Vin's taillight shrinks into the darkness like a dying red star being sucked into a black hole.
"So...you found me. Impressive," Colby says. He steps toward me, still keeping his distance but seemingly sizing me up, as if I'm here to fight. "Care to tell me how you pulled that off?" He folds his arms across his bare chest.
"I could ask you the same thing," I say. "I mean, faking your death. A new identity. That's not exactly amateur stuff, you know?"
I watch him reach down and sling Dexter's Frisbee across the sky. There's no way I'm going to let him intimidate me. I've come too far.
His eyes pull away from Dexter and burn holes into me. "Hold up. Faking my death?" He shakes his head in disbelief, and I swear, I think he's actually offended.
"Okay," he says. "Let's just start this over. Would you like to come inside?"
He motions toward his gigantic beach house, and there's nothing more I want than to go inside. I would've stayed on his back patio the day of the storm if I'd known Vin wouldn't have thrown me over his shoulder and hauled me off.
"Seriously?" I ask.
"Well, you didn't bring a camera crew, screaming girls, or worse, my parents, so I feel like my secrets are safe," he says.
He leads me past his big black truck, around the house, and to the back patio. A string of wet suits hang against the wall, probably dry by now from today's burning sun. Three surfboards are propped against the house as well.
"One sec," he says. He quickly fills Dexter's water bowl with fresh water and dumps a cup full of dog food into another. Then he whistles across the ocean for Dexter to return home. And I see Dexter's home – a dog house made entirely of broken surfboards. Their colors are faded, and bits of them are cracked or chipped or outright split in half. I don't know how I didn't see it the last time I was here. But then again, we were focused on Colby's life that day, not that his dog's house was made of surfboards. I follow him through the back sliding glass door.
"Let me give you the official tour," he says. "This way."
He opens a door to his left, and had I been asked to guess what was on the other side, I'd have said a laundry room...or possibly an empty garage. But it's neither. It's like a showroom for his biggest trophy. A real Woodie, like from the 1960s – exactly like the ones you see in old beach movies. It's only the coolest station wagon-like vehicle I've ever seen. It shines like it's made of black marble with silver splotches of awesomeness in the shapes of stars and crescent moons. Great White Surf's logo is plastered across the passenger side, and there's the silhouette of an angel on a surfboard. "RIP Jake 'Shark' McAllister" curls beneath it in cursive.
Colby pats the hood. "Got this bad baby in Australia a few months ago. Vin said I should've taken the cash, but this thing was just too badass to pass up. I got to design it myself."
My heart overflows with pride as I constantly steal glances at Shark's name while I try to take in the rest of the car. It makes me so happy to know that Colby honored Shark like that, to see that he remembers where he came from and who gave him the chance to live his dream. He remembers who helped him chase forever down. Shark was like his salon lady Stella...or his coffee shop Tim...or his rock star Barney. Whatever Shark was to him, he remembers.
And as if the sentiment wasn't strong enough in the trophy room, his living room walls bleed Shark's photography. Forget the flat screen and huge sound system. It's a shrine to his mentor's work.
"The rest of the place is pretty boring," he says from behind me. "Bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen, surf stuff. Just make yourself at home. I'm going to go find a shirt."
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.
"But I miss the normalcy of just living," he says. "I like the fact that no one can control me anymore, but I hate not being able to walk outside sometimes without fearing that someone will see me, and it'll end up on a North Carolina news broadcast. I've put too much into this to watch it all crash down."
He steals a glance at his watch. "You want to ride somewhere with me? There's this really cool place out on the far side of the cove that I bet you haven't seen," he says.
*****
The beach flies endlessly past my window in a blur of white sand and black water. After a ten minute drive and Colby's less-than-exciting story of how he simply paid a few hundred bucks and had his name changed with no hassle, he turns onto a street in the middle of a suburb. A million questions continue to run through my mind, but I play it cool, trying not to press my luck with him. I'm finally here; I can't blow it now.
"This is the retirement area," he says. "Old people, nursing homes, just simple life away from all the tourist craziness. A.J.'s psycho clown friend lives out here."
He points to a white building with a purple sign that reads Azalea Living Center. I bite down on the inside of my jaw to keep from saying something I'll regret.
"Here we are," Colby says.
He kills the engine and nods toward a long pier that stretches far into the ocean. It's much longer than the one near The Strip, which surprises me with The Strip being the hot spot of Crescent Cove. Orange circles glow inside the tiki torches that line the pier's edges. They reflect off the water in little blobs, like orange stars against a sky of black glass.
"This is incredible," I say. I can only imagine the crowds that would be drawn to it on The Strip. It'd be covered all day and all night.
"Yeah, it's not on the tourist attractions," he says. "They keep it pretty hush-hush. The people out here enjoy it, and they don't have to fight the crowds. I come out here to think. It's kind of like my Zen location, just to clear my head."
We climb out of the truck and trudge through the sand. It's the soft crushed diamond type of sand that's on The Strip. Colby leads the way up to the pier. It's even more massive up close. I imagine Horn Island's pier looking like this in all its glory, before it collapsed and was left to rot on the beach. My flip flops make a thunking sound against the wooden flooring.
"So why did you go back to North Carolina, to the party?" I ask halfway down the pier. A slight breeze lifts off the water and the grains of sand on the pier run toward us.
"To make sure I was dead."
The blunt force of his words ram through me. "What?"
