Chapter Text
The beach was already alive beneath the afternoon sun, warm enough that most of the crowd had drifted toward the water instead of staying tucked beneath their umbrellas. Kids shrieked near the shoreline every time the water chased their ankles. Parents dragged coolers through the sand, teenagers clustered around towels and speakers, and the boardwalk behind them stayed busy with people moving between food stands, souvenir shops, and shaded benches. Red sat beside Hazel in the lifeguard tower, sunglasses perched on top of her head and her whistle resting against her chest. Chloe sat beside Hazel with her legs draped lazily across her girlfriend's lap, chatting with the two of them as Red's attention wandered between the conversation and the beach below.
Red lifted her foot and tapped the legs of the chair Chloe was sitting on. "You got any dinner plans tonight, boo?"
Chloe looked up from her lap, where she traced lazy patterns over Hazel's fingers, and shook her head. "Nope, not tonight."
"Want to grab something later then?" Red asked.
"If I finish my homework in time, sure," Chloe replied.
Hazel shook her head from her spot beside her girlfriend. "I still can't believe you're taking more summer classes."
Chloe lifted Hazel's hand to her lips and pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles. "You know I like to keep busy."
"True," Red said.
Hazel snorted, earning a playful glare from Chloe before she looked back at Red. Red smiled to herself. Chloe had always been the busiest person she knew. Between work, studying, and somehow still finding time for the people she cared about, Red wasn't entirely convinced she knew how to slow down. She admired that about her, even if there were times she wanted to grab Chloe by the shoulders and tell her the world wouldn't end if she gave herself an afternoon off.
Hazel must have been thinking something similar because she smiled and gave Chloe a fond look. "One of these days I'm going to convince you to slow down."
Chloe leaned comfortably against Hazel's shoulder before reaching up to gently boop the end of her nose. "You can try."
Hazel caught Chloe's hand before she could pull it away, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I'm serious."
Chloe smiled back at her. "Oh, I'm sure you are."
"Chloe."
She lifted an innocent brow. "Hazel."
"I'm just saying, maybe if you—"
Red laughed softly and let her attention drift back toward the beach. Chloe and Hazel had been like this for as long as she could remember. Their conversations had a way of drifting from quiet affection to harmless bickering and back again without either of them seeming to notice. It was impossible to be around them and not see how much they loved each other. Red noticed it all the time, even when she wished she didn't.
A soft chime sounded from Chloe's phone, pulling Red's attention back from her thoughts.
Chloe slipped the phone from her pocket to silence the alarm, and Red could already see the heartbreak settling across both of their faces.
Chloe looked over at Hazel, a small pout tugging at her lips. "I've gotta go," she said softly.
Hazel's thumb drifted across the top of Chloe's thigh, still resting comfortably in her lap. "The world is evil for separating us," she grumbled.
The comment earned a small smile from Chloe.
Chloe slid her legs from Hazel’s lap and stood. Hazel followed not even a second after, like just sitting behind Chloe was being too far away from her. Red stayed where she was, allowing them to have their moment together. Chloe raised her arms to cradle Hazel’s face in her hands, while Hazel settled hers on Chloe’s hips. Between soft kisses they exchange words that Red can’t catch and smile at each other so brightly they’d give the sun a run for it’s money. Red envied how easy it was for them, how certain it was. There was no flinching, no second-guessing, no waiting for any moment to turn sour. Just two people who genuinely care for each other.
Red looked away before the ache in her chest had time to make itself obvious.
“Text me when you can,” Hazel said when Chloe pulled back.
“I will,” Chloe promised. “And you text me if Red gets herself in trouble.”
Red scoffed from behind them. “Why am I catching strays during your goodbye kiss?”
“Because it’s funny,” Chloe said, stepping back with a grin. She lifted her hand to Red in a small wave. “Bye, Red. I’ll let you know if I can do dinner tonight.”
“Later, Blue. Don’t study too hard.”
“I won’t!” Chloe said. Then she shot Red a smile that told her she absolutely was going to anyway before making her way out of the tower and heading down the stairs. Hazel’s eyes never left her, even as she walked across the beach and out of sight. The look on her face was so pathetic that, if Red hadn’t known her any better, she’d have thought Hazel was on the verge of tears.
“You know she’s not going off to war, right,” Red asked.
Hazel moved into the chair next to her with a pathetic sigh. “Yeah, I just miss her.”
Red stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. "Aww, you poor thing. I don't know how you'll ever recover."
