Page 44 of Sweet Chaos
“You think I should stay a virgin forever, Dylan?”
“Wait until you find someone who treats you right. Someone special. And don’t say the word fuck. It sounds all wrong coming out of your mouth.”
I’d taken Dylan’s advice and I had waited for someone special. Someone I trusted with my heart. I chose Ollie, and he’d been so gentle, so sweet. But I’d broken his heart. My head fell back against the headrest with a thud and I banged it a few times.
I hated myself right now.
Dylan returned with two plastic carrier bags and stowed them in the back. I didn’t even ask what was in the bags. I didn’t say a word as he pulled out onto the road. Minutes later, he parked in the public lot by the pier and tossed a hoodie at me from the backseat.
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Something I want to show you.”
“I just want to go home,” I said, weary and defeated.
“And do what? Eat ice cream and watch 80s flicks? I’ve got a better idea. Come on,” he coaxed. “The view’s better where we’re going.”
With a sigh, I got out of the car and walked alongside him, the sea breeze cooling my flushed cheeks. I shivered, threading my arms through the hoodie and zipping it up, annoyed with myself when I burrowed my nose in the cotton fabric, inhaling his scent. I needed an intervention. We followed the curved sidewalk past the pink stone benches on a grassy hill overlooking the sea and passed a group of teens doing skateboard tricks off the low wall, their wheels grating against the concrete.
We stopped outside the front entrance of The Surf Lodge, and Dylan transferred both bags to his right hand and unlocked the door then ushered me inside and used his phone flashlight to guide the way.
“Careful,” he said, giving me his hand so I didn’t trip over the rolled-up carpeting and debris littering the uneven floor.
The construction crew had walked out halfway through the job and left walls partially knocked out and electrical wiring exposed.
We climbed the stairs, Dylan leading the way, and I stayed close behind him. The hotel smelled musty, the sawdust from the construction work lodging in my throat and making me cough. When we reached the top of the stairs, Dylan flung open a door and ushered me onto a flat roof. I took deep breaths of the fresh sea air and trained my phone flashlight on the space, arcing the light across the bar spanning the far wall, tarps covering what I guessed were tables and bar furniture.
Dylan dragged two Adirondack chairs over to the railing and set them up side by side. I took a seat next to him and looked down at the two bags at our feet.
“What’s in the bags?”
“Trick or Treat.”
Despite myself, I laughed a little and rooted through a bag of snack food. Doritos, Twizzlers, M&Ms, a bagful of sweet and salty junk food. I knew he hadn’t bought them for himself. This was his attempt to try to make me feel better. I never would have dreamt that Dylan could be so sweet, but he was always surprising me.
He flipped the lid off a bottle of beer with his key and handed it to me before he opened one for himself. “Thank you.”
He nodded once.
“It’s beautiful up here.” I leaned back in my seat that was sticky from the salty air, and took in the view of the ocean, a silver slipper of moon shimmering on the water, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore a soothing lullaby.
“Yeah. It is. The first time I saw the Pacific Ocean… any ocean… I was sixteen. It was the only time in my life that the reality lived up to the dream.” Wanting to hear more, I waited, sensing that he was going to share a piece of himself with me.
“Me and Remy wanted to learn how to surf. We taught ourselves to skateboard, so we figured we could do the same with surfing. So, one day we rented boards from Jimmy… Shane’s dad. He used to own a surf shop.” I nodded, acknowledging that I knew who Jimmy was even though I’d never had a chance to meet him.
“He told us he’d teach us a few basics.” Dylan chuckled under his breath. “He brought us out here and made us practice on the sand. I was so pissed. I just wanted to get out in the water. But, for some reason, I stayed, and I listened to everything he told us. I think it was because nobody had ever taken the time to teach me anything. And he was just this cool, chilled-out hippie dude. Big on finding his Zen and shit.”
I smiled, envisioning a teenage Dylan and an older version of Shane bonding over surfing. “Like Shane?”
“Even more laidback than Shane. He always gave the best advice. Not that I always took it. But when I was in college, Remy was gone… Shane was gone… and I used to kick back with Jimmy, smoke weed, talk about life and shit.”
“You miss him,” I said softly.
“He was the best guy I’ve ever known. He got married on this roof. He told me that he wanted to buy The Surf Lodge someday and restore it. But he never got the chance.”
I thought about his story. For Dylan, this wasn’t just an old hotel and it wasn’t about the money. He wanted to hang on to a piece of history, a piece of Jimmy, and one of the ways he could do that was by restoring The Surf Lodge. “This place means a lot to you.”
