Page 62 of Ride the Wave

‘Part of your soul,’ he finishes for me. ‘That’s how you put it the other day.’

‘A wanker thing to say.’

‘But an honest one.’

We smile giddily at each other.

He’s right. The oceanispart of his soul; he couldn’t turn his back on it even if he tried, which I think, at one point, he did. Surfing is who he is, but it’s not all he is. These are the thoughts running through my mind as I watch him, floating on top of the water with me, our legs dangling in the ocean. These are the things I’ll write about him.

His chest rises as he takes a deep breath. ‘I want to tell you about what happened.’

‘When?’

‘In Australia,’ he says. ‘For the article. I’ve decided I want to talk about what happened to me and why I left. If you’re ready to hear it.’

A swell of excitement ripples through me.It worked. The best way to get to know Leo Silva is on a surfboard. There’s no one else out here. It’s him, me, and the ocean.

‘I’m ready.’

He hesitates, frowning. ‘Although you don’t have your phone on you to record.’

‘I’ll remember,’ I assure him. ‘You can always check it to be sure.’

He shrugs. ‘I trust you.’

I nod.I trust you too,I want to say. But I stay silent, waiting for him to speak.

‘When you said just now that it’s easy to define athletes on their achievements, you basically put into words something I struggled with every day at the peak of my career,’ he says pensively, his brow furrowed. ‘You become so focused on the next win, you forget why you started competing in the first place: the love of the sport.’

A shadow of sadness crosses his expression and he takes a moment to collect himself before he continues, his chest rising as he inhales deeply.

He turns to look at me.

‘When I was learning to surf in Victoria, I was surrounded by some great people. Everything was easy and fun; we all loved surfing. But when I started getting attention, signing sponsorship deals and earning competition winnings, things changed. It felt good to be so admired; I’d grown up thinking I was going nowhere. My grades were terrible, my academic motivation non-existent. The only place I felt happy was out on the water. I’d grown used to feeling like a disappointment, which was… difficult, considering who I was.’

He looks pained, his eyes falling to his board. I think he might be talking about his mother, but I don’t want to ask. This isn’t the right moment for interjections.

‘I got caught up in the whirlwind of attention I was getting,’ he sighs, deflating. ‘I liked what fame meant: the money, the admiration, the places it got you. I threw myself into relationships with people who made me feel important. They hadn’t known me when I was a goofy grom, fucking up on waves and wiping out. They only knew me as a winner. A rich and famous World Champion. I pushed away anyone who’d ever cared about me: Dad, all my old mates. I shut them out, made them feel like they didn’t matter.’

He shakes his head, still annoyed at himself. The old video of him and Ethan Anderson as a couple of grinning, surf-obsessed teenagers flits across my mind, and I wonder if he’s included in this group, if their former friendship fuelled the intensity of their rivalry.

‘I partied a lot, spending all my time with people who told me I was the best,’ he mutters. ‘People who didn’t ask me real questions about me or my future, because they cared way more about themselves and their own fame. They all thought I was this successful, arrogant bloke with the world at his feet – and for a while, I was. But I look back now and all I see is a scared little kid desperate to prove himself.’

His eyes flicker across nervously to me, and I get a glimpse of the boy he was then, so lost and vulnerable, desperately trying to make his mark. An ache erupts in my chest. I have an urge to reach out to him, to take his hands in mine and tell him that it’s okay.

But I can’t. All I can do is sit on my board and listen.

‘The funny thing was, no matter how many competitions I won or big deals I got, I still wasn’t good enough. I remained, at the core of it, a disappointment.’ His throat bobs as he swallows. ‘I dimmed that sense of inadequacy with more drinking and drugs. And any time I was photographed pissed off my face or high, and it got splashed about the press, I laughed about it. I tried to convince myself I was done attempting to live up to someone else’s image of what I should be.’ He hesitates, frowning at me. ‘I’m not trying to justify the way I acted back then. I think I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it myself. I want to understand why I became that person I don’t recognise anymore. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes. It does.’

He runs his hand through his hair, his fingers getting caught momentarily in the crisp, salty tangles. ‘All of that behaviour numbed the fears and anxiety that haunted me. The thrill of winning, the applause and acclaim – that’s addictive. When everyone expects you to win, your self-worth becomes tied to it. Like you say, you define yourself by the wins. Ihadto keep winning. Otherwise, what was I? Nothing. People wanted to spend time with me because I was a winner, that’s all I was. Even the thought of losing, I couldn’t… cope.’

Hanging his head, he exhales all the breath from his body.

‘Leo,’ I say, a lump in my throat as I worry he might crumple beneath these memories at any moment, ‘you don’t have to talk about this now. If you need a break, we can—’

‘No, it’s okay,’ he says, lifting his eyes to meet mine. ‘I want to. Your articles aren’t just about the athlete’s self-promotion, right? They speak to people. This might make someone out there feel less alone.’ He offers a sad smile. ‘That’s important.’

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