My breath catches in my throat, and I'm overcome with relief when I find Vin talking to A.J. I'd have never heard the roar of his motorcycle over the music of Sapphires and Sunsets.
"Why didn't you tell me Topher was your brother?" I ask before I can talk myself out of unearthing the skeletons that Vin has worked so hard to keep hidden.
He folds his arms over his chest, looks at me like I'm an absolute idiot, and says, "You never asked."
Right. Because any normal person would've thought to ask if Topher was his brother. Of course. That makes total sense.
I shrink into my surroundings, like in the movies when the camera zooms out and the main character looks so tiny and helpless in a world of drama and chaos.
"What else haven't you told me?" I do all I can to keep my voice steady, but I feel that intimidation from day one on The Strip all over again. And he's not even armed with lame hair dye spray tonight.
He throws his arms into the air. "What do you care?"
He pushes off of the car behind him and heads toward his bike. A.J. stumbles behind him, and I trail along, racking my brain for any good reason as to why I care that doesn't sound totally invasive and obsessive.
"You really need to leave some things where they are, Haley," Vin says, turning back around to face us. "You don't want these answers."
Oh but I do. Beginning to end. The good, the bad, the drowning, and the surfer. And anything else you want to shed light on. I don't just want them. I need them.
The silence continues to grow more awkward and uncomfortable, at least for me because I think Vin likes staring at me and freaking me out. The street lights flicker and stars pop out of the sky. Music pours over the roof of the beach house and floods the sand. I don't even know how long we've been standing here.
"I'm going with you," I finally say.
"No," Vin counters. "You're not."
"My car," A.J. says, dangling his keys.
Vin snatches them out of A.J.'s hand. "You're too drunk to drive anywhere."
A.J. latches onto my arm to balance himself. "But you...can drive," he says, pointing his finger at Vin for extra emphasis.
A.J. must've been sitting out here since the fight, drinking beer to his heart's content, or until he forgot why he was kicked out to begin with.
Vin doesn't verbally surrender. But when he helps A.J. into the backseat of that tin can of a car and motions for me to get in, I want to squee like an excited fangirl. I climb into the passenger seat and lose all focus upon seeing the Enchanter hanging from A.J.'s rearview mirror with what looks like a yarn noose. The doll is small with black fabric for its body. But it's not wearing clothes. Instead, the entire body is covered in white stitches, like Enchanted Emily cut him apart and sewed him back together and left his battle scars out there for the world to see. Its lime green eyes stare back at me.
"That's Logan," A.J. says, leaning in between the seats. Vin pushes him back and tells him to put his seatbelt on.
A.J. does as he's told but keeps talking. "Like Logan Riley," he says. "That motherfucker got fucked up bad...black market organs...and that's what we're going to do to the east coast."
So A.J. is a little more drunk than I thought. I glance over at Vin, and he tells A.J. to go to sleep, but A.J. keeps talking and slurring his words more each time he tries to tell me the story behind his Enchanter. I still don't know the story even after we pull into the gas station parking lot. Vin goes inside for the beer, being the legal twenty-two year old that he is, and A.J. goes into a comparison of Logan Riley and our dear friend Dominic.
Vin comes back as A.J. says Dominic should have been arrested and charged with assault, but it sounds more like asphalt. Vin shoves two cases of beer into the floorboard behind the driver's seat and tells A.J. that he has learn to control his temper, especially around idiots like Dominic.
"But he took Haley's shirt off," A.J. says, more clearly than he's said anything since we left the party.
"He did what?" Vin yells, looking over at me. He doesn't give me time to answer. He looks at A.J. in the rearview mirror. "We're slashing his tires."
"Hell yeah!" A.J. shouts. He slams against the backseat once Vin cranks the car, and it chokes itself to life in the same way Miles's truck did.
"Hold up. He didn't take my shirt off," I say more to Vin than A.J. "He tried, and A.J. stopped him. Then he pushed A.J. and A.J. hit him, and it was insanity until Topher rescued me."
A.J. laughs. "Topher's a good kid. He's learned from the best."
Vin cracks a smile, but it fades just as quickly as it came. "Except for the fact that he volunteered the information that I was his brother."
"No, he didn't," I say. "Kale told me."