Hazel gave her a lazy shove with her shoulder, scanning the water now that her biggest distraction was gone. “Laugh all you want. One day you’re going to find somebody who makes you act just as stupid, and I’m going to be unbearable about it.”
Red smiled because that was the easy thing to do, the expected thing to do, the thing that kept Hazel from looking too closely. “Can’t wait.”
Hazel let the subject drop, falling into easy conversation again as the afternoon carried on. Red tried to follow along, nodding when it felt appropriate and humming in agreement when Hazel paused long enough that it seemed like she expected an answer. Whatever Hazel was talking about gradually faded into little more than background noise. Her gaze drifted over the beach, past the bright towels and bobbing heads, past the sunlight glittering on the water until it hurt to look at.
One day you're going to find somebody.
Hazel had said it like it was simple, like love was something that wandered up if a person waited long enough, like Red had not already learned what it felt like for love to turn into a trap with a pretty name.
She did not say any of that. She did not say that the idea of someone looking at her the way Chloe looked at Hazel felt impossible now, almost embarrassing to imagine. She did not say that she still heard old words in quiet moments, still blamed herself when something went wrong, still caught herself tracing bruises that had long since faded. Red only kept her smile in place, nodded when Hazel nudged her for a response, and kept her gaze on the water like she could leave those thoughts somewhere beneath the waves.
Luis rested one arm against the open window of his Jeep as he headed toward the beach, the warm ocean breeze carrying the familiar smell of salt through the vehicle. He had only been back in town a short time, but every street felt a little easier to recognize than the last. Some of the places he remembered were still right where they had always been, while others had changed enough to catch him by surprise. It was a strange feeling, coming back somewhere that had helped raise him. Part of him wondered if he still fit here after all these years. The rest of him was just happy to be back.
He slowed for a car turning ahead of him, his eyes drifting toward the row of shops lining the street. Miss Tiana's bakery was still there. He smiled as he drove past it, remembering all the afternoons she would hand him a free pastry before sending him on his way with a smile. Maybe he'd stop in sometime this week and see if she was still around.
The bakery disappeared behind him, replaced by another stretch of familiar storefronts. Before long the song on the radio came to an end, and the next one earned a grin the second he recognized it. Luis reached over, turned the volume up a little, and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel while he sang along under his breath, letting the music carry him the rest of the way toward the beach.
A red light brought him to a stop at the next intersection. While he waited, two kids ran across the crosswalk from the left, racing each other toward the playground on the other side of the road where the rest of their friends were already waiting. Within seconds they were climbing, laughing, and chasing each other around the playset. The equipment was newer than the one he had grown up with, but watching them brought the same old memories back anyway. He wondered if any of the friends he used to spend afternoons there with still lived in town, then the light changed and he followed the road toward the beach once more.
After another minute or so of driving, Luis spotted an opening in a parking lot near one of the beach entrances. He pulled into the space with a satisfied grin, shut off the Jeep, and climbed out into the afternoon sun. The heat settled over him almost immediately. Before he could forget, he reached into his bag for the sunscreen and worked it over his face, upper body, arms, and legs. Satisfied he was not about to spend the rest of the day looking like a lobster, he tossed the bottle back inside, grabbed his towel and surfboard from the backseat, locked the Jeep, and started toward the beach.
He had almost reached the boardwalk when something familiar on the side of a nearby shop caught his eye. A faded mural stretched across the wall, worn by years of sun and salty air until some of the colors had almost disappeared completely. Luis slowed to a stop, staring at it for a second before a smile spread across his face.
"No way..."
He wandered closer.
His third grade class had painted this.
Looking at it now, he honestly could not believe nobody had covered it up. The school mascot in the middle was crooked, some of the handprints overlapped each other, and a few names had faded enough to disappear altogether. He leaned in, reading the ones that were still there.
Celeste.
Finn.
Melody.
Then, near the bottom, he found a dark blue handprint with his own name still sitting underneath it.
Luis shifted his board beneath one arm and pressed his hand against the paint. His palm completely swallowed the little handprint now, and he laughed quietly to himself.
"Guess it’s been a while."
He left his hand there for another moment before lowering it again. Even after all this time, there was still proof that he had been here. He had left something behind long before he was old enough to realize it.
Maybe leaving a new mark on this town would not be as hard as he thought.
With that thought lingering pleasantly in the back of his mind, Luis adjusted the board under his arm and continued toward the beach.
