don't hear anything. Not even deep breaths that would show he's asleep.

"Dex?" I whisper.

"Yeah?" he answers a few seconds later, and my chest loosens.

"Thanks for holding my hand today… I mean, on the High Roller." I stare at the unfamiliar ceiling above me, the outline of the molding growing more visible as my eyes adjust to the dark. "I couldn't have done that without you."

"You wouldn't've had to if not for me," he scoffs.

"True," I laugh, then pause. "But you made me feel safe."

"Good. That's what I wanted. That's all I want for you with this whole thing—to feel safe." His voice always has a hint of laughter in it, but not now. That, more than anything, underlines how sincere he is.

The room fills again with a lonely silence that makes my heart pound almost as much as it did when I saw the High Roller.

"Dex?"

"Yeah?" The sound of his voice quiets my pulse.

"You were really nice to that kid today." I smile at the memory of the way Brody's face lit up when Dex talked to him like they were already friends.

"That surprised you?" He shifts on the couch, and I can see the outline of his torso sitting up against the arm of the couch.

"No. Not at all, but it was still nice to see."

"He caught me on a good day," he deadpans.

"It was a good day, wasn't it?"

Dex lets out a breath. "Yeah, it really was."

We go quiet again, but the loneliness is gone. I'm not ready to go to sleep. I want to keep talking, but this is nice too.

"I was worried you might be sad because your mum wasn't there," Dex says softly, and my breath hitches.

"I wasn't, Dex," the words rush out. I couldn't stop them if I wanted. "I didn't even think about her, and that scares me. It scares me even more than that stupid, giant Ferris wheel we got married on."

My breath comes fast and heavy. I will not cry. Not on my fake wedding night. It won't change anything. I can't go back and miss her while I was saying "I do" to a business arrangement.

Dex is quiet, and I wonder if he's thinking the Olympics might not be worth three years with a crazy person who breaks into tears if her mom is mentioned.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to put that on you." I control my voice until the end when you comes out in a stagger.

From across the room, Dex lets out a frustrated sigh that only makes me feel worse. Then he pads across the room, probably to the bathroom. Except he stops next to the bed, his shadow falling over me.

"Move over," he orders.

Without asking questions, I scoot to the center of the bed, and Dex climbs on, pinning the covers around me as he lies on top of them. He slides his arm under my head, pulls me close to his chest, and wraps his other arm around me.

"I call necessary hugging." His lips brush the top of my head in what may be an accident or a kiss.

I hope it's the second, because I'm already nestled into his chest, wishing the down comforter wasn't between us, while burying my head into it to muffle my sniffling.

I don't fool Dex. He rubs my back and whispers things like, "there, there," and "let it out. I've got you." Which only makes me cry harder, because it's been a long time since someone's had my back.

There are no platitudes. No, "it will be okay" or "things will get easier with time." Because it won't ever be okay that Mom wasn't here and I didn't miss her, and I also hate the thought of things getting easier the longer Mom is gone. I don't want her to be gone now or in the future when my memories of her start to fade.

"What do you think it means that I forgot her today?" I ask when my tears slow enough I can form the question without making that weird choking sound that comes with crying.

"Do you mean while we were getting married in one of the world's tallest Ferris wheels, even though you're scared of heights? And maybe marriage, too."

I let out a small laugh.

"I think it means you were too terrified to think of anything besides what was happening in the moment. Nothing else." Dex's hand is cupped around my shoulder, and he caresses my bare skin with his thumb.

I take a deep breath, wanting to let go of the weight I've carried for years, but that's become unbearable since Mom passed. "I don't want to forget Mom, but I'm afraid that's the penance I have to pay."

"Penance for what?" Dex's voice is calm, like what I've told him is totally normal.

"Being mad at her for getting sick. It makes no sense, but I am. It's not her fault, but I gave up everything I had planned because I wanted to take care of her." Not only have I never said these words out loud, but I also haven't articulated them to myself.

But saying them brings clarity to my feelings, and I shed a fragment of the shame I've been carrying. "She raised me to be whatever I wanted, to go wherever my heart took me. Then, because I'm her only daughter, her illness brought me home before I could do any of the things I wanted to do."

I feel Dex nod. "She asked you to come home?"

I've asked myself the same question, because I honestly don't remember. "Nobody tried to stop me."

"Hmm. You regret going home?" He drags one fingertip at a time slowly down my shoulder.

