Chasing Forever Down (Drenaline Surf Series)

by Godwin, Nikki

  Linzi’s voice rises an octave. “You knew!”

  Reality slaps me across the face. This is all my fault. In forty-eight hours, as much as I hate it now, I won’t be able to bitch about Linzi and Alston’s constant make out sessions. A.J. won’t be around to make me laugh when everything is going wrong. I won’t have Reed there to smooth everything over when life is about to erupt. No more West Coast Hooligans or crescent-shaped cheese biscuits or Ocean Blast Energy drinks or iceberg eyes.

  And what was it for? What did any of us gain from this? Linzi and I are leaving, Colby still has his secrets and all of the playing cards, and we’re no better than him because we interrupted the lives of such amazing people just to walk out two weeks later. It’s not even Linzi’s fault.

  I dragged her across the country chasing after forever and a surfer. It’s all on me. Colby found me, I found Crescent Cove, and now it’s all going to shatter into a sea of broken hearts – mine, Vin’s, Linzi’s, Alston’s, A.J.’s, and everyone else who was dragged through the forever-chasing disaster I’ve created.

  Tears well up in my eyes, and there’s no moment of redemption for this. I get up, walk to the window, remove Solomon, and I even apologize to him for being dealt such a crappy card. No one should have to be a spirit guide for me when I’m playing the same awful chess game as the west coast surf star.

  But still, I hug the glass seahorse to my chest because he’s the only thing that’s been with me from the beginning. From Solomon Worthington to my suncatcher. And he’s the only thing I deserve to have left in the end. I squeeze him tightly in my hand, push through the screen door, retrieve my flip flops, and run toward the shoreline.

  The beach has grown silent. No laughter from the condos, no late night surfing adventures, no bonfires or volleyball games. Just the rolling waves and crashing whitecaps. So it’s impossible not to hear the roar of that motorcycle when Vin pulls up.

  He must’ve made the rounds once around the house because he finds me in record time. I know it’s him. His shoes thud in the sand. He’s the only person around here who wears tennis shoes on the beach.

  “You come here often?” he asks from behind me.

  I barely glance over my shoulder, mainly because I don’t want him to see my red eyes or tear-stained cheeks. He finds a seat in the sand behind me, stretches one leg out beside me, and pulls himself close to me. I relax and let my shoulder blades press against his chest.

  “Hey,” he whispers into my ear. “I was going to tell you…I really owe you an apology for how I acted, how I’ve been acting.”

  He settles his chin into the hollow of my shoulder. “I was just trying to look out for you. I’m not the hard ass guy you think I am. I’m so not that guy, and I don’t want you to think I am. The last thing I ever wanted was to hurt you or…” His voice trails off as the salty tears chase each other in a race to my chin.

  I’m not sure if he sees them, but I can’t fight the urge to sniffle. If my teardrops were a secret before, they’re widely known now. I brush my cheek dry with the back of my hand, but I can’t look at him. I can’t face him.

  “Are you okay? Talk to me,” he says. He pushes my shoulder back, leaving me no choice but to let him watch my mascara flow down my skin.

  So I talk. Or try to. Most of the words come out a jumbled mess mixed with sniffles and tears and a touch of self-loathing. Even if he doesn’t make sense of it, he steadily wipes the tears off my cheeks and pushes my hair back every time it falls into my face.

  “It’s all my fault – everything – with Linzi and Alston and A.J. and you,” I ramble on. It’s like role reversal, me pouring my heart all over the sand and Vin listening this time. “And if Colby Taylor hadn’t come back to North–”

  “Are you kidding me?” Vin pushes away from me and scrambles to stand up. “Come on. We’re ending this right now. You can’t let it go. So you know what? I’m going to give you exactly what you came here for.”

  He treks back toward the condo, and I follow slowly, careful not to walk over his shoeprints because I want some sort of proof that he was here, that he came to find me tonight. He never looks back – not even once, not even after he’s revved up his bike.

  “Get on,” he hollers over the engine. He notices my hesitation. “We’re just going up the beach. It won’t kill you.”

