A/N: Sorry for the delay in updates. Geoff and Elena expressed dissatisfaction with my handling of their story. This chapter is my attempt to remedy that. Many thanks to my collaborator, henriettaline, for reviewing and making sure I did their story justice. The Joni Mitchell lyrics are from "A Case of You", from the album Blue. Also, the writers Giulia DeMarco and V.J. Gorey are fictional.

Reviews, as always, are welcome and appreciated!

Geoff walked into the dorm bathroom. Elena was finishing up in front of the mirror before his and Marge's party, and he got that same old pleasurable jolt seeing her dressed up, such as she was. She was leaning forward, concentrating on her eye makeup, in a simple cotton coral blue dress and matching heels. Her height and very short, blonde haircut was reminiscent of Charlize Theron (better, actually, in his opinion) from certain angles.

He smiled to himself, remembering the first time he had ever seen Elena dressed like that, for an 8th-grade dance at his middle school, soon after they met. Her awkward, thirteen-year-old gangliness made her self conscious, as well as the fact she hadn't started developing as quickly as her friends. Not that it had mattered to him, of course: she was still the prettiest girl he had ever seen. His dad, as he dropped them off, whispered to him to make sure to offer her his arm, and Elena gratefully took it, still wobbly in her shoes. He kept tugging at his collar-loose even with the tie- around his skinny neck, and made her laugh and relax when he admitted he felt like he was playing dress up. And yes, their dancing was a bit awkward and stilted, but when he held her close she seemed to fit perfectly, and they could have just stood there swaying for all she cared. And he kissed her, in front of everyone, in the parking lot while waiting for his dad to pick them up afterwards, glad he didn't have to wonder if she wanted to kiss him back.

Elena told him once that she was glad they met so young, because she got to watch him mature in front of her eyes, how she got to see his spindly physique fill out and became bronzed and muscular from the surfing. He admitted he felt the same way about her, that she grew more beautiful every day, strong and athletic, with modest yet alluring curves. His tan had faded because he swam indoors to keep fit in New York. In Berkeley, Elena also swam, but in an outdoor pool, so her tan, while not as deep as in the summer, was still dark compared to the kids in Geoff's dorm. She brought a sun-splashed freshness to this place, he thought, watching her finish up at the mirror. What was it about this town's obsession with wearing black? Elena turned her head to look at him.

"Nice jacket, handsome," she said, nodding in approval, and he laughed, because the tan corduroy jacket he was wearing, over an open-necked white shirt and his least-faded pair of jeans, was one that she helped pick out. He walked up and pulled her close, as she bent to rest her forehead on his.

"Thanks, gorgeous," he managed to get out despite the lump in his throat. She could see him complimenting her on how she looked in his gaze alone.

They were feeling relaxed and alert again, finally. Since her arrival the afternoon of the 29th, he and Elena had spent most of the time in bed.

She had looked so tired at the gate, her eyes, weary and darkly underscored. Like him. They splurged on a cab from the airport, huddling close.

"I loved your email," she murmured, laying her head on his shoulder.

Geoff had sent her a quote to read before she got on the plane. It was from her favorite writer, D.H. Lawrence:

All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.

Finally in his room, barely speaking, they undressed, and fell into bed, exhausted. He held her close, marveling as the sheer ache of separation began to ease immediately with her presence. Her soft, warm skin and delicate, clean scent were like a luxuriant bath to him; she played with his long hair, and enjoyed him pressed against her, despite the bone-weariness. Sleep mercifully came while they were entwined, whispering to each other.

Twelve hours later, he awoke to find Elena' s head close to his, green eyes gazing at him intently, her hand stroking his flank.

"It's about time you woke up."

"How long have you been awake?" He took her in his arms. Elena sighed in contentment.

"Too long without going to the bathroom," she laughed. "Come on." Then a smoky look. "We have some unfinished business."

She got up and went to his third drawer, where she found the D.H. Lawrence shirt he saved for her and pulled it on, not bothering to wear anything else. It was slightly large, barely covering her behind, he realized, but didn't complain. She also grabbed her toothbrush and some toothpaste. Geoff pulled on his boxers, took his toothbrush, and they carefully peered out the door of his room. It was 6 AM on a Friday morning, yet nobody seemed to be about yet. They dashed to the bathroom, and other than two people showering, made it back without meeting anyone.

"Now then," Elena purred, the both of them naked and back in bed, "Where were we?"

By now they knew what to do for each other; the separations before had taught them the best way to make the most of their pent-up longing. First there was a round where their bodies, starved for release, made all of the decisions: frantic, powerful and quick. Then came a rest, followed by a longer, tender, re- acquaintance: her fingers playing in his hair, lips kissing his jaw line, holding him to her tightly as her moment came; his lips exploring every inch of her body, breathing in her aroused, intimate scent, delighting as his hands, stroking over firm abdominal muscle, suddenly met with the infinite softness of her breasts. When they came to rest, sated, gasping, hearts still beating madly for each other, Geoff and Elena let the residual fatigue overcome them, and they slept until noon.

He made Elena and himself espresso with his machine while she showered, then she read in the lounge, saying hi to those who remembered her from last time, while he got cleaned up. Ravenous, they ate at his favorite burger place near the dorms, both ordering lamb gyros and a boat of fries, and then she accompanied him to his two classes. They picked up more coffee at the Starbucks across from Union Square Park, and then headed back to the dorm for an impromptu pizza dinner and (early) party for Geoff's birthday thrown by his dorm friends.

