Cross Me Off Your List (14 page)

When I step off the elevator, I hear voices.
Loud voices. I pause and listen, trying to figure out which room
they’re coming from before going any further. Then Nat walks out of
one of the rooms – not Noah’s – and catches me frozen in the
corridor.

“Um, stupid question but did you forget
Noah’s room number?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I just didn’t want to
interrupt whatever is going on,” I say.

Nat shrugs. “Noah’s pissed,” he says. “Jules
and Aralie are going to the competition with you guys today. And
Big Tony insists on going, as if Jules wasn’t enough to make my
brother mad. Have fun, though.”

He gives me a half-wave before walking down
the hallway and going into someone else’s room. It’s amazing how he
just helps himself to whatever he wants. I wonder if everyone in
the SAS family is okay with how he just invites himself into rooms
and conversations.

I linger around a few seconds longer before I
feel like a creepy stalker fangirl outside of Noah’s hotel room
window. In an attempt not to be, I quickly knock on the door and
step back, trying to play casual.

The door cracks open, but no one steps out,
and I don’t dare invite myself in. I may have some impulsiveness,
but I don’t have that Nat-like quality of just making myself at
home. I wait a few seconds before Noah opens the door the rest of
the way.

“Hey, you ready?” he asks, looking past
me.

I just nod. I feel like I’ve walked in on an
argument or like I’m invading someone’s already-bad day. Maybe I
should excuse him from his bucket list duties today. He doesn’t
seem thrilled to be going at all.

“Let’s go,” Noah says. He grabs my wrist and
rushes toward the elevator.

“Are you okay?” I ask as he pushes the
elevator button. “If you don’t want to go to this, you don’t have
to. I can show up long enough to prove I was there and bail.”

The elevator dings, and the door slides open.
“I want to go,” Noah says. “I just don’t want my babysitter to
go.”

On the ride down to the beach, Noah tells me
that Big Tony is waiting for us at the car. I don’t even ask where
Aralie and Jules are. I do not want to be the one who adds fuel to
this fire. When we reach the lobby, we hurry out to the car, where
Big Tony is waiting behind the wheel. For some reason, I feel like
Noah should have a separate driver. He probably does outside of
vacation. At least it keeps Big Tony out of the backseat with
us.

The ride to the beach lasts about two
minutes. Cars line the street, and every parking lot for a mile is
packed. A few vehicles are even down on the beach. Noah pops the
door open, and Big Tony slams the brake.

“C’mon,” Noah says, stepping out onto the
street. “Tony can park. We’re walking.”

I step out behind him, and he slams the door.
His arm wraps around me and pulls me close to him. He doesn’t even
look back at Big Tony as he drives away in an attempt to find the
last empty parking place in Crescent Cove. We walk along a sidewalk
that leads to the sand for a minute before Noah glances back.

Then he starts to laugh. “Looks like Jules
decided to drive without the bodyguard today,” he says. He nods to
a black car sitting on the street in traffic.

A Jeep that’s parallel-parked on the side of
the street eases out. The driver waves at Jules out the window, and
SAS’s bad boy slips his rental car into the spot. Noah storms off
before I even catch a glimpse at his reaction. I sort of feel sorry
for Jules. He has no idea how much salt he constantly throws on
Noah’s wound. Like that parking job – it’s not like he knows that
Big Tony is scavenging the area right now to park our car.

I turn and hurry to catch up to Noah before
Aralie and Jules spot us and ask us to wait up for them. Miles and
Topher gave Noah specific instructions to look for the Drenaline
Surf tent. Topher said it’s “blue and ginormous so you really can’t
miss it.” He wasn’t kidding. An area is sectioned off in the sand,
covered by a huge blue tent. I’m almost scared to approach it. It
looks all serious and professional.

And that’s when the insanity begins. Even
hiding behind his Oakley sunglasses and with a girl on his arm,
Noah Winters cannot hide. It starts out with a few whispers of “Oh
my God” and “Is that really him?” Then the squealing and giggling
join in. It’s like some sort of crazy fangirl song. I wait for the
piercing screams to break through like a guitar solo.

