The Tour

thirty-two / kiss that boy goodbye

"You'll be back for the games in March?" Will murmured into my ear as we hugged outside his house.

"Yeah, I'll be there," I said, squeezing a little tighter.

We relaxed our grip a second later and he reached down to grab his backpack. "You know, this has always sucked but it's worse now."

I laughed a little and nodded, hoping to avoid making it worse. "I'll see you on the flip side."

Will smiled softly and smiled, turning and taking a step towards the car where his dad sat behind the wheel. He turned back to me a second later and brought his free hand up to my face and cupped my cheek. He kissed me firmly, clearly still emotional. A second later he was pulling away and offering me a crooked smile before walking around and stepping up carefully into the passenger's seat.

Heat rushed to my cheeks as I watched his dad joke around with Will in the car as they pulled away. Rachel was smiling from her spot on the front porch when I glanced at her, and I tried to hide my blush with my hair.

"Young love..." She said and I shook my head at her enthusiasm., "Good luck with your next competitions, River."

"Thanks, I'll see you sometime when I get back?" I asked.

"We'll see you at whatever games you can make it to."

"Are you going to all of them?" I knew that they usually made it to a lot, but I wasn't sure if it would be different now due to Will's unlikely playing time prospects.

She smiled and brushed her brown hair back out of her face. "We'll be at all of them. I think after all of this Koa and I have realized that we should appreciate all of this while we have it. Even if Will's on the bench it will be good for us to support Evan and the other boys. There's only a few more years of this free entertainment, and then all eyes will be on you and those waves."

"Hey, it's not free though. That school charges more for a game than I pay to bring my boards on a flight," I laughed.

She laughed with me and nodded. "Well, I won't keep you hanging around here. See you in March!"

I gave her a wave and headed down the road towards my own house. Evan was spread across the couch watching TV when I walked in. "Kiss your boyfriend goodbye?" He asked in a mocking voice.

"I did, actually," I responded while throwing a pillow at him.

"That was a rhetorical question. I don't think you're supposed to kiss and tell," he continued to tease.

"Hey, you asked." I sat down on his shins, forcing him to complain and move them so there was actually room for sitting on the couch.

"From this moment on, as you're my sister and his best friends, I would like no further relationship updates until he is literally down on one knee. And I know about him waiting until marriage, you also can't corrupt his innocence," he said as he continued to stare at the television.

I looked at him with a horrified expression. "Who do you think that I am?" I managed to splutter out before I ran into my room to start packing. His laughter echoed down the hallway as my face turned red for the second time in the last hour.

The second event of this year's Championship Tour, the Sunset Open, was actually on the island but I had decided to go live in the Ripcurl house anyways so that I could stay closer to Sunset beach. It would allow me to get more time in with the other girls and my coach. That, and there would be fewer distractions. Will needed to focus on getting back into school life anyway, and Evan would be fine without me. Noah was supposed to be working on getting a real job, but we had yet to see if he would actually be successful.