December 23

CHELSEA IN CHICAGO

T HE MORNING WAS A ROUGH START FOR C HELSEA. H ER HEAD throbbed, and a foggy haze made every one of her thoughts arrive slowly through the thick, unorganized soup of her mind. She blinked at the light through the window and struggled to orient herself. Where am I? Oh, that’s right, Chicago . In a com plete stranger’s bed . No, technically my bed at a stranger’s house . She turned and patted to her right the rumpled sheets in complete disarray—a vestige of the prior evening’s events. But she was here alone. She hadn’t been alone though. Flashes of the night before arrived in quick succession. A memory of perfectly crisp awareness at the candlelight concert... then, dancing... then, more drinks... then... kissing. Oh shit . Then, there was more, so much more. Thoroughly naked Chelsea, wrapped in chaotic ruching of sheets, pulled her arm up above her head to drop her hand in a flop across her face.

She groaned an ugph... as she rolled over to bury her head in a pillow, which she tried to roll up over the sides of her face. Which pillow she also then tried to punch with the back of her head as if it was the one recounting to her harsh accusations of all that had happened the night before. But it was her slowly sharpening mind, running through what she said, what Carlos said, what she did— Oh God, what did she do? And then there was the matter of who put what where and when it all happened and another “ ugph... ” out loud again when she felt embarrassed about how many times she’d come and if it was loud or strange, or just how the person she’d just had sex with received her.

Last night, she didn’t care, couldn’t have cared at all if she wanted to, but this morning, how she worried. She wanted to pull the covers over her head and roll back into a peaceful sleep that would last her until her flight three days from now. Where the shame came from, she had no idea, as she used to be that girl, the exact one that everyone told you not to be. The old Chelsea had a sexual freedom to her, one that allowed her to experience a person physically as easily as she did in collaboration for an art project, or even sometimes as a type of conversation. When it was done it could be finished and she needed nothing more. The experience itself was the virtue that needed no justification.

But Chelsea had changed, admittedly so. She hadn’t dated since she lost her parents, not really. On that day she spent in the gallery with Carlos, something had shifted in her. She could feel that now, even as unbelievable as it was. Was it possible that someone could speak just one morsel of truth so directly to you, so keenly, that it stirred your very soul?

Chelsea sat up in the bed with a start and pulled the sheets around her. Carlos said he wouldn’t stay, she remembered. But then, there was something else. She’d forgotten about the painting she was doing, of him. Had she left it on the table?

Despite being alone, Chelsea suddenly felt very exposed. It was one thing for someone to see you naked on the outside. It was another for someone to see your raw thoughts, your stripped-down heart, your soul itself, removed of all its pretenses. She wrapped the bedding around her and made a rapid march into the living room. There on the table, she saw everything she’d laid out of her paint tubes, the palette still there covered in plastic, her brushes—cleaned and neatly laid in place. And the unfinished painting of Carlos lay in the center of the table. Surely, he’d seen it as he left, Chelsea thought to herself. And how would she explain it? How would anyone feel knowing they were the unwitting subject of an artist’s inspiration, and that you were captured with such detail? Would it be flattering? And then, with Carlos’s disclaimer before—of no strings, of not wanting to be connected past the night, not even to the morning—would he think her crazy? Fragile perhaps?

Chelsea closed the rest of the distance to the table and picked up the unfinished painting. To her, it was unmistakably Carlos, as it was meant to be. It was a reflection of her memory, the thing that she’d most wanted to preserve before it disappeared. Which led Chelsea to the biggest question of all: Had he now become something she was afraid to lose?

RAMONA IN MALIBU-YAAH...

R AMONA OPENED THE BEDROOM BLINDS ON THE FIRST QUIET morning she’d experienced in Malibu and started the day similarly to almost anyone else who’d had a prior evening of at least four glasses of champagne (but who was counting?), a light seafood dinner, and an earful of Joan Fox at her best. Her head was swirling as if she’d been on one hell of a ride. An aspirin and some orange juice would fix the mild hangover, but there was still the matter of Jay. According to Joan, she’d learn to surf and secondarily be seduced into his harem of lululemon-clad acolytes.

But Ramona was leaving in a few days and in no danger of getting carried away any more than she feared being swept away by the ocean. And the latter was in fact an actual fear.

The one person who would have been proudest of Ramona going surfing today was most certainly Melba Tucker, who encouraged both of her children to know as much of the world apart from Chicago as she had through her travels. Only that current circumstances were such that Ramona’s very own mother was the one person she couldn’t tell.

From Chelsea’s kitchen she surveyed her view of the ocean. The day was still overcast, for now. The water was tame, and low tide had the edge of the Pacific grazing the sand as gently as you might pet a baby animal.

Ramona picked up her phone and selected Latrice from her list of Favorites, and within two rings heard her friend’s familiar voice.

“Did you meet Jaws yet?” Latrice chided, without so much as a hello.

“Why can’t it be Ariel, Latrice?” Ramona shot back, already smiling. “You have me getting eaten by a shark?”

“Just sayin’ of the two movies, one is slightly more realistic than the other.”

“I’m starting to regret making you my emergency contact,” Ramona said.

“So, for real, when do you go?”

“In a couple hours.”

“I swear, Ramona, surfing? You out there doing the whitest white shit possible. You can swim that well?”

Ramona laughed. “Of course I can swim. Can’t you?”

For a second Latrice was quiet, and quickly, it occurred to Ramona that maybe swimming wasn’t as common as she thought.

Latrice cleared her throat. “Nah, I can’t.”

“Latrice! You can’t swim? Or you just don’t swim? You didn’t learn in school?”

“Moe, I’m serious. I can’t. And you know I wasn’t trying to mess up my hair in high school. I opted all the way out of swim class. When did you learn how to swim? Like, you can swim, swim?”

Ramona thought about it. “My dad took us to the Y when we were little. Me and my brother learned as kids. When there was a pool, we swam.”

“Girrrlll...” Latrice said. “I’ll dip my toes into Lake Michigan in the summertime...”

Ramona laughed and then she stopped abruptly. As they’d been talking, she was trying her best to visualize a Black surfer, or even competitive swimmer, for that matter. There wasn’t much to reference. Her image of the water was overwhelmingly white, just as Latrice had said.

“Do you wonder why that is?” Ramona spoke her thought aloud.

Latrice stopped talking about cold weather to answer. “Why what is? In the summertime? Girl, do you know how cold it is right now?”

“Latrice, no. I meant, do you ever wonder why when we think of surfing... we can’t see ourselves in mind?”

A loud sigh came from Latrice’s end of the line. “You know what, Moe, I actually don’t wonder.”

“Because you already know,” Ramona said resignedly.

“I already know,” Latrice echoed. A brief silence passed between them. “What are you going to wear?” Latrice asked with shifted energy.

“Jay has a buddy with gear, a wetsuit, board, everything I need—”

“Except shark repellent.”

“Latrice, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“So said everyone who was about to meet calamity.”

“Girl, get you some optimism,” Ramona said.

“ Optimism? Who are you and what have you done with my friend Ramona?”

Ramona laughed. “It’s the same me, but I have to admit, things are unfolding much better than I expected.”

Ramona enabled her camera for Latrice so that she could see the view, the ocean, and the beach outside that still managed to look peaceful and inviting despite the sun’s late arrival. Latrice, who happened to be working on a Sunday, appreciated the glimpse into the world outside of her office.

When Ramona and Latrice ended their call, Ramona couldn’t get it out of her head what Latrice said about surfing—that it was for white people. Most of all, it needled her that even though she’d met Jay, who wasn’t white, and even though she’d be trying it herself, she still didn’t feel in her heart that Latrice’s words were untrue. Were there spaces in the world, enjoyments especially, that weren’t available to her still? Searching within, she could find no examples to counter this strange segregation that persisted, which was especially alarming if its roots were held only in her own mind.

Hours later however, shivering on the beach in a bathing suit, Ramona started to wonder if perhaps Jay was actually the Pied Piper of Malibu and if he had very possibly charmed her into a spectacularly bad decision.

He was off to the side speaking with his friend, standing next to a dusty old VW Microbus in powder blue and white and corroded chrome. The faded writing on the side indicated that the vehicle also doubled as a surf-school headquarters. To his credit, in the payload was a wide assortment of boards and gear looking professional enough for someone whose “office” was once likely used for weed deliveries.

Just as Ramona was wrapping herself with a towel and shifting her weight again in her ongoing effort to generate some warmth against the ocean breeze, in her peripheral view, she saw Jay heading over. Across one arm he was holding out a limp black wetsuit. His own was pulled over his legs and unzipped above his waist, exposing his wondrously bare chest and rippled abdomen. Under the other arm was a long and large turquoise surfboard that Ramona assumed would be hers.

Extending one sinewy arm, he held Ramona’s suit out to her and then with the other gently dropped the board lengthwise in front of her feet.

“We start on the sand. It’ll be just like class ’cept you swap the board for the mat.” Jay smiled like he was getting a kick out of Ramona’s hesitation. And, of course, her mind filled each moment with a new reason why she shouldn’t. One wave crest looked too big. Wasn’t that a riptide? That person who fell out there in the surf, did they get back up? Ramona had already counted the lifeguard shacks along the shoreline, and there didn’t seem to be enough.

Ramona watched Jay pull the top half of his wetsuit up and tug it over one arm and then the other like he was wrapping himself for preservation. “I’m supposed to put this thing on?” she said, her face crinkled with confusion. The suit Jay handed her looked like it might have been for someone much smaller. She had no idea where to even start—how to go about folding herself into the puzzle of a clothing item.