Strips of sand and ocean rush past my window, bleeding together into such a blur that I'm not sure if it's a Crescent Cove beach or a Horn Island beach. The longer I'm here, the more the two places seem to belong together in a twisted way, like Topher and Vin. So vast and different, yet unique and kind of beautiful in their own ways. And they balance each other so perfectly.
"Kale has the biggest mouth in Horn Island," Vin says. When I glance over, he's shaking his head. "I wouldn't be surprised if he rips into Dominic next. Miles better not blow it this weekend. I'll be damned if Dominic gets that sponsorship."
The stitched up Enchanter swings on the rearview mirror. I'd bet Vin would rather an east coaster have Great White Surf's name plastered on him than Dominic.
"He doesn't deserve it," I state the obvious.
"No, he doesn't," Vin says. "He wasn't such an arrogant jackass when he went up for sponsorship. He thinks he has it in the bag because his parents have money. They'd put a lot into Great White , but he's the last thing Great White needs. But if Miles gets nervous and chokes, I really won't have a choice."
I rewind those last few words in my head, trying to make sense of them, but I've learned by now that not much makes sense with Vin because he tries to be as vague and mysterious as possible. Right now, he looks exhausted. Either he forgot to be a man of mystery tonight or he just doesn't care anymore.
"Wait. What? What do you mean you won't have a choice?" I ask.
Something loud under the hood swallows my question. The car coughs and squeals and echoes like a gunshot. Vin pulls it off the side of the deserted highway before it officially kills over.
"A.J., when's the last time you had your oil changed? Or anything else changed, for that matter?" Vin asks, looking back at A.J. in the rearview mirror.
A.J. fights a yawn. "You were the last one to change it."
Vin slams both fists into the steering wheel and buries his face against it. "That was last summer, you idiot," he mumbles. "Damn it, A.J."
He gets out of the car, lifts the hood, and mutters quite a few four-letter words. A.J. grabs a case of beer and heads down to the shoreline, but I stay behind. I won't be much help to either of them, but at least Vin is sober and can carry on a conversation better than A.J. can tonight.
I walk around to the lifted hood. Vin wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "It's too hot under here to work on it right now. We're going to have to wait for it to cool off," he says.
"You're really a mechanic?" I ask. I always assumed, to a certain extent, that it was a cover up.
He laughs. "Yeah, believe it or not, I do have a few talents. It paid the bills for a few years." He looks down to the shoreline, where A.J. has set up his own little beach party with a case of Milwaukee Best. "Might as well join him. We're going to be here a while."
Vin slips the car keys into his pocket, and we trek through the sand. I debate returning to the sponsorship, but I don't have much else to lose at this point. It's not like he can leave or abandon me here. We're stranded, at least until A.J.'s car cools off and Vin can attempt to get it running again.
"What did you mean by not having a choice? About Dominic?" I ask as we close in on A.J.'s solo party spot.
Vin stops in the sand and looks at me with that same defeated look he had the morning of the storm, the morning when we thought Colby might be dead out there in the ocean. He looks vulnerable and almost scared. He kind of looks like Topher – or maybe Topher looks like him – and I feel like an idiot for never putting the two together.
"Get comfortable," Vin says before stretching out in the sand. I sit next to him, but I'm too tense to get comfortable just yet.
He stares out across the ocean, and I wish I could capture those brainwaves and whatever thought or memory they're reflecting on. I feel like there's more going through this guy's head than anyone could ever imagine. I want to know those thoughts even more than I want to know Colby's secrets about chasing forever down.
"When Jake died, everything changed," Vin says.
It's the first time I haven't heard someone refer to him as Shark. And for once, he feels like a real person and not a local celebrity-turned-tragedy.
"Great White Surf was in its prime, he'd just signed Colby on, and everything just soared straight to the top for him. I was working for Strick's dad, and I wasn't thrilled with the whole not-dead kid, but I went with it because Jake believed in him," he says.
He doesn't take his eyes off the ocean, like maybe his best friend will emerge from the black waves and tell him everything's going to be okay, that he just pulled a Colby Taylor and has been living as someone else for the last year and a half.
"He used to tell me that I'd make a good businessman if I'd just get out of the business of screwing people over. He said if I had a real business, I'd be even better than he was," Vin says. He turns to face me this time. "That's why he left Great White to me."
A.J. sits up in the sand and stops drawing pictures in the sky. "Thank God! The secret is out," he says. He stands up, stumbles toward the shoreline, raises his beer bottle into the air, and screams out, "The secret's out, Shark! The secret's out!"