  My stomach clenches itself, squeezing so tightly that I want to vomit. I think that’s my natural instinct trying to talk me out of this. But I’m too scared not to do what he says, too scared that I might screw this up even worse than I already have.

  I throw my leg over the seat and pull myself on behind Vin, grasping him with one hand and Solomon with the other. Streetlights and porch lights blur together into orange blobs in the night, whizzing past us in streaks. I watch them until we slow down, and the night comes into focus. My lungs take a trip to the land of temporary paralysis, and I forget to breathe when I see the numbers 2311 on the mailbox. I can still hear Alston screaming it into the phone that night. Twenty-Three Eleven. Dolphin Point. The flag on the mailbox is a red surfboard.

  Vin kills his bike, and guitar chords float around the side of the house. Dexter joins them and greets us, happily dragging that hot pink Frisbee with him. My knees go all wobbly, and I’m not sure I can stand up or walk or even think to maneuver like a normal human being.

  “Hey Taylor!” Vin calls out. “Brought someone to see you.”

  The acoustic guitar falls silent, and then he rounds the corner. Blonde. Chiseled. Shirtless. Tan. He’s something straight off of a billboard. And I’m standing in his sand, next to Vin’s motorcycle, with Dexter all too happy and so very clueless as to how badly this may end.

  Vin revs up the bike one more time, blinding me with that one headlight and leaving me here with nothing more than a million questions and a glass seahorse.

  “He’s all yours, Sunshine.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Vin’s taillight shrinks into the darkness like a dying red star being sucked into a black hole.

  “So…you found me. Impressive,” Colby says. He steps toward me, still keeping his distance but seemingly sizing me up, as if I’m here to fight. “Care to tell me how you pulled that off?” He folds his arms across his bare chest.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” I say. “I mean, faking your death. A new identity. That’s not exactly amateur stuff, you know?”

  I watch him reach down and sling Dexter’s Frisbee across the sky. There’s no way I’m going to let him intimidate me. I’ve come too far.

  His eyes pull away from Dexter and burn holes into me. “Hold up. Faking my death?” He shakes his head in disbelief, and I swear, I think he’s actually offended.

  “Okay,” he says. “Let’s just start this over. Would you like to come inside?”

  He motions toward his gigantic beach house, and there’s nothing more I want than to go inside. I would’ve stayed on his back patio the day of the storm if I’d known Vin wouldn’t have thrown me over his shoulder and hauled me off.

  “Seriously?” I ask.

  “Well, you didn’t bring a camera crew, screaming girls, or worse, my parents, so I feel like my secrets are safe,” he says.

  He leads me past his big black truck, around the house, and to the back patio. A string of wet suits hang against the wall, probably dry by now from today’s burning sun. Three surfboards are propped against the house as well.

  “One sec,” he says. He quickly fills Dexter’s water bowl with fresh water and dumps a cup full of dog food into another. Then he whistles across the ocean for Dexter to return home. And I see Dexter’s home – a dog house made entirely of broken surfboards. Their colors are faded, and bits of them are cracked or chipped or outright split in half. I don’t know how I didn’t see it the last time I was here. But then again, we were focused on Colby’s life that day, not that his dog’s house was made of surfboards. I follow him through the back sliding glass door.

  “Let me give you the official tour,
” he says. “This way.”

  He opens a door to his left, and had I been asked to guess what was on the other side, I’d have said a laundry room…or possibly an empty garage. But it’s neither. It’s like a showroom for his biggest trophy. A real Woodie, like from the 1960s – exactly like the ones you see in old beach movies. It’s only the coolest station wagon-like vehicle I’ve ever seen. It shines like it’s made of black marble with silver splotches of awesomeness in the shapes of stars and crescent moons. Drenaline Surf’s logo is plastered across the passenger side, and there’s the silhouette of an angel on a surfboard. “RIP Jake ‘Shark’ McAllister” curls beneath it in cursive.

