Chasing Forever Down (Great White Surf Saga, #1) [Wattpad Featured Story] | ✔

Chapter 16: The Brooks Brothers

I check my teeth one last time in the visor mirror, and Reed laughs from the driver's seat. A group of girls in short shorts and bikini tops pass by, and I realize I'm totally overdressed. I leave my T-shirt in the Jeep and hold back any smart remarks for Reed's laughing at me since he had the decency to wait for me to brush my teeth four times. Linzi bailed on me long before.

She's lingering around a lit up palm tree with Alston once we push through the crowd and onto the deck behind the beach house. I scan the crowd for A.J. I'm certain he's here somewhere, but I don't see him.

"Hey!" Linzi squeals out. She rushes over and hugs me like we're long lost friends, and I'm starting to feel like we are. She wasn't pulling me out of the ocean when A.J. flipped our jet ski. She wasn't fighting through the stinging sand with me after it stormed and we all thought Colby was dead. And she definitely didn't do me any good when it came time to sell raffle tickets for Reed. The only thing she's done worth a damn is keep Alston from getting in my way.

Her eyes sparkle under her silver eye shadow, but her face is serious. "We need to talk," she whispers.

She tells Alston over her shoulder that we'll be back and pulls me through the mass of partiers with a grip on my wrist. I can't imagine what's wrong. Maybe our parents found out we're here or Colby found out or Alston ratted us out to the surf star and hell is going to explode tonight or God I can't even think.

We walk out about twenty feet from the house, and she sits in the sand while steadily twirling that purple flower ring in and out of her blonde hair. I pull my knees up close to me when I sit, and I wait for the worst.

"Why are we still here?" she asks, her eyes on the dark ocean. It swishes like black paint, trying to decide what abstract design it wants to splatter onto the canvas. Swishing back and forth, back and forth.

I don't have a real answer for her. We have time to kill. And I don't want to leave. Not this weekend, not this summer, not ever.

"Better yet, why haven't you mentioned Colby Taylor in like...the last three days?" She turns to face me now. "I know I've been hanging out with Alston and all, but wasn't finding Colby sort of like our purpose for being here? Wasn't this trip all about finding him?"

It was. When we followed a gum-stained receipt and a left over coffee cup, it was. When we stalked a band into a dark alleyway with a broken streetlight, it was. And when we crossed the California line and saw him on the billboard and listened to Enchanted Emily talk about his bodyguards, it was. But now...

"I thought it was," I say. "But now I think it's really more about finding myself."

"How poetic," Linzi says. She stares at me with this look of confusion and what-the-fuck-are-you-serious. "So we're just chilling and you're not concerned with finding him after we lied our way across America? Hell, you even made it through A.J. You're the first. Isn't that some sort of cosmic sign that you're supposed to find Colby?"

I trace circles in the sand with my finger. I haven't made it through Vin. Isn't that some sort of cosmic sign?

"Maybe. Or maybe I was supposed to get through A.J. because he needed a friend. Or maybe... I don't know," I admit.

Music thumps from behind us, and someone attempts to tune a guitar. The speakers screech across the night, and Linzi cringes at the same moment I do.

"Let's head back in there before it gets too crowded to find the guys," I suggest. "Alston's probably already having withdrawals from your absence."

She laughs and jumps up, fairy hopping back toward the house and assuring me that whatever mission I'm on, whether it involves Colby or not, she's totally on my side. Reed is busy doing his public relations for Strickland's Boating, so I don't interrupt. Instead, I follow Linzi back to Alston, who is talking about surfing and parasailing with a group of guys he says he knows from school. He introduces Linzi, slips his arm around her, and she's back in paradise while I hang back outside of their little clique. These two minutes stretch onward, allowing me to listen to all of the random conversations passing me by – "Did you see what she's wearing?" "Oh, I know he didn't just kiss her." "This beer tastes like horse piss."