The morning came in the same way I figured a dream would physically manifest - a soft breeze from an open window, the scent of his earthy cologne on my pillow, and the wispy feeling of linen sheets on my bare legs, already warm from the morning sun.

Like most dreams, eventually you had to wake up and face reality. In my reality, there was room for surfing and success. Anything else was background noise, even though the sounds of our night together and all our little deaths would be imprinted in my head for god knows how long.

Despite all of that...the space beside me was bare, and it looked like whoever was there left a while ago. Even though it hurt feeling the cold of the empty space in the bed where he just was, part of me was relieved. The less attachment I had to him, the better, and it was obvious he shared the same sentiments. Our only romantic involvements were our dedication to our respective sports, and that's how it should be.

I blinked the last of bits of sleep out of my eyes and slid out of bed, not bothering to sort through my clothes littered on the floor. Instead, I slipped into the first bikini I could scoop out of my suitcase, threw on my oversized Surf Locos hoodie, and tip-toed out of the hotel room with my board tucked under my arm.

I spent the rest of the early morning in a haze. Every time I dipped under a wave, desperate to just clear my head, I felt Atlas's touch on my skin in place of the water that rolled off my back and my arms. It seemed like he was everywhere when I closed my eyes, and yet nowhere when I opened them. I only caught a few decent waves before surrendering to my exhaustion...and the odd sense of disappointment making its home in the pit of my stomach. I went back to my hotel room and collapsed into the bed, watching shadows of clouds dance across the bare walls.

At some point, my phone buzzed somewhere in the mess of sheets, pulling me out of the lull of sleep I'd been in, but as I fumbled around for it, I caught sight of the piece of paper folded up on the nightstand. It was a note written on the hotel stationery. I sighed and ran my hand over his blocky handwriting, reading the note in his voice over and over again.

sorry.

-atlas

ps - you're beautiful when you're asleep

I sucked in a breath before gently folding the paper and slipping it into the pocket of my hoodie.

As I haphazardly bolted around my room and threw my belongings in my suitcase, my phone pinged with a notification from Instagram.

atlasvaughn1 has followed you.

A self-satisfied smirk worked its way across my face as I hit follow back, and despite becoming just another speck in the sea of his 10 million followers, I'd also become one of those now 36 people he followed back. Even though I'd already skimmed through his Instagram feed in my internet lurking, I found myself drawn back to the only semi-personal, non-racing related post on his page - a photo of him and Phantom on some beach on an unknown tropical island. Sunburn kissed his toned, freckled shoulders as he grinned down at his dog. That was the Atlas I'd come to know, and I smiled one more time before I shut my phone off, shut my suitcase, and attempted to shut my mind off too.

t w o w e e k s l a t e r

I loved where I lived. I loved waking up with my bedroom window open, greeted every morning by the smell of the ocean and the sound of the waves. Sure, everyone had California daydreams, but a place like Encinitas, tucked away between the sea and the mountains and far enough from the buzz and smog of Los Angeles, was more pure and perfect than you could even imagine. We had been and always would be a surfing community first, and me and my own daydreams had been brought up on these waves.

Every morning that I was home, I took my manic Samoyed Sam on a run before heading out on my surfboard. I was about half a mile in when my phone buzzed in my sweatshirt pocket, and I couldn't hold back a groan.

DAD [07:42 am]: you coming for dinner tonight?

I sighed and slowed my run to an eventual stop. Sam whined and tugged on the leash.

"Will you just chill out?" I grumbled at him. He whined again in response.

"Yeah, I don't want to go to Dad's either," I replied. Pretending Sam understood me made it easier to vent my frustrations when I needed an ear, even though in reality his lexicon consisted of treat, walk, and no Sam don't eat that.

My dad and stepmother still lived in the same beachside house I grew up in on the other side of town, but given how often I was away, I didn't see them much. At least, that's how I justified it. It wasn't that I didn't like Mikayla. After all, she'd been married to my dad for almost half of my life, and her 12-year-old son Josh didn't know life without me as his older sister. Despite all that, it just felt like a family that wasn't really mine, in a home that I didn't really belong in.

Then again, my dislike of the passive aggressive confrontation that would follow me denying his invitation outweighed it all...at least for the moment.

SAVANNAH [07:45]: I'll be there.