  Colby pats the hood. “Got this bad baby in Australia a few months ago. Vin said I should’ve taken the cash, but this thing was just too badass to pass up. I got to design it myself.”

  My heart overflows with pride as I constantly steal glances at Shark’s name while I try to take in the rest of the car. It makes me so happy to know that Colby honored Shark like that, to see that he remembers where he came from and who gave him the chance to live his dream. He remembers who helped him chase forever down. Shark was like his salon lady Stella…or his coffee shop Tim…or his rock star Barney. Whatever Shark was to him, he remembers.

  And as if the sentiment wasn’t strong enough in the trophy room, his living room walls bleed Shark’s photography. Forget the flat screen and huge sound system. It’s a shrine to his mentor’s work.

  “The rest of the place is pretty boring,” he says from behind me. “Bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen, surf stuff. Just make yourself at home. I’m going to go find a shirt.”

  I ease closer to the entertainment center and scan over the pictures he’s framed. Most are of him with the guys, a few with Shark. There are jars of paper stars and framed newspaper articles chronicling his journey from Drenaline Surf sponsorship to his big win a few months ago in Australia. And then there are drumsticks – the drumsticks!

  All of Crescent Cove can probably hear my heart dancing in my chest right now as I realize that night was as important as everything else to him. I hang Solomon on the knob of the cabinet that protects the drumsticks. He’ll be safe here.

  The living room captures me with a million emotions, so I zone in on one of Shark’s amazing photos and attempt to breathe. It was taken underwater, looking up at Colby, who is sitting on a surfboard. It would be a literal shark’s view of him. It’s poetic and artistic and outright beautiful. It beats the hell out of those Great Whites hanging in Strickland’s Boating.

  “That’s always been my favorite,” Colby says. I glance over my shoulder as he approaches wearing a red Drenaline Surf T-shirt. “He had the coolest ideas. He was the one who thought up the surfboard dog house when I got Dexter. Shark was larger than life. Anyone who dreamed up Drenaline Surf had to be.”

  I wish Vin could hear this. He’d see how much Shark meant to Colby and how much he admired him and misses him. Vin would see how much they have in common, how his best friend is what ties them together in a way that only they understand because they were both so close to him.

  “But Drenaline Surf lost that creative spark the day the ocean took Shark McAllister from us,” Colby concludes.

  Never mind. I stare at the picture a moment longer to keep myself from jumping to Vin’s defense. I want to. And I should. But right now, it’s not an option.

  “So how did you become Colby Taylor?” I spit out before I can talk myself out of asking. My eyes remain on the bottom of the surfboard in the giant photograph.

  “How did you find me as Colby Taylor?” he counters.

  I surrender and give him the super quick version of how the receipt led us to Stella’s, and Stella led us to Tim, and Tim mentioned The Ocean in Moonlight, and Barney told me I’d see him when I got here. To protect the innocent, I change Enchanted Emily’s name to “some random girl on the beach” and explain that she led me to Reed.

  “And now I’m standing in your living room,” I say, ending the condensed version of the last two weeks.

  “Fair enough,” he says, nodding. He sits on the couch and motions for me to join him, so I do. “I didn’t fake my death. I ran away. Faking your death is illegal, you know? I knew they’d assume I was dead, that I drowned or was eaten by a shark, but I never faked my death.”

  He talks about hitchhiking and catching a ride with a long-haul truck driver to a small town in Texas, where he bought a jar of paper stars as his good luck token. I glance up at the blue seahorse hanging from the entertainment center, and I completely get it. I understand that need for something inanimate to be there holding your hand through a journey.

  “From there, I hopped a train and eventually landed in Nevada. I bummed rides with college kids heading to Cali the rest of the way, and once I got here, I asked for the best surf shop around. Some guy told me about Drenaline Surf, said it was roughly two hours south, and I didn’t sleep until I’d bought a surfboard from Shark,” he says.

  As he continues weaving his story to life, I sit here on the couch like a starry-eyed child listening to her grandfather’s old war stories. It’s the same story I’ve heard from A.J. and Reed but from a new viewpoint, the viewpoint of a guy who gave up his whole world to chase his dream.

