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

Chapter 19: Colby Taylor

I ease closer to the entertainment center and scan over the pictures he's framed. Most are of him with the guys, a few with Shark. There are jars of paper stars and framed newspaper articles chronicling his journey from Great White Surf sponsorship to his big win a few months ago in Australia. And then there are drumsticks – the drumsticks!

All of Crescent Cove can probably hear my heart dancing in my chest right now as I realize that night was as important as everything else to him. I hang Solomon on the knob of the cabinet that protects the drumsticks. He'll be safe here.

The living room captures me with a million emotions, so I zone in on one of Shark's amazing photos and attempt to breathe. It was taken underwater, looking up at Colby, who is sitting on a surfboard. It would be a literal shark's view of him. It's poetic and artistic and outright beautiful. It beats the hell out of those Great Whites hanging in Strickland's Boating.

"That's always been my favorite," Colby says. I glance over my shoulder as he approaches wearing a red Great White Surf T-shirt. "He had the coolest ideas. He was the one who thought up the surfboard dog house when I got Dexter. Shark was larger than life. Anyone who dreamed up Great White Surf had to be."

I wish Vin could hear this. He'd see how much Shark meant to Colby and how much he admired him and misses him. Vin would see how much they have in common, how his best friend is what ties them together in a way that only they understand because they were both so close to him.

"But Great White Surf lost that creative spark the day the ocean took Shark McAllister from us," Colby concludes.

Never mind. I stare at the picture a moment longer to keep myself from jumping to Vin's defense. I want to. And I should. But right now, it's not an option.

"So how did you become Colby Taylor?" I spit out before I can talk myself out of asking. My eyes remain on the bottom of the surfboard in the giant photograph.

"How did you find me as Colby Taylor?" he counters.

I surrender and give him the super quick version of how the receipt led us to Stella's, and Stella led us to Tim, and Tim mentioned The Ocean in Moonlight, and Barney told me I'd see him when I got here. To protect the innocent, I change Enchanted Emily's name to "some random girl on the beach" and explain that she led me to Reed.

"And now I'm standing in your living room," I say, ending the condensed version of the last two weeks.

"Fair enough," he says, nodding. He sits on the couch and motions for me to join him, so I do. "I didn't fake my death. I ran away. Faking your death is illegal, you know? I knew they'd assume I was dead, that I drowned or was eaten by a shark, but I never faked my death."

He talks about hitchhiking and catching a ride with a long-haul truck driver to a small town in Texas, where he bought a jar of paper stars as his good luck token. I glance up at the blue seahorse hanging from the entertainment center, and I completely get it. I understand that need for something inanimate to be there holding your hand through a journey.

"From there, I hopped a train and eventually landed in Nevada. I bummed rides with college kids heading to Cali the rest of the way, and once I got here, I asked for the best surf shop around. Some guy told me about Great White Surf, said it was roughly two hours south, and I didn't sleep until I'd bought a surfboard from Shark," he says.

As he continues weaving his story to life, I sit here on the couch like a starry-eyed child listening to her grandfather's old war stories. It's the same story I've heard from A.J. and Reed but from a new viewpoint, the viewpoint of a guy who gave up his whole world to chase his dream.