CHAPTER 1
WESTON
Iwonder if I'm an adversary or a welcomed friend to the water that laps at my fingers, splitting around the atoms of my flesh and bone before rejoining behind my palm, continuing its tidal journey toward the shore.
I wonder if it’s all connected, each droplet aware of the others. I wonder if they’re aware of me, and if I’m a disruption to their peaceful way of life. Or maybe, I’m connected to them too. Sitting atop ocean waves is the closest I’ve ever been to peace. Perhaps it’s simply the water sharing its tranquility with me. Maybe it knows I won’t find it elsewhere.
If the moon can connect with the tides, who's to say the tides can’t connect with me too?
Penelope believes in shit like that, I think. That we’re all just pieces of stardust stuck together in human form, and the true purpose of life is our search for other pieces of stardust that feel like home.
But maybe I was never stardust. Maybe I was an ocean wave.
“Wes? You good? Want to head back?” The sound of Carter’s voice floats to my ears from behind, and I turn to find himwatching me curiously, head tilted. His hands curl around the edges of his board as a swell rolls beneath him.
It looked like a nice one, and I realize now, I let it coast past me as I’d been staring at the water, lost in thought. I turn back around, lifting my head toward the horizon. It’s early, so the sun rise is behind us, casting light over the Pacific. I inhale the fresh salt air, remembering a time when the concept of deep breath, seawater, and a surfboard were all but foreign to me. An unreachable desire, an undiminishable craving. There weren’t even pockets of peace in those years. The day I stepped out of those thick steel doors and tasted that ocean breeze again for the first time in too long, I swore to myself that I’d never take it for granted.
“I’m good!” I call behind me. “You can head back if you want, though.”
He doesn’t respond immediately, but after a moment, I hear the precise rhythm of paddling before the tip of his board floats past me, and Carter appears at my side. His black wetsuit is zipped to his neck, just like mine. He runs a hand through the dark curls tousled on the top of his head, the slivers of silver at his temples glistening in the early morning light. “Nah, I’m here with you. Unless you want me to leave?”
I wish he’d stop treating me with kid gloves. When I was in my teens, he was adamant I never be out on the water on my own. He’d spend hours—entire days—out here with me, no matter how much I’d bitch and moan about wanting to be left alone. Now, I never have to fight for space. I never have to fight at all. Every meal I eat, every place I want to go, everything I want to do—it’s like my former foster parents are at my beck and call.
It’s never what I wanted from them.
I just wanted to be treated like any other kid, and I know there can’t be any other unemployed, fresh-out-the-slammer,no-future-to-speak-of twenty-year-old out there who is as fucking spoiled as I am.
“What doyouwant to do right now, Carter?” I ask, though it comes out snappier than I intend. I take a breath before continuing. “Do you actually want to be out here surfing, or would you rather go back to bed with your wife?”
“Pep doesn’t let me back in bed after I’ve been covered in salt water.” He flashes me a grin, then frowns, jaw tightening. “Do you know what I actually want, Weston?” When I don’t answer, he continues, “I want you to recover from this in whatever way you can. I don’t know what that looks like, and I don’t know how to make it work for you, but I want—desperately—for you to be better.”
I shrug, unsure how to respond or comfort him. I don’t have the answers either.
In the past six months since being released from jail, I’ve tried individual and group therapy, living on my own in one of the apartments Carter and Penelope own above their art gallery, living with Carter and Penelope themselves, and I’ve tried community college. None of it panned out. The only thing that makes me feel okay is sitting out here on a surfboard. It’s the only time my past feels escapable. It’s the only time I’m not eaten alive by the reminder of the future I gave up in a regrettable act of revenge.
“When you were placed with us, you were this broken, mute fourteen-year-old kid who’d gone through something fucking unspeakable.” Carter sighs. “We thought we might have nothing more to offer you than a bed and a roof, but over the years . . . you bloomed into this funny, smart, driven young man. A good student. An incredible athlete. A champion. You’re kind and caring and thoughtful. Then . . .”
I look down at my board, unwilling to make eye contact. I know what he means. I know I threw it all away too. I know I’m a different person now than I was before it happened.
“Now, we’ve got you back, but it feels like you’re that broken boy again, and what put you back together last time doesn’t seem to work now. The wounds cut deeper, and I’m not sure I have the equipment to stitch you up. I need you to help me out.”
I shake my head, watching again as the water splits and glides around my legs where they dangle off my board. If I thought I might be a friend earlier, I certainly feel like an adversary now.
“Surfing is the only thing that makes me feel okay. I know I threw away any future I had in the sport. I know my title was stripped, and it can be nothing more than a hobby to me now...” I lift my head, meeting his hazel-eyed gaze. “But out here is the only time I feel like I might be healing—like I could be capable of it.”
He studies me for a moment, a deep furrow setting in his thick brows before he nods curtly. As if my explanation were enough. At least for now.
I’ve been working as an assistant to Carter, picking up shifts in his and Penelope’s art gallery, Muse, but I know it’s not enough. I can’t keep living with them and offering nothing more than a bit of half-assed free labor.
I need to get a real job, which isn’t easy with my record and lack of work experience.
I turn toward the horizon, studying the oncoming swells, assuming our conversation is over and hoping that Carter might save the heavy shit for when we return home.
But just as I lower to my board, his voice rings out among the waves, “What if I told you this didn’t have to only be a hobby? What if I told you that you could still have a future in surfing?”
CHAPTER 2
WILLOW
