by Nikki Godwin
It’s like a freaking movie scene. Alston opens his mouth, presumably to ask who the party is for, but the cheers behind us announce the arrival of the guest of honor. He’s everything I remember – movie star looks, salon-produced highlights, what might be a fake tan, and enough arrogance to put the Jersey Shore cast to shame. Maybe Dominic should’ve auditioned for a reality TV show. He’d have been the star he dreams of being.
He slaps a few high fives on his way in, tilting his head in that magazine model way whenever he smiles at a girl. He doesn’t seem to notice us in the crowd, which works to our advantage and helps me find an escape route.
“Wait,” A.J. says. “I want to hear what this idiot has to say. You know he’s going to make some big speech, probably toast to himself.”
Alston sighs. “Okay, fine,” he says. “Let’s just hang toward the back, though, so he can’t see us from his podium.”
We shuffle toward the room where the DJ is, jostled around by the crowd of people following Dominic like a herd of cattle. Dominic slices his hand across his neck, motioning for the DJ to kill the music. The beat stops almost instantly.
Dominic steps into the DJ booth, steadily waving to the crowd like he’s some famous musician who is about to thank his fans and ask the DJ to play his new song. Girls shriek around us, squealing with excitement and hormones. I wish I had earplugs.
“What up, Crescent Cove!” Dominic echoes through the speakers. “It’s so great to be back in California, back home where I belong with my family and my true friends.”
I glance at Alston and mouth ‘true friends?’ He shrugs. A.J.’s expression says that he’s clueless as well. I can’t imagine Dominic having any friends left in Cali aside from the screaming girls who just want to make out with him. I’m surprised he didn’t find another sponsor to let him live the surf star dream. Asshole or not, he’s a damn good surfer. There are plenty of assholes in the elite world of surfing, so I know they’re accepting applications.
“I want to thank you all for coming out tonight, to celebrate with me and have some fun,” Dominic shouts. “I’ve done a lot of soul searching, and I’m definitely not the same man who left here last summer. I’ve cleansed myself of the bad, and I’m only focused on moving forward from here.”
There are so many things wrong with this. Dominic doesn’t have a soul to search, and he’s never been a man, period. He’s only back here because he has nowhere else to go, and he isn’t about to get a job or actually work for anything in life. He came back for the lifestyle his dad has been guilted into serving him on a silver platter.
“This is sick,” A.J. says. “I’ve heard enough. Let’s bail.”
As the man of the hour rambles on about starting anew, we push back through the onlookers and starry-eyed girls to the front door of the beach mansion. There’s nothing in this world that could keep me in there listening to his well-rehearsed speech that was probably stolen from a motivational speaking pamphlet.
Except for the black truck that just pulled up next to the curb.
Colby Taylor steps out.
I don’t know what Colby is doing here, but I instantly turn around, go back inside, and plaster myself to a wall. Alston and A.J. become wallpaper on either side of me. I’m sure we look out of place, like wallflowers at a school dance, but I can’t allow Colby to run loose at Dominic’s party. That’s like opening all the cages at the zoo and telling the animals to have fun.
“Well, we can’t leave now. The party’s just getting started,” A.J. says. “I’m going to get another beer. If we have to stay through this shit, I might as well get drunk.”
He peels himself from the wall and disappears into the crowd. Alston and I don’t move, still hanging around in the foyer. Colby hasn’t made his way inside yet, so I move over to the window. People stand around in the front yard, some sitting on the curb, but the surf star isn’t anywhere among them.
“Maybe he came in through another door,” Alston says. “This place is a fucking maze. Do you want to go look for him?”
No, I don’t want to look for him because there’s no telling what he’ll say to me. I don’t want to find him because I don’t want to know why he’s even here. Every fiber of my being knows this is absolutely terrible, and finding, seeing, or speaking to Colby Taylor will simply just prove what my instinct already knows.
“Yeah,” I say, reluctantly. “We need to find him before he does something stupid. Does he normally go to Cove parties? I thought he lived like a hermit.”
