Laguna Cove

  “Hey.” She looked over to see Chris coming out of the water. His hair was slicked back, his board was under his arm, and even though she was trying not to stare, his body was cut, tanned, and totally amazing. “Glad to see we’re still on. It’s a good day to learn; the swells are kind of small,” he said, smiling.

  “I didn’t really know what to bring,” she said nervously, trying not to gawk at his six-pack abs. “So I just brought some sunscreen and a towel.”

  “No worries,” he said. “I’ve got everything you need.”

  And when he smiled, she thought it might very well be true.

  chapter twenty-two

  Ellie’s coaching lesson was not going well and it probably had a little something to do with the deep pool of regret she was currently wading in. Not to mention the hangover that had her not only fatigued and nauseous, but seriously longing to climb back into bed, pull the covers over her head, and forget about surfing, Surf Fest, and just about everything else.

  It was Duncan, not her dad, who’d woken her this morning. And just hearing his voice had brought it all back. Her father was already at the hospital and her brother apparently didn’t answer the phone anymore, so finally on the fifth ring she reached over and croaked, “Hello?”

  “Ellie, did I wake you?” he’d said.

  “Um yeah. Kind of. What time is it?” she’d asked.

  “Ten thirty.”

  “Oh my God,” she’d said, throwing off the sheets and jumping out of bed way too fast for her compromised condition. “Um, I gotta go. Can we talk later?” She fell back onto the mattress, gripped the edge, and closed her eyes against the banging in her head.

  “Sure. I’ll call you later,” he’d said, sounding disappointed.

  Oh, God. If that upset him, just wait ’til I tell him the truth, that I made a huge mistake and should never have kissed him, she’d thought, feeling bad about the prospect but glad that she could put it off for a few more hours.

  And now, out there in the ocean, all she wanted to do was float on her board, with the sun beating against her skin like a warm blanket while the gentle waves rocked her to sleep. She could think of nothing better.

  “Maybe we should cut this short today,” her coach, Lina, said.

  “I’m sorry.” Ellie slowly lifted her head and squinted at her. “I had kind of a rough night. And to be honest, I wasn’t really into this to begin with. This was all pretty much my dad’s idea.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Not a problem.” Lina shrugged. “Either way, I’m still getting paid. But if you ever decide to get serious, give me a call,” she said, heading for shore.

  “Hey! Excuse me!” Ellie yelled after her. “But for your information, I am serious!” She sat up on her board and glared at the back of Lina’s head, but all the while she wondered if it was true.

  chapter twenty-three

  Lola was almost out the door when she heard her mother call, “Lola? Can you come here for a minute?”

  Oh God, I was so close, she thought, dutifully turning around and heading back into the kitchen to see what she could possibly want now.

  “Oh, there you are,” her mother said, leaning against the kitchen counter and sipping something out of a blue ceramic mug that Lola assumed contained her usual herbal tea concoction. “Did your friend get home okay last night?”

  “What?” Lola squinted at her mom. “Oh, yeah,” she said, suddenly remembering how she’d lied about Anne being sick. “Thanks for understanding,” she added.

  Her mother nodded. “I’m sorry you had to leave so early There was someone there I wanted you to meet. So I gave him your number.”

  “What?” Lola dropped her beach bag onto the floor and stared at her. She can’t be serious. Please, dear God, don’t let her be serious!

  “His name is Diego. He is the son of one of your father’s associates. He’s just a year ahead of you and I really think you two will hit it off.” She smiled excitedly.

  “But,” Lola began, trying to think of a really good reason for why this could never, ever happen.

  But she hesitated too long and her mom continued, “His family lives in Palos Verdes Estates and he has plans to go to Columbia University next year,” she said, taking a sip of tea and watching Lola closely.

  “Okay, and what does any of this have to do with me?” Lola asked calmly, trying to hide her mounting panic. “I mean, why do I have to meet him?” As far as Lola was concerned, she wasn’t feeling very single right now, despite the fact that she’d just been dumped.

