Chapter 1:

"Fuck. My. Life." Nudge stated loudly as she entered my parent's business, Ride the Waves Surf Shop (My last name is Ride. Ride the Waves. Clever). Luckily, I was on shift and my parents were out doing other things, so they didn't have the pleasure of being introduced to Nudge's foul mouth.

I straightened up from the surf board I had been waxing, wiped my hands on a rag and brushed my long blond hair out of my eyes. "What happened to you, Lil' Miss Sunshine?"

"Fucking god damned shitfaced Dylan Wate happened, that's what." I glanced around the shop, checking for customers. There were none. Tourist season hadn't quite started on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, so everything was pretty dead.

"Oh man, what did he do this time?" I hopped onto a table facing Nudge, who had plopped herself down on the counter, next to the ancient cash register my mom refused to replace. Nudge and Dylan had had an on-again, off-again relationship for the past few months, and honestly, things were getting slightly ridiculous.

"This is it, Max. I swear I'm done with him and his bullshit. You wanna know what happened? I went down to see him at his house, and guess who I find with her mouth suction-cupped to his face? FUCKING BRIDGET, THAT'S WHO. And when I walked in I was like, 'What the hell is going on here!?' and he just looks at me with his eyes all bugged out like a dying fish, and Bridget was all straddling him and she looked at me and was like 'Oh, you two are together?' and I was like 'FUCK YOU BITCH!' and—,"

"Wait," I cut off her rant, "I thought you guys broke up like, last week or something?"

Nudge deflated slightly. "Well, we did, but that doesn't give him the right to go fu—,"

The bell chimed on the door, which signaled the arrival of my first customer today. Nudge sighed and hopped off the counter.

"I'll call you tonight!" she said as she exited the shop though the back door. I nodded and jumped over the counter so I was behind the cash register.

"Hey! Welcome to Ride the Waves Surf Shop! If there's anything I can help you with, just let me know!" The shop was a maze of shelves, wet suits, surf and boogie boards, swim suits and more, so I hadn't actually see my customer yet.

"Actually, I was wondering if you knew anybody who gave surfing lessons or something," came a distinctly male voice from behind a rack of wet suits.

"Well, me, and pretty much everybody else on the island." I responded. Island kids had literally been on the water since they could walk. My parents had basically thrown me into the ocean as soon as I took my first step, and I had been surfing ever since.

"So how much do you charge, like, per hour or whatever?" the guy rounded the corner, and I got to see him in full view, and…

Oh damn.

He was wearing black swim trunks, no shirt, no shoes. Our surf shop was right on the beach, so this was a pretty regular occurrence, except it was usually fat old men or zitty thirteen year olds who had just started getting pecs that wandered in shirtless, not fricken' underwear models or whatever he was. He had golden-brown skin and black hair that flopped in his brown eyes.

"I—uh—," I stuttered, suddenly very conscious of my white string bikini and short shorts.

He smirked at me and flipped his hair out of his eyes. "You got a staring problem, sweetie?"

Okay, that snapped me out of it. "No, you just look just like my Aunt Margret, and it's kind of freaking me out."

He chuckled, and I saw his eyes quickly scan my body before focusing on something on the wall behind me. "So it says on your little sign that lessons are ten bucks an hour?"

"Twenty if you piss the instructor off." I said jokingly in return. He was probably about my age, maybe eighteen at the most.

"And the instructor would be you?" he asked, leaning casually against the counter and causing me to notice his toned abs again.

"So it would seem."

He chuckled. "Then I'm fucking screwed. Do you take payment before or after?"

"Depends. Can I trust you?" I gave him searching look.

"Sure."

"Cool. Pay me after, then." I pulled out a sheet of paper that had all my surfing lessons scheduled on it. "I have all of tomorrow open, so whenever, I guess."

"Nice. I don't know when my family will let me go, though, so…?"

I ripped off a corner of the paper and scrawled my cell phone number and name. "Call me. I can be at the beach in like 15 minutes no matter where I am." I shoved the piece of paper across the counter as the bell rang, signaling the entry of another customer.

"Alright. See you tomorrow..." He glanced down at the paper, "Max."

I shot him a grin. "Yeah. Hey, I didn't catch your name."

The guy was already walking away to exit the building, but he turned and called over his shoulder.

"Fang. My name's Fang."

I waved at him quickly before turning to greet the next customer.

"Hey! Welcome to Ride the Waves…"

X

"So, did anybody interesting come in today?" Nudge asked me after her half an hour rant about Dylan.

"Actually, yeah." I said, jamming my cell phone between my head and my shoulder as I jiggled the door to my porch. The humid island weather had caused the wood to warp drastically, and now, to be able to open it, you had to use just the right combination of pushing, knob-turning and a few well-placed kicks. "This guy came in. Wanted surfing lessons. I haven't seen him around before."

We had people flock to the island every summer, and there were a few regulars that we kept in contact with. My close friend Iggy commuted to Kiawah every summer from New York, and Nudge had especially bonded with one of the townies named Ella, who was from roughly the same area as Iggy. Connecticut, I think. Mostly, however, we islanders stuck to our own little groups of fellow islanders. Nudge and I were friends with Gazzy and Angel, twins that were 16 years old, same as us. We also hung out with Kate, Dylan (when he and Nudge weren't fighting), and Jamie.

All of us were native islanders except for Nudge and Jamie, meaning our ancestors had been part of the tribe that lived here, and we had the characteristic traits of most of the island kids; high cheekbones, deeply tanned skin, stormy grey eyes and sandy hair bleached by the salt and sun. Nudge was half black, a descendant of a slave family that had lived on Kiawah in the ninetieth century, and Jamie's grandparents had moved here in the fifties to take over the Fish Mill, a packaging center for the massive amounts of seafood hauled in by local fishermen. He had the tan of someone who spends all day in the sun, but he had chocolaty brown hair with golden highlights and piercing blue eyes.

"Was he cute?" Nudge cut into my thoughts.

"I guess. If you like that kind of thing," I said in a non-committal tone, while secretly thinking about his model-worthy body.

"I bet he—oh, shit. Dylan's calling me again. I should probably answer him this time. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" I mumbled a goodbye, and hung up the phone with a soft click. The hammock I was laying in swayed in the warm breeze that flowed through the screened-in porch, because it was too hot to sleep inside, and I smiled to myself as I drifted off to sleep.

Soooooo? What do ya think!? Leave a comment! Let's try to get up to 30, yeah?