Alston’s face answers my question before he even speaks. “The only public appearances he’s ever made were for Drenaline Surf. I don’t even know how to react to this,” he says.
I guess now that his secret is out, all bets are off. It’s scary, though, because everything is about to change. Drenaline Surf may be facing a lawsuit. Shark’s legacy and reputation are in danger of being damaged. And God forbid, if Colby’s parents actually win a case over him, we’ll all be homeless because the first thing he’ll sell off is the condo that Reed, Alston, A.J., and now I live in. I get why Vin was always leery of this whole thing – Colby Taylor’s name is on the mortgage. He holds all the cards.
“We’ll lay low,” Alston says, pulling me back into reality. “Just hang to the back of the room, wherever we go. If it gets bad, we find A.J. and bail.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say. “Lead the way.”
We follow a slim path through the first room, past the Greek goddess statue and a passed out teenage boy, into a small parlor room where two girls are making out on an antique sofa, and back into a main living area with a pool table. Some guys play beer pong and shout stupidly no matter what happens in the game. And that’s when I find Colby, indirectly. His voice seeps out of the speakers and ricochets off the walls of the mansion.
I grab Alston’s arm and drag him through the house, slamming into people along the way. Alston apologizes to them for me as I dash for the DJ booth. Colby gives Dominic a high five and that classic ‘one arm over the shoulder guy hug.’ There’s no way these two are friends. Colby doesn’t have any friends. Hell, I’m the closest thing he has to a friend. Colby has people who hide him, people he works for, and the girl who still tries to have faith in him. Dominic falls nowhere under those categories.
“I want you guys to give it up for my man, Dominic,” Colby says into the microphone. “We all have our demons, and we all have our own battles to fight, but you guys are looking at the next big thing in the surf world!”
As the cheers erupt around us, Colby grabs a red cup from someone nearby, raises it in a toast to Dominic, and then throws his head back, drinking the stolen beer. His face contorts, and his Adam’s apple bulges when he forces himself to swallow.
“Looks like he just came to party,” Alston says. “You want to bail?”
“Are you serious?” I ask. “We can’t leave. Colby doesn’t ‘come to party.’ He’s anti-parties. He’s one of those water-drinking, organic-food-eating, save-the-planet and go green people. He doesn’t party or drink or smoke. His body is his temple. This is not like him.”
People can say what they want about his lies and secrets, but they can’t deny that the boy is the perfect image of health and fitness. If he’s here to let loose and live a little, he’s going to end up living a lot more than a little.
“Alright, I’m going to find A.J. then,” Alston says. “Will you be okay or do you want me to hang around, just in case?”
“Go,” I tell him. I take a deep breath. “I’m going to do what I can to intervene.”
Thirty minutes later, I’ve reunited with Alston and A.J. I almost hoped they’d have Colby with them when we met back up, as I’ve yet to find him. When he stumbles out of a back bedroom, balancing himself with a pool stick, I decide it’s time to move in.
“We’ll hang back for security purposes,” Alston says. “He’ll listen to you before he would either of us. We’ll watch out for Dominic or anyone else who might try to get in the way.
”
Colby trips, slams into a wall, and rams the pool stick into the backside of a skinny blonde girl. She yells, and he holds his arms up in apology. He leaves the pool stick behind when he goes into the next room. A.J. nods and I decide to follow.
When I get through the room to where he stands, he holds out both arms, asking everyone to stand back while he shows them how it’s done. I’m pretty certain this is the first time he’s ever been drunk in his life. I doubt he’s had a ton to drink, but he was a clean slate before tonight. Even with a few beers, he’s long gone.
And that’s when it happens. Colby stretches his body over a coffee table – the kind of coffee table with a glass top. He braces each hand on the corners of one end, over where the wooden frame sits. Where there’s glass, there’s bound to be blood.
I force myself toward the table as quickly as I can, but the world moves in slow motion. As Colby pushes himself up onto the table as he would a surfboard, his right leg moves back, slipping. His foot dives through the glass, sending shards around him rather than ocean droplets. Girls scream and guys shout ‘hell yeahs’ as the table completely shatters and collapses under Colby’s body weight.
