Miley forced herself to watch Jake's limousine drive away through a thick curtain of tears before finally allowing herself to turn around and unlock her front door. Although her view of the disappearing automobile had a somewhat cathartic effect, there was still an overwhelming feeling of guilt crushing her spirit as she finally gained the strength to open the door. As she stepped inside her living room she felt as though her feet had gained a thousand pounds and her heart had permanently constricted to its minimum size.

Like he usually was when one of his children went out on a date, Robbie Ray was camping out on the living room couch. His hands were occupied with a bowl of food, pretzels this time, and his eyes were supposedly glued to the television screen. Spying Miley from the corner of his eye he patted the couch cushion next to him and held his bowl of pretzels up in her direction.

Careful to keep her reddened eyes and tear soaked face averted from her father's gaze, Miley moved over to the couch, sat down heavily to his left, grabbed the pretzels violently, and placed her head on his shoulder. After a long, comfortable silence with each of the two lulled by the familiarity and stability of their current positioning, Robbie Ray turned his head towards his daughter and softly asked, "Do you want to talk about it, bud?"

It became apparent to the man after his daughter buried her head in the space between the back of his shoulder and the sofa and began sobbing softly that she clearly did not want to talk about it at the moment. Smiling sadly to himself he wrapped his left arm around his daughter, allowing her to bury her face in his broad chest. Stroking her long brown curls gently, he wished that he could say some words of comfort that would reach her right now.

Unfortunately he knew in his heart that nothing he could say would ease the pain she was feeling. While the relationship between the teens hadn't been formed and sustained for the proper reasons, there was no question in Robbie Ray's mind that Miley and Jake had been genuinely attracted to one another. That type of thing was bound to happen when two people with their kinds of magnetic personalities met. That attraction which had been the bond holding their relationship together was a pure connection that would definitely hurt when severed, in spite of the conditions surrounding it.

As a parent, it was more important for him to be a rock for her to cling to as the sheer force of her emotions threatened to pull her under. Any words he said now in her hour of desperation could very easily be distorted and misconstrued by the negative emotions of her situation. He would have to leave the sympathizing to her good friends Lilly and Oliver. For now, he would just hold her and remind her that he was always there for her.


As Miley entered the door to her bedroom, she felt as though she had emptied out all of the water in her body onto her father's pajama shirt. Taking a peek at her cell phone through strained eyes, she estimated that she had spent over half an hour sobbing on the couch. She felt emotionally, mentally, and somehow even physically exhausted, so falling asleep would not be difficult for her tonight.

After hopping into bed fully dressed, the girl pulled her covers up to her neck before realizing that the had one more task to complete. She somehow managed to stumble out of bed and send a quick text to Lilly before the waves of sleepiness dragged her back under her covers and into slumber land.


It had been a slow day so far by Jackson's standards. This point of view was not exactly influenced by the number of customers that came by Rico's Surf Shop; it was a sunny day, and the amount of sun that was shining was inversely proportional to how often Jackson was allowed to take a seat while he was tending to the shop. The lethargy Jackson associated with the day actually had to do with the lack of beautiful women who had showed up at his place of work. The day moved far too slowly for the young man when his eyes weren't feasting on a fine example of the female form. With his eyes bored to the point of tears, he kept himself busy during downtime by stacking a ridiculous quantity of consumable items into an elaborate construction that looked vaguely like a monstrous wave when viewed from the right angle with squinting eyes.

The slow pace of the afternoon lulled the boy into such a depressed state that he almost didn't notice the brunette teenager wearing a slightly damp, white, button-up shirt over a two piece bikini. It was a credit to Jackson's keen girl watching senses that he had managed to spot her out of the corner of his eye as she ascended the stairs that came from the beach.

His face still a blank slate he paid close attention to the area that surrounded the girl, especially to any males within a five foot radius of the beautiful teenager. As he methodically made sure that she was unattached for at least the moment, a grin slowly worked its way onto his face. The game was, as they say, afoot.

The first thing the boy did was dive under the counter, surprising all of the customers who were seated at said counter with both the sudden disappearance of the store worker and the loud thud. What those customers didn't know was that Jackson always kept a can of Axe body spray hidden underneath the counter for such occasions. He had yet to experience the sensation of beautiful women tackling him and ripping his clothing to shreds, but he held out a tiny hope that he would one day run into an Axe vulnerable woman. That hope in addition to the fact that he smelled like he had been working all morning drove him to empty half of the nearly full canister over himself.

Assured that his smell now matched his natural sexiness, Jackson hopped back onto his feet. Although it struck the boy as odd that all of the customers who had been sitting at the counter were either gagging or running away screaming, Jackson focused his attention back on the brunette. She was close enough to the counter for her to hear him, so the boy let out his sexy cough.

