One Stupid Thing

Take Your Time

It's fascinating how watching someone you love do something they love makes you love them even more, and it's been a really long time since I've seen JJ this ecstatic. Seeing him out on his board, slicing through the water like he is one with it, causes the smile on my face to grow so wide my cheeks are beginning to hurt.

Sitting on a beach chair with my legs kicked up onto the cooler in front of me, I sip on one of the vodka seltzers we packed and raise a hand to shield my eyes from the sun. From over here on the beach I can hear my friends cheer for John B as he begins to ride a fairly large wave.

"Yeah, John B, take it! Take it!" JJ's voice carries.

When the next wave rolls in, Kie claims it, standing up on her board and cutting through the wake until she finds her balance.

Sarah, who had never shown interest in surfing growing up, paddles towards a very small wave that breaks early on. Staying bent in the knees, she clumsily rides the whitewater in towards the shore.

"Go, Sarah!" I shout, cupping my hand around my mouth to amplify my voice.

"I'm doing it!" she squeals. John B, Kiara, JJ, and I clap and cheer for her like she just surfed the largest wave known to man.

Watching all of my friends have their fun from the sidelines is making me grow antsy. I fidget in my chair, already barely sitting on the edge of it and about ready to spring out of it as soon as I see JJ start towards the shore.

As my sister carries her board out of the water, I watch as she passes Kelce and Topper. The two insufferable Kooks stretch and prepare to take their boards out like they're about to surf in some sort of competition. I roll my eyes and sit back in my chair.

Sarah plops down in the chair next to me and by the annoyed expression on her face I can tell that the Kooks have gotten under her skin. Lifting my feet off of the cooler, I lean forward and pluck another seltzer out from beneath the ice. She takes it from my hand eagerly, opens it, and takes a drink so fast I'm surprised she didn't immediately get the hiccups.

Joining the Pogues out in the water, Kelce and Topper decide to paddle right up alongside them. Sitting up taller, I raise my hand over my eyes once more and try to assess the situation from the shoreline. "I have a bad feeling about this," I say aloud.

"If anything were to happen, it probably would've already." Sarah shrugs and takes another sip of her seltzer. "As long as Topper keeps his big mouth shut."

"Yeah, well, I don't exactly trust him to do that," I sigh. "Let's just hope that when he does, the boys handle it out on the waves and shut him up that way."

Just as I finish my sentence, a large wave begins to rise a couple yards off of the coast before the lineup of surfers awaiting it. As it continues to grow, I eye it up as if I'm going after it myself. The surface of the water is glassy and from here I can already tell that by the time it breaks, this wave is going to be at least overhead if not larger than that.

Suddenly, two shapes break away from the line: JJ and Topper. The two boys paddle eagerly towards the growing wave turning right before it reaches its peak. "Oh, God," I mutter under my breath. As the wave breaks, and the crest turns to whitewater, both boys stand up on their boards and compete for the chance to ride it, however with one slick maneuver, the boy with the blonder hair cuts off the other and wins it. Topper gets thrown off balance and abandons his board, diving into the water with an angry yell.

Jumping to my feet I throw my fist into the air and holler like a banshee. "Hell yeah! Go JJ!" He has one hell of a run, too. Set perfectly inside the pocket of the wave, JJ generates enough speed to carve it numerous times.