No one bothers to help as Colby scrambles to his feet. He pulls a small shard of glass out of his hand and wipes the blood on his shirt. Someone needs to just throw him in the pool, but as wasted as he is, he might not come back up.
A girl rushes into the room, screaming about the coffee table. It must be her house…or her parents’ house, more so. At this point, damage control isn’t an option. So I do the only thing I can. I find Alston and A.J., and we bail.
Chapter Seven
When I walk into Drenaline Surf the next morning, Topher leans over the counter, completely engaged in A.J.’s retelling of Colby’s coffee table disaster. I wonder how much of the truth he’s exaggerated, knowing A.J. Then again, the story itself is pretty insane without A.J.’s special touches.
“I swear to you,” A.J. says. “That fucking table went splat! And Taylor was right there on it, glass everywhere, bleeding. No lie.”
The pleading tone is A.J.’s voice cracks me up. I can only imagine the crazy stories he’s told Topher before, just to be proven wrong later. I wish this story was an exaggeration, but he nailed it. The table went splat, Colby was on it, and there was glass and blood. No lie.
Topher looks over at me as I make my way to the counter. “He’s serious?” he asks.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say, leaning against the counter next to A.J. “It really was that bad.”
“Damn,” Topher says. He heaves a heavy sigh and looks down at the cash register. “My brother is going to flip the fuck out when he hears about it.”
That’s exactly why I’m here at Drenaline Surf this morning. Regardless of Vin’s distance, I know he’s under a ton of pressure. He’s just signed a new surfer. He’s managing the careers of three guys. He’s trying to keep this store running, and now with talks of opening a second location, he’s pretty much drowning in Drenaline Surf. I wish he’d stop being too stubborn to ask someone for help. There’s no way he can handle all of this on his own. Colby Taylor alone is a full time job.
Sunlight pours into the room when the front entrance doors open. Enchanted Emily bursts in, hugging a newspaper against her pink tank top. The words ‘Young, Wild, and Free’ stretch around the bottom of the fabric.
“Have you guys seen this?” she asks, shaking the paper in her hand.
She rushes over, wedges in between A.J. and me, and plasters the paper down on the counter. Topher comes around on my other side to see.
Colby Taylor – Coffee Table Surf Star?
If the bolded, yellow headline wasn’t enough to make me cringe, the photo beneath it is. It’s definitely not a photographer’s photo. It’s fuzzy, taken from across the room, probably with a cell phone, but it’s clearly Colby face-planting with the table.
“Oh my God,” I say, dragging the words out slower than I meant to. “Vin can’t see this. Not yet. We need to be the ones to break it to him, not the Cove Gazette. How did they even have time to get this printed?”
“Tabloids work fast,” Emily says. “And it’s a local tabloid, no fancy printing company or anything. They do it all in-house. I sent Alex down The Strip to collect any and every issue he saw.”
I’m glad she’s dating Miles. It means she really has Drenaline Surf’s best interest at heart, even if it’s because of him.
“Alex?” I question.
“Summer Snow Alex,” Topher says. “The quirky blonde kid at the snowcone place. He’s Jace’s bassist. I wonder if this has hit SurfTube yet.”
Topher walks over to the flat screen TV that Vin installed a few months ago and flips it on. The only channel it has is SurfTube, but Vin thought it’d be a great added addition to the store, modern technology and all that. I feel like it takes away from Shark’s photography, but the guys have assured me that Shark would love to have SurfTube playing in his store 24/7.
Just as Topher assumed, the main news story is none other than Colby Taylor, the Coffee Table Surfer. Images of his collapse pop up on the screen, and I pray I’m not standing around in someone’s cell phone photo looking on in shock.
The screen then flashes to a blonde-haired girl with a microphone on the beach. She smiles the perfect newscaster smile. She looks more prepared for an acting audition in Hollywood than a story about the rise and fall of the west coast’s star surfer. The wind whips around her, sending her hair astray. She tucks it back behind her ear and speaks, but the TV is muted.