XXXXxxxx

"What I want to know is," Anoushka asked, "how did the two of you get on this editing-each-other's-papers kick?" She was a petite Indian-American girl two doors down from Geoff. They were all sitting around the lounge, after smoking Geoff's birthday present from his dorm mates, some fantastic Nepalese hash. There had been some stimulating discussions of music and books, and Elena had just finished telling a story about how she and Geoff tried reading Finnegan's Wake aloud to each other while high once. An Arcade Fire album was playing in the background, off someone's iPod dock.

"It was a disaster," Elena concluded, giggling, as everyone laughed along with her. She grinned at Geoff, and he was glad that she was relaxed and comfortable with everyone. He had taken a ribbing at first about having a high school—hell, middle school—sweetheart. However, when she visited for the contest, a lot of stereotypes toppled: no, she was not wearing a frilly pink dress and bearing a tray of cookies. And her picture in his room wasn't a fake that he ripped off Flickr, either.

Anoushka's question brought Elena's giggling abruptly to a stop. She grew more thoughtful. He could see by her eyes that she wanted him to tell the story, but he wasn't ready.

"I'm a bit too high to tell that, "he said, and Elena nodded, almost imperceptibly. She'd handle it.

She was sitting on the floor, cross-legged and barefoot with him, wearing his white Mexican peasant shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and jeans. She drew closer to him.

"People like to think we made this grand connection, over surfing and writing, all at once," she began, "But the truth is, unlike Geoff, who had always wanted to be a writer, I didn't get serious about it until some time after I met him."

"So he's, like, your… muse?" asked Jamie, a hipsterish, dark-haired English major from across the hall. She had been one of the kids that went back to Geoff's next-door-neighbor Vince's room and had seconds on the Nepalese.

Elena gave a small smile and shook her head. She looked at Geoff fondly. "No, he's not my muse," she said, "Nor am I his. We draw from completely separate wells."

XXXxxxx

"The summer that we met," Elena began, almost lost in the pleasure of the memory, "it was almost all about the surfing."

It was an important summer: her older brother Tony had offered to start taking her and her cousin Anya surfing with his girlfriend Stella. Elena adored Tony, and knew it would be his last summer at home, because he was planning on joining the Army right after high school graduation, next June. He was a good surfer, too. She and Anya were the same age, and had tried teaching themselves surfing the summer before at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro. He offered to teach them to surf properly, but Tony and his friends preferred Hermosa, Redondo, and Manhattan Beach, on the other side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, so Elena was excited to learn real surfing there.

"My dad restored a classic 1954 Chevy woody station wagon that he let Tony drive, and the first day of summer vacation we loaded up the rack with our boards and headed out to Hermosa Beach. We thought we were so cool. "

For the next few weeks, Elena and Anya worked on their technique. They were dismayed to find out Tony wanted them to, essentially, unlearn the skills they had acquired the previous summer, and start over. He and Stella (a small, dark-haired beauty, and an accomplished surfer in her own right) showed them how to judge incoming swells, achieve a standing position without toppling over, and soon had the two girls consistently achieving short rides on the smaller waves.

One July morning, the usual marine layer of gray clouds covered the area when they arrived at 7AM. The surf was already breaking nicely, with smallish but consistent 3-4 foot swells. "Perfect for grommets like you," Tony joked to Elena and Anya. They pretended to bristle at being called inexperienced, and helped each other get into their wetsuits.

"Tony paired up with me, and Stella with Anya, and we started working the waves. Everything was going great, and then I noticed, after about forty-five minutes, we'd been joined by a group of four boys about our age, thirty yards away." Elena smiled slyly, and Geoff dropped his head, blushing. "We were all just bobbing in the swells, taking it easy, and I was supposed to be listening to Tony, who was explaining something to me, but the only thing on my mind was, who's the guy over there with the long blonde hair?"

The other boys had short haircuts, and kept horsing around, but the long-haired one was sitting on his board, gazing back over his shoulder. While the others were fooling around, he saw a good swell coming, then quickly started paddling towards shore and caught the wave just at the right moment. Elena watched him unsteadily stand on his board, and actually ride for a little before the wave began to collapse and he lost his balance, plunging head-first into the surf. Tony followed her eye, noticing her smile when his head popped up and he shook the water out of that wet mane of his.

"He could use some help," Tony remarked, "There was more he could have squeezed out of that wave." She blushed, but then, almost without realizing it, surprised herself as much as him with a bold grin.

"Maybe I should go over and show him how it's done," she blurted out.

Tony raised his eyebrows, then chuckled.

"Maybe you should, Ellie."

She loved and looked up to her older brother, and knew he wasn't trying to mess with her. But she put her bravado aside for the moment, and shook her head.

"Nah, I don't want to embarrass him in front of his friends."

Tony just smiled, and they went back to work.

At ten o'clock it was time to take a break, just as the clouds burned off and it started to warm up. The beach was starting to fill. Elena and Anya stripped off their wetsuits and sat on a blanket, eating some fruit. Tony and Stella walked over to talk with some friends. The sun felt good.

"Hey," Anya nudged her and pointed towards the lifeguard tower. "There are those guys, from earlier."

Elena looked, but she already knew where they were. The blonde boy was sitting, arms around his knees, listening to one of the others. Without wetsuits, all four of them looked on the dorky side of skinny, but brown and healthy.

"I'm going over and talk to him", she said suddenly. Anya looked at her, feigning shock.

"Well I do declare, Miss Ellie, aren't you the forward one?" Then she giggled, her long blonde hair flying in the breeze. The two cousins actually looked more like sisters, and were the best of friends.

"Don't you want to come along?"

Anya just blushed and shook her head.

Elena had never done this before, but her decision was far from impetuous. She had been watching him the whole morning, and liked how he refrained from joining in most of the horseplay of the others, yet still appeared to enjoy their company. She liked how he seriously studied the swells, and didn't make the same mistakes over and over. He seemed…thoughtful. And there was something else, something she hadn't mentioned to the others: she caught him gazing at her once, and he immediately broke into a shy smile, which she returned, before both of them looked away.

