Prologue-ish

Many things brought people to ramson beach every year. Breakups, grief, rehabilitation or just the plain old need to relax and let loose. For April O'Brien, she'd come to face a battle.

It wasn't the typical hunt-and-kill kind of battle, it was far from that, actually. The thing is when you're April, you never really stop fighting: with yourself over what you should or shouldn't feel, with your father over what you'd rather do with your life or with everything in general.

At this point, it was almost like nothing would change.

The waves of the ocean crashed against each other, sending white foam racing to the shore like it was being chased. It was quite the sight, especially if you're the kind to make up scenarios in your head. The air was mixed with the smell of salt from the sea and the sunlight made the gold-brown sand sparkle like tiny shiny jewels, distracting everyone from thinking about their problems and just laying focus on their environment instead.

Eighteen year old April and her stepsister, Paige were watching their environment in awe, like everyone, except their lines of sight were more directed on a group of under-thirty males playing volleyball.

"That guy looks just like Shawn freakin' Mendes, I bet all the fish in the sea!" Paige gasped, looking through the pair of  binoculars perched on her nose. Obnoxious? She and April liked to think not, as they'd been passing the goggles back and forth for the last hour. "Okay, maybe not all the fish," she corrected, "but this is a really close semblance."

"Where?" April turned from her bay watch, straining her eyes to follow Paige's line of sight to yet another group of youthful eye candy. "The one in blue or the shirtless one?"

Paige scoffed incredulously. "Shirtless one, dumbass. That one in blue looks like Barney Stinson if he suddenly had brown hair."

April flipped her off and redirected her eyes. It was true, though. Paige had said the right thing for once in her life. "Okay, oh my gosh!"

"I know right?" The blonde squealed. "What do you think his name is?"

April rolled her eyes. "Check his name tag."

"He has a name tag?!" Paige lifted the binoculars back to her eyes. "I can't see it."

"That's because he's not wearing one! How would you expect me to know his name?"

"Go ask him. You're hot."

April smirked at the compliment. "Yeah, but you're blonde. You ask him."

Amanda, their third party-and the unfortunate audience to this shenanigans - scrunched her nose at the both of them. "Are you guys actually kidding me?" She propped herself up to lean on her elbows. "We're here to relax and enjoy ourselves, not watch boys."

"Technically, watching boys can be described both relaxing and enjoying ourselves," Paige objected, as a flock of seagulls landed a few feet away from them.

"You promised you'd behave," Amanda said, waving to discard the trash eating birds. "Sunbathing was the first thing on our vacation itinerary, not comparing guys to celebrities."

April rolled her eyes and leaned over to grab Paige's binoculars. Amanda always had to be such a buzzkill. "We're not even on vacation, if you ask me. What I'm doing is called making the best of our awful situation."

"What makes it awful?" Amanda asked with a thin smile. "The fact that we're here for free or that we have no obligations whatsoever."

"I get that we're lucky and everything," Paige shrugged, agreeing with her. "But we're still not here on our own."

"Yeah!" April supported. "This would've been way more fun if Dad hadn't had to hogtie us here."

Amanda relaxed her elbows, resuming her former position on the mat, staring up at the sky. "You could be more grateful."

"You know what else sucks here?" April asked.

Paige shrugged. "The 'no skinny dipping' policy?" 

They all laughed and April shook her head. "The fact that I haven't suddenly found my soulmate like the brochures said I would." She peered through the lenses. "I think I'm close though."

"Yeah, I doubt you'll find anything close to a soulmate. If April's interested first, it won't happen." Amanda sounded like she was quoting a physics law.

April chuckled. "That's so not true!"

"Really?"

She laughed even harder. "Really!" She couldn't believe anyone would even think that. Sure, she hadn't had a strong relationship in a while, but it had nothing to do with whether or not she was interested first. It was more... commitment, than anything.

"Agree to disagree."

"Hey, Paige, back me up."

"Backing you up," the blonde said absently, waving at someone off their normal sight range. "Amanda, lay off her. She'll find another Javier."

The muscle in April's jaw tensed as the name left Paige's lips.

Amanda smiled. "I don't even know if Javier was a hero or a villain. He just showed up, was like the sweetest guy you've ever dated and then left you for college...I can't understand him."

April fell silent for the next few moments as she collected herself. She couldn't start thinking about anything -or anyone -that would give her a headache. This was summer. Paige and Amanda, however, kept arguing over it.

"No, April was the one who dumped him right before he went off. To where, Boston?"

She swallowed to keep her voice steady. "Yeah, Boston...Harvard."

As Amanda had been very kind to point out, April did have a lot of exes. None of them mattered to her anymore, though. Not even Javier Klein. He was as dead to her as possible, long buried beneath mountains of teenage stress, as is what she liked to call their relationship.

"You know, I think he's coming," Paige announced as though she'd read April's thoughts. "Javier, I mean. Didn't his father's company like...partner with Dad or something?"

April wiped shock off her face and gave a half shrug. "Yeah...I think so." Her voice came out calm, thank goodness, unlike her thoughts, which were anything but. Javier? here? With them? Never.

She turned away, her eyes darting the perimeter in search of a distraction. She could not allow her mind to start thinking of him, not now.

"Are you okay?" Amanda asked, puffing her curls back into place. "Have you guys talked of recent?"

April shook her head, giving up on the search for something distracting. She was just going to play it natural.  "No, I didn't see reason to."

"Not even to ask how he's coping? I mean you claim your breakup was a mutual agreement." Amanda was persistent.

She lifted the binoculars back to her eyes. Why wouldn't Amanda just drop it?

