Page 49 of The Kiss Principle

“No, I—I left something out.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Fernando, please.” When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “I did some surfing. Professional. That’s why I came from Brazil. My whole family moved up here when I was twelve.”

“I’m sorry, what? You came to California to surf? Your whole family came?”

“Of course they came,” he said, and I couldn’t tell what that was supposed to mean, but then he said, “They wanted me to go pro. That was their dream. My dad’s dream; he loves to surf, and he was pretty good himself when he was younger.”

I had no idea what to say to that, and the quiet built slowly between us.

Zé broke it by saying, “Do you know what we did when we got here? I mean the very first thing.”

I shook my head.

“I made my parents take me to Surfrider—the beach, you know? We’d been here like, eight hours, and I made them drive me out to the beach. I had to see it. I had this idea—” He stopped himself. “Have you been there?”

“A couple of times.”

“That’s where it all happened. That’s where modern surfing was born. It felt like I was supposed to go there. And my parents would have done anything for me.” His eyes were in the past,and then they came back to me. “Anyway, I went pro when I was sixteen.”

Okay, the surfer bit wasn’t exactly news. I mean, I saw how he dressed, and there wasn’t any way to misunderstand the look on his face when he’d been staring at that longboard. But professional—

“What does that mean, professional? You were making money.”

His lopsided grin surprised me. “Fernando, I was making a lot of money.”

I couldn’t help my laugh. “Okay, so—” Questions crowded forward in my mind. “I want to say why haven’t I heard of you, but I don’t know any professional surfers. If I look you up, what am I going to find?”

“God, please don’t look me up.”

Which meant, of course, I had to take out my phone right then. It didn’t take me long to find out about José Teixeira, professional surfer. The pictures were unmistakable: it was Zé, although in some of them, he was a kid, slender because he hadn’t added adult mass yet, which made him look gawky with that long frame of his. In others, he was a man—close to the one in front of me, but not quite the same. In some, the hair was longer. In others (yes, I lingered over the shirtless ones), he had more mass and definition. Zé had certainly put on weight while he’d been living with me, in a good way, but he was still much thinner than he’d been—I almost saidat his prime.

“You look like such a hardass,” I said, angling my phone so he could see the photo. It was in black and white, and he wasn’t smiling. It was clear that the photographer had a good eye; the picture was stunning, capturing Zé with a wetsuit rolled down to his waist, the chiseled lines of his body raked by sunlight. A hint of his vee lines showed, or maybe it was my imagination. It was hard to tell. In the photos, that’s where the shadows lay deepest.

He groaned and tried to push the phone away.

My next question was hard to formulate. What I wanted to say was, Not one of these pictures looks like you, not the real you. Or maybe, Where’s the stone-cold badass who keeps popping up in my search result? Or even more clearly, You giggled for almost an hour after you put those octopus-leg socks on Igz, and I’m having a hard time imagining that’s the same guy in these pictures.

What came out wasn’t great: “You don’t act like a professional surfer.”

Instead of getting mad, though, I only got that slow smile.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, no,” he said. “Because I’m not.”

“That’s a fucking annoying thing to say.”

His grin spread, but then it faded. “I mean, I’m not anymore.” He put his salad on the coffee table and pushed back his hair. “I hurt my knee.”

“I figured that part out. Sorry; that was habit. What happened?”

“It’s stupid. God, it’s so stupid, sometimes I can’t even believe it. I was out with some friends one day. Just hanging. And I fell. It was a freak chance. I’ve fallen a million times. But this time, the board moved the wrong way at the wrong time, and my knee twisted, and pop. There goes my ACL.” He was silent for a moment. “There’s this part of me that thinks it would have been better if I’d done it during a competition, you know? If I’d been about to win, and I’d gambled, taken a risk, and that’s how it happened.”

“Sounds like that would have felt even shittier.”

“Maybe. It feels pretty shitty to have ruined my whole life because we were showing off for each other, messing around.”

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