She shook her drying hair—it was like Anya's back then, long and blonde- and stood up. Her decision made, she began walking towards the boys. At first she felt acutely exposed, now that she was only in her bikini, a black top with red bottoms, which, while not particularly scandalous, did not hide very much. But the die was cast for her when she caught his gaze again. He was smiling at her as she approached, holding her returned smile, not turning away this time. The insecurities she held about her body melted away. He made her feel powerful. There was the taste of ripe peach in her mouth, and the smell of brine, suntan lotion and French fries. And the hissing, glittering surf. And she realized, standing before him, that she had no idea what she wanted to say.

She felt all of their eyes on her. The long-haired boy stood up immediately. She liked that.

"Hi," Elena said, stalling, waving her hand.

"Hi" he said, extending his. "I'm Geoff."

"Elena." She shook his hand, awkwardly, she thought. Up close, she was pleasantly surprised at how good-looking he was—bright blue eyes, and an intelligent, calm face, under that shaggy, bleached-blonde hair. He seemed to like what he saw, too, and she felt a thrill.

"We were watching you out there today—you rip."

"Thanks. You aren't bad yourself," she said lamely, feeling embarrassed from the compliment, and anything but powerful now. Geoff just scoffed.

"Not as good as you and your boyfriend," he said, slowly, gauging her reaction. She laughed gaily, running a hand through her hair.

"He's my brother," she giggled, enjoying the relief on his face.

Geoff introduced his friends: Paul, Brad and Field. "His sister's name is 'Leaf'". Field laughed, and shook her hand too. "And I have a younger brother named Marsh." They all lived in Manhattan Beach, and were going into 8th grade, like her and Anya.

"That must be cool to be able to just walk to the beach every day," she commented. Then she figured out what she wanted to say.

"Hey Geoff, do you have a wax comb my cousin and I could borrow? Our boards got a little slippery at the end there."

"Yeah, I noticed," Geoff said, grinning. Then he looked at her carefully. "None of you brought a wax comb?" He rummaged in a small bag as Elena shrugged, deadpan. He handed her what looked like a Swiss Army knife, only with a wax comb and tools to adjust board fins, as well as blades.

"I've always wanted one of these," Elena murmured.

"When's your birthday?" Geoff asked, giving her a sidelong glance, and she felt something pass between them right then, a connection she would never be able to explain to anybody, before his friends ruined the moment with "Awwwww" noises, and before she invited them to join her and Anya to surf a bit more while her brother and his girlfriend hung out nearby with the big kids.

"We spent the rest of the summer surfing together," Elena said, dreamily, "Anya and Field even had a summer fling, too".

She looked at Geoff, and they were silent for a moment, awash in memory.

"That's nice and all," Anoushka said, "but what about the editing?"

XXXXxxxxx

"Two weeks later, on a Saturday, Geoff invited me to stay and have lunch at his house."

Geoff called his parents, who agreed, and said they had to be at his Aunt Lori's house in Long Beach for dinner, so they'd be glad to drop her home on the way. Elena cleared it with her parents, and Tony said he'd take her board and other gear home with Stella and Anya. They had a great surfing morning, and, after saying good bye to the others, she and Geoff washed off the salt at the outdoor beach shower with the handmade soap Geoff used from one of the surf shops on the Strand. She loved how he had no problem using her after-surf shampoo. Then she went into the restroom and changed into the simple blue cotton coverup dress she always carried in her bag, and white Converse low tops.

He didn't live far, he told her. Elena offered to carry his small bag after slinging her own over her shoulder, and he held his board under his left arm. After walking a few feet, Geoff stopped and turned, offering his free hand. She beamed and slipped her hand into his as they strolled up the Strand, crossing from Hermosa into Manhattan Beach.

It was their first significant time alone. They spent it talking about the surfing that day, and she asked if he'd ever seen The Endless Summer, and was delighted to find out he hadn't, so she invited him over to her house soon to watch it. It was a giddy feeling, planning actual things with him, it all seemed so new. She liked it.

Geoff's family lived five blocks above the Strand, in a small two-bedroom house, more of a bungalow, actually, on a quiet, tree-lined street. They walked down the driveway, which consisted of two concrete strips with grass in between them, to the tiny garage set in the back, and stashed his board. Then, after meeting an excited and affectionate border collie named Molly, they entered the house through the back door, which opened into the small, sunny yellow kitchen, where a tall, slender man in jeans and a red polo shirt flipped grilled cheese sandwiches in a frying pan. The Supremes were singing "Nathan Jones" from another room. He slid the sandwiches on a plate and turned around.

"Hi!" he said, extending his hand, "You must be Elena! I'm Dean, Geoff's dad. Welcome!"

She was shaking his hand as a small, pretty blonde woman in a t-shirt and jeans shorts came in from the living room. She looked at Elena for a moment, then smiled. "Hello", she said.

"Hi, Mrs Fielding, I'm Elena Bosaic."

"I'm Nan" she said, and hugged her.

Lunch was delicious: grilled ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches, and fresh fruit.

Geoff's parents were teachers: his mother taught chemistry at Mira Costa High School, and his father was a literature professor at El Camino College. Elena explained that her father, Philip, was a longshoreman for the Port of Los Angeles. Her mother Irma was an accountant for a shipping firm. She told them she was going into 8th grade at Dana Junior High in San Pedro.

Elena tried a plum from the plate. Geoff's father watched her ecstatic look after the first bite. "Picked fresh off of our tree this morning," he said, and she giggled when she had to use her napkin to catch some of the sweet juice on her chin. His mom offered to give her some to take home, much to Elena's delight.

