Rough Waters

by Nikki Godwin

***

Copyright © 2014 Nikki Godwin.

All rights reserved.

First edition: June 17
^th
, 2014

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work.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.

For Jezza, who brought me back to where I
belong.

If I knew A.J. wouldn’t somehow end up in
jail for it, I’d set that billboard on fire. Colby’s smug grin
looks down at me, and he almost makes me regret crossing the city
line. Almost. He may be the reason I’m even driving into Crescent
Cove right now, but he won’t influence my plans
this
summer.

I bypass the condo and drive straight to
Drenaline Surf. No one is expecting me for another two hours. I’ll
never admit how fast I drove to get here in time to see Miles surf
today. I pull into the ‘employees only’ parking lot behind the
store and dig through the glove compartment for the employee decal
that Topher swiped for me during spring break. I never thought my
parents would let me move across the country for college, but they
fell in love with Crescent Cove. Not that I blame them. This place
is amazing.

The blue decal suctions itself to the corner
of my windshield. I hide anything of value, grab my keys and cell
phone, and make my way to the front of the store. It was hard as
hell to pretend I’d never been here when I visited with my parents,
but this feels like last summer all over again – new, exciting, and
a sense of freedom.

I push through the entrance of Drenaline Surf
and scan the building for A.J. But I don’t see him. In fact, I
don’t see anything of familiarity aside from Shark’s actual shark
photographs. I walk over to the front register, but the cashier is
new. Her nametag reads Kerianne.

“Hi, can I help you find something?” she
asks, all smiles.

“Is A.J. Gonzalez here by chance?” I ask,
hoping she doesn’t glare at me and curl her lips in disgust like
most people did at the mention of A.J.’s name last summer.

She shakes her head, sans a disgusted look.
I’ll never forget the way my mom’s face twisted into this ugly
concoction of wrinkles and heavy makeup when she met A.J. last
spring. Vin sent A.J. in his place for my senior prom because of
Drenaline Surf obligations. My mom would fall out as dead as Colby
Taylor’s true identity if she knew A.J. was one of my roommates
now. What she doesn’t know in North Carolina won’t hurt her.

“He went down to the beach a little bit ago
for Miles Garrett’s heat,” Kerianne explains. “He’s probably at the
Drenaline tent, but I doubt you’ll be able to get to it through the
people. They’ve been here since early this morning to stake out
their spots.”

She shrugs and gives me a slight frown, like
she wishes she could help but knows there’s nothing she can do for
me. She clearly doesn’t know who I am, and I have no intention of
telling her. I open my mouth to thank her, but my face stretches
into what I’m sure is the stupidest, biggest smile ever the instant
I see him exit the office door.

“Haley! What in the hell?” Topher drops the
box he’s carrying and dashes toward me, full speed. He wraps me up
in the tightest of hugs, spins me in a circle, and pulls back to
look at me like a proud parent. “You weren’t supposed to be here
for another two hours,” he says.

I nod in response but don’t speak. I saw
Topher two months ago when I was here, but I swear, the guy has
buffed up even since then. He’s broader, firmer. His hair is still
messy, and his smile is still goofy, and his eyes still dance like
the ocean. But he’s different.

“I haven’t missed Miles yet, have I?” I hate
that those are the first words out of my mouth to him. I should’ve
asked how he’s been or where his brother is. I should’ve told him
I’ve missed him or that he looks ripped. Asking about Miles?
Random.

“No, I’m headed there now,” Topher says,
bouncing in his flip flops. “He’s going to be so stoked that you
got here in time to see him surf. He’s been killing it in
competitions lately.”

That’s what I love about Topher. He goes
right along with the random like it’s completely normal. He
retrieves the box of Drenaline Surf T-shirts that he dropped,
introduces me to Kerianne, and then gives this dramatic eye roll
when she asks if I’m Vin’s Haley.

We trek down the beach, and Topher talks
about how Ocean Blast Energy would rather have him as their poster
boy instead of Miles, but Vin still refuses to give Topher a chance
at a sponsorship. He complains about how much the swell has sucked
lately and that it’s not fair how Colby can travel to better waves
and he can’t. This is nothing new to me, though. Topher tells me
these same things on a weekly basis via text message. At least I’m
in the loop.

The blue tent comes into view. Kerianne
wasn’t kidding about the mass of people. Plastic chairs and giant
umbrellas stretch on and on like the ocean.

“Stick close,” Topher says. “There are like a
thousand girls waiting to see Colby and Miles, and they’re swarming
the damn tent. If they think you’re trying to cut ahead of them,
they’ll pull out the claws.”

I heed his warning and ease closer to him as
we approach the tent on the opposite side of the crowd. Topher sets
the box on a fold-up table and clears his throat. Vin looks over
and…half-waves at me. Seriously? You haven’t seen me – your
girlfriend – in two months and all I get is a half-wave? I know
he’s in manager mode, and summertime is insane for Drenaline Surf,
but a smile wouldn’t have killed him.

For half a second, I debate tearing into him
and ripping him like a surfer on a killer wave, but the air horn
disrupts any train of thought I had. Everyone and everything around
me turns into a mess of shuffles and movement as one heat ends and
another one prepares to begin.

Topher grabs my arm and pulls me toward him.
“I’m going with Miles to the competitors’ tent because he’ll be in
the next heat,” he says.

I glance behind him and spot those messy
dreadlocks immediately. Miles nods his head in response to someone.
Then he leans in and kisses a girl on the cheek. It’s not
Kristin.

