Blue Read Online Free PDF Page A

going on about how cold it was, or how much better it was to surf free, without a wetsuit cramping their style. I thought the cold was a small price to pay for surfing the most stunning beach break in Europe.
    It was low tide and it was breaking clean, the waves peeling off perfectly. We paddled out, and Zeke was off, much faster and stronger through the water than I was. He made the line-up, which is where surfers wait to catch a wave, while I was still battling the impact zone. Finally outside, paddling through the pack of hunched surfers, I tried to find my sweet spot by checking the markers on land that I always used to position myself atthe best sandbar location. Today, though, the current was zippy and I had to paddle just to maintain position. I was too far outside and I missed a few sick waves.
    Zeke got them.
    He had some killer moves. I watched him shoot across the wave face, then turn the board 180 degrees and back again for a perfect cutback. On his next wave, he really embraced the speed, and when I saw how fast his board was moving across the water, I knew what he was going to do. He accelerated toward the crest of the wave, where his board lost all contact with the water to score him some serious air on an aerial 360-degree turn. He must have been six feet above the water.
    Not many surfers could do that. Hucking air was the sort of thing you’d have to do thousands of times before you got any good at it. And Zeke was really good, with his own loose, super-graceful style. I’d never seen anyone surf Fistral like that. Zeke was slipping across the waves like a skater, light-footed, as if he and his board weighed nothing. He must have spent most of his life in the water.
    There was so much I could learn from him. If he wanted to teach me, that was, but I knew that not many surfers of his ability were bothered about teaching other surfers. They were just out to do what they loved as well as they could, as often as they could, and wanted everyone else to get out of the way. Zeke had total control, total power, total grace.
    Basically, his style of surfing couldn’t have been more different from Daniel’s.
    Daniel only taught people to surf for a living because it paid really well. He resented the time away from his own surfing.He’d get so frustrated with his students’ lack of talent that when it came to his own sessions he’d psycho-surf. Even his riding stance looked like a fighting stance. He pushed it too far. Taking off too late, charging hard, then riding in so far at Little Fistral that he almost ate the rocks. And he was always breaking boards in insane wipeouts, which was not funny as surfboards cost hundreds. He’d perforated his eardrums, slashed his hands on rocks and he’d lost three teeth, although he wore a partial bridge so you couldn’t tell.
    It was like he wanted to prove something. I don’t know what, or even who he was trying to prove it to. The whole world, maybe.
    I sighed, as if I could sigh Daniel out of my mind, and my eyes settled back on Zeke, which was when he did this incredibly sexy thing. He was up and charging, when the lip of the curling wave started falling on his face, and he did this head-flick. It should have looked cheesy because it was just to get his hair out of his face without using his hands, which would affect his balance. But it was just gorgeous. It was like I was there under that waterfall with him. I could feel the phenomenal weight of that water crashing down on to his broad shoulders and jerking his head forward. By rights he should have wiped out. But he didn’t. His spine bent forward under the immense pressure of the breaking wave, but somehow he managed to stay vertical, that head-flick getting the hair out of his eyes and righting his balance at the same time.
    He was amazing. I let myself feel the weight of his amazingness and suddenly I felt this strange kind of hunger, a cold ache in my belly. Right there, in that moment, I would have willingly