On Wednesday evening, the phone rings.
Evan stares at it for several seconds before answering—almost lets it ring out. He’s fairly sure it won’t be for him. But it is.
Reg’s voice, familiar and immediate. The sound hits Evan hard—sharp, disarming. Homesickness, if you can be homesick for a person, swells. It’s been just shy of a month since he left New York. A month without Reg.
They’d been inseparable since the age of six, when Evan’s mum and stepdad bought the house next door to the Blacks’. The kind of childhood closeness that never really fades.
So much so that when Reg moved to New York. Evan had followed without hesitation. Couldn’t imagine college—life, really—without him.
“How you holding up?” asks Reg.
“Yeah, man. Okay.” Evan shifts the phone to his other shoulder, glancing out the kitchen window. “Weird being back. Your mom asked about you, by the way. Wants to know when you’re coming home.”
There’s a smooth laugh on the other end of the line. “Of course she does.”
Evan leans back against the counter, the ache in his chest less sharp now. “Seriously, though. It’s good to hear your voice.”
A softer beat on the line. “Yeah. You too. New York isn’t the same without you.”
Evan makes a non-committal noise. Reg he misses. New York. Not even slightly. Then he asks the question he’s not sure if he wants to know the answer to. “How’s Barty?”
Barty had been Reg’s friend first, and as much as some petty part of Evan wanted Reg to pick a side—his side—he knew that wasn’t fair. Barty hadn’t really done anything wrong. He hadn’t lied. He hadn’t cheated. He’d just… not wanted Evan as much as Evan had wanted him. Not wanted the life Evan wanted. And Evan couldn’t fault him for that. Not really. As much as it hurt. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been straight up about it from the start. It was Evan’s fault really. Evan who’d thought he change Barty’s mind. Thought he could make Barty love him enough—he cuts that thought off because that one hurst more. He can hear Reg shift on the other end of the line.
There’s a pause, then: “he’s alright—saw him couple days ago. He asked about you.”
Evan exhales slowly, rubs a hand over the back of his neck.
“I didn’t know that you hadn’t spoken at all,” Reg continues, voice quieter now. “He asked where you were. Said he’d tried to call but your line was disconnected, gone by your place and someone was moving in. I told him you’d gone back to California. He didn’t take it very well,” another pause, and Evan can tell Reg is about to say something he doesn’t think Evan will want to hear.
“You should’ve told him Ev, at least said bye.”
“Yeah.” Evan’s voice is rougher than he means it to be. “Well, didn’t seem the point.”
There’s another pause. Not uncomfortable—just weighted, with the kind of understanding that only comes after almost two decades of knowing someone.
“You ever want to talk about it, you know I’m here,” says Reg. “Might help.”
“Yeah, I know—thanks,” Evan replies. But he doesn’t. Not with Reg. Feels too close to Barty, too tangled. So instead, he pivots. “Saw James, by the way. Bumped into him in your garage of all places.”
“Yeah?” He hears the smile in Reg’s voice. Feels a spike of relief that Reg isn’t going to push the Barty thing. “Not seen him since… Sirius’s birthday, three years ago maybe? Was going through it then.”
“Oh yeah?” Evan asks, half distracted as he opens the fridge, grabs a beer and pops the cap off against the counter edge.
“Stuff with Harry I think,” says Reg. “Great kid, rough situation though.”
Evan pauses, brow furrowing. Reg’s voice is casual, like he’s stating something obvious. “Who’s Harry?”
Reg, sounding amused now: “James’ kid.”
Evan stares at the bottle in his hand. Lets the words sink in. “James has a kid?”
“Yeah,” Reg says. “How do you not know this?”
“I didn’t exactly keep in touch with James,” points out Evan, and then he groans, sinking onto the stool at the kitchen island. “Shit. I went surfing with James. He probably thinks I’m a total douche for not asking or saying anything. Since when does he have a freaking kid?”
“I don’t know—ages.”
“Dude.” Evan says in exasperation. “You never thought to mention it? What the hell, Reg?”
“I totally did,” says Reg, “I must have.”
“No,” states Evan with certainty, “you didn’t.”
