Chapter Text
Toni had been building a life for herself for five years now.
Year 1
It all started when she ran away from her foster home, just shy of 18 years old, making sure no one could find her by leaving the state all together.
She went to northern california, just because that was where the next interstate bus went, when she had gotten to the station on that fateful day. When she googled the place she was going to, it was a little north of San Francisco.
‘Might as well be anywhere’ Toni thought. She had no preferences but ‘away’. She hadn’t known then that going there would be a stroke of destiny.
At first it was hard. She stayed at a local shelter and was looking for jobs around town to afford a more permanent solution but it was nearly impossible, without a highschool diploma, an address and a few months under 18 years old.
It had been a Sunday, when she met Bernice. The middle aged woman, with friendly but intense eyes, dropped off some clothes at the shelter, from the lost and found at her shop, and took the time to chat with her outside, in the sun.
Toni didn’t usually talk to people, let alone strangers but on that park bench, the sun low in the evening, kind eyes focused on her, she had craved the connection and shared a little of who she was and where she came from.
Bernice offered Toni a job.
That was how Toni came to work at Sea Light surf shop. That first day it took ages to get to it with the bus and then on foot. It was directly at the coast, while Tonis shelter was somewhere inland in town.
The surf shop turned out to be more of a shack, next to a gravel parking lot on top of a cliff, where a wooden footpath led downwards to a big beach.
That first day, big waves broke and crashed against the beach and Toni watched multitudes of people on the beach, sitting around some huts and at bars and playing ball games. The only people in the water were surfers and Toni stood there, entranced by the apparent connection they displayed with the water and the waves. They looked so free.
That day, she would remember as the day her new life started.
She met Bernices daughter that day, Martha, who Toni instantly clicked with. They bonded so fast and so hard, that just after a few weeks, Toni became a part of their little two-person family.
Bernice let Toni stay in the upstairs room of the surf shop, their own apartment in the city had been almost too small for Martha and her alone and Toni couldn’t have stayed there. It didn’t matter to Toni though. She was in a safe place, close to work and with the added bonus of a damn good view.
During the first month on a weekend Bernice took them surfing. Martha had told Toni that she could surf, but didn’t enjoy it tremendously, to her mothers very loudly voiced horror.
Bernice, on the other hand, lived to surf. Almost every day before opening the shop and after closing, she was in the water - it didn’t matter whether the water was choppy - she’d be out there anyways. Toni didn’t need to guess why she had opened a surf shop.
After that first time, when she had shown Toni the basics, Toni joined her more often than not.
Bernice was skilled and an incredible teacher and just after a few months, Toni was going down to the beach even during her lunch breaks, and every day before the sun was even up. Toni made up for Marthas lack of interest in the sport a hundredfold, and it turned out she had some talent as well.
Year 2
At some point, during the second year, Toni met Fatin. She asked her a technical question, after seeing the skilled way she handled her board on the water and after a few unsuccessful flirting attempts and trying to figure out if they had chemistry between them, they became friends. Good friends.
Fatin then introduced her to Leah, and Leah to Rachel and Rachel had a sister named Nora and Nora had been in the same class as Dot. And then Toni and Martha were quickly becoming part of the tight-knit group of friends. They were bound together by their shared struggle to stay afloat and also all of them were somehow connected to the sea.
Rachel was a swimmer, in pools but also in the ocean. Nora was in college studying marine biology. Dot had taken over her Dads bar on the beach after he passed away. Fatin was trying to become a pro surfer. Secretly, Toni was too. And Martha had started working at the coast guard as a swimming instructor for kids.
Year 3
After two years Toni got a second job as a surf instructor, down at that very same beach she herself had learned to surf at.
But that life had its downsides as well. At some point the people that frequented the surf shop, and also the beach and the surf school changed. The gravel parking lot was paved, and it cost money to park there now. The bars down at the beach were either renovated or closed. The surf instructors were told to be more polite and less informal.
Tourists were starting to come around or people from the rich part of town, with fancy cars and high-end surf boards and sunglasses. People who looked down on everybody and anybody who ‘worked for them’. They threw money at everything and expected it to work. Toni hated it.
She had to learn to get her temper in check. She got into some fights which almost cost her her job but she managed. The constant exhaustion from surfing and working and surfing and then riding her skateboard to another bay to surf, made it easier. Her friends suffering with her, made it marginally easier as well.
It was on one of the rare days, when everyone in their friend group had a day off that they had found their little bay. What would become their secret, ‘private’ little beach. They somehow stumbled upon it, not an apparent trail leading to the small sandy bay that was surrounded by overgrown cliffs.
That first day the surf looked so glassy out there - optimal conditions.
You couldn’t see it from the street or any of the paths around the area.
It was their own slice of paradise, especially when the waves were gnarly to surf.
It was there, they could let loose and not risk being seen by a client or a boss or (in Fatins case) a manager. It was there when they weren’t put down and treated badly by rich, entitled assholes. It was there that they celebrated, and mourned, and raged, and thought, and philosophized.
They built a fire pit, and Toni went to that bay every day after work, lighting a fire. Fatin had started calling her lighthouse keeper and somehow they all started calling the beach lighthouse bay.
Toni went there sometimes alone, sometimes one of them joined her and sometimes they somehow all showed up. Life was great there, together.