The first few steps onto the beach loosened something in him. The sand shifted beneath his feet, hot on the surface and cooler underneath, and the sound of the water filled the spaces in his head that had been too loud all day. He found a spot not too far from one of the lifeguard towers, spread his towel out on the sand, and set his bag beside it.
Luis made sure his water bottle was easy to reach before turning his attention back to the ocean. The waves rolled in with a steady rhythm, breaking just far enough out to promise a good afternoon. A grin found its way back onto his face as he slipped the strap around his ankle, tucked the board beneath his arm, and jogged toward the water.
The first shock of it against his legs made him laugh under his breath. It was colder than the air, sharp enough to wake him up, and by the time he paddled out past the smaller breaks, his thoughts had begun to untangle. The first wave he caught was messy, and he rode it only a few seconds before dropping back into the water, but the second was better. By the third, his body remembered what his mind had been overcomplicating.
He stayed out there for a while after that.
One wave turned into another, then another after that, until he stopped counting altogether. The sun warmed his shoulders, salt clung to his skin, and every clean ride left him grinning as he paddled back out for the next one. Every so often he'd glance back toward shore to make sure he hadn't drifted too far from where he'd left his towel, then turn his attention back to the water before the next set rolled in.
It felt good.
Really good.
Luis had spent plenty of time surfing over the years, but there was something different about being back here. Maybe it was because this was where it all started, or maybe he was just riding the high of finally making it back. Whatever the reason, he found himself laughing more than once when a wave carried him a little farther than he expected or sprayed him with enough water to sting his eyes.
He wiped the salt from his face and climbed back onto his board, letting it bob gently beneath him as he looked out across the water. Another set was already beginning to roll in, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Luis turned the board toward the incoming swell and dug his hands into the water, matching his paddling to the rhythm of the wave as it closed the distance between them. One stroke. Two. Three. He felt the tail of the board begin to rise beneath him, then the familiar push as the wave caught hold. A grin spread across his face as he gave it one last strong paddle, planted his feet beneath him, and sprang upright.
There it was.
His knees bent instinctively as he settled into the ride, letting the wave do the work while he shifted his weight from heel to toe. The board skimmed across the face of the water, smooth and steady beneath him. He carved out toward the open face, then eased himself back toward the breaking water, a fine mist of salt spraying around him with every turn. It wasn't the biggest wave he'd ever ridden, but it hardly mattered. It was clean, it was fun, and for those few moments there was nowhere else in the world he would have rather been.
A laugh escaped him as the wave carried him farther down the shoreline.
He could do this all day.
The rush never really went away. Every wave felt just a little different from the last, and every one left him chasing the next before the excitement of the last had a chance to fade. He could already feel himself looking over the shoulder of the wave for another set rolling in.
But as the water carried him farther down the shoreline, another thought quietly worked its way in.
As much fun as he was having, it would have been nice to have someone out here with him.
Maybe that was the hardest part about starting over. Even the best moments had a way of reminding him he was sharing them with nobody.
The thought settled deeper than he wanted it to.
By the time Luis pulled himself out of his thoughts, he was already too late. The board tipped beneath him, the water rose at an ugly angle, and his stomach lurched as he realized he had misjudged the break completely. He tried to recover, but the wave caught him sideways and slammed him down hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. The world became noise and pressure, water roaring in his ears as he tumbled beneath the surface with no sense of up or down.
He reached for the board by instinct and found nothing. The strap at his ankle pulled once, then slipped loose. Panic flared bright and immediate. Luis kicked, but another surge rolled him before he could orient himself, and salt water burned his nose as he fought not to inhale. He told himself to stay calm. He knew how to handle a wipeout. He knew how to wait out the spin, find the light, and rise. But his chest was already tight from the breath he had lost, and the water kept shoving him down like it had hands.
For one terrifying moment, there was no sun, no shore, no boardwalk, no childhood memory waiting to be reclaimed. There was only the dark blur of water and the violent need for air. His limbs felt heavier with every second. His thoughts, sharp with panic at first, began to smear at the edges. He kicked again, weaker this time, and his hand broke the surface for half a second before the water swallowed him back under.
Then something grabbed him.
At first, Luis fought it because fear had turned everything into threat. Arms locked around him, strong and sure, and a body moved against his with practiced purpose. He felt himself being pulled, dragged upward through the churn of the water until his face broke the surface and air hit him like fire. He coughed, but he could not get enough breath to make the coughing useful. The world flashed in pieces, sunlight, foam, a voice shouting near his ear, the hard tug of someone keeping him above water when his body had stopped knowing how.
