Crashing Waves (20 page)

Mick laughed hysterically, shaking his head no.

"Me either. Maybe she's just not his type."

"I bought another Jill. She should be here next week, so I guess we'll see. Unless, maybe the Jill we have is the problem. Bloody hell, I may have just bought her a new mate," he said laughing again.

"Nice," she smiled, shaking her head.

"Maybe I should bring your mum out to see him. She's pretty good at reading people."

"How long has she known about me?" Rory asked, opening her second beer.

He shrugged. "Uni, I guess. I don't remember her cracking the shits about it until you were here for your first championship tour."

"Did you tell her?"

"Fuck me. You know better than that."

"Well, how did she find out then?" Rory asked, running her hand through her hair.

"A mum's instinct, I guess," he replied, watching the large kangaroo hopping in the distance. "You're her kid too. Sometimes, I think you forget that."

"Yeah, well she forgot I was someone else's kid too. I'll never forgive her, Uncle Mick."

"She knew what is was like to be a battler and she never wanted you to have that life. She made a blue, Rory."

"Yeah, well it was one big fucking mistake then."

He opened another beer and changed the subject.

"I remember the day you were here for that first competition. All eyes were on you, especially the eyes of one yank surfie that you'd brought home with you. You pretty much stood out like a shag on a rock when you walked around grinning at her like a shot fox." Mick shook his head, smiling. "Your mum nearly spit the dummy."

Rory grinned, remembering the time he was referring to. She'd just come home for the first time since leaving for college on the other side of the world and had brought her girlfriend, Martie, along with her.

"You're very lucky she never caught you two having the naughty. If Bob had nine lives, he blew right through half of them that weekend," he laughed, shaking his head.

Rory giggled. "Oh yeah, I forgot he found us in the back of the car."

Mick laughed. "The following week, he told your mum the car was shit house and got her to trade it in."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Rory chuckled.

"Angel was mad as a cut snake, but after you won your first tour and then graduated uni; she stopped cracking the shits. Then…the accident really brought everything back that she'd gone through with your father and…it was just too much for her, Rory. I think she realized in that moment, when Martie never left your side, that she was going to have to learn to accept your life and accept her in it," he shrugged. "They spent a lot of time together while you were in the hospital. Hell, we all did."

"Martie and I had broken up long before the accident. We're much better mates than anything else. Trust me. We're not each other's type at all."

"I don't think your mum knew that. She definitely wasn't very impressed when you blew in here yesterday with a schoolie that's grinning at you like a shot fox."

Rory sighed. "She's not exactly that young."

"Don't get me wrong, I like Austin. But, why did you really bring her with you?"

"She wants to join the pro tour and I've been sort of showing her the ropes."

"Are you surfing again?"

"No! Hell, no. I wanted to see how she handled competition waves and let her see how things go at a big competition."

"I think there's more to it."

Rory stared through the windshield, smiling when she saw Roo. "I care for her, Uncle Mick, but she's so young and I'm a washed up has been. She has so much ahead of her."

"So do you. Rory, you're only thirty. You still have your whole bloody life ahead of you. If this Sheila makes you happy, then give it a fair go."

Rory rubbed the gold pendant hanging on the chain around her neck. "We should probably get back. I'm sure Matilda will have dinner on the table soon."

Chapter Twelve

The next day Rory, Austin, and Mick arrived at the competition. Rory stepped out of the limo with Austin, and Mick walked around from the other side. "Your mum's gone to the office—she's buried in cat shit, so she won't be here today."

"That's fine. I wasn't expecting her anyway," Rory said, walking towards the crowded beach.

"Here come the flies," Mick exclaimed as the fans flocked towards them.

Rory smiled and shook hands with the women and men as she signed her name on calendars, pictures, magazines, t-shirts, towels, hats, surfboards and anything else they pushed into her face. Austin wasn't sure where to go, but Mick pushed her closer to Rory, nodding with a smile on his face.

After signing the last item, Rory walked towards the competitor's tent.

