Chasing Forever Down

by Nikki Godwin

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I shake my hair free from the towel and check myself one more time in the bathroom mirror before I walk out. Topher hasn’t been home long, and Vin has been lecturing him through the wall about getting enough rest before competitions. He hasn’t mentioned my being here, to my knowledge.

  Deep breath. “It’s now or never,” I say to my reflection. I push through the door, down the hallway, and into the kitchen, which adjoins the living room. Topher’s bare back is to me while he digs through the refrigerator.

  “Dude, did you not buy more milk?” Topher asks the refrigerator door.

  “Middle shelf, toward the back…if you’d actually look,” Vin shoots back.

  “Found it!” Topher shouts out. He spins around, milk in hand. “Holy shhhhh…Haley! Vin! Dude! You could, like, tell me when you have chicks over so I can put clothes on.”

  Vin meets me halfway across the room, kisses my forehead, then says, “She ain’t looking at you.”

  He couldn’t be more right. Vin looks like himself today, well-rested, spiky hair, and intense blue iceberg eyes. Ohmygod he’s beautiful, and this time, I’m not even afraid to admit it to myself.

  “You have girls over often?” I ask.

  “No,” Vin says. He reaches into a cardboard box of Drenaline Surf merch and tosses Topher a T-shirt. “Never actually.”

  Topher’s head pops out of the blue shirt. “But apparently there’s a first time for everything. Cereal?” He shakes a box of Lucky Charms and shrugs his shoulders.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. Topher hands me a bowl, and all the awkward conversation I expected never comes to surface.

  An hour later, I’m latched onto both of the Brooks brothers trying to fight our way through the mass of people on The Strip.

  “Why didn’t we just go around back?” Topher screams into my ear from behind me, hoping Vin can hear him from in front of me.

  “It’s never been this crazy! I didn’t think it would be!” Vin shouts back.

  I expected a big crowd to swamp the beach today, but it’s barely eight A.M. This is freaking insane. There’s a line outside of Drenaline Surf, blocking the front entrance and any chances we had of getting inside. They don’t care if Vin owns the place. They just need last minute surfboard wax.

  “Strick’s!” Vin shouts, jerking his head toward the boating store.

  It’s busy inside but nothing like the craze outside of the surf shop. Reed waves across the store, and an older guy joins him at the register. Reed says something to him then bolts around the counter toward us.

  “Dad’s got it covered, so if you need me, I’m yours,” he says to Vin. Then he looks directly at me. “Haley…you’re becoming a stranger these days. Not cool.”

  I swap awkward glances with Topher, hoping he won’t start blabbing that I spent the night with his brother, but Vin is all business today and isn’t in the mood for secrets.

  “It’s insane out there. We can’t even get into the store. Mind if we cut through the back?” he asks.

  Reed motions us to the back sliding glass door. He follows me and the brothers through the sand to the back office of Drenaline Surf, which thankfully has a fire exit that serves as today’s entrance. A.J. is sitting in Vin’s office chair.

  “I’m not even late, and A.J. has taken over my store,” Vin says. He grabs the back of the chair and spins it around.

  “Dude,” A.J. says. “Shaka Magazine already called wanting to interview Colby after he surfs today. The lady with the flamingo pond has called three times and won’t let me take a message, and the Ocean Blast CEO dude took the wrong exit and I had to give him directions. Where the hell have you been?”

  Topher answers for Vin. “He was pre-occupied.”

  The phone rings again. “I wasn’t pre-occupied. I was on my way,” Vin says. Another ring. “The front door was completely blocked with all those crazy people.” Another ring. “Damn it,” he says before grabbing the phone. “Drenaline Surf, this is Vin.”

  He grabs the pen from A.J.’s hand and begins scribbling down whatever the voice on the other end of the phone is saying. He waves Topher toward the main showroom of the store, and Reed follows him into the mass of surf mania.

  A.J. pulls me toward the back door, and I follow him back outside. We don’t have a chance to talk though because Linzi and Alston meet us almost instantly.

  “So nice having connections,” Alston says, pointing to his car in the ‘employees only’ parking lot of Strickland’s Boating.

  Linzi grabs my shoulders, and her eyes glow with excitement. “Where’d you go last night? Did Vin really take you to see Colby? You have to tell me everything,” she says in one breath. “I’m so excited to see him surf today. It’s like we finally get what we came here for.”