He had come up with the idea for this opening move after an insightful evening of watching some animal show on late night television. The teen had been pulled in by the image of two rhinos getting it on, but inspired by the knowledge that some birds were capable of attracting a mate's attention with a burp. If a bird could pull off the wild thing with a burp, surely a good looking human like himself could get a date with one. His first attempts at a dating call were thwarted by screams of, "Gross!" and, "You're disgusting." As the call evolved into a cough, however, he was pleasantly surprised with the results.

Like most girls who heard his sexy cough, the girl suddenly turned in his direction and asked in a concerned voice, "Are you alright?" Jackson could never figure out why they always asked that question after being snared by his sexy cough. He would have been able to figure it out, though, if he was aware that he had somehow managed to develop a cough that sounded convincingly like he was choking to death.

Leaning forward on the counter, Jackson smiled as handsomely as he was able to as he answered, "I'm doing real fine now that you're talking to me."

The girl eyed the teenager critically for a moment before raising her right eyebrow high, shifting her weight backwards, and asking in a flat voice, "Did you need something?"

Jackson was not well known for his perception of reality, but even he could see that he was deep in the process of striking out. He needed to hit a homerun on this next one or this game was over. It was time to pull out the big gun and beat her over the head with it. In a calm voice, the young man asked, "Can I interest you in an ice cold beverage?"

"I don't have any money with me," she stated with an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders.

The shrug had slipped the unbuttoned white shirt off of her right shoulder, so Jackson had to fight hard to keep his voice from cracking when he answered, "This one is on the house."

The girl strode towards the counter steadily until she hit the invisible, thick wall of body spray. Her stride was effectively interrupted by an inaudible gag reflex followed shortly afterwards by tearing eyes. Jackson did not notice the girl's reaction to his scent, however, since he had turned around to pull a plastic bottle of soda from the refrigerator. His back still turned to the girl, the boy took some deep breaths. He had been practicing bar flair tricks relentlessly with a similar bottle back home, but this would be his first time attempting them in public. It was time to see if his blood, sweat, and tears (a literal statement due to Jackson's first attempt at a high toss with his first practice bottle, which happened to be made of glass) had paid off.

Holding the bottle by the neck in his right hand at waist height, he flicked the bottle high in the air using his wrist. The bottle flipped impressively before landing in his outstretched left hand. Once he had a firm grasp on the bottle, he whipped his left arm behind his back, releasing the bottle in an arc that brought the soda up to his right hand which lay waiting over his right shoulder. As he caught the bottle, he turned around to take a peak at the girl. To his surprise, it actually seemed like it was working; her eyes were following the bottle closely and she was smiling delightedly.

Encouraged by the appearance of her teeth, the boy swung his right arm downwards in a pendulum motion, releasing the bottle as it came level with his lower back. The bottle completed the circuit over his right shoulder allowing him to catch it by the neck with his left hand. Holding the bottle directly in front of him, he flicked it directly upwards in the air. It flipped twice before he caught the bottle by the base and immediately tossed it straight up into the air. After a brief slide to the right, the boy stuck his left elbow out as though he were leaning on someone's shoulder. The bottle landed neatly on his extended limb.

His performance was met with wild applause by the customers who were still seated at the bar, as well as the girl who had inspired it. Removing the bottle from his elbow with his right hand, he offered it to the girl with a heavy swagger to his step. She accepted the bottle with a bright smile and a light blush on her cheeks. Things were looking up for Jackson. Right until she actually opened the bottle.

Let it be known that bar flair tricks were designed for open bottles of alcohol, not unopened bottles of soda. When compressed soda is subject to a wide variety of shaking and agitation it has the unfortunate tendency of exploding all over things like an unbuttoned white button-up shirt.

Jackson barely managed to dodge the hurled, almost empty bottle of soda as the drenched girl furiously stalked away to a restroom, but wished immediately afterwards that he had not. The bottle flew over his shoulder and hit the wave model that he had spent all morning building dead on, sending bags of chips and bottles of liquid flying in every direction.

As his eyes took in the destruction of his morning's labor, a familiar female voice called out, "I've been meaning to warn you about that, Bro. If you want to do those tricks 'round here, you really should use a bottle of water."

Jackson slowly looked up from his destroyed work of art to his sister. In a slightly annoyed voice, he stated, "I could have really used that advice up until about a couple of minutes ago, Miles."

Miley shrugged her shoulders innocently as she said in a voice that matched her body movement, "Ooops? Anyways, can I have a bottle of water?" Jackson knelt down and grabbed a bottle from the ground. With a flick of his wrist it was sent flipping in the air towards Miley. The girl somehow managed to bat it towards the ground with her hands before it connected with her face. Before bending down to pick up the water, she angrily spat out, "Jackson, you know I can't catch!"

In a perfect mimicry of his sister, Jackson shrugged his shoulders and parroted, "Ooops?"