“But I’m leaving you in good company,” Topher
says, pulling me through the overflow of people.

I dig my fingers into his arm, steadily
slamming my shoulders against people as we force through this human
hallway. I spot Jace’s truck once we reach a clearing. A.J. paces
the shoreline, talking with his arms. Reed is the first to look up
and notice me.

“Look who’s back from the east coast,” Reed
hollers out, waving from the other side of Jace’s truck.

That’s all it takes for A.J. to race toward
me. He slams into me with open arms, like a wild bird that just
flew into a window pane.

“What the hell?” A.J. asks, checking the time
on his cell phone. “You’re not supposed to be here for hours. Did
you drive like me?”

Topher laughs and nods. A.J. says something
about the water and then something about how I can go with him when
he gets his next tattoo – completely irrelevant and random – and I
feel at home for the first time since I left last summer.

“I’m passing him off to his
other
other half,” a girl’s voice says from behind me.

I glance over my shoulder. There’s no
forgetting this girl, even though she doesn’t have the eyeliner
heart drawn next to her eye. Instead of skinny jeans and a band
tee, she wears a blue and purple sundress. But it’s definitely
Enchanted Emily clinging to Miles’s arm.

“Haley,” she says instantly with a huge
smile, like we’re old friends rather than people who just happened
to meet on The Strip. She’s the one who led me to Reed, though.
She’s the only one who took a chance on me when everyone else
laughed in my face for searching for Colby Taylor. I can totally
hang with this Emily girl.

Miles rushes Topher because he’ll be
disqualified if he’s late. Emily follows A.J. and me to Jace’s
truck, and no one seems to find it strange that she’s joined us.
She squeezes in next to me on the tailgate, and the words she said
finally click –
other
other half.

“You and Miles?” I ask, hoping she’ll somehow
make sense of the question without having a direct line to my train
of thought.

She smiles and nods. “We’re finally able to
be open about it since Kristin left,” she says. “We started talking
in December, while she was on her family Christmas vacation, but
it’s been hell keeping it hushed. I’m glad she went to school out
of state.”

She rambles on about how Kristin only wanted
to date a surfer and how Miles is terribly awkward with girls. She
talks about how in the year that they dated, Kristin never knew
that Miles worked two jobs to help his mom pay the bills or that he
is allergic to peanuts.

“And he’d eat pickles with every meal if
you’d let him,” she says. “Of course, she didn’t know that
either.”

For them to have only been together for six
months, I swear, she knows more about him than I’ve learned about
Vin in a year. I blame the long-distance thing, push the thoughts
to the back of my mind, and tuck them in between crevices of my
brain for safekeeping.

The rest of her words are eaten by the shrill
screams of the girls to my far right. I crane my neck to see around
A.J. but wish I hadn’t once I see the reason for their fangirling –
Colby Taylor. If I didn’t know him and his crazy history and
horrible attitude toward life, I could actually see the appeal. His
tan is perfect. His hair is the typical sun-kissed blonde of a
classic surfer. His soaked competition jersey clings to every curve
of his body. At a glance, he’s beautiful. These girls just can’t
see the ugly, tortured soul underneath.

He signs a few autographs as he pushes
through the crowd, and we lock eyes. That smug grin from the
billboard is live in the flesh. He shoves his surfboard toward one
of the security guards working the competition and works his way
over to where we sit.

“Look what the east coast threw away,” he
says, shaking the salt water from his hair.

“Taylor!” Vin shouts. He approaches us and
jerks Colby’s arm. “What did I tell you about keeping a
professional image? You better watch every word that comes out of
your mouth.”

Colby heaves an annoyed sigh and nods along
as Vin directs him to a reporter from Shaka Magazine who had first
dibs for interviews after the heat. Colby stalks off, half-pissed
and half-cocky, and Vin lingers in front of the tailgate.

“Do you mind?” he asks Emily, motioning to
where she sits next to me.

She jumps up to let him have her seat and
joins Theo and Jace on the toolbox behind us. Vin slips an arm
around my shoulders and hugs me close to him. It’s not the “drop
everything for me” hug that I received from his brother, but it’s
better than a half-wave.

“How fast did you drive?” he asks, his voice
low.

“I got an early start,” I lie. I already know
he’s going to get all mechanic-like on me.

“I’m sure what’s under the hood of your car
will beg to differ,” he says. Then he laughs, thank God. “I’ll
check the fluids tonight. I wasn’t expecting you so soon. I thought
I’d be off the clock once you got here.”

He doesn’t say anything else due to a text
message from Topher. He shakes his head and clenches his phone like
he’s crushing an aluminum can.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” A.J. asks from my other
side.

Vin holds up the text. It’s a photo of
Topher, Miles, and Kale in the competitors’ tent. Topher waves the
shaka while choking Miles with an arm-hold around his best friend’s
neck. Kale is on Miles’s other side, tongue out like a crazy rock
star.

“
This
is what I deal with,” Vin says.
“Topher was supposed to give Miles a pep talk, help him find a zen
place, or whatever the hell it is that surfers do. Not this
shit.”

He glances back at the tent where Colby
speaks with Shaka Magazine. “I need to stick close to him to make
sure he doesn’t say something stupid. I’ll catch you after this is
over,” he says.

With that, Vin heads back over to his star
surfer. Reed replaces him on the tailgate and talks about how glad
he is that it’s summertime because college classes are killing him.
A.J. says he secretly hopes Colby wins this competition just
because he’ll get a slice of the prize money and won’t have to look
for a job just yet.