“But the real question is what drove Colby Taylor to this point,” she says, as Topher turns up the volume. “Is this a rebellious stunt in the wake of his parents’ return to his life? Is he lashing out over his disqualification in his most recent competition? Could he feel threatened by the uprising career of Miles Garrett or the recent sponsorship of longtime rival Logan Riley? Only time will tell. This is Bridget Parker reporting for SurfTube. Back to you guys in the studio.”
Topher mutes the TV again as images of Colby reappear on the screen. This is probably the part where the news anchors in the SurfTube studio all sit around and give their theories as to why Colby is behaving this way and what it will mean for Drenaline Surf as well as Colby’s individual career.
“This is all anyone is going to talk about at the sale this weekend,” I say. “So much for celebrating Logan’s arrival. Everyone’s going to be too busy talking about coffee tables.”
“Shit!” A.J. says. “Turn off the TV!”
Topher clicks it off and resumes his employee position behind the counter. He crumbles up the tabloid and tosses it away just as Vin enters the store through the back. That was dangerously close.
Vin stops and looks at us for a moment, as if he knows we’re totally up to something. Then he folds his arms over his chest. Yeah, he totally knows we’re up to something.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
A.J. shrugs and glances to Emily and me for an answer. I completely freeze. Luckily, Emily came prepared.
“We were just talking about the sale this weekend,” she says. “I helped Miles pass out flyers yesterday in Horn Island. We sent some to the music store with Jace. Should be a good turn out.”
And just as I think Vin is about to disappear into his office, Summer Snow Alex bursts into the store.
“I got ‘em!” he yells.
In his moment of pride and excitement, he stumbles on the metal under the door, and the load of papers in his arms burst into a firework of tabloids. They litter the floor of Drenaline Surf, and Colby Taylor becomes the new tile.
Vin slowly walks across the store, reaches a hand out to Alex, and helps him up. Then Vin pulls a paper from his pocket, unrolls it, and holds it up.
“Sorry, kid,” he says to Alex. “But you forgot one.”
Emily buries her face into her hands next to me. A.J. pats her on the shoulder in condolences. She crosses the room to help Alex clean up the ta
bloid mess on the floor as Vin walks back toward us. He simply shakes his head before going back into the office.
I refuse to let him accept defeat this way. There has to be some way I can help. There has to be something that Vin needs done that he can trust me with. He won’t live to see twenty-five if he keeps going at this rate. I follow him back to his office. I half-expect him to kick me out, but he simply looks over his shoulder and turns back to the wall.
“This is officially going to be the Wall of Shame,” he says, tacking Colby’s tabloid cover to the wall. “I wonder how many of these he can collect before his contract is up.”
Vin sits in his spinning chair, and I find a seat on the corner of his desk. Something has to give. Now.
“Look,” I say. “You can’t handle all of this on your own. I know, you think you can, and you’re stubborn, and you don’t want to make anyone else suffer, but this is ridiculous. You have too many people who want to help Drenaline Surf to keep pushing us away.”
Vin sighs and props his elbows on the desk. He buries his face in his hands, just like Emily’s defeated actions moments ago.
“As much as I want to let Taylor out of his contract, I can’t,” Vin says to the desk. Then he looks to me. “I don’t see any other way out of this mess. He’s the weak link that’s dragging us all down. I can’t manage him. He’s out of control.”
“Then let me,” I say. I’m not sure why I didn’t come up with this idea sooner. “I can be like your public relations person. Or an agent of sorts. Let me manage Colby and his career. I can go with him to appearances and interviews, make sure he says the right things, give press statements on his behalf. And he’ll listen to me. I can even help with Miles and Logan if you need me to.”
It’s crazy how I came here a year ago, hoping to find Colby and learn all of his secrets so I wouldn’t have to be a CEO slave to a company I hated. I had dreams of frame shops and driftwood, but these days, all I want is to be right here in the heart of Drenaline Surf. It’s bittersweet how dreams change with life experiences.