  “She’ll tell you all about it,” A.J. says. “But we’ve gotta go grab something for Vin. Meet us at the Drenaline tent later?”

  Linzi nods and bounces off with Alston to find the Drenaline Surf tent. I don’t know how to tell her that Colby Taylor is the very last thing I’m here for these days. I breathe a sigh of relief and thank A.J. for stalling her for the time being. But that doesn’t stop him from demanding answers, and right now, I feel better giving A.J. answers than I do Linzi. We trek through the sand to the employee parking lot and sit on the hood of Alston’s car.

  “I kissed Vin, and Colby Taylor sucks,” I say.

  “Whoa. You kissed Vin?”

  “Well, he kissed me.”

  “But you kissed him back, right?”

  “Yes,” I admit. I don’t know if I’m flustered from admitting that out loud or if it’s just this summer heat burning my skin. I’ll go with the heat, just to save a little bit of my pride.

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” A.J. says, talking with his hands. “You came to California for the guy who sucks, but you end up kissing the guy who you thought sucked the most?”

  I bury my face into my hands and laugh. That’s exactly what I did. I know he’s probably shaking his head, but I refuse to unhide my face. “Yes.”

  “Damn,” he says. “There’s never a dull moment with you around.”

  That pulls my face up quickly. “You’re a fine one to speak – stealing election signs, passing out drunk in my bed, busting Dominic’s eye.”

  A.J. nudges me with his shoulder. “Hush.” He looks off at the water. “I told you about Vin. He’s not a bad guy. He’s just got a lot on him that he never asked for.”

  The action from the store has moved to the Drenaline Surf tent near the shoreline. A.J. and I walked The Strip for a while, hated on Colby, and he again reminded me that Vin was never the evil con artist I thought he was. But now that I’m sitting on the toolbox in the back of Jace’s truck, I’m still fighting to find words to tell Linzi that Colby Taylor isn’t all I’d dreamed him up to be.

  I wish A.J. hadn’t gone back to the store to cover for Vin. He’d be straight up with Linzi, so I wouldn’t have to be. There’s no way Reed would say it, even if he did think Colby was a royal screw up. And right now, Reed is my only wingman.

  “I can’t wait to see him surf,” Linzi says. “Was he excited about it?”

  Shrugging my shoulders isn’t much of an answer, though. “He didn’t really say much about it,” I tell her.

  Reed looks across the water at the surfers paddling out. “This isn’t his first rodeo. One competition is the same as the next for him,” he says.

  Linzi stares at Reed for a second, probably trying to figure out what a rodeo has to do with surfing, but luckily she doesn’t ask and focuses all of her attention on the guys in the water. She’s excited, just like everyone else in the Crescent Cove sand. And just like the west coast surf fans, she’s so ready to see Colby Taylor do what Colby Taylor does best.

  But I’m not ready to see him. I honestly don’t want to. Just days ago, I thought I’d see him surf and know he was happy with his new life, and I’d be able to let it
go. For Colby, it’s not about being one with the ocean or becoming a part of the wave that’s carrying him. I can’t watch him surf when he takes the love for surfing in vain.

  I latch onto Reed’s arm and pull him close enough so Linzi won’t hear me. “I need your help,” I whisper.

  He nods in agreement, and I tell Linzi we’ll be back in a little bit. She tells me to hurry or I might miss the big moment of seeing Colby surf. I don’t tell her, but that’s exactly what I’m aiming for.

  Vin looks up from under the hood of my car when Reed pulls up next to him. “Couldn’t stay away from me, could you, Sunshine?”

  I laugh because secretly that is part of the reason I made Reed bring me back to the condo. “That…and I couldn’t stomach watching Colby surf,” I say.

  Reed tells us that he’s going to park his Jeep near the amateur division section and double checks with Vin to make sure we’ll be there in time. Vin says there’s no way he’d miss it. I watch Reed’s Jeep until he’s out of sight.

  “Have you told them?” Vin asks. “You know, that you’re leaving tonight?”

  I’d hoped he wouldn’t bring that back up. “Yeah,” I say. “Reed complained that he’ll have to go back to keeping A.J. out of trouble. And A.J. is really good at denial because he refused to hear me out when I tried to explain that I can’t stay forever…at least not yet.”

  Vin slams the hood shut. “I changed the oil and topped off the other fluids. Your tires are good…and I hacked into the system and did some rewinding on the mileage so it won’t appear that you’ve driven to Cali and back.”