“Yep, hold it open, then one leg at a time. Putting a wetsuit on is all about small victories.”

One at a time , Ramona thought to herself. She dropped one foot in the end hole and felt the seal of the suit shrink-wrap her calf. But there was still give in the suit, and she managed to pull it farther up her leg. When both sides were accomplished, with a fair amount of shimmying and grumbling on Ramona’s part, she was winded but satisfied to finally have the suit at her waist. She copied Jay’s gestures of putting one arm in and then the other, and all that was left was the torso-length zipper behind her.

As Ramona turned about from one side to the other to complete the exercise, Jay set in motion in her direction.

“Let me help you.” At her back, he pulled the sides of the suit together. Romana felt the seal close around her with the satisfying sound of the zipper closing. Something about the finality of it spoke directly to Ramona’s nerves.

“You know, there are a lot of people who’ll be upset if anything happens to me.” Ramona was only half kidding. She could only imagine how infuriated her mother would be if she’d somehow managed to get herself killed during a faux trip at the hands of a stranger she’d already been warned about.

Jay walked around to face Ramona, intently, and stepped close. He was near enough to touch her, and he did. He laid his bronze-brown hands on her shoulders. The warmth and weight of them resting on her lent a certain gravity to his words as well. “You,” he said, “are in good hands.” And the way he said it, so definitively, so carefully, with such confidence, Ramona believed him—she needed to. Latrice’s words had stuck with her. What if she really didn’t belong? Others in the water, who did not look like her, seemed to be enjoying this unfamiliar activity. Why else would they be out there? It was already so much work. Did she really need a wetsuit contraption? Perhaps she’d learn there was something inherently wrong about the water, or it would reject her somehow, or her it. And at the same time, even with all this doubt, she still felt looked after, as if somehow this man could and would help her, help keep her safe.

Jay moved to position himself on the other side of the board in front of Ramona with his back to the ocean. Behind him were the waves of the water, frothy white crests that advanced and disappeared into the sand at the end of their glory. She couldn’t believe that in just moments she’d be out there, riding on the water. There’s no way , she thought.

Like a skilled instructor Jay paced back and forth, delivering Ramona the rules of the waves. “Don’t cross into another surfer’s space,” he said. He told her to never release the board, which she couldn’t imagine happening with it tethered to her via the ankle strap currently lying along the sand. The board he’d selected for her was long, wide, and pretty thick—he assured her it was the right shape and size for beginners. “And it’s got a textured top to help your foot grip,” he said, referring to the soft dimpled top layer on the board. Even that was a reminder of what was to come. In the water, out there, she was supposed to somehow stand on this thing while it was moving. For Ramona, the entire idea was mind-blowing.

Jay was all business. “Okay, we’re going to practice paddling out and then popping up,” he said. He had Ramona lie on the board and show him her freestyle swimming stroke. He adjusted everything about it, from the way she bent her arms to the angle of her hand hitting the water. “Like a fin,” he said, showing her with precision. “You want to push the water, not pull yourself... one arm at a time.” He watched her intently as she practiced the stroke, studying her for corrections to make in each repetition. By the time he finally said, “Okay, now we’re going to practice standing up,” Ramona felt like she’d already swum across Lake Michigan.

Standing up on the board, and even practicing it, was going to require Ramona to push herself up from a lying position flat on her belly to crouching on her feet. Watching Jay demonstrate it for her made her feel nervous and self-conscious. Her arm strength was weak, and she was heavy, especially top-heavy. The thought of embarrassing herself made her cheeks burn, and instantly she reignited her regret. Next to her a couple of seagulls tittered, looking for food, and then flew away. She wished she could join them.

“See, it’s just like yoga class,” Jay said over the roar of the ocean, demonstrating the choreography again for standing up on the board. His movements were so fluid, so masterful. There was no way Ramona could do that herself, and frankly, she didn’t want to try. “Your turn,” Jay announced, gesturing to the board on the sand below. Ramona vigorously shook her head no.

“I don’t think I can do that.” She folded her arms and turned toward the sea. When the breeze blew the smell of the seawater into her nostrils, she took a deep, defiant breath and looked for the nearest way out. Maybe this really wasn’t for her. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to be here. But yet, here they were, just the two of them, only feet away from the water. The challenge itself beckoned to her; she’d come too far now to leave and not know.

“I saw you do it before,” Jay said. “Only, in class it was harder .” He smiled. “This is going to feel easy. We’ll do it in steps. All you have to do right now is lie down, flat on the board.”

Ramona hesitated, knowing that she was being managed. She hated the part of herself that liked it, appreciated it even. Jay was good, with confidence and information that exceeded her knowledge. What she felt was a tinge of regret, like she was out of her mind, filled with contradictions. She worried that he’d be able to convince her to do anything. To go past her limits. Maybe that was the reason for Joan’s warning. He’s going to have me out here looking stupid , she thought, remembering how she fell asleep. But then, she looked down, and Jay had taken her place instead. He was lying flat on the board, stomach down.

“Stomach down flat on the board,” he said, seeming to pay no attention to Ramona’s obstinance. “Chest lifts up... right toes stay stuck... Left knee comes up to kneeling position, right up to your chest.” His actions were slow and easy to follow, just like the yoga class. To Ramona, the moves did look simple, easier than what she’d done before with a downward dog and surely easier than a plank position. “And then we stand up just by lifting our body with the back leg, bringing the knee off the ground and twisting the back foot so that it makes a t shape with the centerline of the board.”

Ramona managed to drop her scowl, but she kept her arms folded.

“Okay, I’m going to do it again.” Jay repeated the same sequence on the board in front of Ramona three times, before she actually started to feel silly for just standing there, and after the fourth time, she wanted to do it herself, if only to save him from another repetition. He never complained or goaded her, he just kept doing it, the same move over and over again. Somehow, she was now more self-conscious for him than she’d previously been about herself.

“Okay, you win,” she said. Ramona bent over the board, lowering herself onto it like she had with the paddling exercise. She put her hands on either side of her and pushed her upper body up, boobs and all, and was surprised how easily the position came to her. Repeating what Jay had shown her, she pulled her left leg forward into her chest, which was a little uncomfortable until she straightened her back, giving her much more room to breathe. And then, she was kneeling.

“That’s it!” Jay clapped his hands together. “Okay, now...” He came over to place his hands lightly at her waist. Another reminder of support, that he was here. And Ramona registered a jolt of determination.

“I think I’ve got the rest.” Ramona was feeling confident now, assured. Trusting her body for the last move, she pushed her right knee off the board just like Jay said, and there she was, standing. She made it up. She couldn’t hide the widening smile on her face. She beamed with pride at a true accomplishment. “I did it!” she said and wanted to say it a thousand times more into the wind.

“Now it’s time to get in the ocean.” Jay showed Ramona how she’d carry her board into the water. How to find a wave that had already broken. “See, where the wave breaks, when it becomes white and foamy, see that froth? That’s the whitewash,” he explained. “With beginners, we usually start there and try to ride one in.”

“Stand up? In the water?” Ramona said.

“That’s kinda the point,” Jay teased back. “The faster you’re going, the easier it’ll be. I can show you... better to do it than to just stand there and think about it.” As Jay explained, all she had to do was to move into position, get on her board, paddle through, and stand up, just like they had on the beach.

Ramona held her look of skepticism. “Jay,” she said, “why do I feel like some other man is saying the exact same thing to some other woman in equally questionable but totally different circumstances?”

“You don’t believe me?”

Ramona groaned. “I’m here to try, so let’s just try it,” she said.

At her response, Jay broke out into a smile that looked almost goofy, like a kid with a new bike.

Twenty minutes later, wading into nearly waist-high water, Jay held Ramona’s board for her while she pulled herself up to lie on top of it and start to paddle forward. They’d spotted a series of swells, the nearest of which had turned into the frothy crested wave just as Jay had described. Somehow, according to Jay, she’d ride one of these waves back to the shore. She paddled out beyond it, riding against and then with the swell of water. The passing wave lifted her up with such great power it focused all her senses in exactly the present. It had been enough to lift her up on the board, farther than she thought, and drop her down at least two feet, slapping against the water and jostling her posture. Ramona wiggled to realign herself to the center. On the other side of the wave, Jay helped her turn her board to the shore. And Ramona could feel the power of the ocean beneath her, even in the shallower water. She turned her head to see the water building behind her. Her wave was coming, building into a break. She was waiting, floating on her board, trying to stay calm and maintain her breath. And then the water started moving her forward.

“Torso up now,” Jay called out to her with urgency. The rush of the moment filled her ears, along with the roar of the ocean surrounding them. She was moving much faster than she expected, as fast as a bike even, but riding smoothly on the surface of the water. She was within the grip of the forces of nature, and the raw power of the water beneath her was evident, palpable. Remembering her practice, she did as Jay said, holding on to the sides of the board, and with flat palms, she pushed herself into a cobra position, like she had on the sand. “Right foot anchors, left knee forward,” Jay yelled out from behind her, sounding surprisingly distant. She performed the movement she remembered and suddenly she was kneeling on the board. The board that was moving on top of the water at speed toward the shore.

As she rushed forward along with the water, Ramona turned inward. She had a goal that she was determined to reach. Just one more move, Ramona , she thought to herself, steeling her focus and will for the last step.

Okay, now, quickly! Ramona’s mind shouted at her. She remembered Jay’s instructions. In the moment there seemed to be so little time to execute. “Pull your back leg forward, twist your foot perpendicular to the board,” she repeated aloud.

