“It’s amazing.” I walked toward one of the rocks on the beach and sat down. Jake sat next to me, but I didn’t look at him; I was too wrapped up in this moment. This bright-blue, luminous, lit-up moment. I’d never seen anything like it and it was, it was . . .

“So, better than Joburg at sunset?” he asked.

I nodded, searching for the words to describe this display. Mother Nature had a flare for the dramatic, that’s for sure. “It’s certainly up there,” I finally said.

“Up there?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn and look at me.

“Okay, fine. You win.” I didn’t bother to conceal the smile that was pulling at the corners of my mouth.

He jumped up. “I win?”

“You win.”

“Hell, yeah,” he said, and then tried to do a cartwheel on the beach. I burst out laughing as he tumbled down with a thud. He immediately put his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. “I meant to do that?” he said, looking up at the sky.

“Sure,” I teased back. “Like you meant to jump up on a chair.”

I laughed and when it tapered off, Jake rolled to face me, his whole body propped up on the sand.

“You know you’re going to be completely covered in sand?” I said.

“I like the sand.”

“Personally, I’m not a fan. It gets into too many unwanted places.”

He smiled at this, and then for some reason, there was a tense lull in the conversation that made me feel somewhat nervous, even though I didn’t know why.

“You’re not a fan of the water either.” It was a statement, not a question.

I shook my head and looked out over the sea. “Bad experience once.”

“What happened?”

My stomach tightened. “I almost drowned.”

“In the sea?”

“No. School pool.”

“How?” he pressed gently.

I sighed. How much should I tell him? How much should I let him in? I bit my lip when I felt a squeezing in my throat. “Kids can be mean bastards,” I whispered, and this time looked directly at him.

He sat up farther on the sand and leaned in, as if totally engrossed in what I was saying. “What did they do?”

“They pushed me in. I tried to come up for air, but . . . they kept pushing my head down. Over and over again.”

“Assholes.” He said it as if he really meant it. As if he was angry on my behalf. “Why you?”

I was taken aback by the question. Couldn’t he put two and two together? Me in a swimsuit. At a pool. In front of my classmates. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.