But I’d also learned the hard way to push negativity out of my brain. Some days I forgot, but others, like today, it came more easily.
I found a secluded spot on the sand and lay down, closing my eyes to the sun and lazily stretching my limbs into healing poses. Working out with mother nature had always been my jam, but there was something about this beach that centred me in ways I couldn’t describe. My mind quieted, and my heart calmed. It was as good as any benzo I’d ever dropped.
“You know you’re killing me with this shit, don’t you?”
I blinked back to awareness. Toby was standing over me, wearing the wet suit that clung to all the right places, and dripping seawater onto the sand by my head. “What shit?”
“Being all bendy and beautiful while I’m trying to catch the waves.”
Bendy and beautiful. Was that how friends talked to each other? I could dig it. And the fact that the way he was looking at me made heat pool in my groin.
I sat up, shielding my eyes from the sun. “You realise I see you surfing in my dreams?”
“You dream about me?”
“Course I do. You’re beautiful too, mate.”
For a moment, Toby’s stare blazed at me, but too soon, he seemed to catch himself, and his features evened out. He dropped down beside me and flicked water in my face.
I made myself scowl. “Piss off.”
“Nope. You looked lonely.”
“Who are you here with?”
“No one.”
“So you’re lonely too?”
“Maybe. I’m more hungry than anything else. You want a pasty?”
“A what?”
He got up without answering and disappeared down the beach, leaving his surfboard behind. I watched him go, perplexed but definitely hungry, and he was back before my brain caught up, brandishing paper-wrapped pasties that were the size of house bricks.
“Don’t speak,” he said. “Just eat. And don’t tell anyone on the farm that they’re better than Joe’s mum’s.”
“I’ve never met Joe’s mum.”
“Shh.”
Toby pushed the pasty at me, and I ate it without further comment. Then wanted to cry because it was so damn good. I mean, I’d had “Cornish” pasties in London, but these were something else. Like an entire roast dinner wrapped up in thick, buttery pastry. If I never ate anything else, I’d die happy.
I made short work of it, then dusted the crumbs from my hands. “I only came down here for some fresh air. Now I feel like I just ate Christmas dinner.”
“You couldn’t get fresh air on the farm?”
“Most days, but I’ve got some class planning to do that I don’t want to start until tomorrow. Figured the later I got back to the farm, the better.”
“Workaholic, eh?”
“Not by choice, but everyone else there works so hard it makes me want to be a better human.”
Toby said nothing. Just lay back on the sand. On his trip to the pasty stand, he’d peeled his wetsuit down to his waist, revealing his strong chest. It said a lot about how good the pasty was that I’d only just noticed.
And, of course, now I had, I couldn’t look away, which flew in the face of every spoken and unspoken commitment we’d made to being friends.
I stretched out beside him and thought of Ella, but all that came to mind was her ridiculously delighted smile every time Toby walked into the farmhouse kitchen. How she’d squeal and squirm until I passed her over. I’d learned to laugh about it and comfort myself with the fact that she was unreasonably fond of Joe too. That it wasn’t because I was a terrible father or that she loved Toby as much as I did. She was just... friendly.