She told them about her brother, and his decision to join the Army.

"Tony wants to be a paratrooper."

"Your family must be proud," Dean said.

Elena nodded. "We are…proud of him."

"But how do you feel about his decision?" Geoff asked. His mother gave him this look, as if he was being rude, but Elena honestly loved him for asking. She was the baby of the family, and young enough for her opinion not to be given as much weight as the older members. She bit her lip before answering, not sure if she could maintain her composure.

"I tried talking him out of it." She clasped her hands in front of her. "I tried telling him how much I loved him and how if he went I'd never get a good night's sleep, praying for his safety." Then the tears came. "He said he understood, and that he loved me too, and hoped I'd forgive him someday."

The others said nothing, but Elena could see they were moved.

"Of course I'll forgive him," she continued, "That's not the problem. The problem is all those hypocrites who'll shake his hand and say 'Thank you for your service', yet, if he comes back maimed, won't even want to look at him, or vote for veteran's services to take care of him and his fellow veterans." She paused, a hard lump in her throat. "And if he's…killed…well, at least he'll be out of sight and out of mind for all but those who loved him."

She sniffed, wiped her nose with a napkin, and looked apologetically at Geoff and his parents.

"I didn't mean to go on an emotional rant right after meeting you," she tried joking, and Geoff simply nodded, patting her hands. His parents said nothing, but she could see they sympathized, and even smiled slightly at their son's sensitive gesture.

He asked if she'd like to see his room, but before she could answer, Molly hurtled through the kitchen doggy-door, and started licking Elena's hand.

"Molly, no!" Geoff reprimanded, even though Elena didn't seem to mind. "She knows not to interrupt a meal." He told Molly to go, and she reluctantly obeyed, wandering into the living room.

"May I help with the dishes?" Elena asked, and his parents both shook their heads. So she followed Geoff down the short hall into a small bedroom, followed by the curious Molly. He left the door open, she noticed with a smile.

She was struck by its spare neatness. There was a nice-sized, perfectly-made bed, a nightstand and lamp, and a large wooden desk with only his laptop, a small reading lamp, an iDock, and a stack of notebooks. There was no TV. One wall had a window with yellow curtains, a dresser, and a poster of a severe-looking older man looking down at them. Another wall was dominated by a closet, and the remaining two walls were covered from floor to ceiling by wooden bookshelves. There must have been hundreds of books in them. Not a shoe or stray sock could be seen on the nice, oriental-style rug covering the hardwood floor. Geoff would be in for a shock when he saw her room, she thought. Molly jumped up and lay on the bed. She joined the dog, sitting on the edge, gawking at the books.

"Are these all your books, Geoff?" she asked in awe. He sat next to her.

"Well, technically, they were my grandfather's. Dad inherited the house from him when I was eight. That's how we can afford to live here." Geoff stood up and walked over to a shelf. "Granddad was also a college professor, at Loyola-Marymount. He taught literature, like Dad." He ran his hand over some pale bluish volumes. "Complete C.S. Forester. Dad told me to start reading these when we moved in. He said they were some of the greatest adventure novels ever written. There's a complete Robert Heinlein set, too."

"Did you read them?" Elena asked, amazed. She saw his eyes light up, just like they did at the beach when the surf was high.

He nodded. "My folks had to take away my reading light because I wasn't getting enough sleep."

He also said he had just started reading the Beats, mostly Kerouac and Burroughs.

Geoff pursed his lips, as if he was debating something internally. Then he grabbed her hand. "These books have made me want to become a writer."

She looked at him fixedly. "A writer? What kind of writer?" She knew already that Goff was thoughtful. But this was a pleasant surprise. She had been entertaining thoughts about being a poet herself, but never seemed to get any support from anyone.

"A novelist."

"Wow. That's pretty cool. Have you written anything yet that I could look at?"

Geoff blushed, and shook his head. "Nothing that I consider ready to be viewed."

She playfully looked over at the stack of notebooks on his desk. "Is that it? C'mon, Geoff," she whined, "let me see. I've written poetry."

"Those are my journals," he said, laughing.

"You keep a journal?"

"I've been writing in it every day since I was eight."

"Every day?" Elena didn't mean to sound incredulous, but art to her was more…spontaneous. She asked, with a curious grin, "Am I in it?"

"You've been the main subject for the last two weeks," Geoff said, watching her blush, "And no, you cannot read it."

She pretended to pout, and they laughed, but something in that moment changed everything. Geoff told her later that it was the light from the window falling on her face and her full lips, plus the fact that he had just revealed his dream to her. Whatever it was, he suddenly fell silent. She saw him pause, then lean forward. She knew what was coming. And there was no time to over-plan or over- think or over-anticipate. She was being kissed by a boy for the first time. It was slightly awkward at first, tentative, and she knew it was his first time kissing a girl, but she appreciated how Geoff didn't rush, giving her time to react and respond, and she secretly enjoyed his surprise at feeling her tongue softly against his teeth, requesting entrance, and the exquisite pleasure when he gave it to her, her hands up, caressing his face, fingers entangled in his hair. She loved how he tasted of plum, and how he pulled gently away at just the right moment for both of them. They sat, holding hands, serenely absorbing what just happened.

"We should do that again some time," he said, with a contented sigh.

"Oh, we will," Elena said, "We definitely will."

They spent the rest of the afternoon playing Frisbee in the yard with Molly. Later, Elena sat with Geoff in the back seat of the car on the way to her house. They held hands, and every now and then would give each other a secret smile. He turned to her.

"I know this is going to sound a bit one-sided, considering how I won't let you see my writing yet," he said, "But can I look at some of your poetry?"

