In Waves | ✔️

01 | when summer ends

"I can't believe this is where I'm spending the last day of summer," I groan, scrunching rough sand between my toes. "Here."

"It's the beach, Lia. You make it sound like we're rock climbing in the desert."

"May as well be."

Rachel snorts and throws a magazine at my face, commanding me to relax. Like it's that easy. Isn't life so cruelly ironic sometimes? I live in a town called Oceanview, yet I can't stand the very thing that gives it its name. The hordes of people, the sweltering heat, the sand that creeps its way into every nook and cranny. Talk about a nightmare.

But here I am, enduring the nightmare and sitting on this stretch of Californian coast with my best friend lounging next to me. Her skin is deepening in rosiness the longer we're under the sun, and my patience is wearing thinner the longer she talks my ear off about her luxurious month-long vacation in Cabo.

You'd think after such a beachy trip she wouldn't feel the need to drag me to this godforsaken place, and I stupidly let her. Guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.

Right as I'm about to lose my mind from her chattering, my phone buzzes to life from inside the blue-and-white striped bag I grabbed from my mom's room. I rifle through it and find half a bottle of lukewarm water, some scratched-up sunglasses, and a few stale mints. A handful of loose change jingles under my fingers as I dig out my phone.

I brush away the tiny grains clinging to the screen, my stomach doing a cartwheel when I read the name underneath.

Every time I see it, fizziness bubbles from my pit, rising and spreading to all the tips of my body. I become consumed in a matter of seconds, our texts falling into their usual flirtatious rhythm of candied words. I'd eat his sentences if I could. Suck the sweetness from them all day, get them stuck between my teeth so I could taste them for as long as possible.

Everything he says is worth holding on to.

"Lia! God, are you even listening?"

"Huh?" My head snaps up, the goofy grin sliding away. "Yes, listening... I am."

"Why're you talking like Yoda?" Rachel's eyes narrow, a flash of mint green darting to my phone.

We stare at each other for an hour that fits into five seconds, and then she launches on top of me, grasping at the phone while I shriek and wrestle it away in a flurry of limbs and sand and strangled laughter. Onlookers must be shaking their heads at these two teenage girls acting so childish.

What could possibly possess them to behave like that? Boys, of course. Isn't it always?

"Ha!" Rachel wriggles the phone from my grip and stands, her perfectly pedicured toes backing away from me. "Oh my god..." she trails off, eyes flitting back and forth across the screen, jaw going slack. "Matt Benson? You're hooking up with Matt?"

"No!" My face prickles with heat, the shade likely resembling her auburn locks. I slump back, my fingers latticing over my eyes. "No, it's new. It's so new that I didn't want to jinx it and tell you yet. At least until you got back from Cabo."

"I got back last night!" She falls to her knees and grabs my burning cheeks. She's beaming. Sparkling. Rachel's had that ability since I met her in fourth grade.

It's what people love most about her. This constant bubbliness, like her skin is made of jewels and her personality is made of complex rainbow arches, different colors conveying different moods. Each one as dazzling as the next. I've always wanted to have that effortless shine.

A body suddenly dives down and causes a sheet of sand to spray us. We both squeal as our towels crease up from the impact, and Rachel's sunscreen bottle is knocked heaven high.