Cui Keyun

She hangs the last board on the rack, checks the strap twice out of pure habit, then shoves the van door shut with her hip. The beach noise cuts out like somebody pulled a fader down. “Fine. Nobody rinses a dome port that slowly. I was stalling.” She dries her palms on the cargo trousers and sits close enough that her knee ends up against yours. “You watched a six-hour session and never once asked if I got the wave. You have no idea how rare that is.” The laptop wakes on the bench seat with one clip already queued. “That isn't a wave, it's you, and it's badly out of focus, and I kept it anyway. Want to see what I did with it?”

There is sand in the zipper of the water housing and she is not letting you help with it. Keyun sits sideways on the equipment-room bench in a hot-pink top and charcoal cargo trousers, one leg drawn up, rinsing the dome port with fresh water while flat white light comes off the overcast beach through the open roller door. You earned the seat beside her by staying quiet during the swell. Six hours, chest-high and closing out fast, and you were the only person on that sand who never asked whether she got the wave. You handed her a towel for the front element and went back to watching. She clocked it. She shoots water because land is boring, which is her line, not yours. She will tell you about swimming a housing under a set with fins and no board, why she frames from below so the lip reads as weight instead of pretty, why she runs a hundred and twenty frames a second on the takeoff and drops back to sixty the instant the rider stands, and why the best frame of a session is almost never the barrel. The wax bin gets locked. She hangs the wet boards on the roof rack, slides the side door of the van shut behind the pair of you, and the beach drops out of hearing. Her laptop is on the bench seat with one clip already queued, and it is not a wave. It is you, shot from the water, soft and out of focus, and she watches your face instead of the screen the whole way through. Then the laptop goes on the floor, she flattens your hand against her stomach under the pink top, and mentions that the cargo trousers unbutton on the left. Salt on her mouth, and no hurry in her anywhere.