One Year Later
I see the towering wave in front of me. It’s huge and getting bigger by the second. It doesn’t stop me. Instead, I push my board to move faster as I surf into the wave. My heart pounds fast and hard in my chest as the wave surrounds me, forming a tunnel that can collapse at any second. If it does, I’m going to have to fight like hell to get back to the surface to be able to breathe. I’ve been crushed by waves like this before and ended up with a couple of cracked ribs that hurt like a bitch and take forever to heal.
I’m not going to let that happen to me again. But remembering that pain doesn’t stop me from attacking this wave either. Most wouldn’t bother. Not when it isn’t a competition. Not when I don’t have anyone out here to rescue me if things take a turn for the worse. It’s just me and the wave. That’s how I like it.
I love the thrill. I love knowing that one wrong move could fuck everything up, even my life. I could die if I don’t do everything perfectly.
This is what I live for though. I don’t live to win competitions even though I win a lot and the money is nice. I live for this feeling right now—the feeling that, at any point, the ocean could steal my life from me or I could conquer it and live for another day. There is no other feeling like it in the world.
I surf the wave and come out the other end of the tunnel, unscathed. I win—for now. I step off the board and let the cool, salty water refresh me before I begin heading back to the beach. It’s starting to get dark, and as much as I would love to stay out here all night, I’m hungry, and I have other cravings I need to satisfy.
Because I lied when I said that there was no feeling like surfing a wave that could destroy you. There is one feeling that is better—the feeling of stealing someone’s happily ever after. The thrill of chasing a woman already claimed by another man just does something to me that nothing else can. It twists my soul and makes me want more of the drug that pulses through my veins every time I finally make the woman mine instead of his. It’s a drug that pulls me in over and over again, a thrill I can’t resist.
But why would I want to?
I’m a thief and a surfer. Both things keep me completely satisfied. And neither makes me feel guilty. I don’t feel bad for the women or the men I hurt. I’m doing them a favor really. They believe in true love and happily ever after. They believe in the fairy tales they have been fed their whole lives. I just teach them how wrong they really are. In the real world, love doesn’t exist.
“That was some wave, Asher,” Luca, my only friend in the world, says.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be home, resting, after your concussion. Or are you finally taking my advice over the doctor’s and getting your ass back out here?” I ask with a grin before walking over to where my towel is slung over the back of my pickup truck. I toss my surfboard in the back before I take the towel and begin drying my shoulder-length dark hair.
Luca laughs. “Nope, just wanted to see if you wanted to grab a drink and a bite with me.”
I stop drying myself off and grab a T-shirt to throw on. “Is that new girlfriend of yours coming?”
Luca frowns. “Hell no. She’s back on the mainland, visiting her family. But, even if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t let you anywhere near her.”
I walk to the driver’s side of my truck and open the door. Luca is already climbing into the passenger seat without waiting for me to say that I want to hang out tonight. He already knows my answer is yes.
“Why not? I should meet her if you guys are getting serious, shouldn’t I?”
I climb in and start up my truck, waiting for the purr of the engine before it fully starts. It doesn’t start up right away. I get out and give the hood a love tap with my fist before I jump back in and turn the key over again to get it to start.
“You should really get a new truck, Asher. This thing is a piece of junk, and you can afford a lot better.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Why would I want anything better? The truck still runs, and all I use it for is to get me from my place to the beach. Why would I want to get a new truck? It would be a waste of money. After one drive, it would be full of sand and look just as bad as this old thing. How would I know if the new truck could handle the sand as well as this old thing anyway?”
Luca nods to the truck. “This old thing can barely handle the sand. They do make trucks designed specifically for handling sand and rough terrain nowadays, you know?”
“When this one dies, I’ll think about it.”
I don’t have to tell him the real reason I don’t have nice things. People would assume I stole the new car instead of buying it. I’ve learned it’s actually better to live without the finer things in life.
I reach my hand out the window as I drive back to my house—if you can call my place a house. It’s more like a shack on the beach. But it has the most amazing view. I love feeling the warm, salty air as I drive the couple of miles back. Luca does the same. You can’t help but do that here.
“So, back to your girlfriend,” I say.
Luca frowns and grabs ahold of the frame of the truck as we bounce along the dirt road that leads back to my house. “You don’t get to meet her—ever.”
“What? What about if you decide to marry this one? You’ve been with her for, what? A month? That’s a new record for you. She might be the one. I need to vet her first. And I’ll have to meet her at your wedding anyway when I’m your best man.”
