CHAPTER 4
WESTON
“You’ll call as soon as you get settled in, right?”
“I’ll call, I promise,” I say, setting the last bag of my things in the back of my truck. Not that I had many to begin with. Only three duffle bags and a suitcase. The guesthouse I’ll be living in comes fully furnished, so all I needed to bring were my clothes and my board, really.
“You sure you don’t want us to come with you?” Carter asks.
“Nah. I think I’ll probably be pretty tired tonight, so I’ll want to unpack and chill.”
Penelope offers me a closed-lip smile as she presses off my tailgate and throws her arms around my neck. “I’m proud of you,” she whispers.
I return the embrace, squeezing her lightly. “Thank you.”
Neither Penelope nor I am particularly affectionate people. I don’t like to talk about my feelings, and she can always tell when it’s not a good time to ask. I think she understands me a little better than Carter does, and I appreciate that. He’s an open book, eager to voice any thought running through his mind and pull all of mine from me too.
Penelope helps rein that in a little. She gets it—the desire to process things alone—so she didn’t push me when I told them I wanted space to myself tonight, and I’d prefer they wait until next weekend to drive out to Pacific Shores—my new home.
“I do think it’s a little odd that we haven’t been able to get ahold of him all day, though. What if he forgot I was coming? I don’t want to show up unannounced.”
Carter spoke to Leo over a month ago about my training with him for the summer. It was a long shot, but Leo was able to make time for me in his training schedule and offered to mentor me in exchange for my working in his family’s surf shop through August.
Leo and his wife, Darby, offered to let me stay in the guesthouse on their property, with the stipulation that if I fucked up, if I didn’t do my job well, or didn’t take training seriously, he’d send me packing.
I think they checked in a couple of times since we decided on today’s move-in date, but when Carter called to confirm this morning, there was no answer, and we haven’t heard back yet.
Carter rubs his neck. “It’s not like Leo to avoid a phone call, but it’s also not like him to forget something like this, either. He may just be busy today.” He shrugs. “I gave you his number, I’d try him again when you’re closer to town. I told him you’d be arriving around four so he should be keeping an eye out.”
“All right.” I sigh. “Feels odd to be showing up at the house of someone I’ve never met before and just suddenly... move in.”
“Well, technically you’re living in their guesthouse, so it’s not like you’re livingwiththem,” Carter begins.
“And you’ve met them before,” Penelope adds, pulling back from me. Her auburn hair is slicked back into a low bun, emerald eyes squinting in the sunlight as she peers up at me, crossing her arms at her chest and stepping up the curb and onto the sidewalk.
I cock my head at them, trying to think back to when I could’ve met Leo Graham.
I think I would’ve fucking remembered. He’sLeo Graham. He was the face of American Surfing for years, and his training program is one of the most prestigious in the world. Multiple Olympians credit him with their medals.
Of course, I’d heard of Leo Graham—anyone who follows the sport of surfing has. I called it fate when my life fell apart and I was placed into a foster family who just happened to be friends with the man himself. The one silver lining in my life at that time was convincing myself I was destined to be a surfer. Ihadto be. It was the only way I could make sense of all the bad shit, I took it as a sign that something good could come out of it.
I could train with Leo Graham. I could be a world champion. An Olympian.
I dreamed of working with him, but I was too young then. I never got the chance to train beneath him, but I was confident he’d take me under his wing after I won Worlds when I was seventeen. I planned on joining one of his camps that following summer... until my entire life fell apart again. Though, that time it was my fault, and I sure as fuck paid the price.
“We went to Disneyland on Christmas that first year you lived here. You met everyone,” Penelope says before sighing. “Though, I suppose it all ended up being a bit much that day, it’s okay if it’s fuzzy.”
Flashes of it filter across my memory. There were so many people I didn't know. Too many names to remember. Too much noise. I was still too raw. Scared. Broken.
It was my first Christmas without my mother. They were all family, and I didn’t belong.
We ended up leaving before anyone else because I was struggling, and I felt guilty about it the entire drive home, eventhough Carter and Penelope tried to reassure me it was okay. I know they felt guilty for putting me in the position to begin with.
The first six months were hard. They’d never had kids. I’d never had a safe place to live. None of us knew what we were doing or what our family dynamic was supposed to look like. There were a lot of things I blocked out, things I can’t remember even if I wanted to, because my life felt like too much at the time.
What I still recall, though, is the devastation that flashed across Carter’s eyes the first time he tried to touch me and I thought he might hit me. Or the way I made Penelope cry when I cried because she dropped a ceramic plate in the kitchen and it shattered. I thought we’d both get in trouble. It felt like reality was short-circuiting when Carter simply grabbed a broom and a dustpan, sweeping up the broken shards before kissing his wife on the mouth and promising me it was okay.
Nothing in my life had ever been okay before.
