I see a big beautiful wave approaching, and I get that familiar feeling of adrenaline pumping through my veins. I’m so ready to ride Evie out of my head, even if only for a few precious seconds. I get up on my board. Then, I’m on the wave, riding it, but my thoughts are still scattered, and the peace I crave is nowhere to be seen.
Instead, I see is Evie’s perfect fucking face and I hear her voice in my head with way more clarity than I need right now.
I just need her gone.
Do I really?
Yes. I just need to tell her what I have to tell her, and then we’re done. And doing this will finally close the door on her.
I won’t ever truly be over her. I’ll always love her. But I have to let her go now.
It’s on that thought that I hit the wave like a novice, and I’m flying off my board. Following in my rookie mistake, I don’t protect my head with my arms, and the board smacks me right in the face.
“Fuck!” My voice is gargled up with water, the shock of it momentarily stunning me, and then I’m kicking back up, breaking the surface.
“Jesus Christ,” I growl. I touch my hand to my face to make sure I’m not bleeding, but my eye is throbbing like a bitch.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
I reel my board in and get back up on it. I ride the whitewash back to shore.
I walk up the sand, dump my board on it, and drop down, lying on my back. I cover my face with my hands and let out a groan of frustration.
“Want to tell me why you just wiped out like a rookie?”
I move my hand away to see Grady standing over me, his overgrown gray hair dripping water on me.
“Not particularly.”
He leans in for a close inspection. “Gonna need some ice on that eye.”
“It’s fine.” I sit up. Knees bent, I link my hands over them and stare out at the surf. I envy the other surfers out there, enjoying their solitary freedom, while I’m trapped in my head.
Grady drops down to the sand beside me. “You wanna talk about what’s bugging the fuck out of you?”
Grady’s been a good friend to me over the years. Probably more like the father I never had.
After Evie left and things went to shit, I moved to Boston and went to Harvard like Ava and Eric wanted, but I always kept in touch with Grady. Part of it was that he was a link to Malibu, my link to Evie, even though he didn’t know where she was. She hadn’t only abandoned me back then. Somewhere along the way, Grady became my friend.
We surf together every weekend. Max usually comes with us when he’s not stuck in the office. He’s got a big case at the moment though, and it’s eating up his time. He’s an entertainment lawyer at his family’s company. Hates it just like I hate my job. Max and I were screwed from the second we both were born.
Letting out a sigh, I dig my toes into the sand. Staring ahead, I say, “Evie’s back.”
I haven’t said those words to anyone, not even Max, yet.
“Ah,” Grady says.
“Yeah.” I exhale. “She’s in Beverly Hills, working at the coffee shop in the fucking hotel I call home five days a week.”
“You talk to her?”
“For all the good it did me.”
“How is she?”
Of course he would want to know that. He cared about Evie, thought of her as one of his own, because that’s just how Grady is.
“She’s okay, I guess.” I shrug. “We didn’t really get around to the pleasantries.”
He nods. “She tell you where she’s been all these years?”
“San Francisco.”
“Not that far away,” he muses. “Did you get the answers you wanted? Why she left?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Not really. I got a lot of bullshit reasons but not the truth.”
“What was the bullshit?”
“That us getting married was too much too soon, and she panicked and ran.” My hand slips into the sand, and I curl a fist around the grains.
“Sounds plausible.”
I give him a look. “Sure, if she hadn’t upped and left with her whole family. Her panicking and leaving is one thing. Uprooting and moving when her sister was as sick as she was? It’s bullshit, Grady. It doesn’t make sense. It never did.”
“So, what could it be?”
I shrug. “You know, back then, I used to think that maybe it was…”
“Ava?”
“Mmhmm. I just…I don’t know anymore.” I blow out a breath.
Back when Evie first left, I did think that it could have been Ava’s doing. Of course, when I asked her, she denied all knowledge.
But, then, what could Ava have done or given to Evie to make her leave? To make them all leave?
Money?
It’s hard to believe that because Evie was never about money. If it were money, then I’m glad she left because she wouldn’t have been the person I thought I loved.
But, then, it’s not like she has money now. If she had money, then, she wouldn’t be working in a coffee shop.
Sometimes though, I feel like there’s a voice whispering the answer in the back of my mind, just slightly out of my reach.
Grady stares out over the water. “You know, you might never get the answers you want.”
I huff out a breath. Opening my fist, I let the grains run through my fingers. “Yeah, I know.”
“And did you…tell Evie?”
Grady is the only person who knows my secret. And the only reason he knows is because it was not long after I got back from Boston. I just bought the house. It was what would have been my and Evie’s third wedding anniversary. I got drunk off my ass, and I broke down and told him the truth.
Meeting his eyes, I shake my head.
“Fucking hell, Adam.” He sighs.
“Don’t give me shit, Grady. She turned up out of the blue after ten years. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.”
“That might be, but you’re thinking straight now. She might have left you, but this isn’t something you can keep to yourself. She has a right to know.”
Bowing my head, I run a hand through my hair. “I know.”
I’m just not sure how to tell her.
“You’re actually ditching me to go surfing with this chick?” Max complains from the living room.
“Stop being a whiny bitch. It’s just today. And we’ll probably see you down there anyway.” I get the orange juice out of the fridge and pour myself a glass.
“Yeah? When? In between you both sucking face?”
I let out a laugh. Walking over to the breakfast bar, I lean my stomach against it. “Jealous much? And you were the one who told me to ask her out.”
He rolls his eyes at me from his spot on the sofa. “Yeah, but I thought you’d just bang her and move on. That’s what you normally do.”
“Not this time.”
Max sits up, a look of shock on his face. “Holy shit. You haven’t fucked her, have you?”
I shake my head before taking a drink of my orange juice. “She’s only seventeen. And anyway, it’s not like that.”
“Not like what exactly?” He gives me a suspicious look.
I lift a shoulder, unable to explain it or anything about what I’m feeling for Evie. “I don’t know. She’s just…different.” I turn from him, putting my glass in the sink.