Riding The Wave

"Johnny?"

His eyes flickered open, partially covered by ruffled strands of his glossy hair, to see Annabell awkwardly pulling her grey hooded sweater tighter around her shoulders, perched uneasily on the edge of the bed in which he was lying nestled carelessly amoung the sheets. For the first time, his gut reaction to her wasn't that involuntary wide-eyed look of fond, friendly affection - the one that made it so clear he could see below the surface and into the soul of anyone he met and demonstrated just how different, how pure and selfless he really was.

But this was different - as though all those evenings that they had spent playfully shoving each other as punishment for cheating, knocking the pieces from the board game they were playing across the carpet, of burning grilled cheese sandwiches in his mom's kitchen because they'd been talking and got distracted, of trying to have an adult walk along the beach and ending up kicking water at each other and running from the rolling waves - as though all of it had never happened.

Annabell had a boyfriend - the smart, athletic son of a wealthy real estate dealer who took her to catillians and regattas - but Johnny had never needed to compete with him. They had been friends since the first day of junior high when they'd been assigned as lab partners and, six years later, were more like brother and sister than anything else. He knew that Annabell shared a part of herself with him that nobody else ever got to see, that even Theo himself wasn't privy to, and it was for that reason that he never felt jealous or threatened. He had girlfriends too - though his relationships rarely made it past the two or three month mark. He was unlucky and usually too kind and gentle for his own good, which meant that he had been cheated on more than a few times and had his heart battered and bruised. Then there was the occasional girl who might really have been in love with him, but couldn't handle the role Annabell played in his life. And that was how the whole situation had started out.

A couple of months before he'd met Jess at a surf competition - performing his usual trick of accidentally attracting her with his sweet nature and casual charisma. She'd just come in from the waves and was a nickel short for a bottle of water when Johnny, who'd been in the queue behind her, had swooped in and saved the day - and left with her phone number after thay'd spent nearly two hours chatting on the sand. A couple of days later they'd gone to see a movie, and after that had hung out almost every day at the diner on the pier. Sometimes Annabell and Theo had hung out with them, which Jess hadn't minded, until the day that Johnny blew her off to pick Annabell up from a party where Theo, her designated driver, had passed out drunk and left her stranded. He'd been really nice about it - really apologetic - but still it had bothered her.

After that she'd been more sensitive to it - every time Johnny'd been hanging with Annabell, every time he had to take off early because he had plans with her, every time his cell phone rang and he brushed aside what they'd been talking about as nothing.

Annabell and Johnny'd always promised each other that their relationships came before friendship - they knew how important they were to each other, and would more easily forgive being blown off or temporarily ignored. All the same, it was the fact that they would automatically spend time with each other when everything else got too hectic which convinced Jess that Johnny sometimes needed time away from her - but not from Annabell. The final blow was when they'd had an argument and, a few hours later, a remorseful Jess had gone to apologise, seeing Annabell crosslegged on the floor through Johnny's bedroom window. He'd run to her - almost without thinking, simply because she would understand and listen and be leaned on as long as he needed her - and it stung Jess more than he could have known. When he looked up and saw her wounded eyes through the glass, he had instantly jumped up and run after her - but it was too late. She'd been too heartbroken even to be really honestly angry, and it had hurt him so much to be the cause of her pain.

"I'm sorry Johnny -" he could still hear her voice wavering in the twilight air "I just…can't compete with what you guys have."

The worst part had almost been walking back into his bedroom, deflated and ashamed, to face the repentant eyes of Annabell. She felt responsible, and though she had no right to, he was too angry with himself to tell her otherwise. It was after this that Johnny had started to think about his friendship with Annabell. It had never occurred to him in such clarity that she was the underlying problem in so many of his relationships - he knew that girls had a natural tendency to be jealous, and the formula of Annabell plus a girlfriend was just never going to wash. Something had to change, he just didn't know what.

Since then, he'd thought about it a lot - about how so many of his girlfriends had been threatened by Annabell's place in his life, about how long he'd been friends with her, how he really felt about her…and then they'd been out with a bunch of people from school, sitting around a camp fire on the beach with a few boxes of beer, lit by the fire, the moonlight, and the distant glow of the buzzing Saturday night pier two hundred yards away. They'd had a lot to drink and finally taken off - close enough to home to make the mile and a half walk down the beach in the warm summer air. Johnny had hardly thought twice - in his inebriated, uninhibited state - about bringing up what had been occupying his thoughts for the past few days with his best friend.

"Anna? You know I think maybe you're the reason that my girlfriends can never handle being with me very long."

"What?"

She'd sounded so stunned, almost hurt, and immediately he'd regretted saying it. By that point it was too late, and in a second they were in an argument - standing a meter apart on the sand and yelling like they never had done before. They'd fought about stupid little things, but never like this, and before they knew it they were saying things they'd never imagined saying.

"How is this my fault?"

"You make them jealous - you turn up all the time, and you call me all the time -"

"Oh, and you don't call me all the time? You think Theo's never hated that you're always around?"

"That's different - he has no reason to be threatened by me."

"What? And your girlfriends have a reason to be threatened?"

"We're always around each other - and you make up this huge part of me that I can't get along without - that you had no right to take."

"I didn't take it - you gave it to me - we gave it to each other. And that's different - we're allowed to be like that. It's not like I have your heart, Johnny."

"Maybe -" he'd faltered, for the first time realising that he was actually having this argument "You do."

That had stopped it. Annabell was struck dumb and searching wildly through her blank mind for something to say. Before she could stop it, she had stepped in towards him and pressed their lips together - the clumsy kiss of two seventeen year olds, their eyes closed and their fingertips touching.

What had shocked Annabell the next morning as she pulled on her clothes in Johnny's bedroom, anxious and distracted by memories, was that they had consciously made their way from the beach and into Johnny's house.