High Tide

Chapter 7 [The Visit]

Chapter 7

The Visit

July turned into August pretty darn quick.

Between surfing with the boys all day, chatting with Hannah on Skype in the evenings and practicing on her new – well, new for her at least – guitar whenever she could get a spare moment, the next two weeks rolled by without Avery really noticing them.

She was really getting along well with the guys, especially Jamie, Stefan and Brandon. They didn't care that she was a 'Kook' – a newbie surfer – or that she was the only girl in the group. She was just one of the boys and to be honest, it was really refreshing.

She was doing a lot of progress with her surfing too. The boys were definitely teaching her a lot. She could not only paddle out to sea and actually stand on a surfboard now, but a few times she was able to complete a few easy tricks as well.

On August 6th, Avery caught herself staring at the calendar on her phone. She could hardly believe she'd been here a whole month already. Soon she'd be starting school again, which would be a whole new adjustment to get used to.

"I'm heading off to work," Lydia called out from the downstairs landing. "Charlie will be home at three o'clock this afternoon!" she added.

"Okay, have fun!" Avery called back, popping her head around the corner in the hallway so that she was looking down the stairs at Lydia.

"There are leftovers in the fridge and emergency money on the counter," Lydia added, going over her mental checklist one last time.

"We'll be fine, I've got this, go or you'll be late!" Avery smirked.

"Okay, okay, I'm gone, be good!" Lydia sighed.

For two weeks, Charlie worked the night shifts at the police station, which meant he was home during the day while Lydia was at the vet clinic. Today was Charlie's first day back on the day shift and Lydia was nervous about letting the two girls – specifically Marissa – be by themselves for even just a few hours.

When Lydia was gone, Avery returned to her room, picking her guitar out of its case. It really was a beautiful instrument; there were obvious signs that it was over twenty years old and that it'd been used a lot, but that only made Avery love it all the more. This was Charlie's first guitar, the one he worked a whole summer to get in some music shop back in the early 90s. At one point in his life, the guitar meant the world to him, and now it was hers.

She sat down on her bed and started strumming the strings, the fingers of her left hand forming different chords as she did so, stumbling a little on some of the ones she wasn't completely familiar with.

Marissa came in moments later, hopped on the bed next to her sister and nodded her head to the beat, waiting until the start of a new verse to sing along with the melody.

"You're getting really good!" Marissa grinned when the song was over, taking a spare pick from Avery's guitar case with an eager look on her pretty face. "Can you show me how to do a couple chords?" she asked.

"Maybe later," Avery shrugged, putting the guitar away and pushing the case underneath her bed. "Right now I want some breakfast... and then we're going to the beach," she explained.

"Are you hanging out with Asher again?" Marissa smirked, her eyebrows rising knowingly... not that there was anything to know...

"...and other guys too, not just Asher," Avery huffed, trying to hide the flush on her cheeks from Marissa, lest she start pestering her some more. She made her way to the dresser and pulled her hair up into a messy bun, spinning around on her heels and grinning. "What are you hungry for? Maybe Lydia and Charlie have some more pancake mix, and I know they've got blueberries in the fridge."