I don't answer right away, because regret isn't what I feel. Anger? Yeah. Resentment? Yes. But not necessarily regret.

"I wouldn't change going home instead of taking a job in LA. I'd care for Mom all over again. The only thing I'd change is her getting sick." I push out a frustrated laugh. "See why it makes no sense that I'm mad at her?"

Dex makes his "ah" sound that I'm learning is what he does before saying something he wants you to think isn't much but is actually pretty deep.

"Makes perfect sense to me. It's how I feel about my dad pushing me to surf."

I tilt my chin toward the outline of his jaw. "You love surfing."

"More than anything." He looks down at me, and I turn over to rest my chin and hands on his chest, which I realize as the duvet between us shifts, is bare.

His skin is warm, and I brush my thumb over his shoulder, the way he did to mine. There's only enough light in the room to see shapes, not his eyes. But I feel them on me, studying me, weighing whether to open up to me the way I have to him.

"Remember how I told you I was ten when I told my dad I wanted to go pro?" he says. "That's all it took for my pipedream to become his dream. Suddenly surfing was less about us connecting than it was about me earning money for it."

"That's a lot of pressure for a ten-year-old."

"It's a lot of pressure for any surfer. You put up heaps of money before you ever start earning." He tucks one arm under his head, but the other one stays draped across my lower back.

"That's true of any sport, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but other athletes don't travel internationally for months at a time before they're pros, hoping to win enough smaller events to qualify for the paying events." There's no bitterness in his voice, just acceptance.

"You did that?"

Dex nods. "A football stadium can be built anywhere, but the only place to surf is where the waves are, and a good wave depends on the seafloor, time of year, and wind. The type of seafloor—reef break, sandbar, beach break or the like—and the wind speed, duration, and how large the fetch determines how the wave breaks."

I hold back my joke about Mean Girls and fetch, and instead raise my hand, like I'm in a high school science class. "Professor Dexter, will you explain what fetch means?"

Dex laughs, and his chest expands. Then I lose track of time as he explains to me how waves are formed—math was my best subject, not science—what makes a perfect wave for surfing, and the differences between the waves he's surfed. He explains why surf competitions are held all over the world and how waves are scored differently—so no one has an unfair advantage. His stories of traveling to Indonesia, Tahiti, Brazil, and other far-flung places, sleeping in tents or in vans to save money, away from home for months at a time while he was still a kid, are fascinating. His descriptions of the biggest waves, though, are both interesting and terrifying.

"A barrel wave, like Pipeline in Hawaii, is created by the wind and the shallow reef it comes off." He uses his hands to imitate the shape of the wave and the reef. "It's the reef that makes it so perfect but also so dangerous. You get pummeled by that wave and hit the reef, you're in for a serious injury. I've seen it happen to more than one surfer, and anyone who surfs it regularly has stories of close encounters."

"I had no idea surfing could be so dangerous."

I picture myself at sixteen in my little high school, thinking I was tough playing hockey with the boys and studying hard so I could go to college because it was my only way out of Paradise. Dex, though, was traveling the world, sometimes by himself, working at a restaurant when he was home to earn enough money to get to the next event. The next wave.

"Chasing waves isn't just a saying. It's how pro-surfers live," he finishes with a small yawn.

"I never thought about that. How did you go to school?"

"I didn't," Dex huffs. "In theory, I was home-schooled, but the only proper teachers I had were experience and the ocean."

"Really? You didn't have to do schoolwork?" I push myself up to meet his eyes.

"Dad did it for me until it got too hard for him."

Talking about waves and what he'd learned from traveling, Dex sounded confident and proud. Now I can barely hear him. His words are drowned out by the shame in his voice that's easily recognizable. I've heard the same in my voice.

I lower my head back to the crook of his shoulder before sliding my hand across his chest. I hold him just enough that hopefully he feels safe.

"What do you mean, ‘he did it for you?'" I ask slowly.

Dex runs his hand over my entire arm until it comes to rest on my shoulder. "How many rules are we breaking right now?"

I scoff. "We'll worry about rules tomorrow. Don't change the subject."

I hold my breath, hoping he keeps talking, but also hoping we both forget the rules tomorrow.

After a sigh, Dex says, "Dad did the work I was supposed to do and submitted it as if I'd done it. He thought it was more important for me to be on the waves than reading Lord of the Flies. "

"Honestly, Dex. He wasn't wrong about that. I hated that book."