The sand scraped his back before he fully understood he was on land. Hands moved him with urgency, turning him, positioning him, pressing against his chest in a rhythm that shook pain through his ribs. Somewhere nearby, another voice called for space. Someone said something about EMTs. Luis tried to open his eyes and could not keep them open. His lungs felt locked, his throat burned, and every sound came to him from too far away.
Pressure hit his chest again, firm and relentless. Then warmth covered his mouth, soft lips sealing over his as air was pushed into him. The sensation was distant, drowned out by his desperate need to breathe. Another gifted breath followed, then more compressions, and suddenly his body remembered what it was supposed to do. Water tore up from his chest in a violent sputter, and Luis rolled as much as the hands on him allowed, coughing until the world cracked open around him.
When his eyes finally managed to focus, the first thing he saw was red.
Not the lifeguard buoy. Not the warning flag snapping somewhere on the lifeguard tower. Hair, bright and vivid and being haloed by the sun, fell around the face leaning over him. At first she was only color and light, a blurred shape against the bright blue sky, but then the details came slowly into place. Smooth skin flushed from effort. Dark brows pulled tight with concentration. A mouth still parted around the command she had just given someone else. Hazel eyes that looked sharp even through the chaos, searching his face like they could drag him the rest of the way back through sheer force of will.
Luis thought, with the last useless bit of poetry his oxygen-starved brain could manage, that she looked like something the ocean gods had given up reluctantly. Not gentle, and definitely not delicate, because nothing about the way she held herself seemed fragile. She looked fierce. She looked furious with the idea that he might slip away after she had already decided he would live. The sunlight caught in her red hair until it burned around her face, and for one suspended second, between coughing and breathing and the returning weight of his own body, Luis was certain he had never seen anyone more beautiful in his life.
“There you go,” she said, her voice clearer now as the world sharpened. “Keep coughing. That’s good. Stay with me, okay?”
Luis tried to answer, but all that came out was another rough cough. The red-haired lifeguard shifted beside him, steadying him with one hand while the other checked him with efficient care. Another lifeguard was there too, a girl with dark hair and worried eyes, speaking to him in a calm voice that seemed designed to keep him from drifting off again. They asked his name. He gave it after a delay that made the red-haired girl frown. They asked if he knew where he was, what day it was, whether anything hurt besides the obvious. Luis answered as best he could, embarrassed by how thin his voice sounded and how hard it was to stop shaking.
By the time the EMTs arrived, the growing crowd had become a loose ring around them. Someone had found his board farther down the shoreline and brought it over to him. Someone else kept telling everyone to back up. Luis was brought up to a sitting position and handed a blanket to put over his shoulders despite the heat. One of the EMTs shined a light in his eyes and check his breathing while another asked him a steady stream of questions that took more effort to answer than they should have.
They decided he did not need to be taken in as long as he kept improving, though they warned him to rest, hydrate, and get checked out if anything felt wrong later. Luis nodded through the instructions, still dazed and mortified and alive. When someone asked where his belongings were, he pointed toward the towel he had left on the sand. A nearby beachgoer jogged over, gathered everything up, and returned with his bag and towel. Luis thanked everyone he could, but when he finally stood on unsteady legs and turned toward the lifeguard tower, the red-haired girl was gone.
In her place, two different lifeguards had taken over the post, both unfamiliar, both already focused on the water like nothing had happened at all. Luis scanned the beach, searching for that flash of red hair among the towels and umbrellas and bodies moving through sunlight, but he found nothing. She had vanished back into the day as quickly as she had appeared out of the water.
He stayed where he was and looked out at the ocean, which rolled in calmly now, as if it had not tried to keep him. He should have been thinking about how close he had come to dying, or how stupid it had been to lose focus, or how badly his ribs would ache tomorrow. Instead, he kept thinking about the lifeguard who had refused to let him die. She had saved his life, and he had not even managed to thank her before she disappeared.
Luis pressed a hand to his chest, felt the steady beat beneath the soreness, and let out a breath that trembled more than he wanted it to. He did not know her name. He did not know anything about her beyond the flash of red hair and the sound of her voice telling him to stay with her. But he knew he owed her more than a silent glance toward an empty lifeguard tower.
He gathered his things, took one last look toward the beach, and made himself a quiet promise.
The next time he came back, he was going to find her and thank her properly.