"I can't believe you signed that girl's bikini," Austin laughed, shaking her head.

Rory chuckled. "Yeah, I get some odd requests sometimes. I generally don't go to many of the surf competitions for a lot of reasons, this being one of them. I know I still have fans, but to me, all of this," she said, fanning her arm towards the crowded beach. "This is over for me," she sighed. "Come on, I'll introduce to the best surfers in the world."

"I'm already standing next to the best one," Austin whispered.

~ ~ ~

The competition started out casually. Many of the magazines and sportscasters took photos of Rory and spoke to her in brief interviews. She was glad to see they'd finally stopped asking when she was coming back into the sport. Austin tried to stay close by her so that she could see how everything worked behind the scenes, but she finally took a spot on the sand with the rest of the crowd as the surfers began taking to the waves. She watched the surfers in the water, studying the line-up. One wave would be perfect and a surfer would drop, having an awesome ride, then the next wave would be flat, leaving the others to wait their turn. Eventually, everyone had ridden at least one wave, completing the heats.

"What do you think?" Rory said, sitting down on the beach towel next to Austin.

"Hey. It's crazy out there. They're waiting for the perfect wave, not knowing what the next line will look like. It's completely unpredictable and nothing like what I'm use to, that's for sure."

"Yeah, it's like a game of poker. You never know what you'll be dealt, but you still have to play your hand when you're in the blind." Rory leaned closer, bumping her shoulder into Austin's. "So, you think you can do it?"

"Right now? I'd be scared to death and probably wipe out and drown," Austin replied without thinking. She turned to face the woman sitting closer to her. "I'm…so"

Rory smiled. "It takes time. No one is perfect when they first go pro."

"You were," Austin said softly, wishing she could see the pale blue eyes hidden behind Rory's dark sunglasses.

Rory laughed. "Yeah, well, I was a horse of a different color I guess," she replied, drawing in the sand with her finger.

"With consistent practice, I know I could do it, Rory. I really wish I lived somewhere like this, with real waves to surf. We have bathtub ripples at home."

"No kidding."

~ ~ ~

After the competition finals, Rory met with her riders to take pictures and congratulate them all for placing in the top three of their divisions. Austin accompanied her. She mingled with them, asking a hundred questions about the tour and riding so many different styles of waves. She was as thrilled as a child in a room full of Disney characters.

Rory saw the fire burning in her gray eyes.
She has the drive and the skill, but the heart…does she have the heart to give up everything in one ride?
Rory walked away from the crowd, sitting on a large rock, alone. She rubbed the pendant hanging just below her collarbone, while watching the waves rise and fall, one after the other, lower and lower as the tide washed away. "What the hell am I doing?" she said to herself as she wiped away a single tear.
 

Mick found her a few minutes later, silently sitting down next to her. Rory mustered a tiny smile.

"It's great to see you back at a pro comp, but not if it hurts you this badly," he said. "I know why you did it." He paused, watching the waves roll in. "Rory, is she worth it?"

Rory sighed. "I haven't been near the ocean for anything in over four years, except to run the beach behind my house. I stopped feeling the allure of the ocean when my ears became deaf to the call of the crashing waves. I accepted that it was over and moved on with my life." She wiped another tear from her cheek. "After all of these years, it's come back to me. That girl makes me feel again and it scares me to death. I tried so hard to ignore the magnetism pulling me towards her, but I have no control. I'm helpless against it. The walls that I carefully built around me are crashing down. She's turned my life upside down and she has no idea what she's done."

Mick wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "You either have to let her go or accept that she's freed you to live again. It's your choice." He pulled her against him. "I hate seeing you so distraught, but I also haven't seen you as happy in years as I have in the past couple of days."

Rory sighed. "I'm afraid…I feel like the closer I get to her, the closer I get to the water. If I open myself completely to her…I don't know what will happen. I swore I'd never surf again, but I'm scared to death that I may have no control over that either."