Luca shakes his head. “Not happening. You are never going to meet her. You don’t even get to know her name. You don’t even get to meet her at my wedding or even after we get married.”
“You do know, it’s not possible to hide her from me forever? Hawaii is a small island. I will figure out who she is.”
“Not if we move far away.”
I chuckle. “Not going to happen, dude. Once here, no one moves away from Hawaii. They move to Hawaii.”
Luca shakes his head. He’s not going to tell me right now. And I don’t blame him for not telling me. He knows that I have been looking for a bigger challenge, a harder chase. Most of the girls around here have been too easy to steal from their unsuspecting fiancés or husbands. That’s the nice thing about living in Hawaii though. Everyone comes here to get married. So, I always have an endless supply of women to hit on and steal. But, lately, it’s been too easy and the damage I have done has been minimal at best. If Luca really is in love with his girlfriend like I think he is, if he can see himself proposing to her in the future, then they could be my biggest challenge yet.
But I need to make sure they are really in love first, that they want to get married. Then, I can plan my move. So, for now, I’ll wait. I’ll wait for my best friend to fall in love, and then I’ll destroy him. It might destroy our relationship, but I doubt it. Most of the men blame their cheating girlfriends, not the guy their girlfriends fell in love with. Well, on second thought, they do blame me, but after a good square punch to my jaw, their anger at me usually dissipates. Occasionally, it lasts a bit longer, but then I’ve never been friends with any of the men whose girlfriends I have stolen. Luca might hate me after this, but it is a chance I’m willing to take.
I park the truck outside my shack of a house and climb out. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll be ready to head out,” I shout to Luca.
I run up to the door of my house. Luca doesn’t answer me, but I hear my truck door slam behind me, indicating that he climbed out of the truck. I push my unlocked door open; I never bother locking it. There isn’t anything in here that is worth stealing anyway. I don’t even own a TV. The most expensive items I have are my surfboards. Nobody wants to steal mine when they have their own. And, even if they did, my sponsors would just supply new ones.
That’s the key to life—not having anything worth stealing. That’s why I don’t own anything worthwhile. That’s why I don’t fall in love.
I walk toward the back of my shack. It’s just one room with a fridge and small stove that I rarely use for cooking, a bed, and a dresser. I don’t even have a bathroom inside. I have an outdoor shower and toilet. But it satisfies all my needs and ensures that any woman who gets close to me isn’t going to stick around for long. No woman wants to live in a shack on the beach, no matter how beautiful the sunsets are.
I reach my dresser and pull out a fresh pair of swim trunks and a new T-shirt. I only own one pair of clothing that isn’t swim trunks, and I’m not going to bother wearing it tonight. I prefer to live my life in swim trunks. For one, women find them sexy as hell. They know right off that I’m a surfer without me having to say a word, which makes my job easier. Two, they are way comfier than any other clothing around. And, three, I never know when I’m going to want to go for a swim or go surfing. It’s better to always be prepared.
I grab the fresh clothes and lay them on my bed before stripping and heading out into my shower. I rinse the salt water out of my brown hair that is far too long before drying off and heading back in to put on compression shorts, my new trunks, and T-shirt.
I walk outside and see Luca standing with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the sea.
I know he’s still nervous about getting back out there again. He took quite a hit the last time he was out there. It was a life-changing, almost life-ending, event. I know he still doesn’t know what he’s going to do now. He was never the best surfer out there. I’ve always been better. Always gotten more sponsors. Won more championships. I’m not bragging; it’s just the truth.
But a surfer doesn’t know how to do anything else. He doesn’t know how to live a different life. I know his comment about wanting to move somewhere else to keep his girlfriend away from me was just as much about him. If he stays here and decides he can’t surf anymore, he is going to have to face his decision every day for the rest of his life. If he moves where there isn’t an ocean staring back at him everywhere he goes, then maybe he can move on.
I get it. I just don’t know how he could ever give this life up, no matter how dangerous it is. Life isn’t worth living if you aren’t doing what you love.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
Luca nods and turns toward me, and then he laughs. “Why did you even bother changing if you were just going to put trunks back on?”
I shrug. “At least they are clean.”
“It’s no wonder that you don’t have a girlfriend.”
I grin. He’s right about that. I don’t have a girlfriend or a fiancée or a wife. I never have and never will. The swim trunks help ensure that. I’m a fling that women think they can fall in love with, but when they realize they can’t change me, they move on and deal with the heartbreak they caused when they left the men who actually loved them. While I get freedom. And that’s how I like it.