“Shit, wait really?” asks Reg, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Really. First I’m hearing about it.”
“That’s mad, Sirius is his godfather—-I swear I told you this,” says Reg, and then, “I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
After Reg hangs up, Evan wanders out onto the patio. The evening is cool, salt sharp in the air. He drifts over to the grill, lifts the lid. Checks the burners, prods at the grate, the vague notion of firing it up flickers through his mind.
Why hadn’t James mentioned his kid?
They’d spent the better part of a morning surfing together. Talked for a solid hour over the walkies. It wasn’t like there hadn’t been space to mention it. Had he just assumed, like Reg, that Evan already knew? That Reg, or Sirius had said something?
Still. A child was kind of a major thing not to bring up.
Evan leans against the grill, eyes drifting over the garden as the light turns molten, pooling low across the lawn. He runs a hand through his hair—he could picture it, more easily than he would’ve expected. James as a dad. He’d be good at it. A kid would be lucky, Evan thinks, to grow up with someone like James in their corner. He shakes his head, still feeling oddly taken aback by the revelation of James with a child.
Evan decides against the grill. Feels like a waste, firing it up just for one person. But he does take his dinner and a blanket out to the deck, the April evenings are still cold. He wraps the blanket around him, plate balanced on his knee as he settles into one of the recliners. The sky’s gone soft with the last of the light, and the distant crash of waves carries faintly up from the shore below.
That was the thing about New York—one of the many, really. He’d never quite felt like he could get enough time outdoors. No real camping trips. No fires on the beach. Not even the simple pleasure of eating dinner beneath the sunset. Everything there felt boxed in, parks with curfews, rooftop bars with velvet ropes, tiny fire escapes barely big enough to smoke on. Curated, performative versions of the real thing. It never felt like there was enough space. Enough time to just exist. Not outside.
Evan closes his eyes, lets the sound of the waves settle into him, lets the slow, even breath of swell roll over his senses. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep out there, but he does. Slips under with the hum of sea air in his lungs and the salt-thick breeze gently tugging at his hair. He wakes with the sun, stiff-limbed and blinking, as gulls squawk overhead and the sky begins to turn the soft colour of a ripe peach. Stretching he wanders through the garden to the edge, looking down at the waves—the idea of an early ride already forming. Half an hour later he’s making his way down the rocky path to the cove below.
The first few weeks back on the water he’d felt every missed year in the stutter of his balance, the ache in his wrists. Today that dropped away, and it felt like muscle memory again. Like breathing. Tilt. Lean and catch. All of it mapped deep into his body. The wind was barely a breath and the waves were clean with a bit of heft, just the way he liked them. Evan angled in early, dropped fast, and carved deep—lines so tight they felt like calligraphy. He caught the edge of a curl, pushed off and spun and rode out backwards.
Forty minutes in, a huge set came rolling into the cove, peaking hard and early, the lip already curling over. Evan dropped fast, weight forward. Too fast, maybe. As he cut to avoid the break, the tail of the board skidded out wide and he heard it before he felt it—a crack like a bone snapping. His stomach dropped. The ride bottomed out. He wiped out hard, hit the water flat, and went under. It was cool, sharp. Salt in his mouth, in his ears. He surfaced with a grunt and pulled the board toward him, flipping it over.
“Shit,” he muttered.
One of the fins had sheared clean off. Sirius was going to murder him. He winced. The board was one of Sirius’s better ones—lightweight, carbon core, custom tail. Evan angled it under his arm and started the long paddle back in. Water sheeting off him in rivulets as he trudged up the beach.
Someone was watching him. A blond guy, maybe late twenties, was standing with his own board, nose buried in the sand. Tan lines, shark tooth necklace, hair still wet. Local, probably. He grinned at Evan when Evan made it out of the water.
“Fucking tight out there, bro,” he said, nodding toward the surf.
Evan shook the water out of his hair. “Was, until that last set.”
He tilted the board slightly, exposing the sheared off fin.
The guy frowned at the bored. “Gnarly, dude.”
Evan offered a half-smile.
“You from around here?” asked the blond guy.
“Yeah, folks live up there,” Evan said, jerking his chin toward the cliffs above. “Been away a while though—just moved back.”