Over the rumble of the waves, in the clutch of the ocean, Ramona felt powerful in her body as she never had before. She could and she did pull her leg forward and anchor her foot against the sticky top of the board as she’d been instructed. There in that moment, it was all her and the air, one with the board and the water beneath her, arms outstretched and into the wind. She was riding the wave. Ramona was surfing.

“Arms along the centerline!” Jay yelled, but it was too late. The board started to slow down, and then wobble. Ramona was surfing for exactly ten seconds, ten glorious seconds before her loss of balance tipped her too far to the left and she landed softly in the shallow turquoise water next to her. But for that brief time, that glimpse into what she’d been capable of, Ramona felt as if she’d won a championship. Every light within her was illuminated in full brilliance. The rush was unmistakable, the unbridled force of the ocean, the communion with nature herself, the ultimate mother. With her feet underneath her once again on solid ground, forgetting herself, she wrapped her arms around Jay with the fullness of her gratitude and joy.

“OhMyGod, I did it!” Ramona was all wet hair, water in her face and eyes, sand in places that had never seen sunlight, but she was all elation. “Thank you, thank you so much!” To her surprise, Jay wrapped his arm around her, returning her embrace. Amid the swell of feelings and Ramona’s soaring delight, Jay’s warmth around her became its own bit of electricity in her belly.

Jay looked so happy for her, like he knew all the while she could do it. “Nice dismount,” he said, finally pulling away.

Ramona felt a small tinge of regret at him separating but recovered quickly as accomplishment continued to surge through her veins. She had surfed and she’d wiped out. “I wanna try it again,” she said with a surprising eagerness. Ramona was surging with the rush of endorphins, the feeling of having broken the barrier of a new thing. She was bubbling with the excitement of possibilities and imagining being able to relive it all in every person she told. But the person she’d shared the experience with was Jay.

An hour later, Ramona had managed to stand up three more times with only one more wipeout and got in her longest ride of a full forty-five seconds before her board gracefully glided into the shallowest bit of water against the sand.

“So, this is what you do on your day off?” Ramona asked, when they were toweling off on the beach.

“Teach Midwesterners how to surf?”

“I meant... surf yourself.”

“Sometimes. I go to different spots. As I’m sure you heard, surfing in Malibu is a little... complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“It’s not always welcoming. Some people feel like they own certain breaks, spots to surf... and... there aren’t many brown folks in the water.”

“But you do it.” Ramona was confused. The rush she’d felt, it was indescribable. Like she’d just come alive. As if she’d been reborn in the ride, within the wave itself.

“I do it because I don’t care whether or not I’m welcome.” Jay’s voice had a firmness to it, as if echoing a feeling beyond the moment, a frustration perhaps. “It wears on you though, feeling like an outsider, especially at first. But I found some different groups to surf with. And I got good enough that I feel like I can go out anywhere now, but there are still days I don’t know what to expect—maybe a knucklehead or two, you never know. The thing about the ocean is that nobody owns her. And the minute you think you might have it figured out, she changes, something’s different. Always different.”

“A temperamental woman?”

“A temperamental woman makes the best kind of lover,” Jay replied, holding eye contact with Ramona until she had to look away. She understood what he meant, having just left the sea, but couldn’t help but wonder if he somehow meant her as well.

Jay’s friend walked up and motioned to collect the suits and boards.

“See you tonight at Dockweiler?” he asked to no one, and thus to everyone within earshot.

“Dockweiler? Is that a bar?” Ramona asked.

Both Jay and his friend, who by then she’d learned was called Rip, laughed.

“Dockweiler is a beach. The only one nearby where you can have bonfires.”

Ramona turned to Jay with a smile. “So, you do have other hobbies.”

“I don’t know if a bonfire is a hobby, but sure.” He winked back at her playfully.

Rip lifted a deep golden arm up over his eyes. The sun had finally made its full appearance. “Hey, if you’re into surfing, you should come. Some good people there, and there’s nothing like seeing the firepits all lit up at night. And the ocean, it’s like she has another personality.”

“Ramona, if you want to go, I’ll drive you,” Jay said. “It’s a little ways away from this beach.”

“Yeah, Malibu is for surfing for sure. Dockweiler is for firepits,” Rip said.

Ramona looked back and forth between the two men. There was absolutely nothing about them that signaled they couldn’t be trusted. In fact, Rip and his dusty repurposed van, his sun-bleached curls and tanned extremities, looked far too relaxed to do any harm. Worst case, she’d be riding in a dingy VW with Jay for a bit.

“Okay,” Ramona said after her deliberation. On the electric high of her first experience surfing, she would have agreed to nearly anything. And she couldn’t wait to be back at the beach. I’m sure it’ll be fine , she thought, just like she’d told Latrice.

CHELSEA IN CHICAGO (DEFINITELY NOT SURFING...)

O THER THAN M ALIBU, THE MOST FAMILIAR PLACE IN THE WORLD for Chelsea was alone with her thoughts. Ordinarily she’d be comfortable there. Basic regret was manageable, or sorrow, even that was fine. But this day Chelsea’s thoughts were driving her crazy with no place to go. Did Carlos see the painting? Did he think she was obsessed? A stalker? Would he want to see her again? Wait, why did she care? And so, for distraction and a bit of cheer, she decided to go to the most obvious place in town.

It gets dark so early in Chicago... This was Chelsea’s thought as she glanced out of the window of the car she decided to take down to Michigan Avenue, the section best known as the Miracle Mile. There wasn’t anything particularly miraculous about it until the holidays, when the avenue came alive with a million tiny lights strung along every branch of every tree along the street, a bonanza of Christmas decorations, Fifth Avenue–esque decorated shop windows, and a humongous Christmas tree sitting right at the base of the Wrigley Building. Roaming about almost like a single organism were the innumerable pedestrians, bundled up like waddling penguins trying to brave the temperatures, weaving back and forth between one another on the sidewalk and in and out of stores.

Earlier, in Ramona’s condo, Chelsea spent the better part of the day working on another art piece, a charcoal pencil sketch from memory, trying to work the previous night out of her mind. She’d also paced the floor, listened to five podcast episodes, then scrolled all of her social media feeds until she started feeling insecure about her makeup, hair, body, career, and strangely not having a car or relationship, although none of this seemed to bother her as much before. Even without the digital FOMO, however, she felt very acutely the longing of wanting to be with someone, someone you could still feel against your body, who you could still smell on parts of you. Someone absent, but who you could still see every time you closed your eyes.

Chelsea had composed at least ten text messages to Carlos that she didn’t send. “I hope you’re having a great day!” she typed. And then deleted it, because of course she wasn’t the type to put exclamation marks in text messages. “Wanna grab dinner?” was her most honest attempt, which she talked herself out of because wouldn’t it be presumptuous to assume he didn’t have a date lined up? After all, although they’d had an incredible night, it was only because an outing planned with someone else fell through. So, rather than obsess about what she couldn’t control, she decided to channel all her insecurities into the most common solution she could think of—shopping. The next day was Mrs. Tucker’s party, and as a small splurge she’d purchase the first dress she’d bought in years.

And this is how Chelsea wound up on Michigan Avenue back in front of the Wrigley Building, right next to the pizza restaurant where Carlos had first introduced her to deep dish. It was just approaching the end of the afternoon hours, and already the sun had all but disappeared during the very short dusk. The lights of the boulevard twinkled, casting a glow about the street and lending a festive air to the blocks ahead. The car headlights in the wide boulevard and the glinting decorations on the bordering trees, all sparkling in the spreading evening, made an amusing parade of the slow-moving vehicles and the bundled pedestrians costumed for winter warmth.

Remembering the trips that she used to take with her mother, Chelsea stopped in the fanciest department store that she saw, near the five-star hotels that dotted that portion of the double-lane avenue. There, she’d see if she could find anything special, sparkly, and on sale , worthy of the glamour that Mrs. Tucker had promised for the next evening’s festivities. When Chelsea finally found a dress within her budget, it wasn’t sparkles but instead something much more befitting of the theme, more representative of her, and something she couldn’t wait to wear.

Satisfied with her relatively modest purchase and making her way down the escalator out of the store, Chelsea heard from above the rousing sounds of a caroling quartet singing a soulful a cappella of a Christmas song she’d never heard before but certainly wanted to hear again. “This Christmas will be a very special Christmas,” echoed around her in harmonies and swells of melodic voices. She hoped that somehow, some way, it would be special—and not just a fleeting memory that she would scramble to paint before it disappeared... forever.

The lights on the trees inspired Chelsea to make a stop in one of the large drugstores she saw to pick up a few strings of lights and some candles, and upon returning to Ramona’s condo with frozen fingertips and toes, she peeled off her hot-pink mittens and set about putting up some temporary decorations. Finally satisfied with the lights around the window and a smattering of a few stick-on bows, Chelsea snapped a photograph of it all and wrote a confident message to Carlos.

CHELSEA: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Simple and to the point, casual. So much easier than saying what she really felt or even asking for what she really wanted.

So, it came as a complete surprise when Carlos replied just one minute later. His text message was simple, but to Chelsea, it was everything she needed.

CARLOS: Wanna see some real lights?

RAMONA IN MALIBU...