I picked up my run again much to Sam's delight, feeling broken seashells crunch underneath my feet as I made my way back up to the street. As I walked back to my condo with the sound of the waves at my back, it brought me back to the reason I never truly left my hometown to begin with.

The ocean has the ability to heal all wounds - those of the body, and those of the mind.

After bringing Sam back to my condo, I went out for a long, soul cleansing surf, no matter how much my knee fought with me about it. I paddled out into the crystal clear expanse of the ocean, the morning sunlight glinting like diamonds against the peaks of the waves. Nobody came out onto our neighborhood's section of the beach this early except for other local surfers, but for the most part we gave each other space and stayed out of each other's way.

After I'd warmed up, I went to paddle out to another wave when another person swooped by me and dropped in, cutting me off from the wave. I watched him glide along the peak of the wave and disappear into the barrel.

Gritting my teeth, I paddled over to the person aggressively, splashing water in every direction. "Hey! You can't just snake my wave like that, it's common courtesy, man."

When he re-emerged from the water, and the familiarity of his striking hazel eyes sent goosebumps prickling up my arms, I sucked in a sharp breath.

"Dane, don't do that!" I groaned, splashing him.

He laughed and paddled closer to me, little rivers of ocean water trickling down his tan, sculpted chest.

"You were really ready to throw hands, weren't you?" he laughed again.

"Yes! I thought you were a fucking tourist."

He scoffed, but followed up with a grin. "Well hi to you too, Savannah."

Warmth filled my stomach, and I couldn't help but grin back at him. "I thought you were still in Monterey."

"I got back last night. My parents are off to Thailand for the foreseeable future, and I don't want to be in that godforsaken house all by myself."

Dane was from Monterey, but liked to distance himself from it and his high-profile family as often as he could. We met at a juniors competition when we were 13, after claiming our respective Roxy/Quiksilver sponsorships and sort of being forced into spending time with each other. 10 years later and not too much had changed between us, except the fact that Dane's place in the surfing world wasn't in danger. Mine was.

A beat of silence lingered between us as we sat on our boards in the morning sun, gently sloshing around on the waves. It was far from an unusual moment between Dane and I, but that's all it usually ever was - a moment.

"You look good, Sav," he said softly, but quickly rebounded as he cleared his throat. "I mean uh, the surfing. I was watching you earlier - wouldn't even think you were hurt."

"Well, thanks," I sighed. Looked good and felt good were separate concepts in my world, but I didn't need to indulge Dane in that one.

"I heard you placed in Brisbane," he continued, and if he was aware of the way I gritted my teeth as I shifted on my board, he didn't show it.

"Yeah, on a technicality," I scoffed. "If I place I'd like to actually earn it, ya know?"

"You will," he shrugged casually, then glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "That is, if you can beat me out to that next wave."

Competitiveness in both of us kicked in, and I was able to lose myself in the waves for a while - a stark reminder of why I surfed in the first place. A reminder that came too infrequently.

"By the way," Dane said as we dragged ourselves back onto the beach. "I saw Malia the other day, and she said you weren't coming to the Quiksilver Pro in a few weeks? What's up with that? You've been coming to that event for years."

I scoffed, sticking my board into the sand and plopping down next to it. I grabbed a handful of sand and squeezed it until it spilled out between my fingers. "It's a men's pro event only this year, why would I be going to that?"

I kept my gaze towards the ocean, bright blue as the sun climbed higher in the sky above it, but I still knew Dane was rolling his eyes without having to look at him. The problem with being as exposed and intimate as I had been with Dane was that not much got past him. A few drunken teenage hook-ups over the years would do that.

"Because you used to go to every Roxy Quiksilver event," Dane replied pointedly. "Besides, didn't Malia tell you that they're still looking for a guest judge for the Women's Junior event? They'd kill to have you."

Maybe a couple of years ago they would have killed to have two-time world champion Savannah Allen as a guest judge for a bunch of guppies. But now? Roxy had probably been denied by several other high-caliber surfers to be forced into asking me, and the thought of it stung.

"I'll think about it," I grumbled.

"Fair enough." Dane nodded. After another beat of silence, he let out a sigh. "And you know, there's that benefit dinner Quiksilver hosts after the event."

Now presenting Mastermind Dane, Episode 1 - Ulterior Motives for Getting Into Savannah's Pants (or bikini bottoms, technically).

