Page 26 of Broken Hearts

“Really, City Girl?” Nate says, and now it’s me laughing. I’ve never been called a city girl before, but that’s probably because I rarely leave New York. The city is my home and being a city girl is something I kind of pride myself on.

“Okay, Island Boy,” I play back, and again when Nate looks over at me, his chocolate brown eyes focusing on mine, my heart begins to race, feeling this connection to him, and wanting more of it.

“Most people would just call me a local, City Girl,” Nate says, as we’re pulling up to a small makeshift parking lot covered in gravel that basically pulls right up alongside the water. “You ready?”

“How hard can this be?” I question. “They’re seven years old.”

Nate hits me with a hard stare, blinking a few times before he just shakes his head and exits the car.

Turns out the look he gave me right before we exited the car was warranted. I was not prepared for how unruly a group of seven-year-old children can be. It was like herding feral cats at first, but Nate knew exactly what to do, and as soon as he got into the surfing aspect of it, the kids fell in line.

They called me a benny more times than I can count and laughed at my attempts to pop up on the surfboard while it was on land. I didn’t even try to get in the water, feeling like a fool and more unathletic than I’ve ever felt in my life.

Turns out the swim lessons I took at the YMCA as a kid never prepared me for learning to surf. It’s times like this that I wish I would have taken my dad up on his offer, but instead I was salty and bothered by his need to teach me something I would never use in my life.

Now I wish I would have learned to surf. It would have been a permanent connection to my dad, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, and I can’t change things now.

“So my dad set that all up?” I ask when Nate and I have everything loaded into the car.

“He did. Hawaii has one of the highest rates of absenteeism in schools in the United States. It’s a pretty chronic problem, and he started the program to try to keep kids in school,” Nate says, but I give him a confused look, curious how surfing keeps kids in school.

I try to fight back the hurt I feel building in my chest, bothered by the fact that my father seemed to care more for kids in the community he lived in than his own daughter. But I know that isn’t true. Mistakes were made on both our parts, but I’m the only one who’s still here. It’s my job to move past those feelings and remind myself that I can continue to hold him close through the things he did.

“Mitch organized the lessons to be sponsored and covered by The Pipe Dream, but the school buses the kids to the beach and picks them back up,” Nate clarifies. “The kids have to be in attendance to participate in the program.”

“Has it made a difference?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“It has, and it has for years,” Nate says, and he opens his mouth to say something more but quickly catches himself, stopping almost mid-sentence.

“I’d love to continue to help while I’m here,” I say, keeping the conversation going. “How often do the lessons happen?”

“We have all ages every weekday, except on Fridays. Mitch,” Nate says, pausing as he looks over at me, “your dad tried Fridays, but it didn’t really take off. Guess kids like to do their own things on Fridays.”

It doesn’t go unnoticed by me the way Nate refers to Mitch as my dad. It’s the first time he’s done that, almost like he’s coming to terms with the fact that I’m Mitch’s daughter.

“I get that. I remember being that age and never wanting to hang out with anyone but my friends, and Fridays are the start of the weekend.”

“I would have come on Fridays,” Nate mutters under his breath, but then shakes his head.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The way he barks out a clipped answer tells me it isn’t nothing. There’s more here that Nate isn’t saying, and as much as it’s not my place to demand answers, I want to know. His relationship with my dad was clearly important to him, and so is carrying on with the things my dad did.

“How did you meet my dad?” I now ask, reading into his comment, and there feels like there’s something tied to what we just did and how it relates to Nate and my dad.

He wets his lips, his tongue slipping out slightly, and then he drags his teeth over his bottom lip. Stalling, his words don’t come, and I wait. I want to know, and I’m not afraid to ask again. What’s the worst that can happen? Nate gets mad at me? We’ve been there already, and I’m prepared this time.

I won’t call my mom crying or hit back with immature comments. Okay, maybe I still will, but whatever.

“I was flunking out of high school,” Nate suddenly says, and this time he doesn’t make eye contact with me; his eyes focused on the road in front of us.

I stay silent, not sure how to respond or how this relates to my dad, and my mind begins to think of all the ways my dad could have intervened in this.

I didn’t even realize people flunked out of high school or were in danger of it happening, and that just goes to show me that my life with my mother was far more privileged than I even realized. Not only was graduating from high school not optional, going on to college wasn’t either. It was a given. I would go to college. No questions asked.

She did suggest a gap year to which I declined. She’s the adventurous one, and with all the traveling I did with her as a kid, I didn’t need to explore the world. I already did.

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