"Yeah, it is pretty one-sided," she jokingly agreed. "I'll have to think about it." He gave her this adorable grin that told her he knew she would show them to him. Well, some of them, anyway. As they pulled into her driveway, Elena impulsively kissed Geoff on the lips, said she'd see him on the beach the next day, and bounced out of the car, thanking his parents, who seemed a bit surprised, but amused at her behavior.

Later that evening, she hesitated sending him some of her poems. She wondered if he would think of them as silly things many young girls do. That caused her to write off most of her efforts. But there was one that her friends didn't like because it didn't rhyme (sheesh), and which she never showed to Tony or her parents because of the subject matter. Geoff could be entrusted with it, she decided. So, right before going to bed, and as she was running his kiss through her mind, she sent the poem to him.

Stella and Anya made fun of Elena on the way to the beach the next day. "You look different, girl," Stella said, winking. Anya just kept humming "Wedding Bell Blues". She didn't mind the ribbing, actually, because she wasn't ashamed. Let's face it: Geoff was good-looking, literate, and a surfer. Come on, people, really.

The guys were already in the water. It was still cool enough for wetsuits. As she paddled out to meet them, Elena suddenly wondered what the greeting protocol should be between her and Geoff. She needn't have worried. As soon as she pulled up next to him, Geoff leaned over and pulled her in for a nice kiss, in front of everyone. And nobody seemed to care. Even Tony. He kissed Stella in support.

Later, Geoff asked Tony if it was cool if he and Elena go eat lunch together on the Strand. She could tell Tony appreciated being asked, though she knew he wasn't completely comfortable with how their parents thrust the role of her chaperone upon him. But he was her big brother, and he loved her, and would always look out for her when he could, and she cherished their relationship. It made his decision to join the Army all the more heartbreaking. He said, "Sure."

They walked, hand-in-hand, past the beachgoers in the warm summer sun. Geoff was wearing a sleeveless blue t-shirt over his shorts, and flip-flops, while Elena wore a plain white t-shirt over her bikini and had her trusty low-tops to keep her feet from burning on the pavement. She imagined they looked like a classic surfer couple, and laughed to herself. She also wondered what Geoff had in the paper bag he was carrying.

"Pick any place you like," Geoff said, and Elena stopped him in front of a Greek place that sold gyros.

"Do you like gyros?" she asked him, and he replied he'd never had one. "It's a traditional roasted lamb sandwich," she explained, with pita bread, tomato, onions and tzatziki, a creamy cucumber sauce. When he wrinkled his nose, saying how he disliked cucumbers in salads, Elena begged him to try the tzatziki first. He also said he had never eaten much lamb before. She patted his arm. "I'm Croatian, baby" she said, "trust me about the lamb." Just then the wind carried the smell of the roasting meat over to them, and he suddenly pulled her with him to the counter, laughing. She asked for a small sample of their tzatziki, and clapped her hands when she saw his face light up with pleasure at its cool, fresh taste. "It's made with yogurt," she said. He ordered them two gyros and fries (offering to pay and confiding that his dad had slipped him some extra money for it because he liked Elena, too) and some spicy ginger beer ("I love this stuff", he enthused), and they found a wooden picnic table.

Their hours surfing, the fresh air and warm sun fueled two enormous appetites: Elena almost laughed at how they didn't speak until most of the food was gone.

"God, Elena, thanks for turning me on to these," Geoff said, and she just smiled, also glad that he never called her "Ellie".

"You're welcome," she said, then asked, " So…what's in the bag?" She wondered, to herself, if he had read the poem yet.

"I read your poem," he said, as if on cue, "But only once, quickly." He could see she was in suspense, so he took her hands in his, then said, "I liked it, but can I read it a few more times before I say anything more? I haven't absorbed it yet, you know?" She would learn this was typical of him; methodical and thorough with his thoughts, Geoff loathed uttering anything until he knew what he wanted to say. So Elena just nodded and smiled, then arched her eyebrows, looking at the bag.

"I will say I liked how you decided to put your thoughts about Tony and the Army, and how it affected you, in a poem. I told my dad about the theme, and he suggested this book from my room." He pulled a hardcover from the bag. It was a novel, Meadow Grass, by a writer named Giulia DeMarco.

Elena paused in the telling of the story.

"I've read that book," Jamie said. "I've read all of her books."

"That book, "Elena declared, "changed my life."

XXXxxxxx

It was about a tiny English village in Lancashire that got caught up in the patriotic fervor of 1916, and sent all 23 of its eligible men to join the Accrington Pals Battalion. Pals battalions were so named because the Army guaranteed that all of their members could serve together with their friends and neighbors. It was a fantastically successful recruiting policy.

On the morning of July 1st, 1916, the entire Accrington Pals Battalion was sent over the top on the opening of the Battle of the Somme. In less than half-an-hour, the unit practically ceased to exist, "mown down like meadow grass," according to one eyewitness. Of the original 700 men, 585 were casualties.

The novel begins on the day the village of Mornington finds out that all 23 of their young men were killed in less than 15 minutes, slowed and trapped on the German wire, then mercilessly cut down by machine gun fire, less than 75 yards from where they started. The dust jacket blurb quoted a critic, who called DeMarco's 1994 book "An incredibly powerful and moving meditation on the nature of patriotism, duty, love and loss."

"I took that book home and finished it in three days, reading it on the beach after surfing, and late into the night. It encapsulated—perfectly-all of my feelings about Tony and the wars and their impact on all of us. And after I finished it, at 2 in the morning… " She paused and gazed at Geoff lovingly, "I called him on the phone and told him I wanted to be a writer, too."

"So," Anoushka asked, after also having seconds on the Nepalese hash, "is that when you started editing each other's stuff?"

"No," Elena giggled, "We both decided that we needed to educate ourselves first, and read as much as we could get our hands on."

