I closed my eyes to the late evening sun and let it warm my bones. I took deep breaths, but the notion of lying prone on the sand didn’t really work for me. It wasn’t my thing even when my brain was quiet, unless it was stillness with purpose.
With a sigh, I rolled to my feet and took my body through some gentle stretches while I searched the horizon. From this distance, the surfers in the sea were indistinct blobs, but I looked for Toby anyway and nearly had a heart attack when I saw how far out he was.
I brought myself upright, tracking him as he paddled away from an incoming wave. It didn’t seem too fierce, then it crested, taking Toby with it, and another jolt of fear rocked me as he leapt to his feet and languidly rode his board until the wave petered out.
It was fucking poetry. I watched him ride wave after wave, spellbound by how he moved his body with the water. I’d known he was strong the moment I’d clapped eyes on him, but this? Damn, he was something else.
I sat down again, no longer struck by the urge to move around to kill time. The sand grounded me to the earth, but the rest of me was hooked on Toby. I watched him glide with every wave until he called time on the sea and swam to shore.
By then, the beach had quieted even more. The tide had crept closer, and surfers had lit campfires in the sand dunes. The glow of embers matched the setting sun. I lay back on my elbows as Toby approached, dripping wet, hair slicked back, eyes bright with endorphins. He was such a vision, my existence felt surreal, and whatever my face was doing drew his curiosity as he dropped down in the sand.
“So you do like the beach.”
“Huh?”
He shrugged. “It was hard to tell when you were talking about India before. I can never tell if you like something or if you hate the whole world.”
“That must make me super fun to be around.”
“You’re fun to be around. Maybe you just don’t know it.”
He lay back in the sand, leaving me to puzzle over his words. From anyone else, I’d think they were fucking with me on purpose, but not him. Never him. Toby saw the world in innocent colours, and what he saw in me was probably more accurate than I cared to admit. Though it bothered me that he assumed it was merely mother nature who’d put a smile on my face.
I stretched out beside him, enjoying the last of the sun. “Were the waves good? They looked pretty big to me, but I don’t know jack about surfing.”
“They don’t get that big out here. Fistral is better if you want to scare yourself, but the beach gets crowded and dirty, so I don’t like it there.”
“This place is nice. I’ll definitely bring Ella here if I can get my car around those bends.”
“I’ll drive you. We can borrow Harry’s car. I’m insured on that too, and you can put Ella’s car seat in the back.”
I sat up to look at him. “Why would you want to come to the beach with a screaming baby?”
“She’s not a screaming baby, and if she was, maybe the beach would change her mind. You know they used to drop grizzly kids in the sea to shut them up round here, right?”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking, so I took back all my thoughts about Toby’s innocence and settled on this being the kindest offer anyone had ever made me. “I’d love that, if you’re serious. But won’t it be boring for you?”
“No more boring than watching me surf for two hours, eh?”
“That wasn’t boring. I loved it.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe I love watching city kids get their feet wet for the first time.”
I had no answer to that, and I didn’t need one. Toby returned to the sea to catch the last few waves before sundown, then we trooped back to the van in the fading light. It was dark when we reached the car park. The sea breeze made me shiver, but Toby didn’t seem to feel the cold. He rinsed sand from his skin under a crude shower, then swapped his wet suit for his shorts.
He didn’t put his T-shirt back on. Had his shyness around me eased? Or had he forgotten I was there? Either way, I wasn’t complaining. I sat on the bed in the back of the van, while Toby cleaned his board up, and watched his lean muscles work. “So, if you’ve worked on the farm ten years, does that mean you’ve lived round here your whole life?”
“Yup.” Toby flipped his board to the other side. “I was born in the same house I grew up in, and I lived there till my mum died a few years ago.”
“Joe told me he was born on the farm too, but you don’t have the same accent.”
“We’re both Cornish, but my dad was a Traveller, so I guess I talk like him a bit, which is ironic as he never really spoke to me.”
“No?”
“He thought I was too soft. That’s why he sent me to work on the farm. Turn me into a real man, whatever that is. Cos it wasn’t him.”
“I don’t think the definition of a real man exists, mate. Anyone looking for it is probably having an existential crisis.”