  “Because I think it’s important.”

  Lola took a deep breath and stared at her mother. She knew what this was about. Her mother had obviously found a nice Mexican boy who came from a good (i.e., wealthy, i.e., respectable) family, and she had absolutely no regard for the fact that Lola had recently had her heart ripped to shreds and wasn’t exactly interested in meeting anyone right now. Okay maybe her mom didn’t know any of that because she hadn’t exactly told her, but still. How could she do this to her?

  “It’s a shame you had to leave early to take your friend home,” her mom continued, giving Lola a look that said she hadn’t bought the story for one measly second. “Anyway, you should hear from him today or tomorrow. And Lola, when he asks you out, I expect you to say yes.”

  Lola just stood there, staring at her mother, knowing there was no way to win this one.

  chapter twenty-four

  Jade sat on her beach towel observing her friends. Anne was out there with Chris, doing surprisingly well. And according to Jade’s unofficial count, Anne fell off Chris’s longboard only a handful of times, which was pretty amazing for her very first day. But then again, it also seemed like Chris had found like a million reasons to hold on to her—like, way more than necessary.

  Then there was Ellie, not doing much of anything but bobbing in the water, trying to act like she wasn’t watching Chris and Anne, even though it was totally obvious that she was completely obsessed. Even from the vantage point of her towel, Jade could see Ellie’s head swiveling around, watching their every move. She must be feeling pretty lousy right about now, Jade thought, remembering her friend’s surprising behavior the night before. If it were anybody else, it wouldn’t even be worth remembering. That’s what parties were for! But Ellie wasn’t just anybody—she held herself to a pretty impossible standard and up until last night, she’d managed to stick to it.

  But it was Duncan that Jade really felt sorry for. Especially when he’d figure out that Ellie wasn’t into him, that she was just using him to get back at Chris. Jade knew that Duncan had been crushing on Ellie for about as long as Ellie had been crushing on Chris. It was just so damn obvious that she couldn’t understand why nobody else could see it.

  She applied more sunscreen and lip balm, then lay back on her towel, closing her eyes against the sun. Why is it so hard for people to stop lying to themselves? she wondered.

  “Hey, Jade.” Lola dropped her towel right next to hers.

  “What’s up?” Jade peered at her friend, knowing for sure that something was definitely not going right in her life.

  Lola just shrugged and dug through her beach bag, pulling out a stack of magazines that could stock an entire newsstand—ELLEgirl, InStyle, Latina, SG, Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, People, Shop Etc., Lucky …

  “Your bag must weigh thirty pounds,” Jade laughed, reaching for one. “House & Garden?”

  “Hey, I’m an addict. Any glossy will do,” Lola said, putting on a straw cowboy hat to shade her face from the sun. “Oh, and have I mentioned that my mother has expanded her parental duties?”

  “Oh no,” Jade said. Lola’s mother gave new meaning to the word “ambitious.”

  “Oh yes.” Lola nodded. “She’s now appointed herself as my very own dating director slash life coach.”

  “No way.” Jade stared at her friend.

  “Apparently she has a wonderful young man all lined up for me. So I now have the pleasure of sitting by my cell,
breathlessly awaiting a call from Diego—the best thing to come out of Mexico City since my dad.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and lay back on her towel. “Little does she know, I put my phone on vibrate so I won’t have to hear it ring. He can just leave a message for all I care.”

  “Oh, that does not sound promising,” Jade said, looking at her friend with sympathy. “But maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.”

  Lola opened one eye and looked at her. “Jade, you’ve met my mother. I think we both know how bad it will be!”

  “Oh, you know I hate negative thoughts, but this time you’re probably right,” she agreed.

  “My life is a disaster.” Lola shook her head and placed her hat completely over her face. “Tell you what, I’ll just lie here with my eyes closed and you tell me if you see or read anything interesting. I just need to zone out for a while, but I swear I’m listening.”