Then he hurls the bottle into the ocean, possibly for Shark's ashes to share in a victory toast. If I knew A.J. wouldn't turn into some crazy psycho and swim in after it, I'd pour all of that beer into the ocean to keep him from drinking any more of it.
"Get over here," I yell out to him. Even when he's drunk, he obeys well.
"Go to sleep, A.J.," Vin says again.
*****
"So you own Great White Surf now." It's more of a statement than a question. I'm not exactly sure how this changes everything, but it does – it totally changes everything.
"He left half of his money to his dad, part to me and Topher, and some for his mom, but she lives out of state and didn't really support the idea of a surf shop," Vin explains.
He continues. "So he left me the store. Joe invested most of what Jake left him back into the store too. He's more involved than people think. That place was his son's dream. We're just keeping the legacy going."
I can't even imagine. Losing your best friend. Inheriting all of his dreams and feeling obligated to fulfill them. Not having a clue in hell what you're doing but knowing you have to do it, no matter what it takes.
"I wasn't even legal to buy alcohol," he says. "Haley, you don't know what it's like. Hell, I'm twenty-two, trying to raise my kid brother because he's an idiot who got kicked out just like I did, trying to keep Great White above water, and dealing with all this Colby Taylor bullshit."
Of course, then I showed up, digging into the secrets that no one should ever reveal. Colby Taylor is Great White Surf's poster boy, their sales pitch, and without him, Vin would lose Shark's store. He'd go back to working on cars, and then he and Topher both would be next to A.J. with "will work for food" signs. If Colby had been outted, everything would've sunk to the bottom of the ocean with his best friend's ashes.
I take a deep breath and verbalize my next realization. "And if Miles chokes on nerves this weekend, everyone will see it, and they'll blast you for picking him over Dominic," I say. "And they don't know the side of Dominic that we know. You really wouldn't have a choice."
Vin sits up and dusts the sand off the back of his shirt. "Miles is Topher's best friend. I'll catch hell regardless. If he wins, everyone will say it was rigged. If he chokes, then I'll be stuck with Colby and Dominic, and I can't take that much arrogance. Do you know how fast that store would go under? I need Great White to put Topher through college. I can go back to fixing cars, but Topher's better than that. He can do more. He deserves more."
I want to tell Vin that he's better than that, that he deserves everything he's ever wanted too. But every line I think of sounds even cornier than the last, and I doubt he'd believe me anyway.
Vin slides over closer to me. "I have a plan though," he says. "You can't tell anyone, or I swear, I really will have to kill you. Topher knows, but he's the only one." He glances over at A.J., who seems to be passed out in the sand.
"I don't have anyone to tell," I remind him. Linzi is so far out of the question. And her replacement in the best friend slot is passed out behind me.
"Okay, so, this energy drink company contacted me a while back about doing a sponsorship through Great White Surf, and in return, we'd sell their drinks, put their logo on a lot of our stuff, and Colby would wear it during competitions. We'd basically market them, right?" he says.
He talks with his hands, like Topher does. I've never seen Vin this excited about anything, but his movements are dead on with enthusiasm. It makes me smile bigger than I ever thought I would for Vin Brooks.
"It's this energy drink slash rehydrating drink, like Gatorade with some kind of extra zing to it," he explains.
And it totally clicks. "Ocean Blast Energy!" I practically scream it. "Topher is always drinking it, not that he needs it. He's kind of hyper anyway."
"All those damn sugar cubes," Vin says, nodding along. "He's been my test subject – I know, he's the worst candidate – but I figured if it wasn't too much for him, everyone else would be okay. I can't just endorse a product that I don't know about. It's bad for business."
"What's the trade off?" I ask. "What does Great White get in return?"
"The sponsorship," Vin says. "The money, the perks, their logo, the whole works. I'm just praying Miles doesn't choke. He has before. If he wipes out, I'm fucked."
I'm still confused, though. How does Ocean Blast Energy help him if all they're doing is backing Colby and possibly Dominic? How does anyone win in that situation? That would be just stroking their egos and dragging Shark's legacy through the mud.
"So, um, what's your genius plan? I don't think I get it," I admit. I dig my flip flop into the sand and watch the ground reconstruct around it.
"Oh yeah," Vin says. "That plan – Logan Riley."