"Well," Geoff interrupted, "We did agree to work on a journal every day as well…" He gave her a grin, and she punched his arm playfully.

"I had a hard time doing that," Elena admitted. "But then, I didn't use it in the same way he did."

She found that Geoff used the journal to record details during the day that he wanted to keep for future reference, plus prose experiments, and his personal thoughts on…well…life. Elena used it almost purely as a notebook, recording facts on current events, and what she could glean on the origins of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and historical items from the First World War, because, after finishing all of DeMarco's novels on Geoff's shelf (most of which dealt with the effect of World War One on British society), she moved on to Pat Barker's novels with a similar theme, and the starkly beautiful antiwar poetry of Wilfrid Owen, a British officer who was killed one week before the Armistice.

It was the third month of 8th grade that Elena discovered D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, and Geoff had finished with the Beats and had been turned on to Thomas Pynchon by his father.

"Lawrence and Woolf weren't as specifically focused on World War One's aftermath," Elena said, "But it haunts their writing, nonetheless." She paused, with a dreamy expression. "And Lawrence writes so goddamn beautifully. It wasn't until I read him that I understood what kind of voice I wanted."

Geoff, in the meantime, had been going back through his journals, looking for those prose experiments that had things in common, and tried tying them back to what he had been reading.

"I ended up deciding to throw out a lot of what I had written," Geoff said. "And Elena and I had a big fight over whether or not I should show her those failed experiments."

"Yeah," Elena said, sadly. "We were, you know, 'going steady' by then," she made quote motions with her hands, "but our surfing was cut back to the weekends and holidays, and some of our friends resented the time we did spend together, and, because we lived in different towns, girls and guys were hitting on us relentlessly, and our parents were wondering why we weren't seeing other people…" She sighed. "It was a dark time, and the issue of Geoff being so secretive about his writing was just one more thing with which to deal." She bowed her head. "I told him it wasn't right that I showed him some of my stuff (and appreciated his always constructive feedback), but that I was cut out of his creative process."

"She said she thought I didn't trust her to review my work," Geoff said, wringing his hands, at the memory. But then he softened. "She said it hurt her, badly, because she loved me."

"I'd never told Geoff that I loved him before," Elena explained, "even though I knew it for some time."

"Why not?" Vince asked.

"Because I was fourteen, and the depth of the feelings I was having scared the hell out of me. I mean, my parents openly wondered why I was so involved with Geoff, and his parents felt the same way, as did some of our friends. I began questioning my own feelings. But at that moment I felt everything was crumbling, so I had to let him know just how serious I was."

"And what did he say?" All of the kids in the lounge leaned forward, now, interested.

"I was relieved," Geoff said. "Something unsaid had been building up inside me, too. I told her I was glad to know that, because I was in love with her, as well. And we were so…happy, you know, because we admitted that our feelings for each other had grown far deeper than just 'going steady.'" Then he added, "But I also realized that, I had just entrusted another person with my deepest, innermost feelings." He took Elena's hand. "And I told myself, if I could show Elena the true me, I could show her my work, even if it wasn't where I wanted it yet."

"But you two were just fourteen, right?" Anoushka marveled. "I mean, Jesus, I remember when I was fourteen, and nothing that heavy was going on in my life, and yet I still had a ton of shit to deal with."

"We were lucky to find out we shared two passions," Elena said. "And that with the writing we didn't have to be in close proximity. That was the key. It allowed us to fall in love and yet live in different cities, with almost no chance of being completely alone, so that stuff like sex didn't really get a chance to ruin it early on."

Vince started to make a snide remark, but Geoff gave him a murderous look, and he laughed and backed down.

At first, Elena couldn't figure out what Geoff was trying to do with those failed experiments. Some were ten or more pages long, and the language seemed dense and difficult. She didn't give up on them. Instead, she asked questions. Were any of them related? Some of them were, he answered, ten in fact, so she concentrated on those. They seemed to be random vignettes, told from different points of view. But she was determined to find out how they fit together. Re-readings eventually began to pay off, because Elena thought she detected a glimmer of a pattern. Some had certain short phrases or unusual words in common, but at different places in the pieces. Others seemed unrelated that way, although she did uncover a few relationships because the phrases had been changed through the use of subtle puns. She made subgroups of these, recording them in her journal at night after her homework was done. It was slow going, though, because she was also writing her own material, a short story that she wanted to enter in the annual literary contest for the entire Los Angeles Unified School District.

"I asked Geoff for help," Elena said, "because he said he wasn't entering anything. As usual, he said he didn't have anything 'fit to submit.'"

"Hey!" Geoff protested weakly, and she just giggled.

"It was then that our process for editing each other's work began to take shape."

"Finally," Anoushka grumbled.

XXXxxxx

Elena invited Geoff over for dinner one Friday night, and also to stay over so they could work late on her story for the contest. He had felt a lessening of the tension with her parents lately. That made him grateful; he had been working hard to give them no reason to think he was bad for their daughter, even though he wasn't sure what, if anything, he could actually do to get them to fully accept their relationship. Dinner was pleasant, and afterwards Tony left for a date with Stella, her dad went to his workshop in the garage, and her mom sat in the living room reading while Elena and Geoff sat cross-legged at the coffee table with their laptops and notepads. The low table was ideal for them, and her room just wasn't suitable for it. He could tell Elena would have preferred to be alone with him, but was glad they weren't giving his parents any reason to complain.

"Mom", Elena asked, pointedly, "We're not disturbing you, are we?"

Irma Bosaic peered at them genially over her book, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, Geoff noticed. "No, not at all. Go right ahead." She subtly winked at Geoff, causing him to laugh and Elena to roll her eyes. Elena's mother was the mellower of her parents; Philip was gruffer and, frankly, more traditional.

