The Truth About Sex & Surfing [Featured Story]

Chapter fifteen

“Wait, what?” Hailey dropped her fork, hearing it clatter down to her plate as she stood up. She pushed to the entrance of the restaurant, the open doors.

“Dylan,” she cried. “Where are you going?”

But he didn’t stop. He kept walking away. Not especially quickly, just with his usual over-confident stride. The asshole.  

A pit opened in Hailey’s stomach. She didn’t know what had just happened – couldn’t be sure, even, of the ground beneath her feet. Without wanting to, she flashed back to that moment when, on the beach, she’d wanted to shout to Dylan that she wasn’t a prostitute. She’d held back then.

That had been a mistake. She should have let him have it.

Now she didn’t hold back. “I said, wait! You want to hear my life story? All right, fine! My parents are dead. They died in a car crash on 495 the year I started college. I’m an ORPHAN, is that what you wanted to know?”

It started pouring out of her, an angry gush: “I’m pretty much alone in the world. I’ve tried to cope as best I can, I guess. Then the ONLY guy I’d ever loved or trusted or slept with – before you – moved one of his ‘friends’ into his apartment as his roommate and OF COURSE it turns out they’re screwing each other’s brains out and laughing at me. Or so I have to think, about the laughing, I mean. The sex is freaking indisputable fact. The funny thing is I’m now pretty sure I never loved him at all, I just needed someone.”

Hailey paused to gulp air and wipe away the beads of sweat that had broken out all over her forehead. Dylan still hadn’t turned around. So she dashed the ten yards or so to catch up with him. They were nearly back to the shop.

“Hey!” She yelled. “Don’t walk away just yet because there’s MORE. And you asked for it! Okay, so when that guy dumped me, my boss fired me because he’s in love with me. Or so he says. It’s kind of hard to tell because all he ever does is yell at me. That’s, like, his way. I’m thinking about going into business with him anyway. He’s got a daughter just like you. And she’s fantastic. For the record, I LOVE kids. I’d like to have three or four myself one day. Because, you know, family. I don’t really have one!”

A smallish crowd was gathering around her. A mom pushing a stroller with toddler twins, the Dad close by in one of those men’s tank tops. A couple of twenty-something guys in plastic Viking helmets, probably doing a bachelor-party weekend. An older couple with startlingly deep tans -- ones that made Hailey think of public-service campaigns about the benefits of sunscreen. Maybe those had come late to Australia?

The elderly man nudged his wife: “Look, it’s some doomsday preacher.”

“No,” the woman whispered back, her whisper loud as her eyes were wide. “It’s that hooker from the newspapers. One of those Weston girls.”

Hailey let out a laugh. A cracked, crazy-sounding one. “I’m not a hooker! I only made out with him! I was ambivalent, I swear to god!”

“Right on,” cheered a Viking guy.

“I said I’m not a hooker,” she corrected. “Not a prostitute, got it?!”

“Fair enough.” The guy and his friends moved on, while Hailey laughed some more, so much she almost doubled over. She couldn’t stop, even though her face was wet with sweat or maybe crazy tears.

“It’s all right, darling,” the older woman soothed just as loudly, stepping forward. “In Australia, we have services for people like you.”

“But I said I’m not a prostitute.”

“I meant crazy people,” the woman clarified. “Nutters.”