I wish it wasn't so dark out here. My eyes have adjusted well in the moonlight, but damn it, I swear if I could see Vin's eyes right now, they'd be the most incredibly beautiful shade of blue that even Solomon can't catch in the sunlight. I can hear his smile in his voice.
"I met him last year," he says. "And he's interested in Great White . He wants to move out here, get away from Florida and join the big league of surfing. His contract with his sponsor is up for renewal in March, and he said he's not signing it. He's saving up now to move out to the cove."
"Fuck," A.J. says behind me. "I'm going to have to change my voodoo doll's name now."
A.J. most likely won't even remember this conversation in the morning. Or afternoon. Whenever he sobers up. What I don't understand is how a big time surfer in Florida hears about a surf shop in California – one of a kind – and wants to be part of it. Then again, Colby Taylor is his archrival. He probably knows everything there is to know about Great White Surf.
"He's real," Vin says. "He's got Colby's talent and Miles's heart, and he's driven and wants to be better. And his family knows he's alive. His name is the same one he was born with. No extra baggage. No bodyguards. No empowerment over the world around him."
With Miles and Logan, Great White Surf could totally build itself up to be something bigger than Vin or Shark ever dreamed of. And as much as I kind of hate it, Colby doesn't hurt. As long as he and Logan can come to terms, they might be an unstoppable duo in the surf world.
"So Ocean Blast Energy...then Logan," I say. "Sounds like you are quite the businessman."
Vin laughs. "Don't give me any credit until I actually deserve it."
He doesn't realize that he already does.
*****
It takes nearly an hour for Vin to fix A.J.'s car – or at least get it running long enough to make it back to the condo. Reed's Jeep is back in the garage, and Alston's little red sports car is in the sand. I laugh at the irony that we're the last ones rolling in from the west coast party, and we're the ones who partied the least. Except for A.J. He staggers into the guest house, but I walk back outside. The gears are still turning in my head.
"I sold those tickets for you!" I don't mean for it to sound as accusatory as it does.
Vin shrugs and locks the doors of A.J.'s car. "You got me on that one," he says. "But I do appreciate it. Thanks. You did good."
He has that tone again. That smartass tone that I hate. There's no way in hell he's going back there with me. Not after all of this. Not after tonight. Not after he told me about Logan Riley and Great White Surf and how much he wants Miles to win this and let him off the hook.
"So you said it," I accuse again. "You told A.J. to tell me to sell to the guys only because they'd buy from me. That was all you."
He crosses the sand to the sidewalk where I'm standing and stares at me in the glow of the streetlights. "Yeah, that was me. It was a good sales technique, wasn't it?"
I grab his arm when he brushes past me to go inside. "That's not all you said," I remind him.
He twists back around, looks to the sky, then back at me. He shakes his head, but I don't let go of my grip on his arm. "Haley, please," he finally says. "Let me walk away from tonight with a little bit of my pride."
As much as the angsty girl inside of me wants to twist the knife and make him say it, I don't. Instead, I let go of his arm and follow him inside to find A.J. crashed out sleeping in my bed. Linzi is most likely asleep in Alston's room, but I still don't want to sleep in her room tonight. This room is mine – Zombie Asylum, Solomon, and even the drunk best friend sleeping in my bed.
"I can stay with him if you want," Vin says. "And you can crash in his room. Or I can drag him upstairs in the condo. I just don't want him to be alone. I've heard too many stories of people drowning when they've passed out."
Thank God he spared me the gross details. But I've heard the stories too. And Vin can't lose another friend to drowning, even if it's not in the ocean.
"It's fine," I say. "I can stay with him. I'm a light sleeper, so I'll definitely check on him all night. And you've gotta be up early to get to the store for all that pre-competition stuff."
Vin nods. "I'll crash here, in his room. Just come get me if you need me, no matter what, okay?"
"Promise," I say.
He lingers a minute longer, like he's trying to convince himself that it's okay to leave A.J. under my watchful eye. But he finally says, "Good night, Sunshine," and heads back toward the condo before I can say much else to him.
I push A.J. over onto his side, facing away from me just in case he does throw up, and turn off the light. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I know it's going to be a restless night. I feel around for A.J.'s wrist in the darkness then latch on and wait for his pulse to thump beneath my fingers. I almost wish I could channel his intoxicated dreams.
Tonight, I don't think I'll dream of anything less than icebergs.