His laugh rumbles over me. "At least you understand what people are talking about when they say, ‘it's Lord of the Flies in there.'"

"Unless you've seen pre-teen boys kill each other, they're exaggerating."

"I have not seen that."

"Because Lord of the Flies is a stupid, depressing book, and William Golding had a stupid, depressing view of humanity." No one should feel bad about not reading that book, especially someone like Dex who's a good guy.

"Good to know."

"Seriously, Dex, you've done really well for not going to school much." I may be too comfortable right now, because it feels totally natural when I curl in closer to him, my leg over his, wishing there wasn't a blanket between us.

He presses his palm into my skin and slides his hand down my arm, then back up. "I've done well at the one thing I know how to do, because it's the only thing I'll ever be able to do without an education. Surfing is all I've got going for me."

I disagree, but that's not what I say.

"So, do you regret giving up everything else to do it?"

He shakes his head. "Nope. It's like you taking care of your mum. The only thing I'd change is what it did to my relationship with my dad. But if I changed that, I wouldn't be where I am."

Dex rearranges the pillow behind his head, then pulls me closer. "Take your mum. If she hadn't gotten sick—which no one could have changed—you wouldn't be the Britta you are today either. You wouldn't be risking everything to start a totally new life. You wouldn't even know how much you wanted this new life, yeah?"

Something brushes the top of my head. Maybe his cheek. Maybe his lips. I hope it's his lips.

"Not to minimize what you've been through and all the sacrifice it took to get through it," Dex's voice grows softer, more serious. "But from where I stand, the results are pretty awesome and with so much happening, it's not the least bit surprising that you didn't think about your mum. I didn't think about mine either, and she's still around. I haven't even told them."

In the quiet that follows, Dex's heart beats steady under my cheek, and I try not to think of him as my husband. If I let my mind go there, my lips will follow. And if I kiss him, the rest of my body will want to follow, too. We're married, after all. It would be easier to get lost in each other's bodies than to sit with the hard things we're unloading on each other.

But I can't leave Dex carrying my baggage without helping shoulder his.

"What did going pro do to your relationship with your dad?" I ask quietly.

"He became my manager and my coach instead of my dad." The bitterness his voice lacked before is there now.

"Do you think you'd be the world champion if he hadn't coached you?"

Dex shakes his head again, but more slowly. "The reason I'm world champion is that I fired him four years ago. I quit surfing to win for him and went back to doing it because I love it. That's what helped me win, not him telling me I could do better." Dex's words come out faster than usual, like he's expelling them.

I suck in my breath. "Is that why things were weird between you when he came to San Clemente?"

Dex shifts and smiles. "You saw that? You ducked out so fast, I didn't think you noticed my family was there."

"I noticed, and I'm sorry. For leaving, and for the way things are with your dad." I circle my fingers over his chest and feel his skin prickle.

"His pride won't let him get over it, not just because I fired him, but because he knows he did a crap job as manager. He let people take advantage of me, because he thought a handshake meant more than a contract. He cares more about the money he cost me than I do." His fingers find the spot where my t-shirt has crept above my waist, and he runs them along my exposed spine. "I still love him, but he wants his job back, and I want my dad back, and it puts us at a bit of an impasse."

I search for words but come up empty except for the truth. "I'm at a loss for what to say. Sorry isn't enough."

Dex presses his palm to my back. "You listened. That's enough."

His hands are rough and chapped from spending so much time in the ocean. The broken skin and calluses are evidence of how hard he works at what he loves. When I saw him surf, I thought I understood why he loves it. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have agreed to help him achieve his dream of going to the Olympics.

But I didn't understand anything that first day watching him on the waves.

His gaze catches mine, and both our chests go still. If he kisses me now, I won't stop him. I won't be able to. Every part of me wants it.

But instead of pressing his lips to mine, he brushes them across the top of my head. "Look at us, talking like an old married couple."

My breath comes out in a loud laugh that hopefully covers my disappointment, which quickly passes anyway. Dex did the right thing. We're married in name only, and we have to keep it that way.

Now that I know what he's sacrificed to be the best surfer in the world, I better understand how much he loves surfing.

So much that I'm not only safe being fake married to him, I'm also safe here in his arms, saying things I've never said out loud. Because I realize now, he'll never love anything as much as he loves riding waves.

There's no danger of us falling in love.

Even though, at the moment, I could stay here forever.