While my interest in a relationship with Dane had been dead in the water a long time ago, there was nothing wrong with him. He was charming and good-looking, and even though Gemma claimed he was too stereotypically pompous Monterey for her taste, it was really just me being me and doing what the ocean taught me to do best - push and pull and push away.

After my unexpected morning session with Dane, I stretched on the aerial silk in my "home office" until I was blue in the face, and if limbs could talk, my knee would be screaming and cursing me out. I generally had no routine when I was home, and that was how I liked it. Spontaneity was like an old friend I desperately clung to, and in the most backwards way, it gave me control over myself that I desperately craved. I could go from a random trip to Trader Joe's to sitting on my vintage leather couch and binge watching all three Lord of the Rings movies with a jar of crunchy peanut butter. I could do whatever the hell I wanted, and nothing would stop me. There was the purest, truest control in freedom.

But I was restless, and I fluttered aimlessly around my condo like a moth trapped behind glass. I slapped my phone against my palm a few times before unlocking it and opening up Instagram. Naturally, because I had unexplained bad karma, Atlas's face popped up first on my newsfeed, even though his post was from yesterday. I couldn't read his full expression with his chrome and black racing helmet on, though his eyes glinted with ferocity, and something about his dominant stature made a smirk pull at my lips.

Atlas's professional racing persona on social media opened me up to a whole new part of him - a part of him that felt less human, and more intangible. He was in a different country almost every weekend, he won a lot of trophies, and drank a lot of champagne. I also realized how serious the wolf imagery was to him. It wasn't just a bad joke to use in bed - he was often referred to as The Alpha, even by his own team. Maybe that was his persona on the track, but off the track, it just didn't seem to fit. Alpha males were characteristically overly confident, overly intimidating, and overly obnoxious. Then again, maybe I just didn't know him as well as I liked to think I did.

We had no real interaction since our night together in Australia, other than exchanging the occasional like here and there. I quickly double-tapped his picture and shut my phone off.

6:00 came around after doing nothing productive for the rest of the day, and I loaded Sam into the back of my topless Jeep Wrangler. My stepmother always said my refusal to check the weather before taking the roof off my Jeep was the epitome of my fly by the seat of my pants attitude, but hey, if I got rained on, I got rained on. It wasn't like I'd melt Wicked Witch of the West style.

Mikayla already had a glass of wine in her perfectly manicured hand when I got to my dad's house, and Josh's mop of white blonde hair poked up above the back of the corduroy living room couch, his video game on full blast.

Sam bolted through the living room to the kitchen, hoping to catch any scraps from my dad's cooking. When I first brought Sam home from the shelter, my dad was adamantly opposed to me getting a dog, but as the years went on, Sam's second home became right under my dad's feet in the kitchen. He watched Sam while I was away on long surf trips I couldn't take him to, and sometimes I thought Sam listened to my dad more than he listened to me.

"Wine, sweetheart?" Mikayla asked me, dangling an empty glass in front of me.

Mikayla thought sprinkling in words like honey and sweetheart made her more approachable for me. It didn't, but after 10 years I still didn't think she got the hint.

I gave her a curt nod and watched her pour me a glass, wine sloshing around like a bloody sea of red. I didn't bother letting it sit and took a long sip, feeling it sting the back of my throat.

After selling his construction business, my father took up cooking as a hobby. Over the last year or so, we'd been the test subjects of everything from brown sugar pineapple ham to Italian steak roulade to shellfish-stuffed salmon. Luckily tonight wasn't as experimental, and it was easy for me to continue slugging back my wine as we passed around eggplant lasagna, while Mikayla passively prodded me about my life choices while my father tried to mediate - just a regular Allen family dinner.

"Sam's coming with me to San Diego next weekend, but I'll need to drop him off the following week on that Wednesday night before Fourth of July, because my flight out to Florida leaves at 5 on Thursday morning." I was only really addressing my dad, but Mikayla chimed in.

"Savannah..." she sighed out. "Aren't you tired of all this?"

"Tired of what?" I spoke into my wine glass, taking another sip.

"Well, always being on the go, always pushing yourself too hard. You're only 22. I know you think that's old, but it's not, and you'd still have plenty of time to sort your life out if you stop surfing. You could go to the community college here and really set yourself up for long-term success."

"Wow yeah, that's really insightful Mikayla." I feigned interest as I stabbed my lasagna with my fork.