  “How’d you do that?” I ask as I follow him down the sidewalk and into the kitchen.

  He turns on the faucet and scrubs the oil from his hands. “Magic trick,” he answers.

  “Feel like helping me work a little more magic?” I ask.

  It takes twenty-five minutes through competition traffic to get to the far side of Crescent Cove. The pier is alive today with retired couples spending the day with their grandchildren, all of whom are oblivious to the insanity happening a few miles down the shoreline. It’s peaceful out here. Waves crashing, seagulls cawing, children laughing. It makes sense why this is Colby’s Zen location. But there’s no ignoring that air horn in the distance. I wonder if that’s his competition, if he did well enough in the first heat to move forward. Of course he did. He’s Colby freaking Taylor.

  “You always return to the scene of the crime?” Vin asks, slipping his hand into mine.

  “Sometimes it’s necessary,” I tell him.

  We walk the length of the pier mostly in silence. He speaks to a person here and there, and I wait for someone to ask him why he’s not at the competition. But no one asks. No one even minds our being here really. They go about their lives and their afternoon as if we aren’t strolling along their pier.

  I stop just short of the pier’s edge and count three tiki torches back. I twist a piece of the wood around and tuck the little orange CT star into the torch. I position it as carefully as I can, so it can’t be ripped away by the wind or caught up in the torch’s fire when they’re lit up tonight for all of the cove to see. I don’t need his unlucky autographed star anymore.

  “An eye for an eye, huh?” Vin asks, wrapping his arms around me from behind. “It’s symbolic though, so that makes revenge okay.”

  I wrap my arms over his, tilt my head back against his chest, and inhale. I’m going to miss this west coast ocean air.

  “Let’s stay here a while,” Vin says.

  We settle onto the edge of the pier, away from the third tiki torch and laughing grandchildren. Then Vin unleashes half a million thoughts into the universe from his worries over what’ll happen if Dominic wins this sponsorship to how Alston bought that hot pink Frisbee for Dexter when he was just a puppy and Colby got mad because it was a girly color.

  The mention of Dexter sends my thoughts back to last night in Horn Island.

  “What happened to your neighbor?” I ask. “Luther, the guy with the pit bull.” Not that Vin really needed the clarification.

  “War veteran,” he says. “He was born and raised in Horn Island, known him all my life. When he got home, they offered him full residency at a facility that is set up for injured vets, but that’d mean leaving the island. Because they offered the facility, they weren’t obligated to make his current residence wheelchair accessible.”

  “So who made the ramps for him?” I ask.

  Vin hangs his head but smiles. “Me and Topher. Horn Island is just one of those places you can’t leave. It gets in your veins.”

  I rest my head against his shoulder. “I don’t want to go back to North Carolina.”

  “I don’t want you to,” he says. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer to him. “I don’t know who I’m going to get to sell raffle tickets for me now.”

  I ram my elbow into his side and push him away. “You’ll just find some other hot girl on The Strip to do it for you. By the time I come back next summer, you’ll be engaged, and I’ll be long forgotten. Then I’ll have to date your brother.”

  “You are not dating my brother,” Vin says, pulling me back toward him.

  “Well, Reed’s still single,” I counter.

  He wraps his arm around me. “You’re not dating Strick either. And I’m not replacing you, so get that out of your head.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who said guys would buy tickets from me because…”

  “I know what I said,” Vin interrupts. “And I feel bad enough for it without you throwing it back at me all the time. Yes, I said you were hot. No, I shouldn’t have.”

  I don’t wait for his explanation. I know where this is going. “It’s because I’m seventeen, right? I’ll be eighteen in September.”

  He laughs. “Your age doesn’t faze me, Haley. I knew how old you were before I even let myself get close. It’s not an issue. I just felt bad for using the same words to describe you that Alston uses to describe the whores on the beach.”

  And I’m reminded again how right A.J. is about Vin. “I didn’t want to date your brother anyway. He’d get on my nerves pretty quick,” I admit.

  Vin laughs, and I know he understands that all too well. All the sugar cubes and energy drinks. “What about Strick?”

  I shake my head. “He’s too nice. I like a challenge.” Then I lean in and kiss him before he can even throw some smartass comeback at me.

  And I don’t care if all the grandparents on the pier are watching.