Page 111 of The Beach Shack Summer
Okay. Welcome to having a beautiful, confident daughter who surfs better than most of them?
Not helping.
She can handle herself. You saw her shut down those guys at the Shack. She’s got this.
Tyler looked at the photos again. His daughter, strong and capable on the waves, completely unbothered by the chaos she was causing in the lineup.
Luke was right. She could handle herself. Had been handling herself.
But that didn’t mean Tyler had to like it.
“Hey Tyler?” Stella called from the living room. “Tomorrow for the photo lesson—can we shoot sunrise at Crystal Cove? I researched, and the light angles should be perfect for what you were talking about.”
“Yeah,” he called back. “Sounds good.”
Father-daughter sunrise photography sessions. No surfer boys. No distractions. Just him teaching herabout f-stops and composition while definitely not mentioning that half the dawn patrol had forgotten how to surf in her presence.
“Oh,” Stella added, appearing in the doorway again. “Andrew from the surf shop texted. Wants to know if I need any gear. Said he’d give me the ‘local’s discount.’”
“He what now?”
“The local’s discount. Nice, right?” She wandered off again, leaving Tyler staring at his phone.
He pulled up a new text to Meg.
Code red. Andrew’s offering her DISCOUNTS.
That’s... bad?
He’s TWENTY-TWO.
She’s sixteen. She knows she’s sixteen. Andrew knows she’s sixteen. Breathe.
How are you so calm about this?
Because I remember being sixteen. And having an overprotective dad. And guess what? I survived.
This is different.
Because she’s YOUR daughter?
Yes.
Tyler. She told a guy yesterday his pickup line needed work. IN FRONT OF HISFRIENDS. She’s fine.
Tyler looked at the photos one more time. Tom’s spectacular wipeout sequence—board vertical, arms flailing, all because he’d been rubbernecking.
Maybe he could convince her to take up photography exclusively. From a nice, safe studio. With no windows. And definitely no surfer boys pretending they needed to borrow wax or check the conditions or offer helpful tips about board selection.
“Tyler!” Stella called. “Want to watch Patricia’s pottery class livestream? She just went live and Bernie’s commenting. He’s savage!”
“Coming,” he called back, closing the laptop on the evidence of his daughter’s effect on the local surf population.
At least Patricia was a problem he understood. Surfer boys with crushes? That was entirely new territory.
And Meg was at the shack now, probably laughing at his texts from her peaceful, surfer-boy-free prep station.
The universe had a twisted sense of timing.