W HEN R AMONA RETURNED TO C HELSEA’S BEACHSIDE COTTAGE, she was still wired with the buzzing energy flowing through her, bubbling like an effervescent glass of champagne. The feeling lasted even as she showered and rinsed out her hair, thankful that her twists had still held up in the seawater. Ramona’s normal haircare routine was much removed from a simple “wash your hair in the shower” type of process. Her very thick type 4 curls were both fragile and obstinate, requiring care and patience to coax them into one of her customary styles, achieved like a chef’s signature recipe. Usually, it took lots of love and even more conditioner (especially to detangle)—the kind that penetrated deeply and the kind that was left in to protect, and then a fixative—her favorite gel that smelled like the soft perfume of marshmallows. For Ramona, restyling her hair was her favorite “enjoy me today, tomorrow’s wash day” T-shirt—a careful process that required hours of her focused time and attention. Each strand that grew from her head, and each millimeter of length thereupon, was an earned testament to growing hands and methods, intention, and sacrifice. Although the twists weren’t her comfortable normal style, and the shrinkage she experienced as they dried brought her some disappointment, she was getting used to the look of them, finding the twisted strands of her hair to be less of an intermediate step and more of a style of its own, robust enough to weather the new climate of moisture-laden sea air.

Moisture brought changes to Ramona’s hair that she couldn’t always predict. But the twists, they held their shape. To dry, she pulled them tightly up to the top of her head and arranged them in a small-but-satisfying bun bundled at her crown. Her eyes delighted in the curves and bends of the textures twined around themselves, dark and lush and dancing with light. It looked rich and graceful, the style of a queen, fastened and affixed with care. “There,” she said aloud, smiling at herself in the mirror. She saw a delighted Ramona, purely and simply happy, physically blooming, it seemed, spurred by a current of quiet confidence.

Ramona’s stomach grumbled, an interruption reminding her that it had been some time since she’d last had a meal. The power of the sea, the weight of the surfboard, the resistance of the water, the sheer effort it required to focus all of her attention on a single point on that board—it had taken a toll. To stand up while being propelled on the surface of a rush of water had robbed her of whatever she’d last filled her body with to fuel it. Crossing into the kitchen, she rummaged for the sandwich she’d absentmindedly purchased on the way back from the beach.

Despite the intensity of her hunger and as she quelled it with her first bite, there was one thing that kept nagging at her. A place her mind kept asking her to go. To examine that feeling that she’d had in the water and how extreme was her exhilaration. Ramona knew then, for sure, that there was no way that this experience, this healing, this plugged-in connection to the raw power of nature was something that any group of people just didn’t do . Because once you felt this feeling, it would be something you’d chase for the rest of your life. And you’d want others to chase it too because it was so pure, the purest of delights that when discovered; like a small child who discovers a delightful thing, the first impulse is to share. And so, she knew, she knew that there had to have been an intervening force. Something had to have kept us from it , she thought. Something so big, powerful enough to suppress the soul itself . And with this thought, the curiosity appeared within Ramona, white hot and burning. She had to find out what that something was.

When she searched “Black surfers” on the internet, what she quickly found was a history of struggles that played out on California’s beaches and in the waves. It turned out that Latrice had made a great point about swimming, Ramona realized, as she read that Black people, who historically had little access to public pools, even in California couldn’t escape segregated beaches until the 1960s. She read accounts of localism that ranged from name-calling to all-out violence and the acts of resistance like wade-outs and paddle-outs of people of color reclaiming their place in the water. She found the names of groups like the Black Surfing Association that formed in the seventies, the Black Surfers Collective, and then Color the Water, formed more recently in the name of increasing representation, plus Textured Waves, Black Girls Surf, and SurfearNEGRA, focused on Black and brown women. After coming across the award ceremony pictures in her search results, with smiling brown faces holding surfboards and trophies, she smiled back at the screen, wishing she’d been able to see A Great Day in the Stoke in person, beyond just the images that lived online documenting its historic competition, gathering Black surfers from around the world. It made Ramona wonder, if she kept at it, if she got good enough, could she compete, even for fun? But where were all the professional competitors since Sharon Shaffer, like Nique Miller, who looked like her, to answer that question? There were not very many other names to be found. Why was that? Ramona wondered.

Between the articles she found, as she read voraciously and then searched some more, Ramona thought back to all that surfing might have required in the 1980s or later even, and especially for a Black woman—knowing how to swim, and having access to water, because as she read it, not even half of Black children or adults did. And even if she did, what would she do with her wet hair if she had to go to school or to work? A style like her versatile twists wasn’t even fully protected from punishment until the CROWN Act from the repercussions of being deemed unprofessional or outside of a dress code. And if she decided to surf? Malibu was considered to have the best surfing beach in the world, but it was a place that had once been segregated by practice and now was made exclusionary through various weapons from simple hostility to actual physical aggression on the sand and in the water—the heartbreaking stories from the coastline were detailed in news archives and hard to read. “People are trying to own the actual beach!” Latrice had said. And now that Ramona found the articles, she learned for herself that, sadly, this was true.

Ramona read voraciously. One crumb of discovery led to another, word by word, article by article, narrative by narrative, each building together like a drumbeat, thump-thump... thump-thump... thump-thump... to a frantic crescendo. Her heart was racing, her mind thinking clearly, freely. Until it came to a point of stark realization, a breakthrough in understanding. The big something... was violence . Her people’s right to recreation, to the enjoyment of leisure—the right that they had to their own bodies to do as they pleased, to their joy, to their time and clear thought—that right had been stolen by violence and intimidation, by privilege conferred on others.

Ramona savored then her experience of exploration and wildness, the purity of shaping her power through nature, reserving herself not for productivity and labor, but for re-creation. Rejuvenation, rebirth—these were freedoms too, bought and paid for by the salt of sorrow and tears that had now become one with the ocean itself. Her leisure, her communion, this time that she had taken for herself, it had allowed her to slow down, to examine her thoughts, to really listen to others and to herself, and to try a new way to reclaim her body, to reconnect to herself, to be free. This was her inheritance.

Too quickly, two hours passed with her phone in hand, consuming all that she could to help put rails of context around what she’d experienced earlier riding the ocean. Ramona was still on a high with a crackling energy that kept her buoyant.

She hit send on a message to Latrice, attaching the photo that Jay took of her in her wetsuit with the board. She only wished that, alongside that one, she had a photo of herself in the water, on even just one of the small whitecapped waves that she’d wrestled. That photo, if she had it, she’d frame it like a work of art, or a graduation certificate, a commemoration of its value—the induction into a new part of her life. She was now a wave rider, a watawoman, an enchantress of the surf. And without such a photo, without documentation or an image to refer to or just to proudly show others, she’d have to rely on her memory and her imaginings and what she was assured would be her longings to return. To Latrice’s reply, telling her she looked “badass” and “legit,” Ramona messaged that she’d call later—she’d hope to keep the spirit of the moment alive in its retelling. Without the photo, she’d use what the ancestors did, the story and the spoken word. For now, her rendezvous with Jay for the bonfire had arrived, and it was time to see another face of the Pacific, what it looked like up close in the nighttime.

When Jay pulled up, just a half hour after she’d finally set her phone to recharge, she wasn’t sure it was him at all, al though she could see him and the car he was driving from the window. She expected to see a dusty VW van like the ones littered around the beach parking lot with surfboards strapped along every free surface. Or an open-sided white Wrangler that she’d seen on television. Instead, Jay called out, “Are you ready?” from a very new, very matte, very expensive-looking, ultraluxury SUV. She never imagined that teaching yoga on the beach could be so lucrative.

As she stepped into the car, as much as she tried to assume a neutral countenance, she must have registered her confusion on her face.

One of Jay’s hands was wrapped around the leather steering wheel, and another dropped down to adjust the complex-looking climate controls. He turned to face Ramona. “You were expecting something else?”

Ramona had to decide whether she was going to be honest. She certainly was expecting something else, but clearly now, her early assumptions about Jay’s presence on the beach had been incorrect. “Perhaps... I should think about being a yoga instructor,” she said.

Jay laughed. “I haven’t always been a yoga instructor.”

Ramona did a quick take around the opulent interior of the car. It was more than she’d imagine purchasing at this stage in her career, or even years from now. And for once, still carried by bliss, she cared little for measuring herself against comparative accomplishments, at least not professional ones. She was interested to know who he was, how he’d learned to surf, and if the story started here, she’d take the bait for an opening.

As Jay turned the car onto the PCH, its wheels crunched loudly, rolling upon coarse gravel. Jay was focused, looking over his shoulder for traffic. Ramona turned to him, pushing her body against the seat belt, and asked, “What did you do before?”

In the twilight, cars zoomed past them in a parade of headlights. Jay watched intently, looking for timing to join them. He turned into an opening, and as the shape of Chelsea’s house shrank behind them and the wheels of the car began to hum against the road, Jay finally answered.

“I worked in finance. Deals mostly. Investment banking, some private equity.” He turned to look at Ramona quickly, and then back to the road ahead. “Teaching yoga is my retirement job.”

“Retirement?” Ramona looked at Jay more closely. Aside from the salt-and-pepper sprinkling in his hair at the temples, and in the curls at the top, he didn’t look old enough to have retired, even from a lucrative finance job. His skin was smooth, bronze brown, and other than the fine crinkles at the corners of his eyes, he appeared to be a young man in his prime years.

Jay laughed. “Retirement as in I made enough money in my career, and I got out before it was too late. While it was still fun... and when I still had a grasp on any sense at all of having enough.”

Now it was Ramona’s turn to laugh. The concept of enough was a puzzling choice of words. Enough of what for whom? she wondered. “What’s enough mean to you?” she asked.

Jay turned to look at her again with surprise registering in the shadows of his face this time. By now, the sun was beginning its approach toward the long curve of the ocean horizon. Soon it would be dark, and she’d miss the subtleties of his gestures. Their eyes met briefly, and then Jay turned slowly back to his driving while the corner of his mouth lifted in a hint of a smile, as if he was remembering a pleasant thing.

