Page 52 of Britta & the Beach Boy
“You really love that place, don’t you?” he asks.
I consider my words before answering. “My Great-Grandma Britta started it over sixty years ago, and my mom took it over and babied it all my life. I want to carry on the legacy.”
Dex nods thoughtfully. “That’s really noble, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“Yeah, I did. Mom’s legacy. That’s what I love.”
Chef sets a long plate in front of us with what looks more like art than food. Each round seaweed-wrapped rice and fish concoction is identical, topped with a colorful mix of bright yellow mango and green avocado.
“Do you eat horseradish?” Dex asks.
“Weird question, but yeah. It’s good on prime rib.”
Dex laughs and scoops a bit of green stuff from a little plate, then mixes it with soy sauce in a tiny bowl. “Wasabi is basically green horseradish. Dip the roll in this first.” He passes me the bowl. “Then put the whole thing in your mouth.”
I pick up my chopsticks, one in each hand. His eyelids slowly drop closed, and he shakes his head.
“Did I mention I’m from a small town where my family owns most of the restaurants? I’ve eaten a lot of pretty authentic Danish food, but beyond that I’ve had limited options. I haven’t used chopsticks very often.” I try to explain, but before I finish, Dex is behind me.
He takes the chopstick from my left hand and moves it to the right. Then he gently positions my fingers around the sticks. Holding them is difficult, but Dex smells like cedar and pine in a rainstorm; it’s very distracting but also very centering—like it’s just the two of us right now.
When he sits back down, my skin still tingles from his touch. He watches me awkwardly dip my roll, then stuff the whole thing in my mouth. I can barely close my lips around it, but then there’s an explosion of flavor.
I cover my mouth and point my chopsticks at the rolls. “Dat’s reary good.”
Dex laughs and expertly pops one in his mouth. I’m reaching for a second one when the chef puts another dish in front of us, equally artistic but totally different with a pink fish—salmon?—and cucumber in the middle.
Feeling brave, I take a roll from the second plate.
“When did you fall in love with surfing?” I’d rather keep the focus on him than on questions about why I’m staying in LA longer.
He cocks his head to the side and pinches his chopsticks together. “About four years ago.”
“You’ve been surfing for a lot longer than four years.” I try to imitate his pinching motion but drop one of my chopsticks.
“Yeah, but you asked when I fell in love with it.” He helps me reposition my chopsticks in the right place. “That was about four years ago, after I decided I needed a new manager. My dad had always been the one making all the decisions, but I’m the one who hired Archie. That’s what made my career mine, if that makes any sense.” He glances at me for a reaction, and I nod. “That’s when I fell head over heels in love with the sport I’d been doing for nearly twenty years by then.”
I take in everything Dex has said, wondering how to ask my next question. “When you say your dad made all the decisions before, does that mean he was your manager?”
“What you won’t find on google,” he says, giving me a cheeky grin before focusing on the sushi again, possibly to hide the vulnerability I saw in that glance. “I started surfing because my dad loved it, and like any little boy, I wanted to be just like him. At some point, I also realized that it might be the only way to spend time with him. And, it turns out, I was pretty good at it, which Dad loved too. I started competing when I was around twelve years old. Dad became my manager, and we traveled to competitions all over the world. I can see now that my reason for doing it was because I wanted to please him and he wanted me to win.”
Dex dips his roll, but his mind is somewhere else. “Don’t get me wrong; Dad loves me. He’s a great guy, but as the years went on, I felt a lot of pressure. If I didn’t do well, he’d get upset. Not at me, necessarily, but it was hard to tell the difference. And insurfing, you can never win all the time. A bad wave, an injury, the wrong weather, or a better competitor can cancel out your skill in any competition. He pushed me hard, and it blurred the lines of why surfing had become my whole world.”
“Oh wow. That’s intense Dex.” I didn’t have the same relationship with my mom, but my parents were both so busy running businesses so they could pay bills and provide for us that spending time with them meant working by their sides. I’m not sure I’ve ever looked at it that way before and I feel some emotion building in my throat to see it this way. “What changed four years ago?”
“In 2015, I made it to the Finals as a rookie, which was a huge deal. But then I dropped in the ranks for the next four years. Dad was furious, and I started to see how twisted up surfing was in my head, yeah? I kept getting injured, and it seemed like he was less worried about that than he was about my sponsor dropping me.”
He waves a hand. “That wasn’t true, but like I said, things were twisted up with me. Archie helped me sort through things and offered to manage me since he wasn’t surfing anymore. I put some distance between my dad and me, and things turned around.”
I nod as though I get what he means. Then, I realize I do. I felt that when I left Paradise for college, and why I hadn’t planned to go back after graduating. Not that I wanted to leave my family or the place I’ve always lived. More that, I needed some space to figure out who I was without them.
Then mom started behaving oddly and was struggling to manage the shop the way she had for over twenty years. She got her diagnosis, and I made the choice to go home.
Dex catches my eye and holds me with his gaze. “It took about a year of Archie’s coaching, some therapy, and surfing for myself before I truly fell in love with it. So, I guess what I’m saying is,if you’re going to devote your life to something—give everything to it—you’ve got to love it more than anything and you can only figure that out for yourself.”
I consider what he’s said, impressed with how smoothly he brought this back to me. “That’s how you feel about surfing?”
“Yeah, I do. I love it more than anything now, but it took me twenty years to get there.”