Noah steps aside to sign a girl’s cell phone
and take a few selfies. He’s definitely the best with the fans – at
least that’s what I’ve read online. He’s said to be the most likely
to stop and engage. He feeds on their energy, and it shows right
now while he’s pushing his Oakleys up into his hair to actually
show those pretty green eyes to Pink Bikini Girl’s iPhone. More
shrieks come from behind us, and someone screams Jules’s name.

“They’ll be fine!” someone shouts too closely
to my ear.

I turn to my left to see Aralie. She shrugs.
“Happens all the time,” she says loudly. “Big Tony will fix the
problem whenever he gets here. For now, let the girls scream.
C’mon.”

For half a second, I look back, a bit afraid
to leave Noah and Jules alone in the crowd of pushing girls dying
to get next to them. But I have no say in what he does, so I follow
Aralie toward the Drenaline Surf tent. Emily waves at me from a
distance.

A few coolers are loaded into the back of a
big black truck. Emily sits on the tailgate and invites us up.
There aren’t many vehicles on the beach. I wonder why they’re
special enough to have one.

“Jace helped haul crates of T-shirts down
here before dawn,” Emily says. “So he just leaves his truck for the
competition. When things get crazy, it’s nice to have a highpoint
to watch from.”

Emily explains that quarterfinals start
today, and Miles is surfing in this round, so all of the Hooligans
are here to support him. She speaks more to Aralie than she does to
me. I guess she knows I’m not an official Saturn girlfriend or a
famous Branson sister. I’m actually still on the fence about
whether I want to be part of that world.

More loud screams come from our right. I
immediately jerk my head to see who is being attacked – Noah or
Jules – but it’s neither. It’s some blonde guy in a competition
jersey and board shorts. He’s somehow worked a miracle that I
dreamed was impossible. He’s taken the spotlight away from two guys
of Spaceships Around Saturn.

“Okay. Hold up.
Who
is that?” Aralie
asks before I can. She stands up from the cooler under us and
stares at the guy walking up the beach.

“Colby Taylor,” Emily says, almost spitting
the words like his name is a bad taste in her mouth.

Aralie glances at me, like the fact that I’m
from California might mean I know something.

“What? Don’t look at me,” I say. “I live
under a rock, remember? I didn’t even know who was in Spaceships
Around Saturn.”

Emily laughs. “Colby surfs for Drenaline
Surf. He was their first sponsored surfer, and he’s pretty much a
huge deal in the west coast surf scene,” she says. “But he’s
arrogant and has all these secrets. I don’t know the first thing
about him, and none of the guys will spill, so I’m on the outside
as much as you guys are.”

Theo walks away from his spot on the sand
next to the truck. He steps under the Drenaline Surf tent, talks to
some guy with spiky black hair, and the two of them dare to venture
into the crazy girl-mob that has engulfed Noah, Jules, and this
Colby guy.

A few moments later, Theo and the other guy
come out of the crowd with the blonde surfer in tow. The
spiky-haired guy looks behind himself and steps back into the
insanity. He clears a path to allow Jules and Noah through, and
then he uses himself as a human barricade to stop the girls from
following them.

“I think Big Tony needs to be fired,” I say.
“And whoever he is, hire him.”

Emily laughs. “Vin Brooks already has a job,
and I would put money on it that he doesn’t even know who these
guys are. Besides, he has experience keeping the Hooligans in line.
Boybands are nothing.”

I’m just thrilled there’s one other soul on
this planet who could look at Jules Rossi and Noah Winters and
not
know who they are. Aralie gets up and jumps onto the
sand. She and Jules meet Theo and remain on the ground with him.
Noah steals Aralie’s seat next to me.

“So how does a surf competition work anyway?”
Noah asks, as if he didn’t just cause a fangirling riot on the
beach.

Emily explains the quarter finals and how if
Miles win this round, he’ll move on to semi-finals. Each round is
made up of heats, and apparently all Miles needs to do is keep
winning his. Then she says how the swell is small and Miles is more
brutal with power surfing than small wave riding. She compares his
surfing style to some Tahitian surfer. Noah listens, like maybe
he’ll take up a second career in surfing, but I’m pretty sure I’ll
become a Saturnite before I fangirl over Colby Taylor or Miles
Garrett or that guy from Tahiti that Emily refers to as ‘the
Spartan.’