  “Something interesting … Okay, well, my across-the-street neighbor keeps walking up and down the beach. This is now her fourth or fifth lap.”

  “Maybe she’s just exercising,” Lola said from under her hat.

  “No, I think it’s more about showing off her new boobs—those don’t come cheap, you know. Okay, and Chris and Anne have been in the water for a while now, he’s teaching her to surf, and believe it or not, she’s actually pretty good. So good, in fact, that he probably does not need to be holding her quite as much as he is, which indicates something else entirely.”

  “What?”

  “That Chris is totally into Anne,” Jade said, impatiently.

  “Chris and Anne?” Lola asked, removing her hat and opening one eye.

  “Yup. So much for my big plans.” Jade sighed and looked back toward the water.

  “What plans?” Lola looked at her.

  “Nothing,” Jade said quickly, not wanting to share with Lola how she’d failed miserably at her own lame matchmaking attempt.

  “Okay, continue. This is getting good,” Lola said, replacing her hat.

  “Okay, and poor Ellie has been bobbing out there for what must be hours now.”

  “Bobbing? Not surfing?” Lola’s voice sounded muffled from beneath the straw.

  “Not surfing. She’s through with surfing. Well, at least for today. And it appears that her coach has abandoned her.”

  “Should we swim out there and talk to her?”

  “No.” Jade shook her head. “I have a feeling she just wants to be left alone. And Lola, I hate to break it to you, but your bag is vibrating.”

  chapter twenty-five

  Realizing her fingers and toes were completely shriveled from way too many hours spent in the water, Ellie hopped on her board and rode her last, and possibly best, wave of the day.

  Dragging her board up the beach, she stopped to watch three little tow-headed kids bury their father in the sand.

  “Hey, Ellie!”

  She looked over to see Jade, Lola, Anne, and Chris lying on their towels, laughing and talking. Seeing Anne and Chris like that, with their towels pushed so close together, made her stomach go all weird again. But now that they’d seen her she had no choice but to go over and say a quick hello.

  “Hey,” she said, giving a little wave.

  “How’d the coach work out?” Chris asked.

  Ellie dropped her board on the sand and shrugged. “I guess I just wasn’t feeling very into it today.”

  “Maybe Anne could help you.” He laughed. “She’s a natural.”

  Ellie narrowed her eyes at him. He was so nice and easygoing that he probably meant nothing by it, but still. What a thing to say. Guys could be so insensitive.

  “I doubt that. I’ve seen you surf,” Anne said, looking at Ellie and smiling. “You’re pretty amazing out there.”

  “When did you see me?” Ellie asked, wondering if Anne was spying on her or something, even though she knew how ridiculous that seemed.

  “Um, early in the morning. Before school sometimes.” Anne gave an embarrassed shrug.

  “You get up at five thirty?” Ellie looked at her skeptically.

  “Well, sometimes, yeah. I mean, when I can’t sleep. I guess I’m still on East Coast time or something.”

  “I think you just found your new surf partner,” Lola said. Then, looking at Anne she explained, “We all used to surf before school, but then Jade and I kind of dropped out. Unlike Ellie, we need our beauty sleep.” She laughed.

  “Speak for yourself!” Jade said, tossing her long brown ringlets and giving Lola a fake offended look.

  “Well, I’m pretty serious about surfing, so I’m not really looking for company,” Ellie said, feeling completely annoyed with her friends for pushing this girl on her. Why couldn’t everyone just leave things the way they were?

  “We’re all thinking about going down to Taco Loco in a while. You wanna come?” Chris asked, grabbing Anne’s water bottle and taking a sip.

  Ellie just stood there, watching them. Their knees were bumping against each other, and the way he had just grabbed her water, so casually, almost like they were boyfriend and girlfriend or something. But that was impossible. They just met! “Um, no thanks,” she said, grabbing her board and turning to leave. “I gotta be somewhere in half an hour.”

  “Where you going?” Jade called after her.

  “Just somewhere,” Ellie said, waving over her shoulder and heading toward home.

