The Summer Before Senior Year

Seth

"You guys are dating?!" Xavier exclaimed as soon as Riley was out of earshot.

"Yeah." I breathed. "You have a problem with that?"

"You mean like feelings and stuff?"

"Are you a dimwit or a you just fucking deaf?" I asked and heard a loud chuckle from my right - Vincent.

"You're telling me, Xavier, that you never knew Winters had a thing for Riley?" he questioned Xavier.

Wow, I didn't know I was that obvious.

"Not like anyone ever told me or anything." he replied rolling his eyes.

"God knows you think like the stereotypical blonde." Vince muttered but I heard it which made me laugh because of Xavier's sake. God, that guy really needed some help.

Vince and Xavier left me to surf a little as they'd brought their boards - how I didn't think of that was beyond me - so I went in search of Riley. I mean I could at least have fun with my girlfriend, right?

Girlfriend.

God that felt so good to say out loud. Riley Cormack is my girlfriend - no, screw that, I'm Seth Winters, Riley's boyfriend. I was wearing an ear-splitting grin because of how she'd just asked me unconventionally and in front of people. I believed that relationships should be personal and kept private which was the main reason I hated PDA.

After about ten minutes of moving around the beach with no sight of Riley, my eyes finally landed on a familiar face - Kat.

"Kat!" I called out and started moving in her direction but she didn't seem to hear me.

"Kat!"

"KAT!"

It was on a closer look that I saw that her ears were plugged in and I knew how loud Beats were especially when you wanted to tune the whole world out. I finally got to her and tapped her only to get a shriek.

"Jesus Christ! What the hell is wrong with you?" she pulled off her headphones.

"Absolutely nothing. You're the one who thinks it's okay to walk around in a beach filled with people with music blaring in your ears!" I countered. "What if you were close to the water when the tide was high or something, huh?"

Her silence was all I needed to continue my rant.

"Exactly." I ran my fingers through my hair frantically before continuing, "Look do you know where Riles is? I've been looking for her for over two hours and I haven't heard a peep from her."

"Last I saw her she came to return Em's car keys to her."

"She went home?"

"Yup," she said popping the 'p', "and if you need any help looking, I'm right over there." she pointed to a couple of beach towels not too far off.

I thanked her immediately before continuing my search. When the sun began to set and I still hadn't seen her, I began to worry more than I already was. She wasn't replying any of my texts or picking her calls. At some point when my feet were tired and I'd sunk into the sand, I saw a mass of red curls in the distance. Hoping it was Riley, I quickly made my way over to her to hear her crooning softly to a tune I could pinpoint as Lana Del Rey. Ugh. Don't blame me, she loved the woman to death and constantly played her tunes whenever I let her pick the music. But she told me her reason and it made perfect sense to me - she listened to her more than ever when her moods were extreme. Extremely sad, happy or whatever, that was when she could relate to her. Something about how her life couldn't be as bad as what Lana had to experience at a young age. I couldn't stand her voice anyway - it was too...depressing.