“Shark attack,” he said, holding up his hand, displaying his obviously missing middle finger. And then he stood up and hoisted up part of his shirt to reveal a massive jagged scar that ran the length of his waist. “Got me right down to the liver. A few more millimeters and he would have ripped it right out of me.”

“Oh. Okay . . . that’s, um . . . wow!” I offered up, unsure of how to reply to this.

“I tried to poke him in the eye.” He held his hand up again. “And that’s when he took my finger.”

He sat back down in the chair. “I was surfing and was just about to come out of my roundhouse cutback when it came at me. And you know what?” He leaned over the table and locked eyes with me.

“What?”

“There was a moment where we looked at each other. Eyeball to eyeball. And I swear I heard him say—with his mind”—he cleared his throat dramatically—“‘This is my territory, buddy.’” He said it in a strange, gruff voice, which I assumed was meant to be the shark’s voice. But why would a shark say “buddy” if he was planning on biting you?

And then he smacked his hands together loudly and I flinched. “And bam! He was on me. Sank his teeth straight in and tossed me around like a rag doll. Like I weighed nothing! And I’ll tell you what, Lori. I didn’t feel a thing, not a thing, that’s how much adrenaline was pumping through my veins.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said lamely.

“No! Not sorry, Lori. Not sorry at all. Because if he hadn’t gotten me, I wouldn’t be the man I am today, and I certainly wouldn’t have written . . .” He swiveled his chair around, pulled something off the shelf and then passed it to me. “. . . this!”

I looked down at the book in my hands. Staring Death in the (Shark) Eye. A giant, creepy shark’s eye stared back at me from the cover.

“Open it up, read the dedication.” He pointed at the book and clicked his fingers together.

I opened it and read loudly, “‘Dedicated to the shark who bit me.’”

“Bingo! Binnnng-gooo! But why did I dedicate this book to the shark, you’re probably thinking?” he asked, but I got the feeling it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer. “Because my whole life changed after that. I got out of a very toxic relationship, moved from Durban to Cape Town, and that’s when I made the decision to write about my experiences, become a motivational speaker and school counselor.”

I put the book back on the table and nodded. “Sounds, uh, good.”

“It is all good. All great. The universe is good. You just have to listen to it. And do you think I gave up surfing after that?” he asked.

“Yes.”