"Really?" Her chipper tone was punctuated by shock. "Well, I appreciate you willing to hear me out."

"Yeah," I rolled my eyes. "You know, maybe it'll set me up to be the assistant manager at Whole Foods, and I can get us discounts on groceries."

Mikayla blew out a breath and looked down at her plate. "I'm sorry Savannah, I just want what's best for you. People don't often come back from injuries like yours, and I just want you to think about your future -"

"Save it." That lit the fuse in me, and I was ready to explode. I kicked my chair away from the table, tossing my napkin onto the plate of half-eaten food. I strode out the front door, nearly stumbling down the wooden steps and onto the gravel driveway. Wine sloshed around in my body, but even in the bleariness I was determined to make it to the beach. I was in no position to surf, but I could still sit in the sand and sulk. The sun was just beginning to set on the horizon, turning the ocean a fiery shade of orange. Sometimes I was tempted to paddle out to that horizon and never come back.

I wasn't sure how long I sat out there, drawing circles in the stand with a stick, but eventually my dad shuffled outside onto the beach, lowering himself beside me with a groan.

"Don't even start," I huffed out, still poking at the sand.

"Start what?" he chuckled. "I just came out here to admire the sunset." He paused and let out a sigh, kicking around my sand doodle with his sandal.

"Mikayla means well, I don't think I have to tell you that."

"Yeah yeah," I grumbled, hugging my knees to my chest. "That doesn't mean she knows me, or knows what I'm going through. In all the years you guys have been married, she's never actually taken the time to get to know me. She just jumped right in and assumed she did. That pisses me off. I mean, you know what they say about people who assume."

"To be fair Savannah, you never gave her those opportunities." Dad looked up at the darkening sky, his mouth pinched into a thin smile. "You've been a jetsetter since you were 12 years old. I think Mikayla just sees the possibility of your retirement as a way for her to be closer to you. It's never too late for family. To be a family, I mean."

I inherited that "jetsetter" mentality from my biological mother, who jetsetted herself away from my dad and I when I was young - too young to remember, according to him. She was much younger than my dad, too detached and too free-spirited to be tied down, whereas my dad was too kind and too wholesome, which landed him with me full-time. He met Mikayla when I was still taking balance lessons and falling off my surfboard at the peaks, and they got married and had Josh shortly after. I knew my dad loved me, and I loved my dad, but it never stopped me from feeling like the outlier. So I jetsetted away too.

"You have your family," I sighed. "Stop trying to force me into a puzzle that I'm not a piece for."

"Why do you assume it's a puzzle to begin with?" My dad jabbed back. After another moment of bitter silence from me, he let out a heavy sigh. "I just hope one day soon you'll find your way, and whether that is or isn't surfing will still be okay in the end."

Dad always knew what to say, and sometimes I really hated him for that - he always forced me to think outside of my comfortable little box. I hugged my knees tighter as the sky went dark and a chill blew in from the ocean. We hung out on the beach for a little while longer, counting stars and watching for dolphins that would occasionally poke their heads above the water's surface.

I slunk off to my old bedroom with my hand wrapped around a bottle of wine, treading as ungracefully as possible across my shag carpet rug and throwing myself onto the faded paisley comforter. The room swayed back and forth, like my bed was a tiny ship on a vast sea. A groan rumbled in my throat as I tried to steady myself on my pillows, taking another drink and grabbed my phone in hopes some mindless scrolling would somehow lull me to sleep.

I thumbed through random Instagram stories, seeing a few old surfing acquaintances at a small pro event in Bali. Atlas's celebration of his win in Austria followed, which mostly consisted of chugging champagne and a jumping crowd of guys in black and red jumpsuits.

I tried to click to skip to the next one, but the reply feature popped up instead. I chuckled to myself and typed up something I guess the Pinot in me thought was funny.

@ SAVALLENSURF:
what's a girl gotta do to be that champagne bottle???

Before I could drown any more of my dignity, I shut my phone off and rolled over, still swaying in the sea of my dismal decisions.

can't read your mind, i can't read your mind
we watched the sun go down and then the moon comes out
paint pictures with your hand
i'll chase you, i'm your biggest fan

beach / san cisco

no love triangles no love triangles no love triangles tysm

i seriously love and appreciate y'all for sticking with me whether you're a returning reader or a new one. i'd love to hear your thoughts so far!