  “But I miss the normalcy of just living,” he says. “I like the fact that no one can control me anymore, but I hate not being able to walk outside sometimes without fearing that someone will see me, and it’ll end up on a North Carolina news broadcast. I’ve put too much into this to watch it all crash down.”

  He steals a glance at his watch. “You want to ride somewhere with me? There’s this really cool place out on the far side of the cove that I bet you haven’t seen,” he says.

  The beach flies endlessly past my window in a blur of white sand and black water. After a ten minute drive and Colby’s less-than-exciting story of how he simply paid a few hundred bucks and had his name changed with no hassle, he turns onto a street in the middle of a suburb. A million questions continue to run through my mind, but I play it cool, trying not to press my luck with him. I’m finally here; I can’t blow it now.

  “This is the retirement area,” he says. “Old people, nursing homes, just simple life away from all the tourist craziness. A.J.’s psycho clown friend lives out here.”

  He points to a white building with a purple sign that reads Azalea Living Center. I bite down on the inside of my jaw to keep from saying something I’ll regret.

  “Here we are,” Colby says.

  He kills the engine and nods toward a long pier that stretches far into the ocean. It’s much longer than the one near The Strip, which surprises me with The Strip being the hot spot of Crescent Cove. Orange circles glow inside the tiki torches that line the pier’s edges. They reflect off the water in little blobs, like orange stars against a sky of black glass.

  “This is incredible,” I say. I can only imagine the crowds that would be drawn to it on The Strip. It’d be covered all day and all night.

  “Yeah, it’s not on the tourist attractions,” he says. “They keep it pretty hush-hush. The people out here enjoy it, and they don’t have to fight the crowds. I come out here to think. It’s kind of like my Zen location, just to clear my head.”

  We climb out of the truck and trudge through the sand. It’s the soft crushed diamond type of sand that’s on The Strip. Colby leads the way up to the pier. It’s even more massive up close. I imagine Horn Island’s pier looking like this in all its glory, before it collapsed and was left to rot on the beach. My flip flops make a thunking sound against the wooden flooring.

  “So why did you go back to North Carolina, to the party?” I ask halfway down the pier. A slight breeze lifts off the water and the grains of sand on the pier run toward us.

  “To make sure I was dead.”

  The blunt force of his words ram through me. “What?”

  “To make sure I was dead,” he repeats. “To see that my parents were living their lives and not havi
ng the ocean drained to find me. I have a lot more going on now, more appearances, more competitions. I just needed to know they weren’t necessarily looking for me.”

  Every assumption I’d made about his reasons was so, so wrong. What about making sure they weren’t still heavily grieving? Or what about missing his family or his old life, even just a tiny bit?

  “But they couldn’t control you now,” I remind him. “Look how far you’ve come. You’re the surfer on the west coast. They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “I don’t want them in my business,” he counters. He looks straight ahead across the water and into the night. “They don’t need to know where I am or what I’m doing.” He says it more so to the night than to me.

  We reach the edge, and he sits down, slinging his legs over to dangle above the ocean. “Sometimes, you just can’t have it both ways,” he says. “It’s either this or that, you know? I’d rather have this. I’m completely in control of my life. I hold all the cards, and I can deal myself any hand I want. No one’s messing this up for me.”

  I hesitate as to whether I should sit down with him. He may decide I’m a threat, that I’m the one person who may try to interrupt this awesome little card game he’s playing, and throw me over the pier. Those dark waves would sweep me out to sea until the shore was out of sight, and I’d find myself on some sunken ship on the bottom of the Pacific. Maybe Shark McAllister would be there with sapphires and shark teeth waiting to meet me at the clock.

  “You’re so right,” I say, deciding to play along. I’m stranded without a cell phone, and the only person who knows where I am probably hates me. Forget chasing forever. I just need to survive right now. “I just hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  He looks at me and smiles that same smile from the night of the corporate party, back when he was a forever chaser who got away...before he was a manipulative jackass who used anyone he had to just to get what he wanted.