"It was. And I have no problem with Javier. In fact, I think it'll be fun having him around again," she said carefully, forcing a smile to prove that she was fine when in truth, every cell in her body was on high alert. She flipped the binoculars over in her hands, peering through the lenses as she struggled to ignore Amanda's drilling eyes.

"April, are you sure?"

"When does he get here?" She asked instead, turning to Paige.

"Mom said the rest of the party arrive tonight. There'll be a small gathering at our beach house, then everyone can find their way and real stuff starts tomorrow morning, " Paige answered.

April rolled her eyes. Trust her father to treat everything like a charity function. There was no doubt he could turn the air from summer fun to winter formal. "Who else our age is coming?"

"Emily and Matt Higgins," Paige answered. "Malia's coming too and I'm eighty percent sure so I'll count Javier." Paige replied. April's cheeks flushed again, but Paige took it as a reaction to the number of people. "Crowd, am I right? Don't worry, they're renting that other house behind ours."

It didn't matter who else was coming if Javier was. All she could think of was the trip turning into a disaster. The wind blew again, flinging her hair into her face. She pushed it away while she spoke. "Who's renting the house?"

Amanda rolled onto her stomach, watching her intently. "Javier's parents. His Dad will never agree to share a roof with Malia's Dad."

"I hope they do, actually," Paige noted with a shrug. "It'll just mean more space for us."

April gave a nod, nothing more.

"Alright, I'm gonna go refill this thing," Paige wagged her empty slushie cup in April's face, then quickly boosted herself up and off the straw mat they'd been sharing. "You should come too, yours is empty," she told Amanda, pointing towards her cup on the sand.

"Err... Right," she answered.

When April looked up, she locked eyes with Amanda, hoping she wouldn't call her out on her shit. Seemed it was her lucky day, the girls walked away and into the distance.

Now alone, April smoothed her hazzled hair, still looking on after Amanda and Paige, as their flip-flops left marks on the gritty sand. She raked her hair again and lay on her back like a shark during counter shading, facing the sky. The sun had better not frazzled her eyes.

Crossing one foot over the other in an attempt to calm herself down, she took a deep breath.

It shouldn't be hard.

Breath in, breathe out.

They had a vacation together.

Breathe in.

They would have company almost the whole time.

Breathe out.

Javier was a busy guy. He'd proved that in more ways than one. He probably would not even make the trip, since he had his ivy league school or an ivy league girlfriend or other ivy league perks of life to focus on.

She exhaled again, interlocking her fingers on top of her belly as the sounds began to slowly creep away. The sound of the ocean soon became the only thing she could hear.

***

"Think we should wake her up?" A voice came from a distance. "I think she's been here too long."

She? Who was she?

It took a few seconds for April to realise she'd fallen asleep in the sun.

Shit, she probably looked like a tomato.

She darted her eyes open, gasping at the sight of two treelike males in front of her. One bid farewell and ran off, leaving the other one staring down at April, who awkwardly moved into a sitting position on the mat.

"How red am I?" She could fall on her social skills to mask the embarrassment of being caught like this. She made an attempt at fixing her red cheeks by glueing her palms to them. In the absence of pain, she heaved a sigh of relief. She wasn't sunburned, meaning Amanda's insistence on SPF 30 had paid off.

He chuckled and took a seat beside her, dusting sand off his palms. "On a scale of one to ten, three."

She sighed in relief. "I'll take that as a good thing."

"As you should." He shrugged.

"Have we met somewhere?" She couldn't shake the feeling she'd seen him before.

"I happened to notice you and your friends watching me earlier. I'm not sure the dark one was interested, though."

"Oh." Her eyes widened as she realised he was right. It still didn't do the familiar feeling justice, though. He had sweet brown eyes and the most adorable bone structure she'd ever seen on a guy. It kind of made her want to kiss him, just to know what holding that jaw felt like. His brown hair was a bit lengthy, reaching his eyebrows as it fell floppily on his forehead. If she wasn't mistaken, he looked a bit like-

The recognition clicked, sending her lips into a grin. He was the shirtless guy from before, the one Paige had been watching in the water. "Yeah, you're right, we were. And yes, Manda wasn't interested."

"Manda," he repeated.

She laughed, not sure why. "My best friend. The short blonde one that talks a lot is my sister, Paige."

He smiled and nodded. "So there's Amanda, Paige and?" His eyes met hers, making her grin again. She wanted to know his name.

She shook her head. "Not how it works, you go first."

He chuckled. "Alright, fine. I actually hate this question because people usually see me and assume I look like-"

"Shawn Mendes?" April chipped excitedly, a little too enthusiastic. "You do."

He rolled his eyes. "I don't. And it doesn't really ever help that my name happens to be Shawn."

She gasped and laughed again. "Get out! What a coincidence! Is your last name Mendes?"

He scoffed. "Glad it's not, It's Alwyn," he replied with his own chuckle. "And I'm not Canadian, neither do I have a girlfriend named Camilla."

She shrugged, dusting sand off her knees as the breeze did another sweep. "What's her name, then?" 

The breeze blew in her face again and he beat her to rearranging her hair, answering the question for her. Her already red cheeks flushed as she gave the most suggestive smile she could muster.

"I'm April, by the way."

His brows went up. "April O'Neil?"

She laughed. Never been called that before. "I'm not a redhead, Mendes."

"Meghan fox had brown hair in the movie, hence it is appropriate to label you April O'Neil."

She laughed again, pronouncing her cheekbones. "Okay, fine. If it helps, my last name is something like that," she said.

Living in the moment with this stranger was fun, quite the norm in her life, really. For someone who was panicking about her ex an hour ago, April was at peace. She could only hope this wasn't the still before the storm.