I pass a construction worker holding a “slow” sign and subconsciously speed up. Like a girl can really slow down when she is running away from her heart and her mind. Knowing I can’t escape either, I begin to cry in a loud, pathetic sort of way I didn’t even know I was capable of, all the while subconsciously pressing my foot down onto the pedal harder.
I look to the sky and silently beg the one above for some sort of answer.
The phone’s still ringing, and in a moment of desperation, I figure to hell with it. I grab my purse, yanking it into my lap. Alternating between looking up at the road and then down at the purse in my lap, I finally pull the phone out from its hiding place. Glancing at the screen, I notice it's Gwen. A smile slowly creeps across my face as a few more tears roll down my cheek. Hitting accept, I turn my attention back to the road in front of me.
I don’t blink. I don’t breathe. My eyes widen as my best friend's voice comes through the phone. My foot hits the break, my ears hear the crash, and then there is darkness.
Chapter One
Eva
6 Months Earlier
Standing at the end of the pier, I take a moment and get lost in the ocean’s ever-changing waters. Watching as they change from dark blue to green is hypnotizing. It puts me at ease and calms every thought in my mind. I’ve always loved how with every wave that crashes into the pillars, the ocean churns and gives way to light blue and then white. Releasing a sigh, I take a deep breath and tell myself what I always do standing at the edge of this pier.
This is where I belong.
I continue to watch the seaweed swaying beneath the ocean’s glistening glow. When the crisp breeze picks up enough, the mist from the waves dampens my skin.
Orange County is home, even if my mailing address tells the world differently.
Overhead, the seagulls call out to one another. They fly out across the water to places unknown, their secret hideout will forever be a mystery to the people below them. Glancing around, I’m suddenly aware that the pier is more crowded than normal, and lots of people have decided to gather tonight to watch the sunset. Tourists with cameras in hand gawk and point at the amazing sight. Locals might take the sunset for granted as they hurry around in their busy lives, but it still steals their breath when they slow down long enough to look at the paradise around them.
I wouldn’t label myself a tourist, more like a relocated local. I make sure everyone knows I was forced to leave what I view as utopia, the end of the rainbow if you will, as a preteen when my father got a job transfer he couldn’t pass up. My parents moved me and my older brother to northern California to start a new life. It’s something I vow to never let them live down.
I love it here in my hometown. The ocean is in my veins: the rise and fall of the waves, the salty mist that engulfs your body, the way the noise from the birds and people mix together in complete harmony. These things make up who I am and all I could ever want to be. When I am here, I can breathe, the deep soul-confirming, this is where I belong, type of breathing. Something I never feel up north.
The last of the sun slips beneath the glistening horizon. I gather my thoughts the best I can, and with light disappointment, I reluctantly turn to leave the pier. It’s later than I expected, and I told Gwen I would meet her at Longboards, a local pub on the main drag, just a few minute's walk from the pier.
Gwen and I have known each other since I moved north. The two of us bonded immediately, and there is nothing we don’t share. We’ve absolutely been through it all: first loves and first heartbreaks, the experiential stages of high school and early college, Gwen’s parents’ endless fights and threats of divorce, and even family tragedies like when death stole Gwen’s younger sister in a sudden car crash a few years back. We haven’t known each other our whole lives, but the bond between us is strong. She’s my best friend, my sister. The one person I know I can always trust, always rely on.
We both applied to the same college straight out of high school: Long Beach State. We had dreams of southern California beach life. We even looked for apartments and picked out a few contenders, positive we’d ride off together towards SoCal. We were so sure that the best was yet to come, and we were confident we’d conquer it all together.
Gwen was accepted, but I got a rejection letter.
We looked the same on paper, and there was no explanation. It was just one of those things. The rejection was not nearly as bad as the fact that Gwen got to live out my dream of moving south while I was forced to stay in the mud and dirt of northern California.
Still, it gave me added reasons to visit and move if I could ever afford it. Trying to survive in northern California is hard enough, the amount of money you needed to sustain a life in SoCal is insane. I have my savings, and recently, I started taking steps to hopefully make a move possible. I took a gamble and applied for a position at the L.A. Times.
My degree in journalism is the one thing in life I’m the most proud of. It’s the one thing I drown myself in when everything else around me won’t stop spinning. It’s the one thing I won’t allow myself to give up on.
A reporter position at the L.A. Times is all I’ve ever wanted, and even though they responded and said they found another candidate, I asked if they wouldn’t mind keeping my resume on file, or if I could follow up with them later to see if things had changed. Which is why I’m keeping it my little secret and not telling anyone for now. Not even my hotheaded crazy best friend, who’s waiting for me at one of our routine meeting places.
It’s packed when I walk into Longboards. That’s what Saturday nights are like at any bar on Main Street. I train my eyes in the direction of the bar, searching the faces for a glimpse of Gwen. With no luck, I look around at the tables near the back and eventually see her cozied up in the corner with some bar hound I am sure she only met a few minutes earlier.
Gwen catches my eye and immediately waves me over. “Ev, Ev … over here!”
Maneuvering my way through the thick crowd, my annoyance thickens as drunken men and drunker women bump into me. Orange County is a tourist destination, that’s obvious. But even people who live inland come to the beach on the weekends, making an already crowded location even more hectic—and most times insanely frustrating.
The bar life annoys the hell out of me, although Gwen loves it. She thrives on it. The thrill it gives her is enough to make me laugh and endure it at least a few times when we finally get the chance to hang out together.
“I was just talking to … What’s your name again,” Gwen asks her flavor of the night as I approach the table. She is already slurring, having taken no time starting the night off without me.
“Excuse me … I’m talking to you! What’s your name?” she continues pestering the stranger, poking the poor guy in the ribs. His attention is already elsewhere, on some younger, early-twenty-something, batting her eyelashes at him from a table close by.
“Tom, the name’s Tom,” he says, barely glancing back at Gwen.
I throw my purse on an open chair at the table and then proceed to take off my coat, cautiously sizing up the situation in front of me. This is not exactly what I wanted to encounter on what was supposed to be a girls’ night out, but I’ll go with it as long as I can figure out a way to ditch the stereotypical man-whore later.
