I pull a deep, shuddering breath as he turns back to the road. It’s a little while later that we emerge from the lush woods of the Russian River Valley onto Route 1. We wind up the Costal Highway and watch the waves beat themselves against sheer stone cliffs and craggy outcroppings. Seagulls soar overhead, and golden grass waves on the hillsides to the east. It’s breathtaking.

When we pull up to a surf shop in a tiny town an hour up the rocky coast, it’s quiet. The door hinges groan as we step through, and a combination of sea salt, mildew, and chlorine mingles in the air. There are surfboards on racks along one wall, and tanks and neoprene on shelves along the other. Sand grits between my flip-flops and the wooden floor as Blake and I make our way across the room.

The long-haired guy behind the counter looks up from the phone in his hand. “What can I do you for?”

Blake drums his fingers on the scratched glass over a display case of scuba regulators and pressure gauges. “We need snorkeling gear: neoprene and fins.”

“What size boots?” he asks.

Blake glances down at my feet. “One small and one large.”

The guy nods and darts around the back, pulling suits, gloves, boots, fins, and masks and setting them on the counter. “One day rental?”

Blake nods.

“Where you diving?”

“How are the abalone off the point?”

“Guy came back yesterday with three ten-inchers,” he says, twisting new mouthpieces onto a pair of snorkels and laying them on top of everything else.

“Then we’re diving off the point,” Blake says.

“Need a guide?”

“No, thanks,” Blake answers, pulling a credit card from his wallet and tossing it onto the counter. “Just the gear.”

“Um . . . have there been any shark sightings off the point?” I ask as the guy scans Blake’s card.

He shakes his head. “We don’t really get them up here. If you want to see the great whites, you’re better to head down to Monterey. There are a couple of guys I know down there who will take you out and chum to attract them. I can give you their card.”

“No thanks,” I say with a shudder.

Blake and the guy complete the transaction and we scoop up our stuff and head to the Escalade. We drive another twenty minutes up the coast, past lighthouses, scrubby pines, and cragged cliffs that drop off into the ocean, and pull into an empty parking lot.

He pulls off his hoodie and takes the gun from his chest holster, locking it in the glove box. I notice under the sleeve of his T-shirt some kind of clear bandage on his arm, but his sleeve is long enough that I can’t see the damage. He unstraps the holster and tugs it off, then just sits behind the wheel for a few minutes, staring out at the vast ocean.

“Your dad used to bring you here?” I ask, remembering our conversation about abalone.

He looks at me, and there’s something deep in his gaze that’s either guilt or regret. “A long time ago.”

Before I can ask anything else, Blake’s out of the car. He moves around back and lifts the tailgate. “Have you ever worn a dive suit before?” he asks.

I slide out and meet him around back. “No. Why do we need one if we’re not scuba diving?” I ask, plucking a snorkel out of the back.

“The water out there’s always cold, so you won’t last long without it. You’ll probably want to keep a T-shirt over your swimsuit.”

I shuck off my shoes and shorts as he sorts his from mine.

He holds my suit open. “Just step in.”

I do, and once my legs are in, he tugs it up around me. I stick my arms through the sleeves, and his fingers trail up my abs as he zips me in.

“Comfortable?”

“It’s fine.” I tug at the hood. “You know I have no idea what I’m doing, right?”

“We’ll spend some time close to shore until you get the feel of it.” He pulls his neoprene on over his T-shirt and swim trunks, then hands me two towels and grabs the backpack and loops it over his shoulders. The hike to the shore is longer and trickier than I expected. It takes us almost half an hour to negotiate the path down the cliff to the water, and I slip a few times picking my way over moss-covered rocks as we get below the high tide line. The path eventually drops us onto a small patch of sand. Jutting out from it is a rocky outcrop.

“This cove is protected, so the current shouldn’t be an issue, but stay close, just in case. The abalone will be out in the rocks beyond the point,” Blake says, pointing at the outcrop.

My heart is pounding as I tug my dive mask over my forehead. “I don’t like the sound of ‘just in case.’ ”

He gives me half a smile. “You heard the guy. No sharks here. You’ll be fine.”

He gets me all strapped into my mask and snorkel, and we leave the fins on the towels and head for the water. He’s right. It’s freezing, even through my dive suit, and it takes me a while to work my way in.

“The first thing you need to learn is to purge your mask and blow out your snorkel,” he tells me once we’re waist deep. “You’re going to want to dive to get a closer look at stuff on the bottom, and anytime you resurface, you’ll need to purge the water.”

He takes me through all the basics, and I try everything out in the waist-deep water, but I can’t stop my eyes from darting around for anything moving under the surface.

“Got it?” he asks.

“Seems pretty basic.”

He trudges to the sand for our fins and comes back with those, a small flashlight, and two metal things tucked into his dive belt.

“What are those?” I ask, pointing.

“An abalone gauge and iron. They can grab pretty tight to the rocks.” We slip our fins on over the neoprene booties. “If your arm gets sore, or you need to head back to the beach for any reason, just give me the sign. Thumbs-up means you’re good.”

I nod.

“Ready?”

“No.”

He laughs, probably at my terrified expression. “No sharks, Sam. I promise.”

I plant my hands on my hips. “How can you possibly promise that? Jaws could be waiting right out there,” I say, throwing my hand at the ocean, “licking his chops and saying, ‘Welcome to my lair.’ ”

“Sharks don’t have lairs,” Blake says with a smirk.

I splash him. “You know what I mean.”

“Come on,” he says, venturing deeper.

I can’t stop the cringe as I follow. He dives under, then surfaces and blows out his snorkel. “You’re not going to see much from up here,” he says.

I glare at him, though with my face strapped into the mask, I’m sure he can’t tell that’s what I’m doing. Finally, I get brave enough to stick the snorkel in my mouth and float out on the surface of the water. As I anxiously peer around under the waves, even though I’m on the edge of hyperventilating I get the hang of breathing through the snorkel pretty quick . . . mostly because I realize I can see much better through my mask when my face is in the water.

There are stalks of kelp floating lazily in the waves, and the water is clear and blue. Blake dives deeper and I stay on the surface and watch as he points at a big green flower-looking thing. He pokes at it and it closes all its “petals.” Behind it, attached to the rocky wall, is a large orange starfish, which he brushes his fingers over.

He kicks back to the surface, pops his snorkel out of his mouth and grins. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“What was that first thing?” I ask, spitting out my mouthpiece. “The flower thing?”

“An anemone.”

I grin back. “Definitely cool.”

He swims us out toward where I can see waves breaking around some underwater rocks. “This is our best bet for abalone,” he says.

When I realize we’re not going in water much deeper than I could stand in, I feel better. I mean, sure, Jaws could probably swim up here and eat me, but whether it’s illusion or reality, it just feels safer in the shallow water close to shore. I float on the surface and watch as Blake dives to the rocks a few feet below and points to some urchins and a scurrying hermit crab. He looks up at me and points to something that looks like part of the bigger rock, but then I see it’s ovalish with a line of holes. He takes the metal thing from his belt and holds it up to the oval, then gives me the thumbs-up.