"To make sure I was dead," he repeats. "To see that my parents were living their lives and not having the ocean drained to find me. I have a lot more going on now, more appearances, more competitions. I just needed to know they weren't necessarily looking for me."
Every assumption I'd made about his reasons was so, so wrong. What about making sure they weren't still heavily grieving? Or what about missing his family or his old life, even just a tiny bit?
"But they couldn't control you now," I remind him. "Look how far you've come. You're the surfer on the west coast. They can't make you do anything you don't want to do."
"I don't want them in my business," he counters. He looks straight ahead across the water and into the night. "They don't need to know where I am or what I'm doing." He says it more so to the night than to me.
We reach the edge, and he sits down, slinging his legs over to dangle above the ocean. "Sometimes, you just can't have it both ways," he says. "It's either this or that, you know? I'd rather have this. I'm completely in control of my life. I hold all the cards, and I can deal myself any hand I want. No one's messing this up for me."
I hesitate as to whether I should sit down with him. He may decide I'm a threat, that I'm the one person who may try to interrupt this awesome little card game he's playing, and throw me over the pier. Those dark waves would sweep me out to sea until the shore was out of sight, and I'd find myself on some sunken ship on the bottom of the Pacific. Maybe Shark McAllister would be there with sapphires and shark teeth waiting to meet me at the clock.
"You're so right," I say, deciding to play along. I'm stranded without a cell phone, and the only person who knows where I am probably hates me. Forget chasing forever. I just need to survive right now. "I just hadn't thought of it that way."
He looks at me and smiles that same smile from the night of the corporate party, back when he was a forever chaser who got away...before he was a manipulative jackass who used anyone he had to just to get what he wanted.
"I knew it," he says. "I could see it on your face from across the room at that party. You could escape, you know. This could be your life too. You've just gotta get the right people on your side, and then carry a little leverage on them. It's easier than you'd think, especially when you have idiots like Alston and A.J. using you as their lifeline."
He faces the ocean again, watching the whitecaps roll over under the glow of the moon. My teeth pierce the inside of my mouth to keep from screaming...but also to keep from crying. He doesn't know the first thing about A.J. He doesn't know the guys who watch out for him and lie for him. He doesn't give a damn either. I fake a yawn then pretend that I'm trying to fight it.
"It's late, I know," Colby says. He laughs and stands up, dusting the sand off of his shorts. He reaches his hand out to me, pulls me up from the pier, and nods back toward his truck. "Long day tomorrow," he says. "Competition time makes everyone crazy around here."
Part of me wants to tell him it's not the competition that makes them crazy...or makes him crazy. This whole whirlwind of lies and the secret life of Colby Taylor is what makes everyone crazy.
"Hey, Saturday night...Sunday morning–midnight, meet me here?" he asks. "I swear, this time I mean it. None of that no-show paper star mess. For real. Will you meet me here?"
I'll be long gone before then. I plan on bailing as soon as competition gets underway. I don't want to leave, but it takes so many days to drive back across the country.
"Why didn't you show?" I ask, crossing another question off my mental list.
He shrugs. "I got scared," he says. "I didn't mean to be a jerk about it like that. I was afraid you'd figure out who I was or someone else would see me. I bailed before I could get caught. I'd hoped you'd find the star, though."
I nod as he explains he left it there as a good luck token for me. I wish I had it right now. I need some luck. And I seriously have to get away from Colby Taylor.
"So you'll meet me here? This very spot?" he asks again. He counts the tiki torches. "Third torch from the end?"
"Definitely," I lie. "I'll be here."
*****
The night is as dead as the guy who was once Spence Burks, and I'd give anything to hear the roar of Vin's motorcycle or even that dying cat shriek of A.J.'s car. For a clear cove night, the air is thick with disappointment. The stars mock me from way above, looking down on me and laughing. They make me feel like I'm back in junior high and not cool enough to hang with the popular girls because my hair is too frizzy and my makeup isn't heavy enough.
Red Christmas lights flicker on the hill above where Colby's truck is parked. Their time with me is short-lived before the restaurant's owner flips them back off and heads home for the night. But those words – those words painted in red on a wooden sign with a silly red crab painted next to them – give me hope. Solomon's Crab Shack. His light has found me on the far side of the cove.
"Oh shit!" Colby yells. He grabs my arm, and we pummel back toward the wooden floor of the pier. "Get back!" he hisses.
We duck down behind a garbage can that smells like bananas and onions. Headlights whirl around the parking lot, near his truck, and in the vicinity of where we're hiding. I don't think he's even breathing. In the moonlight, I can see his wide eyes, but he's a statue.
"That was close," he finally whispers after the car is far gone.
I hate admitting that Vin was right. But he was so right.
Colby Taylor is never going to change.
*****
I keep my best smile painted on my face through the first DVD Colby shows me of his surfing competitions from last summer. He falls asleep during the second DVD, the one where Alston is mock interviewing him about surfing and what it means to him. It was filmed not long after Shark died, before Colby lost all of his heart. He has a spark in his eyes and a light in his voice that reminds me of Miles and the way he talked about "getting it" and how Dominic never would. If this forever-chasing path leads to what Colby's become, then the gods of forever can have forever back.
I grab his cell phone off the coffee table and slip outside. I carry my flip flops so they won't make any extra noise. His contacts are very few, so it's easy to spot the name I need. I press the "send" button and wait until I hear his voice.
Then I whisper, "Hey, it's me. I need your help."