Page 31 of Broken Hearts

Nate wanders over to the large sliding glass doors, opening them. The room floods with the smell of hibiscus and the sounds of the ocean waves.

As much as I love New York, the sounds of the city—the honking horns, the sirens and the people—I could get used to the stillness of being here. Everything feels different and fresh and clean.

“My dad only has peppermint tea,” I tell Nate as I begin rifling through the cabinets, looking for mugs, not knowing where he keeps anything.

“It was his favorite,” Nate replies, and I turn to look at him, swallowing back the sting that seems to just linger now. “He didn’t drink any other kind, so you won’t find anything else in there.”

“He tried to get me to drink it when I was here, but I was twelve and anything he said I did the opposite,” I say, hating that my memory of him is clouded by my difficult teenage years.

“Sounds like we had a lot in common back then,” Nate jokes as I fill the kettle and put it on the stove. Heading over, I meet him at the couch, opening a drawer on the front of the coffee table, looking for something to set the hot mugs on so I don’t ruin the tabletop.

When I pull the drawer open, I don’t find what I’m looking for, but I do find a few small photo albums. I pull one out, setting it next to a pile of surfing magazines.

I look over at Nate, and he smiles, almost an indication that I should open the album. I have no idea what I’m going to find in here, and something about that scares me. I’m not sure I can handle seeing the life my father created without me, but in turn, I’m not sure he would enjoy seeing the life I created without him. That both of us went on as if the other didn’t exist.

Nate leans over and turns on the lamp on the small rattan end table. All the furniture in the house is gorgeous and feels so Hawaiian to me. It’s perfect and fitting for my dad’s house, like it belongs in a magazine or on a TV show about the quintessential Hawaiian house.

I find my eyes wandering, looking anywhere but at the photo album that sits in front of us. I’m scared to open it, scared to see a life that happened while I was off living my own life. I guess as a kid, I just assumed my dad was sitting around missing me, going to work, and doing the whole thing over again, day after day.

I know now as an adult that’s not what happened, but I also don’t want to know what really happened. That’s selfish and immature. I’m not a kid anymore, and my excuses are just that, excuses for what a shitty daughter I was. I couldn’t have asked him to try even harder because he did everything he could. And my mom was right, wanting him to leave everything he built here was wrong. But as a kid, that’s all I wanted.

I sit down next to Nate, taking the album in my hand, feeling the soft leather cover, the center embossed with a wave and a surfboard. I run my fingers over the design, picturing my dad buying it for the cover alone. It’s him. It’s everything he loves.

I find myself going back and forth in my thoughts of him, using past and present as if he’s still here with me. It’s hard to think he’s gone, but in my life in New York, he barely existed. The thought stirs some nausea in my stomach, acid rising up in my throat. It’s horrible that I carried on with my life as if my dad didn’t exist.

“Have you ever looked at this?” I ask Nate just as the kettle starts to whistle.

Not bothering to wait for his answer, I head back to the kitchen, filling the mugs and dropping a tea bag into each. Carrying them over, I find Nate holding the album, his eyes glistening with the threat of tears, the worry covering his face.

I watch as he pulls his bottom lip with his teeth, biting down a little as if to try to control his urge to cry. He doesn’t need to answer my question. The look on his face says it all. He’s never seen the album, and like me, he’s struggling with what it will reveal.

Nate has opened The Pipe Dream every day since my dad died, doing what he would have done had my dad still been here. He’s carried on, not stopping to think about what has happened and how he feels about it.

We’re both about to open this album and possibly sob. Not exactly how I thought our evening would go down. We finally got past the standoffish behavior, hating each other and wanting the other to leave, and now here we are sitting together in my dad’s house.

“Here,” I say, handing Nate the mug while I sit down next to him. Setting the album on the table, he takes the mug, blowing on it a little before taking a small sip.

“You know that’s Alana,” Nate says, and I narrow my eyes, my brows furrowed at his comment.

“What’s Alana?”

“That magazine cover,” he replies, motioning with his head toward one of the magazines that sits on the coffee table. “Mitch was so fucking proud of her.”

“I can see why,” I say, picking it up and looking at the toned and tanned girl on a surfboard, a wave several feet above her head as she surfs it. “Where was this?”

“It was at this small, local comp, and she took first place. It’s what qualified her for Maui Pipe. She’s the first local to make it in like twenty years or something like that.” Nate talks about it so effortlessly. My dad might have been proud of Alana, but so is Nate.

When I first met them, I mistook them for a couple, but it’s far from that. More of a sibling relationship than anything and losing my dad has taken a toll on both of them. They need each other more than ever now.

“That’s amazing, and you said my dad was training her, right? Was he like her coach? I didn’t even realize surfers have coaches, but it’s a sport so why wouldn’t they?” I’m rambling, nervous about opening that album, avoiding it with conversation, and so is Nate.

“Yeah, something like that, but I think he planned to find her a real coach,” Nate says. “Mitch was super knowledgeable about the sport and everything, but he didn’t have that skill level. The kind of skill that Alana needs to compete with the best.”

“What’s she going to do?” I ask, still avoiding the elephant in the room, the album sitting in front of us, another one next to it with the same leather cover but a hibiscus embossed on the front.

“She says she’s not going to compete, but she’s full of shit. Alana can’t not compete. Surfing is her life,” Nate tells me. “And if I have it my way, she’s going to get back into it. She’s the best surfer I’ve ever seen. The best Mitch ever saw too.”

“I hope she doesn’t quit. I’m sure she’s still processing…” I trail off, not sure how to address my dad’s death when it comes to other people.

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