“My first time staying in California, I was in LA for work, from New York, on a deal. We had a lot of pressure to close, not a lot of time. For two weeks we worked like... sla—” Jay paused, looked at Ramona quickly, and then restarted. With closed lips, she smiled in amusement, knowing what he was about to say. He continued, “Like, around the clock. And the guys from the other side, they had no shame about telling us we needed to start our negotiation later in the morning ’cause they were gonna go surf. Can you imagine?” Ramona shook her head, for she most certainly absolutely could not. She’d never felt entitled to leisure, and certainly not so much so as to openly prioritize it over work obligations. Never .

“Uh-uh,” Ramona said, her head still moving involuntarily back and forth as if even it independently held its own objections.

“Right?” Jay continued. “So, I worked that deal, and we closed it. And then I said to myself, I’m gonna go surf. I took a lesson, my very first time on a board, had never even thought to try it on vacation. And you know what? That feeling you felt? That first time on the water? I was hooked. I pushed back my return trip and stayed another week—taking lessons. And then, the first time I went out by myself, I decided I was going to the best beach, right? So, I came out to Malibu. Here I am, an awkward beginner and all, and I’m this brown dude, and there’s nobody out there in the water who looks like me. No one . But I go anyway, you know?” He turned again to Ramona, but this time, it was dark now, so all she could see was the reflection of the interior lights of the car in his eyes and off his skin, and the passing illumination that came from lights on the other side of the road. She nodded yes though, and he turned again back to the road to continue his story.

“So, I got in the water, and I’m practicing, and there’s a few guys in the water. They’re looking at me but not really talking to me as we sit in the lineup.”

Ramona felt her face scrunch, her eyebrows furrow. “What’s a lineup?”

Jay laughed; she could see the perfect alignment of his very white teeth in the darkness of the car. “It’s the lineup,” he said as the car jostled beneath them over a rough patch of asphalt. “It’s the calm place in the water out beyond the break where the surfers wait for the waves to come. You sit in the lineup and float and wait... just wait for that perfect wave.”

“Wow...” Ramona said, not quite meaning to; but imagining it, so close to the time that she’d just been in the water, she couldn’t help herself.

“Yeah,” Jay continued. “So, then this wave comes. I have enough room to take it, and it seems like it should be mine. I’m a newbie, remember, so I could’ve had it wrong. And then the guy next to me comes up, drops in on the wave right after, snakes me... but with the timing, it might’ve looked like I snaked him.” Jay turned to Ramona, seeming to intuit that she had no idea what he was talking about. “Snaked him... took his wave, cut him off... accidentally, maybe .” Jay lifted his right hand off the steering wheel to raise a finger in the air to accentuate his point. “ Accidentally, maybe . And you know what that guy said to me?”

Ramona shook her head no.

“He said, ‘Dude, get the fuck out of the water. You don’t have enough tax money for this spot. Go back down south.’”

“Down south?”

“Like to the more southern beaches. It’s where Black people used to go... exclusively.”

Ramona remembered the mentions of Inkwell Beach from her earlier research. During the period of practiced segregation, it was the only beach that Black people were “allowed” to visit without the overt threat of violence, far away from Malibu. “But you’re not Black,” Ramona said.

“Does that matter?” Jay turned to her quickly.

Ramona looked at him and then turned to her right, over her shoulder, to look out of the window. By now, this far down the PCH, she could see the ocean again, in its majestic midnight-blue robe. As a body, the Pacific had witnessed it all. The totality of humanity. And yet was still welcoming to all, held itself back from no one. The surface of the water looked like folds of satin, creasing and uncreasing in the moonlight. Yes, this water was mixed with tears of all sorts. Its body held the bodies of her ancestors. Its beauty was surely that of salt and sorrow, joy and pain... to ebb and flow, to surge and roar, reminding Ramona of her own resilience.

“Then what did you do?” Ramona asked, thinking of her first night in Malibu.

“I decided to see what enough really was,” Jay said. “I got home, and I pulled up my accounts. That deal that closed, I made my bonus. I looked up the cost to live in Malibu and at the time, it was less than the cost of a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. So, I decided, why not me? I had enough, and I’d had enough. I was tired of working and having nothing to show for it, so here I am.”

This intrigued Ramona, not because she also worked in finance, but also because she’d never heard anyone close to her age speak of enough . When you come from the South Side of Chicago, enough is a generational accomplishment. Enough didn’t mean leisure, or a life in Malibu. It meant having enough, making enough from your earning years, with the labor of your mind and the requirements of your body to not be uncomfortable. It meant having enough to eat, to pay the bills, to have a little fun on the weekends maybe or a vacation. For her parents, enough meant sacrifice—turning a dime into a dollar to feed and clothe two kids, to scrimp and save so that the next generation could go to college and have a chance in the world. A chance for what though? Ramona thought, adjusting her shoulder against the seatback to contemplate what Jay had shared.

It wasn’t lost on her that they were heading south now from Malibu. That they would pass the Inkwell in Santa Monica, or what remained of the location, along the rest of the way to Dockweiler. They rolled down the stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway that kept the ocean and the sunset on their right side. This day’s sunset had already turned the sky into brilliant swaths of periwinkle and peach, colors that Ramona didn’t see during the winter months in Chicago. In the darkness now with the windows down, the heavy ocean air blew in through the car and flapped the loose parts of their clothes. Ramona relaxed, finally allowing herself to sink deeply into the full comfort of the plush leather seat.

While they continued to talk along the half-hour drive, Ramona wondered about Jay’s decisions. How differently enough was viewed between the two of them. Even that he’d been able to consider it and decide he had enough , what a luxury that was. Ramona spent most of her life chasing more , in a household with two kids plus Carlos and anyone else from the neighborhood who needed some extra love or a dinner plate—more, because it seemed like there was never enough. She’d worked her entire life just to have a small condo in the right area with the right view. She’d never gone surfing. She only knew how to swim because her father made sure she learned when she was young at the rec center. Otherwise, there was no pool. With few vacations, she took no time for herself, not really. She lived on the lake, and looked at it, but never went down to enjoy it, for recreation. And all this time she thought that she knew what joy would take, what true happiness would require, but never expected to feel it for free that day, the fullest and most unbounded joy she’d ever experienced, right on the water. So, then, what was enough ?

By the time they reached Dockweiler Beach, much farther south, the stars had appeared in the sky’s changeover to night. Airplanes soared up above with a roar into their flight paths, up and over the ocean into single dots of blinking light. Down on the beach below, the ocean was whispering its rhythmic whoosh, with a casual low tide that just gently graced the shoreline. But what filled Ramona with a swell of awe was seeing the active firepits dotted along the sand, blazing in the night, with fireflies of embers and smoke drifting up into the darkness. There must have been at least fifty, a sight that widened Ramona’s eyes with wonder as she absorbed the culture of the western shore.

“You’ve probably already heard about Bruce’s Beach,” Jay said as they stepped down from the car in the parking lot. “It’s down a bit farther in Manhattan Beach.”

Ramona had heard about it, after public attention was focused on returning the land to the descendants of the Black family who established the resort in the 1920s. The news of it reached all the way to Chicago, but Ramona thought it was a singular circumstance. Instead, Jay told her that beyond just Inkwell, all of the city’s southern beaches had been aspirational destinations for the Black residents of Los Angeles; but, during Jim Crow times, access was limited by city councils, by police, by practice, and by attacks.

“How do you know all this? “Ramona asked.

“I think it’s important to know about where I live, don’t you?” Jay said, eyebrow raised.

“I hadn’t thought about it until today,” Ramona said, bundling up further after a surprising gust of chilled evening air.

The two of them continued their walk from the parking lot to the beach, while Jay made sure Ramona understood the significance of where they were. All around the same time in the ’20s, Jay explained, while Bruce’s Beach was confiscated by eminent domain, and the Pacific Beach Club was a magnificent resort burned to embers by arson before it could open, Dockweiler Beach was a resort that was never built at all. Once white residents got wind of the plans of Los Angeles to lease the land to Titus Alexander, a Black entrepreneur, they petitioned local officials to rescind their offer of the lease.

“It was strange times back then,” Jay said, “but I had to understand then to understand now.”

Ramona thought back to her arrival in Malibu. She wanted to say something about it but, unsure of how, allowed Jay to conclude his story, even though she already suspected the ending—the project was abandoned. It was, and the city took over the land. Land that they stood upon now, that they would endeavor to enjoy now, perhaps as those who came before them wished they could then, but could not.

“Does knowing give you any comfort?” Ramona asked.

“No, not really,” Jay replied.

“What, then?”

Jay paused for a second, eyes shifted upward. When his gaze returned to meet Ramona’s inquisitiveness, there was an intensity present that she didn’t expect. “It gives me reverence,” he said.

Ramona wondered then about what it would come to mean for her, the history and the present of this place, what it would bring her and what it had taken. “I was met by the patrol when I got to Malibu,” Ramona said after a beat, more as a musing to herself rather than to Jay, but aloud nonetheless.

“At Chelsea’s?” Jay looked shocked and shifted his stance toward her, stopping his stride toward the firepits. “Who called the patrol on you?”

“Right now, it feels like the whole of Malibu did, like I’m not supposed to feel like I belong. Maybe it’s always been meant to feel that way.”

In response, Jay gestured to the water, still on their right side. “When you have a place like that... the best surf, the cleanest water,” he said. “And only some people get to enjoy it... I guess you’d understand why it makes me happy to see brown folks out here, why I teach for free; maybe one person’s not enough to make a difference, but at least I try.”