“Nice,” the guy said. “I’m Pete.”
“Evan.”
They climbed the path together, Pete talking the whole way—laid-back and loose, like he had nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there.
At the top, Pete held out a fist for the bump. “Yo, couple of the guys are throwing a kegger tomorrow night out at Flat Rock Point. It’ll be chill. Fire, tunes, edibles. You should totally come.”
Evan gave him a nod and the edge of a smile. “Yeah, cool. Might swing by.”
And he did.
He hadn’t really planned on it. But Friday evening rolled around, and he found himself wandering the house aimlessly, no real plans, nothing pulling at him. Since coming back to Palos Verdes Estate his days had all taken the same shape—surfing in the mornings, days full of working on his script, dinners alone, long evenings listening to the waves. So he figured why the hell not.
By the time Evan pulled up near the trailhead for Flat Rock Point, the sun had dipped below the waves. He killed the engine, slung the keys into the glovebox, and stepped out into the warm salt-laced breeze. The faint thump of bass was already threading through the air—muffled but unmistakable. He followed the familiar path down, worn smooth by years of feet. The cove stretched out before him, laughter rising over the music. There was a firepit going—dug into the sand—and beside it, a keg, tapped and dripping foam. About thirty people were scattered across the sand and rocks—some clustered around the fire, others perched on upturned crates or stretched out on blankets. Evan slowed as he stepped off the trail, letting his eyes adjust, getting his bearings. He scanned the crowd, wondering if coming had been a mistake.
Even when Evan had lived here before New York, his social circle had been small. A few kids from school, none of whom he’d bothered to keep in contact with, and Reg. Mostly just Reg though in reality. Sometimes he wondered if they’d done each other a disservice, clinging that hard. Their friendship had always skirted the edge of co-dependence—two kids both as bent as wet noodles and unsure what that meant, they’d kept mostly to themselves. Outsiders by choice, some sort of sense of self preservation perhaps. But maybe a bit of laziness too, they had each other—why look for more?
Evan was just starting to think maybe he should bail when he heard his name. Pete was grinning at him, standing near the fire, holding court with beer in one hand and the other raised in his direction.
“Yo dude,” he said, grinning like they were old friends, “you made it.”
Evan shrugged. “Figured I owed the Estates at least one beer.”
“Hell yeah,” Pete laughed, loud and loose, “come meet the crew.”
A tall, broad-shouldered guy in a linen button-down, Casey—“Call me Mac,” McClaggen—clasped Evan’s hand like they were closing a deal. He had perfect too white teeth and a vocabulary full of words like synergy.
Another guy, tall with frosted tips and a petite blonde girl tucked against his side gave a relaxed wave. “Frank,” he said, and then nodded toward the girl. “This is Alice.”
She smiled—bright and cheerful. “Hi.”
A dark-eyed girl with a razor-sharp smile introduced herself as Emaline and launched into a rapid-fire conversation that felt somewhat like an interrogation about favourite surf spots. She seemed genuinely baffled when Evan mentioned he’d been away for six years, like the idea of going that long without surfing simply didn’t compute in her concept of the world.
Two guys built like linebackers—both in backwards caps. Flint and Bones, (Evan isn’t sure if those are nicknames or their government names) but they are surprisingly friendly for dudes shaped like refrigerators.
Some were Evan’s age, a few—like Pete—a bit older. Half had some vague familiarity to them—he’s not sure if it’s real familiarity, it could be, they’re all from Palos Verdes Estates, he probably went to school with half of them, or if it’s just that they’re all so overtly SoCal that they feel familiar. They’re all nice. No one seemed to mind that he’d come alone, or that he didn’t know anyone, they accepted him instantly as one of their own, which made Evan feel a bit off kilter. He’d gotten so used to the cool aloofness of New Yorkers that the easy friendliness caught him off guard.
Pete was a social gravity well, pulling conversation into orbit around him with effortless charm and a surfer drawl so thick Evan found himself biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself laughing at the frequency with which Pete used the word dude. He wonders, vaguely, if these people might’ve been his crowd—his friends—if he hadn’t left. If he’d chosen differently. If he had been different. Unbidden, Barty’s voice surfaces in his head: edged with disdain.