"You're only going to do what Rory wants to do deep down. Nothing and no one can make you do otherwise. Never forget that. If she's made you hear the waves again and feel the power of that call, then I think she's an angel sent from above," he said, wiping tears of his own. He'd waited so long for Rory to find her way back to the ocean and if it took the innocence of a young woman to do it, then so be it. His niece had simply become a shell of her former self and he'd give anything to have the Rory from before the accident, return.

"I definitely feel like she's something from out of this world," Rory said, taking a deep breath as she removed her sunglasses, rubbing her eyes and drying her face. She smiled at him before putting the dark glasses back on.

"Let's get out of here. We look like a pair fruitcakes," He grinned, standing up.

Rory laughed. "You're a mess, Uncle Mick."

~ ~ ~

After dinner, Rory announced that she was going for a walk. Austin decided to go with her to stretch her legs and work off the large meal she'd eaten. Mick went home for the night and Angel retired to her study to work from home, which was something she was used to doing nightly.

"Want to talk?" Austin finally asked as they followed along the path towards the cliff overlooking the ocean. She'd stayed quiet, walking casually next to Rory as the road wound through the hills.

"What's there to talk about?" Rory kicked a rock with her flip flop.

"I don't know. You looked kind of sad when we left the beach today."

"It's hard on me…the competitions and everything….I still have a really hard time going to them."

"It's been four years now, hasn't it?" Austin asked.

"Yeah, something like that," Rory replied, picking up the pace slightly.

Sensing she wasn't ready to talk about her accident, Austin changed the subject. "Tell me about your family."

"Okay, what's there to tell? They're Australian nutcases!" Rory grinned.

"Come on, Rory. How about your father?"

Rory gazed up at the orange sky.
Where to start. Should I even tell her?
"My dad was the apple of his family's eye. Randall Eden was one hundred percent Irish, born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, despite having blond hair and blue eyes. I actually look a lot like him. Anyway, he'd gone on vacation in California in the summer before his senior year of college. He'd been studying to be a businessman like his father. They owned a few bed and breakfasts in the countryside." She paused, touching the gold pendant and smiling as she thought about her father.

 "Angel grew up here at the Zane Estate. Her grandparents were rich in mineral mining, but her father left the family business after only a few years, choosing to spend his early life as an attorney with his own law practice before moving into politics, having become the attorney-general and minister for justice of Queensland at one point. Her mother was a philanthropist, serving on multiple committees. Angel wanted to follow in her father's footsteps and had been about to start her third year of uni after being accepted to law school early. She flew to California to celebrate and met my father one afternoon on the beach."

Rory looked out at the miles of ocean as they neared the end of the path.

 "They fell madly in love, spending every minute together. My mother found out she was pregnant a week before she had been scheduled to fly home. When she told my father, he asked her to marry him. He didn't want to go to Australia and she didn't want go to Ireland, so they were married at the justice of the peace and settled down outside of Long Beach. They'd gone against the wishes of both of their families and in doing so, were disowned. I was born the following March and—"

Austin grabbed Rory's arm. "You mean to tell me you had a birthday this month and you didn't say anything? That's rude."

"How is it rude?" Rory grinned.

"Well, what if I wanted to get you something?"

"You're too late…it was….last Sunday."

"Happy Birthday. I can't believe you didn't tell me. So how old…wait you'd be about twenty nine, am I right?"

"Thirty."

"Wow."

"I know. I told you I'm a washed up old sock." Rory smiled.

"No you're not."

"Well, I'm definitely a lot older than you are."

"It's only a number. Age doesn't define someone," Austin said.

"True, you're still so damn young though. When I was your age I didn't have a care in the world."

"Enough about me and my age, get back to your story," Austin growled.

"Well, as I said, I was born in March, but before that, my father had decided to change his major and become an architect because he loved to design things. He received an engineering degree a year later. My mother finished her degree and started taking law classes on the side and working for a small law firm. They barely had anything after being dumped by their families, but they'd had each other and to them, that was all that they'd needed.