The Summer of Jake by Rachel Bailey Read Free Book Online Page B

the soft denim flexed and relaxed. Flexed and relaxed. The process was mesmerizing—why had I never noticed that before when a man drove?
    I turned squarely to the front and looked out the windshield. “So how was your surf this morning?”
    We pulled up at a red light, and Jake flashed me a grin. “Embarrassing, actually.”
    “Embarrassing?” When was life ever embarrassing for Jake, let alone a morning spent surfing? “What happened?”
    “Well, I was out there, sizing up the waves.” His voice took on a touch of story-telling drama as he settled into the tale, thumbs hooked under the top of the steering wheel so he could gesture with his fingers. “I picked my wave and went for it. Turned left, crouched down and grabbed the outside rail of my board—”
    Immersed in the visual he was creating, I interrupted. “What’s a rail?”
    “The side of the board,” he slipped in without breaking the stride of his story. “All set for a beautiful tube ride…only to realize I’d turned the wrong way. I’d turned into the tube instead of riding the other way. Crash.” He slapped one hand against his thigh. “I went everywhere—legs, board, everything.”
    As the light turned green and we started moving again, he laughed at himself with real enjoyment.
    “Oh no! Were you all right?” Despite seeing the blatant evidence of his survival in front of me, I felt a strange twinge of concern.
    “Just a bruised ego. Everybody out there was laughing.”
    In fact, Jake was still laughing, and so I relaxed and allowed myself to see the funny side. I tried to picture the other surfers ribbing him, but I’d never thought of people interacting with each other on the water. “Do they know who you are out there?”
    “There are enough who do.” He lifted a shoulder in a self-deprecating shrug.
    I turned a little in my seat to see him more clearly. I was surprised he’d told a story like that. Given his time on the pro circuit, I’d have expected him to be boastful or at least proud. There were mysteries wrapped in this perfect package of a man.
    “Can I ask a personal question?”
    He nodded. “Shoot.”
    I tapped a finger on my knee, trying to formulate the words. “You’re hardly over the hill.”
    Another laugh erupted from his throat. “Gee, thanks.”
    I bit down on an embarrassed smile, but it peeked out anyway. “What I meant is, you’re twenty-three. There are surfers your age still on the pro circuit.”
    “Some even older, if you can believe it,” he said, chuckling.
    I turned farther in my seat, so I was facing him—wanting to see his face as he responded. I’d wondered about this for a long time. “So why did you leave so young? You were at the top of your game.”
    He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, yet his voice remained casual. “Sometimes, it’s better to leave at the top than to slide away into mediocrity.”
    Jake mediocre? Not likely. But…could he possibly fear it? “Is that what you thought would happen if you didn’t leave?”
    He shook his head and paused as he reverse parked the Jeep. “To tell you the truth, I was restless.”
    I thought about that for a second. “You wanted more than a world title?”
    “It’s hard to explain.” He turned off the ignition then rubbed two fingers across his forehead. “It was like, I’d done that, won the title—time to move on. Try something else.” He shrugged again.
    Jake had always lived his life large. He’d been famous since before his birth—the baby that almost broke up Heaven’s Garden. When the singer fell pregnant to the wild boy lead guitarist and left the band, everyone in Australia knew of baby Jake. Then, when he became famous in his own right for surfing and later his business, his family history added that extra dash of spice to articles. Photos of his long-dead father still occasionally accompanied his own.
    Maybe because of his past, maybe in spite of it, the word “overachiever” had basically been