Ramona sighed. It was such a beautiful night. But would her experience be an interruption of joy? That ever-present reminder that the fabric of this place, every place, had woven within it a haunting spirit, the malignant suspicion toward people who looked like her? What was the conditioning of such spite? The infection that turned a naturally occurring wish to share into one so primed to exclude, to keep things selfishly, but without awareness or questioning? As she did often, as many others she knew did often, Ramona took a deep, deep breath, releasing it out into the air to carry away the undercurrent of sadness, of knowing, of mourning, so that she could with some peace enjoy what the evening promised.

Jay’s walk with Ramona down from the parking lot to the beach concluded when they reached the shoreline. The powdery grains poured defiantly into her shoes as the carpeting of sand gave way under each of her steps. They quickly closed the distance to the crowd gathered around the glowing fires. A loud “Hey, you made it!” from their right side caught Jay’s attention, and it was Rip from earlier standing within a smaller group of people, some with foldable beach chairs, some sitting on coolers, and some on blankets. Then, in rapid fire, Ramona was introduced to so many people she couldn’t retain all the names. There was flannel-shirt guy, and UCLA-sweatshirt girl next to him, another holding a beer can sitting on a cooler, and then someone called Lauren who looked like a volleyball player with her height and long limbs. Everyone was friendly, so friendly in fact that when the woman in the UCLA sweatshirt offered Ramona a can of beer, which Ramona didn’t normally drink, she accepted and drank it anyway.

“Technically, you can’t have alcohol on the beach, but quietly, we do the cans,” she said. “And recycle.” Sweatshirt pointed to a black garbage bag set up on the outskirts of the group.

The night felt special to Ramona, like she’d entered another world entirely—a surprisingly welcoming one. It could have felt unfamiliar—with the choices of attire, the shorts, beer-branded T-shirts, and the West Coast sports teams and colleges represented everywhere, or the fact that Ramona was (as, of course, she’d noticed) the only Black person in the group—but rather, there was an air of ease and relaxation, a sense of casual enjoyment that she was starting to enjoy.

“Cold?” Jay appeared at Ramona’s elbow just as she’d made a small shudder, now understanding the stark difference in daytime versus nighttime air at the beach. This was a damp cool, one that could put a chill in your bones if you weren’t carefully insulated. When Ramona nodded, admitting that she was, Jay directed the two of them closer to the fire.

“We can snag these for now,” he said, pointing to two open chairs. Once they were seated, he turned to Ramona. She could see the fire reflected in his eyes and briefly wondered again if he was flirting. It was impossible not to recognize the flicker of hope that he was.

Jay leaned over, tapped her with his shoulder. “Surfing, bonfire, seems like you found your way to living the California dream. Is that what brought you out here?”

Ramona considered the question. Why not tell the truth? she thought. What difference did it make to confess to a person you’ll never see again? Except her whole truth—the secret she’d been keeping, the sense of maybe that she’d been clinging to—that was too complex to explain to a stranger.

“A bad... breakup, screwed-up wedding,” Ramona said. “Basically, I came here to hide out and avoid my parents’ disappointment.” Ramona shifted in her seat and clasped her clammy drink. She’d been as direct as she could, the gist of it. The words left her feeling stripped down and bare. After all, she’d taken every opportunity she could, with even the most remote rationale, to make something true because she was afraid of who she’d be without it. And perhaps, even worse, who she wouldn’t be. Except that now, the truth felt clumsy and inconvenient.

“What, you’re like a runaway bride?”

“Maybe more like a stowaway?” Ramona said, face scrunched with discomfort.

Jay laughed. “Ah, that’s interesting. Parents do take the breakups pretty hard at this age,” Jay said, leaning back to pull his beer to his mouth for a swig.

“Who’re you telling!” Jay’s response made it easier for Ramona to agree without elaborating. And then, he continued be fore she had a chance to correct him. At least, that’s what she told herself.

“If it’s any consolation, you just might be talking to the poster child for parental disappointment.”

Ramona turned to look at him, puzzled. “You?”

Jay took another sip of his beer and then pointed the can at Ramona. “You came out here to avoid disappointing your parents... temporarily . My coming here was the end of my parents’ dreams for me. Now, I’m just the son who’s a beach bum.”

Although Jay seemed like he meant his words sincerely, Ramona couldn’t stop a small laugh from escaping. “Seems like you’re doing all right for yourself,” she said in conciliatory fashion, thinking of Jay’s car and the enviable career he’d had.

“Let’s just say my parents didn’t come to the US for their kids to give up midstream.”

“That sounds like my parents too. They sacrificed so much, wanted us to go further, have everything, all of what they couldn’t.”

“Yeah, but those dreams aren’t free, and they definitely aren’t of being free,” Jay said. “Those dreams are just about having more, after coming from a place of having less.”

To Ramona, just then, Jay sounded like a dreamer. And in a flash, she felt the urge to correct him, or to redirect what he was saying. But instead, she paused, and she thought about it. And she started to wonder where her dreams originated, the aspirations and ambitions for more rather than just enough . With the sound of the ocean behind them, rhythmic with the crash of whitewash into the shoreline, Ramona felt boundless, unconstrained. Like she had space to think, and to breathe, to breathe deeply as if her lungs could expand into all the space around her, as if something tight had been lifted.

“So now you have enough,” she said. “And I... don’t.”

“What’s missing?” Jay asked so sincerely, like he really wanted to know. Like the answer to the question mattered to him. When Ramona looked at him, she saw the movement of his eyes, intently searching her face for any clue.

“I just put myself in a situation I don’t know how to get out of,” Ramona said. “So maybe I don’t have enough courage, I don’t know...”

“I saw you in the water today. Getting out there... up on that board, you looked pretty courageous to me.” Jay took another long swig from his beer can. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life hiding?”

Ramona tried not to show it, but Jay had struck a nerve. “I’m only hiding this week,” she said with quiet protest.

Jay smiled and shook his head. “Where I’m from, how you do one thing is how you do everything.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Yoda said it, right after he said, ‘There is no try.’”

Ramona laughed. “You know I’ve seen that movie—I have a dog named Wookiee. Yoda did not say that!” She landed a playful poke on his arm.

Caught, Jay raised his hands in surrender, and leaned back in. “Okay, he didn’t. I heard it from my pops. It’s what he always used to say.” The fire crackled, releasing a trail of sparks into the sky as a log fell deeper into the pit. Both Jay and Ramona turned to observe it and then turned back to each other.

“What was he talking about?” Ramona was intrigued.

“He was talking about integrity.” Ramona raised an eyebrow. Jay continued. “He’d say it all the time. When I wasn’t giving my best in sports, when I wasn’t getting great grades in school. When I didn’t get the biggest bonus in my banking class. He meant was I coming up first. I realized I was spending my whole life trying to be that .”

“And then what happened?”

Jay gave Ramona a grin. “I stopped trying in favor of doing.”

“You’re saying I should stop trying?”

“Do, or do not...” Jay began.

Both Jay and Ramona laughed, and this time they drank down to the suds from the cans they were holding. Ramona glanced at her left hand as she brought it back down to rest on her leg. And for the first time in a long time, the absence of her ring didn’t feel like an absence at all, just natural, like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

The moment felt to Ramona like being on the cusp of something perhaps worthwhile—something to run toward and away from all at the same time.

JOAN IN MALIBU, OF COURSE...

F ROM HER WINDOW IN THE SITTING WING OF HER UPSTAIRS study, Joan watched every moment of Ramona’s entry into Jay’s car. She was upended by the make and model of his transportation and became all the more suspicious that he was in fact a wolf with identified prey.

For all of Jay’s morning classes, and all the requests to lower the music even just a few decibels, Joan never had the occasion to speak to Jay about anything personal or to inquire how he was in any way different from the multitude of nomadic surfers lingering about trying to make a quick dollar. She did wonder how it was possible that he continued to show up day in and day out in front of her home, drawing people to the place where she coveted and enjoyed her privacy. Privacy was an important right—she did not want to be observed (only paid attention to), and she most certainly did not want to be disturbed.

Joan was not entirely satisfied with how the dinner went at Geoffrey’s. She’d been thrown off by Ramona’s insistence on reopening the issue of the patrol and was frankly a little bit thrown off by her lingering suspicions. In her further efforts toward self-absolution, this evening Joan had hoped to spend with Ramona, perhaps ushering her to the Malibu Country Mart for some light shopping and Italian at that cute restaurant in the back corner. Possibly even nails or, if they could, get a late appointment for facials. Well, a facial for Ramona only, because Joan’s regular gal was elsewhere and there was no way she was going to let a stranger disturb any part of her expertly crafted face. Joan did not expect having to contend with the likes of Jay for Ramona’s time. How a surfing lesson turned into an evening was guaranteed cause for unsettled concern. With Joan’s self-absolution hanging in the balance, she realized she needed to up the ante. It wasn’t just about casual social gatherings. It was about big, substantive, meaningful moments, a moment that Joan would need to create.

With a sigh, Joan slipped into her linen slacks and thick knit sweater, her perfect attire for the glass of wine that she’d sip on her deck to catch the sunset dip into the farthest point of the ocean. In her kitchen she pulled down a glass for her already-open bottle of an over-crisp Sauvignon Blanc that someone had sent in a holiday gift basket.

The stillness and quiet in her home were unbearable, upsetting even. Because her mind filled all the space and time with worry. Where did Jay take her? Did she not tell me because she found out about the stupid guard from the Sentry Patrol? Does Chelsea know Ramona’s with Jay? Did she warn her? And when the thoughts would not still, Joan pulled out her phone. She would send messages to Chelsea:

JOAN: Did Ramona tell U she’s spending time with Jay?