Elena's story was called "The Book of Common Prayer", about a high school girl who has a secret crush on an older student who has no idea who she is, and when he joins the Army after graduation, she composes prayers for his safety and records them all in a little notebook. She plans to give the notebook to him, if he returns safely, as proof of her love. Years pass. She graduates from high school, goes to college, and falls in love with someone else, all the while filling the notebook with prayers for the soldier. When the soldier does return safely, the girl's feelings for him rekindle, and she travels to her hometown, determined to first give him the book and win his heart, and then end it, somehow, with her new lover. But, on the trip home, she tries imagining life with the soldier, and comes to the realization that she can't, because she never even knew him in the first place, and that her prayers should have been a message of love and hope for every young person who ever left home to serve his or her country. She ends up donating the prayers to a local veteran's center, and then goes back to her college boyfriend.

It was several hours later. Geoff and Elena were wrestling with the ending. Elena wanted the girl to come to the realization on the plane, and then go straight to the veteran's center. Geoff, who otherwise was blown away by the story and who had primarily helped polish the prose, looked dubious.

"What is it Geoff?" Elena asked. She had come to trust his instincts. Geoff ran his hand through his hair, and leaned back against the couch.

"She worked on the prayers for him, all those years. Could she turn off those feelings for him quite so abruptly, I wonder?"

Elena pursed her lips for a moment, then started nodding slowly.

"Yeah…yeah…" she mused. Her fingers flew across the keys of her laptop, then stopped. "Yeah, I've got it!" She looked excited. There was more soft clicking of keys, while Geoff watched her proudly, smiling to himself. He caught Irma's eye, and was surprised to see her peering over her book at them, with a satisfied look on her face. She got up.

"I'm going to bed. Don't stay up too late, okay? And Geoff? There are fresh towels on the bed in your room."

"Thanks, Mrs. B."

They worked another half hour. The girl sits outside the boy's house, struggling. She even walks up to the door and contemplates just leaving the notebook on the step. But in the end, she leaves and donates the prayers. They were polishing it up when her father came in. They said goodnight to him and agreed to go to bed soon (it was midnight).

Finally alone, Elena closed her laptop. Geoff had leaned back against the couch, stretching his arms above his head, and she took advantage of that to just crawl into his lap. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, wanting to tell him goodnight. The next thing they knew, a hand was shaking them.

"Geoff! Ellie!" It was Irma, who had gotten up for a glass of water and saw the light on in the living room still. She found them asleep, her daughter in his lap, arms around his neck, head resting on his shoulder. She felt a smile on her face, because the scene was sweet, and innocent. And she had seen how Geoff adored Elena, and treated her so well, and how they worked so well together on the story. And Tony had told her how they insisted on surfing together. Yet she knew, instinctively, that they hadn't had sex yet. There was something about them that told Irma this relationship was special, and good. It had depth, certainly, but it also had breadth, far more than one expected for two people so young.

"I'm so sorry!" Geoff gasped, still groggy, but he was surprised to see Elena's mother smiling. His legs were asleep.

"'Come on, Ellie, let Geoff get up and get to bed." They managed to stagger up from the floor, then totter into the hall. Elena gave him a soft smile as she went into her room. Irma waved to him as he went to his.

"Thank you for helping Ellie," she said.

"It's my pleasure," Geoff answered.

"I know. It shows. And I appreciate it." She looked at Elena's door. "She loves you, you know. " He nodded. "And I know you love her."

He nodded again. She was still smiling, Geoff thought, so that had to be good.

"Treat each other well," she said. "Goodnight."

He was in bed when his phone buzzed. The text message made him chuckle:

***I liked sleeping with you***

XXXXxxxx

"Did you win the contest?" Jamie asked.

"Did you ever figure out Geoff's writing?" Anoushka wondered.

Elena and Geoff laughed.

"No, I didn't win," she said, "But I did have the winning entry for my school."

"She wuz robbed," Geoff chimed in.

After graduation from middle school and Tony's enlistment, Elena eased off from writing for a few weeks, and Geoff, sensitive to her needs, did too. Her father allowed Stella, who was also having a hard time with Tony's absence, to drive the woody. So she, Anya and Elena made the trek to Hermosa Beach almost every day, meeting Geoff and his friends, and they all enjoyed a summer just being beach town kids.

"I finally figured out the puzzle Geoff had created about two months into high school."

XXXxxxx

She was in her room, late one Saturday night. Geoff was on the phone, telling her about a news story involving the Tunguska Event, an enormously powerful explosion in Siberia in 1908, believed to have been an airburst of a large meteorite or comet.

"Elena, it flattened two-thousand square miles of forest!"

He said he'd first heard about it in Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day and made her laugh by reading a quote from the book, describing one of its more bizarre aftereffects:

Reindeer discovered again their ancient powers of flight, which had lapsed over the centuries since humans began invading the North. Some were stimulated by the accompanying radiation into an epidermal luminescence at the red end of the spectrum, particularly around the nasal area.

She had come to love his enthusiasm for Pynchon, though she personally found the man's writing immensely complex. Too complex, for her tastes. There were usually too many characters and subplots to keep straight, in her opinion. It was obvious that he was an influence on Geoff, but, frankly, she thought Geoff did a better job.

Elena considered her own writing more conventional. Geoff was always telling her she was the better storyteller, to which she blushed, but disagreed. Looking over Geoff's writing over the past few months, she could see how he loved to stretch the language, and to take the structure of a story as far as he could without it turning it into some vanity project. He was playful, inventing words (she once told him that she was billing him for the time wasted looking up his invented words and finding they didn't exist), but, she noticed with fascination, he always made it clear what the word meant through the context. And the structure, while often unconventional, didn't lead her to lose interest. She came to the key realization one night that his reluctance to show his work in progress didn't come from secretiveness on his part. Rather, he pushed the boundaries so far that he had to make absolutely sure that he hadn't lost control and produced an unintelligible mess.

