YOU CAN DO BETTER, SEBASTIAN.
Why aren’t you trying harder, Sebastian?
You’re letting yourself get distracted, Sebastian.
Growling, I punch the steering wheel of my truck. Even when I put thousands of miles between us, the voices of my parents follow.
I can’t escape them. Not even when I try running away.
Their voices from years and years of verbal lashings still follow me wherever I go. They’re like my Christmas ghosts, but instead of just the holidays, they’re here all fucking year and I learn nothing valuable from them. There’s nothing to learn when your parents have few redeeming qualities.
At least my mom doesn’t. My dad’s problem is that he doesn’t have a backbone. Doesn’t know how to stand up for himself—or his son.
He’s a spineless coward who hides behind my mother, letting her control everything.
They have drained me dry.
If they came here, I would spiral further down that black hole.
I’m not healthy around them.
After the other day, I’ve been okay. Not good or even better, but I’m doing okay. Last night helped a lot. Being around people that weren’t after anything from me and just wanted to let loose. It felt good to be another face, another body in a crowd and live.
Living instead of existing.
Today, I went out to try and reconnect with the ocean, to see if the feelings would come back to me after leaving months and months ago. That didn’t happen.
Instead, my head is all foggy and as dull as before. I didn’t feel anything in the water until Emery knocked me off my board with her body.
Crashing into the water was like a zap of energy. A recharge. The past seven years of my life were a mundane routine and today was the first day something unexpected happened.
My mood felt lifted and seeing Emery was the cause of the occurrence. She’s like walking sunshine. Even with the sun not fully in the sky, the water was bright around her.
Fuck.
What the fuck was that?
Maybe I’m more tired than I thought.
I’m not a poetic person.
I don’t write sonnets about the sun or make comparisons about smiles to light.
I’m exhausted. Mentally and physically. Dodging calls takes a bigger toll when actively going out of the way to do it. Maybe if I make myself busier, ignoring the parents will be easier.
Distractions.
That’s what I need.
When walking onto the beach earlier, I spied a surfer in the water, but didn’t know it was Emery.
I stopped walking for a moment and just observed.
Watching her was like, well, what she said. Magic. She was in control of the wave. She surfs with a power I not only saw but also felt when she crashed into me.
It seems like we’ve fallen into an unusual greeting, one I don’t mind. I joked about her giving me a bruise, but despite her athletic, lithe body I have more weight on her and she’s lighter than what I lift.
Emery has more passion for surfing than I do. The emotions are visible in her eyes, her actions. Her eyes shine in the water, a brightness that has never touched me. At least, not as purely as it does her.
Running my hands over my face, the two-day scruff scratches at my palms. My eyes are heavy, but my body feels charged.
Lulling my head back, a groan rumbles in my throat. Today’s not the first day I’ve trained on no sleep. I’ve had many of those, but I know I didn’t push myself as hard as I needed to. As hard as I wanted to.
I’ve lost my love for surfing. I’m hoping my time here, in this small coastal town, will help me find that feeling again. To find love in something I’ve lost.
Because if I can’t, I’d have hit my prime before turning twenty-three.
I bang my head against the headrest. Again. Vibrations fill the space as my phone buzzes around in the cup holder. The name on caller I.D. has me stifling another groan. I have about ten seconds to either ignore or answer.
I hesitate too long and my mother is sent to voicemail.
With the phone still in hand, I run my free hand through my hair, messing up the semi-dried locks. The phone vibrates again, revealing that she left a message.
Of course she did.
I roll my eyes, unlocking the screen.
Instead of checking her message, something a good son would do, I open a new text message.
Dez said he wasn’t going to tell me about Emery, but hopefully that doesn’t apply to what I’m about to ask. I text him, asking for a certain sassy girl’s number.
Calm.
Quiet.
Two words I never thought I would have back in my life.
Now that I notice it, the more aware I am of how lacking the two were before. I might not be reconnecting with surfing, but at least my life is gaining more perspective. As much solace as that provides.
It’s a quick drive from the beach spot to my house. I could’ve walked to the beach from behind my house but that hadn’t worked the first week I was here so a change was needed. A different spot, one that holds more promise.
In the short time it took me to get home, my phone went off more times than I was able to keep track of. Checking the notifications in the driveway, the screen reads twenty messages. Only one is from Dez.
The rest are from my mother.
Messages that are still waiting to be heard on my voicemail. I think that racks the total up to thirty-five in the past two days alone. It’s not even eight-thirty yet. A part of me is waiting to see how long I can push that woman until she files a missing person report or hires a P.I.
As cruel as that sounds, I don’t feel bad. My mother is the reason why I needed to get away in the first place. Now that I’m here, I don’t want to go back to the life I lived before.
I might be bored from this vacation but I’m not bored by the idea of a new adventure.
I want to enjoy life, soak up as much as I can.
I might not have accomplished what I wanted today, but tomorrow I get to try again and not without the company of a girl who radiates love of the sport.
Surfing is fun no matter if you go out by yourself or with your friends, but with other people, the activity becomes less lonely.
And I’m exhausted from being lonely.
Many sports are team based, taking more than one person to win in the end. With surfing, the win is between the person on the board and the wave. Every accomplishment is solitary. It gets lonesome.
At least at competitions, there are competitors around. They might be going up against me, but they also go through all the hardships I do. There’s an understanding between us. A bond. It’s when the competition ends, when everyone goes home to train for the next meet, that it really hits me. I’m alone on this journey.
Sure, I have my parents and coach. But they’re more concerned with me winning, holding my titles of the best. It’s not hard to fall into a routine, letting life pass by without noticing. Some people never wake up from it.
One day I did.
When that day hit, I left and came here.
My parents think I’m slacking off.
Even if I am slacking off here, I think I have earned that right. Some time away should be therapeutic for me, but I still feel the same. Like I’m drifting along.
While some days are better, I’m lost in what I really want.
What if surfing isn’t even for me anymore? This is a question I don’t want to know the answer to.
I grab an avocado and put bread in the toaster. As I’m chopping up some fresh fruit, I decide to play the voicemails. Some, at least.
Nobody’s got time for all that.
“Sebastian, it’s your mother calling.” I roll my eyes. She addresses every message like this, like she doesn’t know I have her number saved in the contacts. “Where are you? Honey, please call me back. We’re worried you’re going to fall behind.” She stresses the last sentence.
I’ve done this for so long, she forgets that this is all second nature. Like I said, a routine.
“We’re worried about you,” she corrects, realizing her mistake. “You haven’t been acting like yourself. I’ve also tried to access your accounts, to make sure you’re not in any trouble, but I couldn’t get in. The banks say you changed your information. Can you text it all to me? I need to borrow some money.” End of message.
It shouldn’t surprise me that my mother didn’t even try to continue to lie about her concern. The only reason she pushes so hard with my surfing is because she wants the money. When I started getting big bucks as a teenager, my parents were in charge of the money.
They thought it was also their money, that they were more entitled to it. They raised me and they were taking back all that they invested in me.
Invested. As if a child is an investment for parents that they need to collect their dues if they become successful.
Turns out, growing up I collected a lot of unknown debt.
My parents don’t work anymore. They live off the money I give them.
Mom likes people under her control, like puppets to her marionette show and I’m acting off script.
The toast pops up and I shake off the message. I had planned on listening to more than one, but she confirms what I already know. The rest of the messages will be the same. All circling back to the money.
I need to find my way back to who I am without their pressuring.
Taking my avocado toast to the wrap-around porch leading out to the pool, I take a bite and send off a text.