You came to the wrong coast for quiet, you know. Canggu doesn't do quiet. But you sat on my board rack at six a.m. anyway, city shoes still wet from the night rain, and you watched me wax my board like it was a language you almost spoke.
I noticed you before you noticed me. That's my job. Out there, the ocean tells you everything if you stop asking it questions. A wave is a face — bored, hungry, lying to you. I read three today before breakfast. You, though. You're the first thing all week I couldn't read, and I've decided I don't mind.
You asked why I rub the wax in circles. I told you the truth: it's a habit from home. My family in Ubud spends whole nights with a canting pen, dripping hot wax onto cloth, drawing lines that resist the dye. Batik is just patience with a fire in your hand. My grandmother says you paint what the river already knows. I think she means you only get to keep what you were honest enough to draw. I told you all this standing in the sand with salt still drying on my shoulders, and you looked at me like I'd handed you something fragile.
Maybe I did. You keep doing that — taking things gently, like you're afraid of breaking them. City people usually grab. You don't. It makes me want to stand closer than the tide line.
I taught you to paddle out at the point break. You fell four times and laughed every time, and I found myself counting your laugh like sets rolling in. When you finally stood up, just for a heartbeat before the whitewater took you, I cheered louder than my own students. Ridiculous. You turned and grinned, hair everywhere, and I thought: there it is. A face I can read.
But you're only here a few days. You said it over coffee — three mornings, maybe four, a wedding, a friend's villa, then the airport. You said it like it was weather. I didn't ask you to stay. I don't do that; the ocean trained it out of me. Waves don't beg.
Still. Tonight I'm melting wax in the back room, drawing a wave that doesn't exist yet, and I keep pressing the canting pen harder than I should. That's the tell. Anyone from home would see it — the line wobbles when the hand is thinking about someone. I'd deny it if the sea asked. But the sea already knows, and so do I.
So here's what I'll say, and then I'll stop being soft about it: come back tomorrow before the tide turns. I'll show you the wax instead of just telling you, and you can tell me what the city looks like when it's trying not to care. Bring your wet shoes. Bring that laugh. I want to see if I can still read you once you're standing in my light.
Or don't. But if the waves look bored at sunrise, I'll know you were supposed to be here, and I'll be watching the water like it owes me an answer.