And to her children:

JOAN: Do you want cake or pie for Christmas dinner, or both?

And then another message to her children because thinking of dessert made her think of dinner and all of a sudden, she wondered:

JOAN: Should we really have lamb this year? Or the roast like last year?

And, finally, frustrated because no one replied, Joan sent Chelsea a message just to be certain that she’d seen her last message:

JOAN: ???

Then she sat frozen. Of course , she thought. Christmas . Christmas dinner . Her memorable moment would be having Ramona at her own Christmas table, right there with her kids. Seated like family. With a slow, satisfied smile, Joan wrapped herself in her favorite cashmere blanket in her favorite spot on the couch in front of the television and hit the remote on her fireplace. With a refilled glass and a deepening sense of satisfaction, she decided to skip the deck and watch whatever it was on the Food Channel until she heard the sound of Ramona’s return.

CHELSEA IN CHICAGO...

B Y THE TIME C HELSEA SAW J OAN’S TEXT MESSAGE (AND SHE DID see it), and the one that followed moments later, she was already in a rideshare with Carlos pulling up to what looked like a luxury high-rise hotel, right on Wacker Drive, next to the Chicago River.

As Chelsea read Joan’s words and exhaled a hard and long sigh of complete exasperation, the door was being opened on her side and Carlos’s simultaneously. One attendant seemed to recognize Carlos with a “Hey, man!” and a loud double hand smack and hug between them.

When asked why he’d come on his day off, Carlos said, “Just showing a friend how we do it in the Chi.” Chelsea smiled, recognizing herself as the “friend,” and thanked the attendant who held her car door open. She rejoined Carlos as they walked through revolving doors into a well-appointed luxury lobby space, with marbled walls and elegant neutral furniture, accented by fresh flower arrangements and the customary decorations of Christmas.

“You work here?”

Leading the way to the elevator bank, Carlos turned back to reply. “Second job of three. Art by any means. You understand, right?” Chelsea nodded. But she didn’t understand or relate. Art to her had been a natural flow, something that she did when inspiration struck, and she would have done the same whether or not she was paid for it. It just so happened that she was paid for it, at one time handsomely. She looked at art now as less of a job and more as the one thing she knew how to do. She could never imagine working in multiple positions just to get the chance to paint.

“What’s your job here?” she asked Carlos.

“You know... hospitality,” he said. “Doorman sometimes, bellhop. Helping with bags is definitely the best tips, but we rotate.” Because Chelsea had nothing to add and didn’t want Carlos to think she wasn’t worldly, or worse, was a sheltered dilettante, she said nothing, hoping he would elaborate or change the subject. When he didn’t, she hoped she could change the subject herself.

Thinking about Joan’s text mentioning Jay, as they waited for the elevator, Chelsea asked, “So, have you heard from Ramona? Is she having a good time?”

Carlos laughed. “Last I heard she was going surfing, taking yoga on the beach.” He guided Chelsea to step into the elevator and tapped the button for the top floor.

“Glad to hear it.” Even as she spoke, Chelsea felt her body relax. If Ramona was hanging out with Jay, that meant she wasn’t with Joan. Even for Chelsea, Joan was best experienced in small doses. But now her involvement, her probing had gone too far, and Chelsea expressed that frustration to Carlos.

“I just got a text from my neighbor who was worried after the Sentry Patrol and everything whether Ramona was having a good time,” she said.

Carlos’s face wrinkled, and his head cocked to one side. “How’d the neighbor know?”

“Know what?” Chelsea asked, genuinely confused.

“About what happened... the Sentry Patrol.”

Chelsea felt her breath catch in her throat. Shit. She’d need a quick recovery. “This... is a neighbor I spoke to about the incident.” Chelsea tried to keep her voice even as she told a half-lie and a half-truth. Right away she felt guilty for not being honest. But it was just two more days to let this play out. Joan was harmless, really. And if Carlos knew that Chelsea had known this entire time who’d called the patrol on Ramona, that would be the end of everything. She just knew it, and selfishly, he wasn’t another someone she was ready to let go of, not like this.

The elevator doors opened into an overwhelming hallway of entryways, releasing the air of silence between them. For the moment, Carlos seemed to have completely dropped his earlier line of questioning once he took her hand in his. Their palms touching instantly activated her base chemistry. That small fire that Carlos lit started to burn hotter. She was relieved that Carlos shifted his attention to the path ahead. Although each door ahead was numbered, it was impossible to tell them apart.

“This way,” he said, leading her down the long hallway, and pulled out a plastic key card from his pocket. She wondered if they would relive the previous night in a new locale. A hotel room would be nice—sexy and glamorous. When they reached the door at the end of the hallway, Carlos opened it to a spacious and modern lounge. It was tastefully appointed, like a contemporary in-home library, if the home was a penthouse at the top of a major city, and if the single room was meant to seat a hundred people.

All of the walls were windows, from the ceiling to the floor. The sofas were plush caramel leather. The low-slung tables had drinks upon them, and the din of the room was clearly conversation between people who liked each other’s company. Chelsea shifted her attention to the spectacular view and finally understood what Carlos wanted her to see. As they turned to the left, Chelsea could see the nighttime skyline of Chicago through the far window, the lights of the holiday, along the winding river, all the way to the inlet to Lake Michigan. She gasped and covered her mouth. It was beautiful, so overwhelmingly gorgeous to see, especially since Carlos was still holding her other hand. So inside, she was lit up, with joy as well as a growing feeling of apprehension. She was sure now—the painting she’d started of Carlos would be one of her best.

RAMONA AT DOCKWEILER BEACH...

W HEN THE WARMTH OF THE FIREPIT STARTED TO DWINDLE, SO did the crowd, winding down the festivities of the bonfire. Then, it was that awkward time of the night—still early enough to want just one more drink, and late enough that the options to fulfill that desire were slim. Ramona didn’t want to go home, but with caution, she wondered how close she should get to Jay. They’d shared so much, and she felt so open. The two of them, Ramona and Jay, walked slowly back to the car, quietly and clearly in the space of not quite knowing what to say to each other. Neither wanted to speak their desire or knew what to do to be close without having the excuse of the chill, needing to be closer to the fire, or to have fingers graze one another handing off a fresh can of beer. But Ramona was quite used to being torn in this way. She was always in a battle between what she wanted and something else, whether unaware of it or simply used to letting go of the former. She was subscribed to doing what ought to be done, rather than following her feelings, like these feelings, and going the distance. While they walked, Ramona was certainly quiet because she couldn’t summon the skill of saying what she wanted (or think of what to say to get it).

In the car, Jay hesitated at the ignition button. Just a few seconds’ pause, but Ramona noticed.

“What?” she asked.

“Um... I was just thinking...” Jay said slowly, clearly searching for his own words.

“Okay, I’m in,” Ramona said.

“But you don’t know what I was going to say.” Jay sounded confused. Blind trust is an unusual thing. But that’s what was in Ramona’s voice—she was agreeing. She wanted to go, somewhere, anywhere, else. Just one time to be free of the ought s.

“I didn’t need to,” she said.

“Okay, then.” Jay started the car.

Ramona did want to ask where they were going, but she did not. She felt crazy, like she was doing something wrong. Whatever it was in Jay’s mind would take her somewhere new. Wasn’t that now what she wanted? All Ramona needed was a glimpse of another self that she could become, one she wouldn’t dare imagine. But could she feel safe within that idea, as if a new path and the unknown didn’t always lead to failure? Perhaps that was the opposite of what she’d always been taught.

The car retraced the path along the shoreline, on their left now. The moon had replaced the sun. It was an entirely new world they’d never been to, this nighttime place. Ramona recognized being on the Pacific Coast Highway again, but at this time, rather than the pastels of sunset, the moon shone a bright silver strip along a still midnight-blue expanse of glistening water. Even with the dotting of lights from homes along the coast and up the distant hillside, the ocean seemed endless. She felt as wild and free as the air that whirled in through the windows, lifting up everything in the car—the loose parts of her blouse, stray papers, her twists even—winding through her hair, whipping in and out, echoing the speed of the car as they passed through the curves of the road.

Although she’d only come that way a few times, Ramona recognized the point at which they were nearing the area of Chelsea’s house on the PCH. It was after the ocean disappeared behind the beachfront homes, gates, and enclaves, when she could no longer see the water but for tiny glimpses in sparse and narrow open spaces in between. Jay’s car started to slow down and then roll to a stop. Ramona could identify Chelsea’s house just down the way, on the other side of Joan’s. But why were they stopping here? It was just a garage, and next to it, a low retaining wall, so low she could actually see the ocean behind it. The wall was covered by foliage and seemed to be supporting an anemic palm tree that leaned against it as if the tree itself were tired.

“Where’s this?” Ramona tried not to let panic swell in her body. She trusted Jay, she reminded herself.

“My house,” Jay said.

“A garage?”

Jay laughed. “That’s the garage.” He turned to look at Ramona. The sincerity in his eyes disarmed her. “You want to come in? Have another beer?” Other than anger, there is only one thing stronger than fear—curiosity. And of the latter, Ramona’s had been sufficiently piqued.

“So, you bought the house on the beach...” As Ramona spoke, she processed. The pieces of Jay’s story began to connect for her.

