🌊 Gabby Ashford doesn't belong in the Bay.
She's from the Crest. Big house, absent parents, money that can't buy the one thing she actually wants. But years ago she found Theo Lawson, and with him came a crumbling house three blocks from the beach...
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"The ocean doesn't care if you're ready. The wave comes and you either ride it or you don't. Life's the same."
— Noah Lawson
Crest Bay, California
June 2022
I've lived in Crest Bay my whole life.
A small surf town, about an hour south of LA if traffic allows. Complete different world.
A place that looks pretty on postcards. Palm trees swaying against blue sky. White sand. Water so clear you can see straight to the bottom. The tourists flood in every summer, clogging up the beach, paying fifteen dollars for a smoothie, leaving their trash behind like they own the place.
They only ever see one side of it.
The Crest side. The pretty side. Up on the cliffs where the big houses sit behind iron gates, gleaming white with infinity pools and ocean views that cost more than I'll make in my lifetime. Old money. New tech money. Doesn't matter which. They all look the same from down here.
Down here in the Bay.
My side.
The houses are smaller here. Older. Salt-worn siding and sun-faded paint, packed tight on streets that don't have names worth remembering. The yards are more sand than grass. The cars in the driveways have rust spots and bumper stickers from shops that closed a decade ago. The people work. Fishing boats, construction, restaurants, surf shops. Whatever pays the bills. Whatever keeps the lights on.
Two different worlds. Same town.
The Lawson house sits three blocks from Salt Creek Beach.
It's not much. Blue paint that faded to grey years ago. A porch that creaks in all the wrong places. Screen door that doesn't shut right since Theo kicked through it last summer when he forgot his key. Wind chimes from old Mrs. Hernandez next door that never shut up.
But it's ours.
Or mine, I guess. Since I'm the one paying the mortgage. Signing the checks. Arguing with the electric company. Making sure there's food in the fridge that isn't just beer and hot sauce.
Mom used to make pancakes here on Sunday mornings. I can still see her standing at the stove, humming something soft, flour on her t-shirt. Theo and I would fight over who got to lick the spoon. It is a distant memory now. Another life.
That was before the cancer hollowed her out. Before we watched her disappear one piece at a time.
She's been gone ten years now. Theo was five. I was eleven.
Dad stuck around after that. If you can call it that. Mostly he stuck to the couch and the bottle. Passed out more nights than not. I learned to cook, learned to clean, learned to forge his signature on permission slips when he was too wasted to hold a pen.
