Page 18 of Submit

For a quick second, I think about lying and saying I’m older, but that wouldn’t be fair since he seems to have answered honestly.

“Twenty-five,” I whisper, feeling like I might as well have saidfifteenfor the way he’s looking at me now.

“Jesus.” He runs a hand down his face and looks like he wants to say something else but the moment passes and he shakes his head. “I’ll meet you on the beach in ten.” He abruptly gets up from the table leaving me breathless while he hits the eject button when things start to get personal.

When I make it back down to my board after a quick bathroom break, there’s a second board laid out next to mine. This one is bigger with a custom kite attached, not one of the ones with the school’s logo. I raise my brows at Casper in question.

“I’m going to ride with you. It’s time to practice on open water.”

My nerves get the best of me. “You think I’m ready for that?”

He nods but not before I catch him skim my legs with his eyes. To his credit, he tried to at least hide it where Tristan was basically drooling on my sandals. He also doesn’t linger and pretends that he was checking something on my board.

Maybe he doesn’t think I’m too young for him after all.Once I have the thought, my mind runs wild for about forty seconds before I reign it in and force myself to focus on the task at hand.

Casper lets me get up on my board first. Once he’s sure I’ve gotten control, he hops on his board effortlessly and is up immediately.

Watching Casper kite surf is fucking magical.

The tight cords of muscle in his legs, back, and arms easily control his board so he glides across the water making it look natural and sexy as all hell.

I’m too busy paying attention to him and when the first wind change comes, I’m unprepared and I topple ass-over-head into the water. I pop back to the surface immediately because of my life jacket but it’s definitely more nerve-wracking out here in the open water.

Casper is beside me in a second. “Focus,” he growls.

The disappointment in his voice would bring me to my knees if we were on solid ground. I don’t want him to regret bringing me out here so soon so I bite my tongue about his tone and prepare to go up again.

When I start to pass him after a minute or two, I hear him bark, “Let your bar up. Slow down.”

I desperately want to impress him by setting a faster pace, but I recognize that this is his element, not mine and I already messed up once. If I’m honest, I want to earn his praise again, so I do as he asks. We ride down the coastline for what feels like ten minutes then he slows us down to execute a turn into the wind before we start heading back up the way we came. I follow behind him at a safe distance so our dancing kites don’t get tangled.

When we get back to the shore this time, I’m shivering from the adrenaline, my body in overdrive.

I try to help break down the kite and ropes but I make a mess of things with my shaking hands. Casper notices as he comes to inspect my work.

“Elizabeth!” he barks, startling me.

The sound of my name calls my reality into sharp relief. I let him know I’m okay, it’s just the adrenaline crash, and then I promptly go back to processing my thoughts about the worry I just heard in his voice and the way my name sounded rolling off his tongue.

Casper wraps up the cleaning process and comes back to the picnic table where I’m serenely sitting and watching the other boarders still out on the water. A wave of exhaustion hits me and I yawn.

“You really picked up on this fast. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone get the hang of it so quickly. You board like you’ve been doing it for years.”

I turn my head but it feels heavy on my neck and I feel a little punch drunk from the ebb of the adrenaline. “I like to wakeboard and water ski. And snow ski for that matter. I guess starting those things earlier in life helped me pick up on the wholebody-awarenessthing. My parents were really active and they gave me a lot of opportunities to do that stuff before they died.” Mentioning dead parents always seems to bring the conversation to a halt and get awkward, but Casper presses on, like me being an orphan at such a young age is no big deal.

“Even starting young, there has to be some innate talent which you obviously have.” He looks almost angry or in pain as he throws out the compliment before continuing. “We still have twenty-five minutes left of the lesson. I think we should be done on the water though, that forty-minute ride probably zapped your energy.”

“We were out there for forty minutes?” It felt like fifteen total, although my heavy limbs seem to agree with Casper.

“Time flies out there, huh?” He gives me a tight smile as I feel the joy of our ride dancing in my eyes.

Casper takes a swig of his water bottle and sits on the picnic table with his feet on the bench seat, mirroring me. I can feel the heat coming off of his skin. So that I don’t do something stupid in my sleepy, adrenalize-buzzed state, I turn my attention back out to the water before I answer him.

“Yeah, it felt like fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. It was nice.”

Getting personal all of a sudden, he chooses to answer my earlier question. “That’s why I teach. Not everyone gets it, but for those that do, it feels like a way to give back. Everyone needs that thing that allows them to get away. To focus or unfocus. To process. Or to escape.”

I slowly turn my head toward him with my eyebrows raised, indicating my shock. “Well, that was fucking deep Mr. I’m-Just-An-Asshole. Well done.”

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