  Walking up the beach stairs, she could feel her face grow hot. She was angry with her friends for totally not getting that she had no interest in hanging with Anne, not to mention how humiliating it was to watch her so effortlessly succeed at everything Ellie had worked so hard for. It’s like she’d just come out of nowhere and within one week she’d moved in on Ellie’s friends and Ellie’s fantasy boyfriend, and now she was even showing a certain amount of skill at Ellie’s sport.

  She’d been watching her the whole time, and unfortunately Chris was right. Anne was a pretty good surfer. Maybe not good in the way that Ellie or Chris or even Jade or Lola was, but good in the way that if she got out there a couple times a week and really focused, she could definitely compete someday, and that was something that Ellie did not need. It was bad enough losing Chris to her; she certainly didn’t need to lose Surf Fest, too.

  Leaning her board against the wall, she threw her damp towel over a deck chair and went into the kitchen.

  “Hey.” Her brother was sitting at the table drinking a juice and reading last weekend’s L.A. Times Calendar section.

  “Did you just wake up?” she asked, realizing she sounded bossy and judgmental just like her dad, but jeez, it was three o’clock already.

  “Out last night. Got home late,” Dean said in that shorthand way of talking he had. He was all about word economy.

  “Where?” Ellie asked, opening the fridge and looking for something to eat. All that time in the water had left her ravenous. Too bad I can’t go to Taco Loco, she thought, grabbing a container of yogurt, determined to make do.

  “Party. Monarch Beach,” he said, still not looking up.

  “Oh, I was at one at Aliso,” she said, grabbing a spoon.

  “So I heard.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, panicked that word was out about her drinking three beers and making out with Duncan. Any other girl doing that would be no big deal, but Ellie idolized her brother and she wanted him to think well of her.

  “Duncan called like an hour ago.” He shrugged.

  “What did he say?” she asked, hoping she sounded calm and casual.

  “He wants you to call him.” He looked up briefly.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “No.”

  “So who was at the party?” she asked, determined to move the conversation away from herself. She did not want to think about Duncan right now.

  “Some friends, some poseurs, the usual crowd.” He shrugged, folded the paper in half, and looked at her.

  Dean was pretty intolerant of poseurs, the kind of people who o
ffered nothing more than their money and their presence. He, on the other hand, had accomplished so much in such a short amount of time, having won several surf championships with several major brands clamoring to sponsor him; he’d even gotten an early acceptance into a really good school. Yet despite his good looks and undeniable talents, he somehow managed to stay really low-key, often using his free time for community service, like assisting in beach cleanups or teaching autistic kids to surf or working on his ongoing surf documentary. But Ellie knew that his most amazing accomplishment to date was when he’d convinced their dad that taking the semester off school to work on his film was a genius idea. Ellie couldn’t even take a sick day without getting seriously scolded. And as much as she loved Dean, sometimes it was a total bummer having a brother like him. He was a tough act to follow.

  “Do you know what time Dad’s coming home?” she asked, finishing her yogurt and dumping the container in the trash.

  “Not ’til late.” He looked at her and smiled. He knew just how hard their dad had been on her over the last few years.

  “Good,” she said, heading upstairs to her room so she could shower, change, and then head out to her secret place. She was looking forward to a little peace and quiet.

  chapter twenty-six

  Lola was staring at her half-eaten taco, impatiently waiting for Jade to take her home, even though all the immediate evidence suggested that was not about to happen anytime soon.

  Impatiently chewing on the end of the straw she’d used to drink not one, but two Diet Cokes, she watched as Jade joked around with Ben and some older guys who were apparently friends of his that Lola had never seen before. Chris and Anne had taken off an hour ago, and Lola was beginning to wish she’d gone with them.

  What a waste, she thought. Five single guys less than five feet away and things had gotten so bad for her that she didn’t feel like flirting with any of them. But even worse was the fact that her phone hadn’t rung all day. Not that she thought he would call. But still, it would have been nice.