“Yeah...” Jay turned to her with a look of relaxed confidence. The explanation was before her eyes. Knowing the background of it, inside, Ramona felt a rising swell of pride for Jay. A smile began to stretch across her face, thinking through the paces of what he’d done. And when she turned to look at the garage—or rather, the house—the meaning was reflected there, and momentarily, it became the most interesting house that she’d ever seen.

As it turned out, however, once they exited the car, the look of the place from the roadside was deceiving. The two of them entered a white shiplap door opening that had been hidden by the sagging tree. And behind the door were wooden stairs that ran alongside a hillside cottage attached to the garage.

“This is my rental unit, so not just any house on the beach. One that earns its own tax money.” Jay pointed to the cottage. And then turning ahead, he said, “And this is my house.”

At the landing of the stairs, ahead of them was a dark door, green perhaps, which was indeed in the middle of a long, single-story home. The door was opened by Jay to reveal a much larger version of Chelsea’s living room, but with a freestanding Malm fireplace, with rustic wooden floors and wood slat ceilings with large support beams pulling your eye toward the only thing that truly mattered in that room in spite of its delights—the spectacular view of the moonlit ocean, majestic, dark, and dancing in the distance, rolling, sparkling, and duly hypnotic. Ramona was enchanted and speechless.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Jay said, as he headed around the corner, leaving Ramona alone in the living area. “Bathroom is on the left,” she heard him say through a wall. Having some more time with his space, it felt warm, but with a clear sense that he lived there without children, and without the vestiges of a feminine attention to detail. No accent pillows on the sofa, no family pictures around or on the walls, no small tables or items of décor that were more than functional, spare for a few large plants that actually looked pretty healthy. “Want to try something?” he called out from behind the wall to her right. He was clinking glasses, opening and closing cabinets and what sounded like a refrigerator door. Under regular circumstances, this would be normal. But Ramona’s heart was racing. Not from fear, but with anticipation and the delicious taste of doing something wrong, something that felt forbidden. It was the rush of challenging herself, similar to what she felt on the water, but deeper this time, different, richer, more defiant.

“Sure,” she said, and took his invitation as her cue to look around. She walked toward the windows and decided to go left. She crossed through a partially open sliding door into a small bedroom, but with its own wall of windows exposing the entire space to the ocean. The smell of lemongrass and the sparse décor made her feel like she’d entered a hotel suite. On the other side of the broad, king-size (and neatly made-up) bed was a bathroom of all wood and marble and glass, like a spa, but again few embellishments—no second toothbrush, no flowery shampoo.

Feeling somewhat relieved and still curious, she headed back into the living area and farther along the wall of windows to find Jay behind a divider in a small but fancy chef’s kitchen. Beside a hulking cooking range and industrial broiler, he was popping open a cap on a large bottle.

“Here, smell this.” Jay brought the bottle over to Ramona’s nose, allowing her to inhale the fragrance of its headspace. It looked like wine, but she smelled cinnamon and coffee, and a dark mineral richness that wasn’t of grapes. “It’s an imperial porter stout,” he said, smiling at her reaction. “Only made seasonally... for this time of year.” He poured the dark syrupy liquid, revealing its effervescence, which Ramona did not expect. “Cheers.” He handed her a glass and then brought his own up to tilt in her direction. “Happy Holidays.”

“Happy Holidays.” Ramona let the liquid, such a rich color in the moonlight, meet her lips. The first flavor that reached her tongue was cinnamon. And then coffee, that slightly bitter bite that she recognized from her morning routine, but that felt different in this elixir. She tasted a body that was syrupy like grapes perhaps, but more reminiscent of maple with a delicious finish of espresso. It was sumptuous. “This is a beer?” she asked with an air of surprise.

With his head still tilted down a bit toward his glass, a slow smile stretched across Jay’s face. He seemed to appreciate Ramona’s question and perked up slightly in answering it. “Technically, yes, but a sipping one. Think of it like wine but be careful...” Ramona raised an eyebrow at him. “It has the proof of a port or sherry. Too many of these and you’ll sleep through Christmas.”

“Sleeping through Christmas isn’t the worst idea...” Ramona’s mind was back in Chicago now, thinking of her mother and the Christmas Eve festivities that she’d come all the way to the end of the world to avoid. As she reflected, Jay ushered them to seats on the sofa facing the view of the ocean. Ramona sat and pulled herself back into the present, back to a focus on Jay. “So, someone snaked you in the water, and then you bought this.” As she spoke, she turned her head to look all around at the surroundings, impressive for sure, just enough—an unmistakably gorgeous view of the ocean with its silver streak of moonlight and all of its changing moods. “It’s really nice.” She made it a point to meet his eyes, to show him her sincerity, and was surprised to find him so intently looking at her. In the space between them, Ramona’s words sat in the still air, as her breathing became more shallow and her lips parted just slightly, not to speak, but to be met... with a kiss. It was what the energy of the moment called for, undeniably so. Carried by the sipping, savoring of tastes, both of them sitting with bronze-brown skin illuminated—sun-kissed from the day and moonlit in the evening—neither spoke for quite some while. It was a slowness uncommon to ordinary conversation. A magic of stillness, of time to consider, to think and to feel. Finally, Jay did break the silence.

“This is a great house,” he said, seeming to still be considering his words and actions. “This place saved me.” Jay lifted his free hand to run it across his head. His arm landed on the back of the sofa, near Ramona’s shoulder. She began to wish it were closer, wanting to be touched by him, and so imagining it even as he continued with his story. “When I was harassed at that break, how that guy tried to take from me my right to be there, to think that he could intimidate me... my first inclination... was to buy the whole damn strip of houses. Every single one available.” He seemed to have a small laugh to himself reflecting on it. Ramona shifted on the couch to fully face him as he continued, moving just a bit closer. She didn’t want to miss a single one of his words. “But, on that trip,” Jay continued, “I drove up the shore, found an outcropping of rocks, and just sat and looked out at the ocean—I looked for myself out there, my true self. What did I want? I tried to visualize what I dreamed my life to look like, my days to be, the choices I’d have, the things I’d explore or pursue. And so, I realized quickly that buying up land would have proved a point, but it wasn’t the point. I’d still be owned if I did that, driven by someone else’s impression of me. That was a choice that would force me to keep running, just to keep up.” Jay lifted his head to look around. The arm that lay across the back of the sofa lifted in quick gestures. “So, I picked this house. This particular house. This was the house of having enough... for me .” As he finished speaking, Jay brought his hand down again.

With Jay’s body closer, Ramona listened to him even more intently. She wondered also what his experience would be like for someone else. Someone who could not just buy their way out of an insult or plant a house-size flag in the sand.

“And did buying the house make it easier to surf?” she asked.

Jay seemed startled to have been asked the question. Ramona could see the clouds of memories pass across his face in his expressions. Some seeming good, then seeming bad—the range of emotions read in his features as easily as the coming of rain, or a sunny day. She could see the pain and the triumph play out, even before he spoke. But then, he finally did.

“It’s a process to surf. An hour just to arrange all my gear—wetsuit, board harnessed to the rack on my car, water in a bottle, supplies in a bag. There were days, with all that done, I’d pull up to park at the beach but then turn the ignition off and sit... just sit.” Jay’s gaze turned to the ocean, in front of them, deep and rolling in darkest blues now. “And I couldn’t get out of the car—” Ramona felt the shift of energy, the moment before the rain falls, the heaviness in the air. But Jay swiped at his face quickly and pulled his glass forward to take a sip, lowering it again to sit on his leg. “And then, I’d think, Who am I? What am I doing out here? Guys like me don’t surf—”

“That’s what I thought too, about being Black,” Ramona said.

“You shouldn’t have to feel that way,” Jay said, turning to look at her quickly, and then back to the ocean again as if to retrieve his thoughts from there. “There’s only so much you can take, you know? To have to face nature—all raw power and energy... You don’t know whether she’ll be with you or against you that day. And then, to have people , who should be so full of joy... instead full of the purest energy of something opposite. Of anger, of violence. And why ? Triggered just by my presence in the water ’cause I’m brown? Or ’cause I don’t seem familiar ? The idea of facing both... some days it was too much.”

For Ramona, Jay’s words might have been describing what it felt like for her to go to work, or to school when she was younger. Or to walk around sometimes in stores and be followed, or drive with concerns about being stopped, or harassed. Even to show up as her full self, with her big crinkly hair, or round features, or loud colors, and be misunderstood. To arrive in Malibu, on vacation, and to still be policed. It was why Ramona wanted to leave, to go back home, even though she needed to stay. Yes... it was all too much.

“I’d be there, ready to surf,” Jay continued. “But I couldn’t get over the feeling that I’d have to take my place. I’d have to actually take my place at that break. On that beach, in the lineup, on that wave. So, I started taking it. Pushing out the noise.” He turned to look at Ramona, waiting until their eyes met before he continued. “It’s made me a better surfer because I’ve had to be. I realized as long as I kept showing up, and as long as I got better—my skills and determination that came from that, they couldn’t have. Because they didn’t have to work so hard for it. And that... nobody can take away.”

Nobody can take that away... Ramona’s thoughts echoed Jay’s words. The cinnamon elixir had relaxed her, and the ocean seduced her with its dance. The air was charged and full with the energy of Jay’s transparency. Together they sat in the quiet space of a tender wound, one they both shared. In vulnerability, as it felt right, she reached for his hand and pulled it down to her. On the sofa, in the narrow space between them, their fingers connected, wove together, until they were holding hands, looking out at the sea. And as if on a raft, the two of them, Ramona and Vijay, floated in the ethereal silence. And there was no self-consciousness there, no second guessing, just the purest language of touch and the slow motion of their breathing. All else was understood.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

Ramona answered yes.