The water now in hand, Miley walked back towards the beach chairs she had claimed for herself and Lilly. The text message she had sent before she went to sleep the night before had asked her best friend to meet her at Rico's at around noon. A quick glance down at her cell phone assured her that it was now approaching one o'clock. Although Lilly could be fairly flakey at times, she was actually a very punctual person. She wouldn't be this late without a good reason.

As it turned out there were two very good reasons for Lilly's late appearance. Seconds after seating herself, Miley spotted her best friend limping past Rico's Surf Shop on her pair of plastic, black crutches. Also to her surprise, Lilly was being followed closely by her other best friend, Oliver. Concern overruling curiosity, the girl shot up out of her seat and moved to help Lilly into one of the chairs. As Lilly was in the process of sitting down, Miley finally asked, "Lilly, what happened?"

There was a suspicious look shared between Miley's two best friends before Lilly answered, "Just a skateboarding accident. Oddly, the halfpipe wasn't padded enough for a somersault from about the edge to the bottom."

Grinning wryly at Lilly, Miley joked, "We should write them a letter about that."

Lilly nodded her agreement to Miley and said offhand to Oliver in a professional tone complete with a slight flair of her right wrist, "Oliver, please write up a draft of that letter for my later perusal." Lilly almost jumped out of her seat in consternation when Oliver actually began walking towards Jackson to ask for a pen and paper. After halting the boy's retrieval by tossing one of her sandals at the boy, she complained, "You don't have to take every sentence out of my mouth so literally, you donut!"

Miley slapped Lilly on the shoulder in a congratulatory manner. "That was very nice use of the donut, Lilly. What's up with Oliver anyways?"

Oliver stepped forward then, raising his right pointer finger upwards as he said, "I can answer that question." His face angled downwards as the boy acted on an impulse to hide the shame in his eyes by focusing on the ground he was standing on. His right foot sifted through the sand directly in front of him as he quietly stated, "I'm kind of the reason she's in those crutches, so I've pledged myself to her beck and call until she's healed."

Lilly shook her head at Miley while she clarified, "It really wasn't his fault. I was a couple of feet in the air above the halfpipe when some guy farther down the pipe bailed on his trick." Knowing the Miley wasn't very familiar with skateboarding vernacular, she playfully illustrated a skater bailing on a McTwist attempt using her fingers. As her right finger, which had been playing the part of the skateboard flew away from her left hand's finger legs, she continued, "His skateboard collided with mine while I was on my way down." She silenced Oliver's outburst preemptively with a quick glare before continuing with a cheery voice, "You should have seen me up until that happened, though. I was on fire."

Miley took the spare seat to the right of Lilly, settling in comfortably before saying, "You should have just told me you were on crutches, Lilly. I wouldn't have made you come all the way out here."

Lilly shook her head at her friend before replying, "I prefer being out of the house when my Dad is off and I'm suffering from a skateboarding injury. He likes to try to guilt me out of skateboarding."

"Her Dad can be unusually persuasive with verbal arguments for an accountant," warned Oliver as he took an Indian-style seat in the sand directly in front of the two beach chairs. "One time he almost convinced me to get a crew cut."

There was a long pause in the conversation while all three of the teenagers focused on their personal mental images of Oliver with a crew cut. Lilly was the first to break free of the thought since daydreams about Oliver's appearance were commonplace in her mind. Focusing her attention on Miley, Lilly forced her friend back into reality by asking, "What was so important that you had to send me a text at one in the morning?"

Miley stole a quick glance at Oliver. She hadn't wanted to let him know right away for some odd reason, but she realized that he was going to find out eventually. Miley turned her face back towards Lilly and stated simply, "I broke up with Jake last night."

Lilly could feel the blood draining from her face as her brain wrapped itself around this unexpected news. This break-up had an unusually large number of implications. The immediate concern was that Miley was probably in need of some heavy emotional support at the moment. In addition, an unattached Jake Ryan would leave a vacuum in the social ladder of their high school which girls of all ages, and possibly a teacher or two if one gave any credit to certain rumors, would be vying to fill. The girls' locker room and rest rooms over the next few days of school were going to be filled with interesting political positioning. And lastly, an unattached Miley could lead to something Lilly didn't want to see.

Even though she loathed doing it, Lilly forced herself to take a peek at Oliver before she responded to Miley. The boy's face seemed to be on the verge of breaking out into the biggest grin his mouth size would allow for. The only thing keeping his emotional outburst in check was his empathy towards Miley; a connection that told him that she needed her friends to be sympathetic to her emotions right now.

Pushing her own feelings aside for the moment, Lilly shifted her positioning in the chair so that she was sitting upright with both of her legs turned towards Miley. Leaning her elbows on her knees as she bent towards her friend, she turned a soft smile her way and said simply, "Tell us all about it."

And so she did.