Thirty-five minutes later, when Miles drags
his surfboard out of the water, I’m ready to claim Saturnite status
because this is the most boring sporting event I’ve ever witnessed.
Emily swears that if the swell was bigger, we’d have seen a lot
more surfing and it would’ve been much more entertaining. For her
sake, I hope that’s true because if not, she has a lot of boredom
in her future.

“I’m going to console the broken Hooligan,”
Emily says. She hops off the tailgate and meets Miles at the
shoreline.

I watch them interact for a few minutes,
imagining the words of reassurance and positivity she’s spouting to
him. He shakes his head and motions back at the water a few times.
Then Topher joins their conversation, and Emily makes her way back
toward us.

“Hungry?” she asks, leaning forward onto the
tailgate. “Miles has to stay here and support Colby against his
will, you know, because they have the same sponsor. Vin makes them
do that. So I was thinking we could ditch the boys and have a
girls’ lunch?”

Leave Jules and Noah alone? With a group of
Hooligans? On a beach with fangirls? Is Emily crazy?

“Yes,” Aralie says. “C’mon, you too. It’ll be
fun. The guys will be fine. They have security.”

She looks at me with wild eyes. She’s as
crazy as Emily. Does she not know that her boyfriend and
my…whatever he is…don’t get along?

“I don’t know,” I say, trying my best to hide
my obvious hesitation. “I just don’t think I should leave Noah
alone with...the fangirls.”

Aralie cocks her head the side and looks
straight through me. “He and Jules survive just fine on tour
together,” she says. “They’ll be fine. They need to get over all
this crap. Let’s go.”

Noah shoots me a look that could burn holes
through me as Aralie tells him and Jules about our plans. I hope
Theo or Kale will jump in and offer to hang out with the guys so
I’ll feel less guilty about leaving them here to fend for
themselves.

Emily grabs a set of keys from Vin, who
apparently is the big shot guy over Drenaline Surf, and motions for
Aralie and me to follow her. We trek up the beach back to the
parking lot behind Drenaline Surf.

“I’m parked over here,” Emily says.

She walks over to an electric blue PT
Cruiser. Aralie offers me the front seat, but I allow her to take
it instead. Emily cranks up and backs out of her super lucky
parking spot behind Drenaline Surf. I guess this is the perk of
dating one of their surfers.

“Alright. Give me just a second,” she
says.

She hops out but leaves the car running. She
walks back under the small garage-like area on the back of
Drenaline Surf. Then she straddles the motorcycle parked underneath
it.

“Oh my God,” Aralie says, leaning into the
dashboard. “Is that little pixie fairy girl going to actually drive
that? How does she even know what to do with a motorcycle?
Holy…she’s cranking the thing. Oh my God. Why aren’t you
speaking?”

“Uhhh,” I stammer. I lean between the
driver’s and passenger’s seat for a better look. “I guess, um,
she’s moving it or something?”

The bike roars to life, and as gently as
she’d play with a kitten, the surfer’s girlfriend moves the
motorcycle into her former parking place. Then she kills it, walks
back over to her car, gets in, and drops the set of keys into her
purse.

Aralie finally picks her jaw up off the
armrest. “Holy fucking hell,” she says, almost shouting the words
in Emily’s face. “You have to be my best friend. Forever.”

Emily laughs. “Okay then. We can do that,”
she says. She maneuvers her car out of the parking lot and onto the
main road. “Vin knew someone would steal my spot, so he told me to
move his bike. It’s not the first time I’ve done it. He’ll still be
at the beach when we get back.”

When Emily parks her car in front of a small
diner named Shipwrecked, I don’t even care if it’s some local
burger joint. I love the fact that I’m out with the girls. It
doesn’t matter if they’re not my lifelong friends or people who
know everything about me. It really doesn’t matter that Emily is a
surfer girlfriend and Aralie is a Saturn girlfriend. All that
matters is that it’s spring break, and I’m in the cove, and I’m
hanging out with possibly two of the coolest chicks in California
at some diner named Shipwrecked.

I pause to look at the diner’s sign. An
octopus has its tentacles wrapped around two halves of a broken
ship. The word Shipwrecked is broken in half beneath the image.
Once inside, we settle into a back corner booth. A paper octopus
with scrunched legs sits between the ketchup and mustard bottles.
Its eyes are pink rhinestones. I hope the food is better than the
accessories.