After Geoff hung up, having elicited from her the promise to get some sleep, Elena went back to the latest piece that Geoff had just finished and sent to her yesterday. She had discussed the previous pieces with him before—even convincing him of keeping the ones she thought were amazing, once she figured out their relationships with one another. They still seemed to lack an over- arching theme tying them together. But, as she read this new piece, she found it. She started seeing familiar snippets and phrases, all in the same passage. This last vignette was a Rosetta Stone, a key to all of the others.

An unnamed man was dying, alone, in the Sahara. She could feel the sand, the sun, and the overpowering, all-encompassing thirst. He was losing control of his thoughts as his system shut down, and his mind began drifting. And Elena understood. All of the other vignettes were random memories and mental images being generated by his failing mind. Yet, if one paid attention to them, it was possible to reconstruct the man's life and the circumstances that got him to this place. Going back to her journal notes, it became almost blindingly obvious.

She called him, excited. ""I figured it out, Geoff!" she exclaimed. He told her how proud he was, and relieved that it was, after all, understandable.

"I'm proud of you, too, baby," she whispered into the phone, "I can't wait to start working on it with you to polish it up." And she stopped suddenly. "Um…assuming you want to work on it with me." His chuckle on the other end gave her immense relief.

"I need you to keep me from being too…abstract. I need you to make me better."

She loved him so much, and now she understood exactly where he was coming from in his art. It was as if that last, obscuring smudge on the window to Geoff's soul had been wiped away. He was open to her completely, as she hoped he felt she was to him. She felt her conventionality expand when she listened to his feedback, even though he didn't think he influenced her in that way. It was like Joni Mitchell sang:

I remember that time you told me you said

"Love is touching souls"

Surely you touched mine

'Cause part of you pours out of me

In these lines from time to time

At least, that is all she told the kids in the lounge, and Geoff's small smile did not escape her notice.

What she told them was the truth, of course. But there was more, much more, that she kept to herself. That she knew they had been converging on this moment since the day they met, with a love that had settled in their blood, defying age and convention. But both of them also knew, somehow, that the moment would reveal itself on its own terms, in its own way. So that night, when she told Geoff all she wanted was to be in his arms, in her bed at that very moment, and he told her he was ready too, it was a clear-eyed decision. They made love for the first time a week later, and when they did, it was sweet, a little hilarious, and oh, so satisfying, because it was, above all else, right and true.

XXXxxx

They all sampled some more of the sweet Nepalese hash before midnight, and when the clock struck twelve, Elena kissed him soundly as everyone wished him happy birthday.

"Happy Birthday, baby," she said, nuzzling his ear, then handed him a small package from the table.

It was a book, one that he recognized, because he already owned it: The Quetzal Forest, by V.J. Gorey. It was probably his favorite book on surfing, a novelistic memoir of a surfer from Long Island in the 1960's, who dealt drugs to pay for his surfing around the world, only to disappear into Central America for ten years, and emerge with a book describing the weird, hallucinogenic surfing life on the Costa Rican Pacific coast. "Gorey is the Carlos Castaneda of surfers," he told Elena once. She liked the book, but thought he sounded more like Hunter S. Thompson. Maybe that was just her.

"Open it, silly," Elena said, eagerly.

There was an inscription inside, on the title page:

To Geoff, one very lucky bastard. ~ V.J. Gorey

He looked at Elena in wonder. "How in the world did you get this? This guy is very reclusive and paranoid as hell."

Elena shrugged, then giggled and kissed him.

"It's a long story," she replied, taking in his appreciative gawk. "I'll tell it all to you someday, but for now, suffice it to say it involved me and my roommate Joanne; a cryptic message left on a Big Sur surfing blog; a weird phone conversation with said reclusive and paranoid author, in a sleazy bar in Santa Cruz, with the lecherous bartender as his intermediary; an unknown quantity of tequila; and a dawn meeting at a shark-infested surfing spot on the Central Coast."

He was now just gaping at her. Elena snapped a picture of his face ("For Joanne, who wanted to see your reaction".)

"You didn't surf that spot, did you?" he asked, finally, concerned. She grabbed his shoulders.

"Oh baby, you know I only surf with you. But he did cook Joanne and me some great breakfast burritos on his Coleman. He's a weird, but pretty cool guy, Geoff. "

He wanted all the details, of course. But they were at a party, so he kissed her, saying, "Thank-you, baby. I think this is the new best birthday present I ever received. And the story behind it sounds frakking amazing!"

Elena laughed. "I know, right? Ill tell you what: I'll give you all the details, you can write it up in your gonzo stream-of-consciousness style, get rich and famous, then I'll marry you because you'll be able to afford that house on Rocky Point we love so much, and we'll be able to surf Lunada Bay any time we want and not get our asses kicked, 'cause we'll be locals, bitches!"

She was right. It would be awesome. He had to reward that speech with another kiss.

"Gawd, could you two be any more ridiculously adorkable?" Anoushka wondered, for all of the others.

XXXxxxxx

She finished her makeup, and happily took his arm as they walked to the elevator. She leaned into him, not for support anymore, like she did at that dance so long ago, but because she loved him and liked being close. And she understood him like no other. On a surfboard, she was all balance, beauty and sun-blessed grace. She helped make his writing breathe. And just the thought of her took his own breath away, and she had come all the way across a continent just because it was his birthday, and would go to the ends of the earth just to get him a present for that birthday that actually meant something.

Geoff felt like one very lucky bastard, indeed.