“Really, Ev? Trust fund dilettantes whose idea of critical consciousness involves smoking weed and positioning surfing as a worldview?”
Evan could almost see him—hands tucked in the pockets of a vintage leather jacket, slouched like cynicism incarnate on a barstool somewhere in Brooklyn. Evan used to think he was brilliant—thought he was real. Realer than anyone else. All that righteous anger wrapped in thrift-store layers and ironic detachment, quoting Žižek between drags of a cigarette like gospel.
But now—watching Pete, face wide open, grinning and nodding along as Mac said about the kinetic energy of surfboards—Evan found himself less sure. Less sure of what was real, what was authentic. Of where he belonged in it all.
On Wednesday evening, the phone rings. Evan stares at it for several seconds before answering—almost lets it ring out. He’s fairly sure it won’t be for him. But it is. Reg’s voice, familiar and immediate. The sound hits Evan hard—sharp, disarming. Homesickness swells, not for New York, but for Reg. It’s been just shy of a month since he left New York. A month without Reg. They’ve been inseparable since the age of six, when Evan’s mum and stepdad bought the house next door to the Blacks’.
“How you holding up?” asks Reg.
“Yeah, man. Okay.” Evan shifts the phone to his other shoulder, glancing out the kitchen window. “Weird being back. Your mom asked about you, by the way. Wants to know when you’re coming home.”
There’s a smooth laugh on the other end of the line. “Of course she does.”
Evan leans back against the counter, the ache in his chest less sharp now. “Seriously, though. It’s good to hear your voice.”
A softer beat on the line. “Yeah. You too. New York isn’t the same without you.”
Evan makes a non-committal noise. Reg he misses. New York. Not even slightly. Then he asks the question he’s not sure if he wants to know the answer to. “How’s Barty?”
Barty had been Reg’s friend first, and as much as some petty part of Evan wants Reg to pick a side—his side—he knows that isn’t fair. Barty hadn’t really done anything wrong. He hadn’t lied. He hadn’t cheated. He’d just… not wanted Evan as much as Evan had wanted him. Not wanted the life Evan wanted. And Evan can’t fault him for that. Not really. As much as it hurts. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been straight up about it from the start. It’s Evan’s fault really. Evan who’d thought he could change Barty’s mind. Thought he could make Barty love him enough—he cuts that thought off because that one hurts more. He can hear Reg shift on the other end of the line.
There’s a pause, then: “not great to be honest—saw him couple days ago. He asked about you.”
Evan exhales slowly, rubs a hand over the back of his neck.
“I didn’t know that you hadn’t spoken at all,” Reg continues, voice quieter now. “He asked where you were. Said he’d tried to call but your line was disconnected, gone by your place and someone was moving in. I told him you’d gone back to California. He didn’t take it very well, was pretty upset—didn't believe me at first,” another pause, and Evan can tell Reg is about to say something he doesn’t think Evan will want to hear. “You should’ve told him Ev, at least said bye.”
“Yeah.” Evan’s voice is rougher than he means it to be. “Well, didn’t see the point.”
There’s another pause. Not uncomfortable—just weighted, with the kind of understanding that only comes after almost two decades of knowing someone.
“You ever want to talk about it, you know I’m here,” says Reg. “Might help.”
“Yeah, I know—thanks,” Evan replies. But he doesn’t want to talk about it. Not with Reg at least. Reg feels too close to Barty, too tangled. So instead, he pivots. “Saw James, by the way. Bumped into him in your garage of all places.”
“Yeah?” He hears the smile in Reg’s voice. Feels a spike of relief that Reg isn’t going to push the Barty thing. “Not seen him since… Sirius’s birthday, three years ago maybe? Was going through it then.”
“Oh yeah?” Evan asks, half distracted as he opens the fridge, grabs a beer and pops the cap off against the counter edge.
“Stuff with Harry I think,” says Reg. “Great kid, rough situation though.”
Evan pauses, brow furrowing. Reg’s voice is casual, like he’s stating something obvious. “Who’s Harry?”
