Chapter 18 - First Date

The sky outside is still deep blue when Mia slips out of bed, the horizon just beginning to show the first thin line of pale light.

Ellie is a complete casualty—buried under her duvet, one arm thrown over a pillow.

Mia had forwarded Elias's message to her last night, added a reminder, and then said nothing further.

From the looks of it, the time was well spent.

Mia checks her phone. Ellie's reply from 1 AM is three exclamation marks and an emoji she's not going to investigate further.

She pulls on the lavender swimsuit, knots the yellow sundress over it at the hip, and pins her hair into a bun that leaves her neck bare. Simple. Practical. She's about to leave when—

"You're going to see him."

Ellie's voice, muffled and knowing, rises from the duvet.

Mia nearly drops her sunscreen. "You're awake?"

"Barely." Ellie surfaces enough to rest her chin on the pillow. "My roommate's first date. You think I'd sleep through that?"

"It isn't a date."

"Mia."

"We're going surfing with a group—"

"There is no group." Ellie pulls the duvet back over her head. "Lucas is unconscious. I already checked."

A pause, muffled. "Put on sunscreen. The sun here will destroy you."

She's asleep again before Mia finishes the sentence.

***

The beach is almost entirely empty at this hour.

Tofino in the early morning is a different place—just the water and the light and the sound of the waves finding the sand with patient repetition.

Mia walks the shoreline and notices, not for the first time, how few people are actually here. Every face she's encountered belongs to the team or the coaching staff. It's as though the property exists slightly outside the tourist map.

She files this thought away for later.

At the rock pools near the far end of the beach, she finds him.

Elias is crouched on the exposed reef, white board shorts and a grey t-shirt, completely absorbed in something in the water below him.

He has a small net and a clear container, and he looks, she thinks, like a large, extremely well-built child doing a science project.

He looks up when he hears her footsteps on the sand.

His face does something immediate and unguarded when he sees her.

"You came," he says, and his voice is warm in a way that lands differently in the quiet of the morning.

Mia crouches beside him at the rock pool. She peers into the pool itself—purple urchins, translucent shrimp, a sea anemone pulsing slowly in the shallows. Richer than she expected.

He hands her a net without being asked.

She tries for the shrimp immediately. They vanish before the net reaches them—dispersing in every direction at once, impossibly fast.

She tries again. Same result.

"They do that," Elias says. He finds a small stick and taps the surface nearby, and the shrimp scatter again in a burst.

"Defense mechanism. Makes them nearly impossible to catch when they feel threatened."

"Quasi impossibile," Mia murmurs in Italian, which means she's more focused than she looks.

She tries a third time. The shrimp win again.

She turns to look at him, and finds he's watching her with the particular expression she's noticed before, the one that appears when he thinks she isn't paying attention.

Patient, interested, privately amused.

How is he this alert, she thinks. He was still at the fire when I left. It's barely seven.

"What time did you go to sleep?" she asks.

"Not long after you left, actually." He looks back at the pool. "Seemed sensible."

She considers this.

She hadn't seen anyone on her walk back to the cabin last night. But she also hadn't been looking, too busy thinking about fire and the particular quality of the silence they'd managed to build between them.

"So you chose sleep over staying with the group," she says.

"I had plans this morning." He says it simply, like it requires no further explanation.

It doesn't, really.

No one else appears.

The beach stays quiet, just the two of them and the rock pools and the morning coming in slowly off the Pacific.

Eventually, without discussing it, they release everything back—the crab sideways into a crevice, the starfish eased into deeper water, the shrimp already gone before they can be returned.

"Ready?" Elias stands, brushing sand from his knees.

They walk the coastline toward the equipment rental, the sun climbing now, warm on Mia's shoulders and the back of her neck. The beach is long and the rental shop is far enough that there's no rush, nothing pulling at either of them.

He walks on her right side, slightly closer than necessary, his shadow falling across hers on the sand.

The breadth of his shoulders in her peripheral vision is, she will admit this only to herself, genuinely reassuring.

"You've surfed here before?" she asks.

"A few times." He glances at her. "It's different from the East Coast. The swells are bigger."

"That's meant to reassure me?"

"It's meant to prepare you." The corner of his mouth lifts. "There's a difference."

Mia looks at the water—the long, rolling waves moving in from the open Pacific, steady and immense, nothing like the tame Ligurian surf she grew up with.

"You'll be fine," he says, quieter. "I'll be there."

She doesn't answer.

They keep walking, the sun at their backs now, their shadows stretching long ahead of them on the wet sand, almost touching.