Beach House

What you want is just outside your reach
You keep on searchin'
You're walking down that Pensacola beach
You keep repeatin'

He hadn't been in Florida very long. He didn't really want to stay there very long either. While he liked the sunny beaches of California, there was something different and odd about Florida. Or maybe it was just because he was on the Gulf. Or the sherbet-colored houses that all looked vaguely alike. Floridians really liked their pastels. Maybe as much as they liked cookie-cutter uniformity.

This beach was thousands of miles away from Santa Barbara. Somehow it wasn't far enough, though. Shawn felt like he could be on the opposite side of the world from Santa Barbara and still not be far away enough. He'd have to look into where the opposite side of the world from California was. Something told him it was probably in an ocean somewhere. Gus would probably know. He always knew dumb facts like that.

And then he thought about what Henry had said. About how he always ran and never actually confronted his problems. Probably a byproduct of his father's denial and his mother's wanderlust. Not the greatest combination of qualities to inherit.

It was almost funny how well he handled rejection. He liked rejection, really. But there was something about reciprocation that he couldn't stand. And not even just plain old liking someone else, but that sort of aching feeling you got when you really thought this could be something good, something real.

This sucked.

Because he knew he'd blown it. He always knew when something big presented itself to him that there was a risk of blowing it. And this time…this time really took the cake. It took the whole damn bakery.

Maybe he could just stick a message in a bottle and hope the currents would take it where it needed to go. That would probably be easier than what he'd have to do to gain back trust now. It might take less time, too.

No, if he wanted to regain trust, it had to be in person. Which meant he had to get the hell out of Florida. And he was more than happy to do that.