Reg, sounding amused now: “James’ kid.”
Evan stares at the bottle in his hand. “James has a kid?”
“Yeah,” Reg says.
There's a long pause and then Reg asks, sounding genuinely confused. "Wait, you seriously didn't know?"
"No," says Evan blankly. "First I'm hearing of it."
"How did you not know?" asks Reg.
“I didn’t exactly keep in touch with James,” points out Evan. "Since when does he have a freaking kid?”
“I don’t know—ages.”
“Dude.” Evan says in exasperation. “You never thought to mention it? What the hell, Reg?”
“I totally did,” says Reg, “I must have.”
“No,” states Evan with certainty, “you didn’t.”
“Shit, wait really?” asks Reg, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Really. I think I would have remembered.”
“That’s mad," says Reg. "Shit. Well yeah. James has a kid. Sirius is his godfather—I swear I told you this,” says Reg, and then, “I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
Evan groans, sinking onto the stool at the kitchen island. “Shit man. I went surfing with him. He probably thinks I’m a total tool for not asking about his kid or saying anything. I can't believe you didn't tell me, you freaking suck Reg."
Reg laughs down the phone. "Sorry," he says sounding far more amused than apologetic.
After Reg hangs up, Evan wanders out onto the patio. The evening is cool, salt sharp in the air. He drifts over to the grill, lifts the lid. Checks the burners, prods at the grate, the vague notion of firing it up flickers through his mind.
Why hadn’t James mentioned his kid?
They’d spent the better part of a morning surfing together. Talked for a solid hour over the walkies. It wasn’t like there hadn’t been space to mention it. Had he just assumed, like Reg, that Evan already knew? That Reg, or Sirius had said something?
Still. A child is kind of a major thing not to bring up.
Evan leans against the grill, eyes drifting over the garden as the light turns molten, pooling low across the lawn. He runs a hand through his hair—he can picture it, more easily than he would’ve expected. James as a dad. He’d be good at it. A kid would be lucky, Evan thinks, to grow up with someone like James in their corner. He shakes his head, still feeling oddly taken aback by the revelation of James with a child.
Evan decides against the grill. Feels like a waste, firing it up just for one person. But he does take his dinner and a blanket out to the deck, the April evenings are still cold. He wraps the blanket around him, plate balanced on his knee as he settles into one of the recliners. The sky’s gone soft with the last of the light, and the distant crash of waves carries faintly up from the shore below.
That was the thing about New York—one of the many, really. He’d never quite felt like he could get enough time outdoors. No real camping trips. No fires on the beach. Not even the simple pleasure of eating dinner beneath the sunset. Everything there felt boxed in, parks with curfews, rooftop bars with velvet ropes, tiny fire escapes barely big enough to smoke on. Curated, performative versions of the real thing. It never felt like there was enough space. Enough time to just exist. Not outside.
Evan closes his eyes, lets the sound of the waves settle into him, lets the slow, even breath of swell roll over his senses. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep out there, but he does. Slips under with the hum of sea air in his lungs and the salt-thick breeze gently tugging at his hair. He wakes with the sun, stiff-limbed and blinking, as gulls squawk overhead and the sky begins to turn the soft colour of a ripe peach. Stretching he wanders through the garden to the edge, looking down at the waves—the idea of an early ride already forming. Half an hour later he’s making his way down the rocky path to the cove below.
The first few weeks back on the water he’d felt every missed year in the stutter of his balance, the ache in his wrists. Today that drops away, and it feels like muscle memory again. Like breathing. Tilt. Lean and catch. All of it mapped deep into his body. The wind is barely a breath and the waves are clean with a bit of heft, just the way he likes them. Evan angles in early, drops fast, and carves deep—lines so tight they feel like calligraphy. He catches the edge of a curl, pushes off and spins and rides out backwards.
Forty minutes in, a huge set comes rolling into the cove, peaking hard and early, the lip already curling over. Evan drops fast, weight forward. Too fast, maybe. As he cuts to avoid the break, the tail of the board skids out wide and he hears it before he feels it—a crack like a bone snapping. His stomach drops. The ride bottoms out. He wipes out hard, hits the water flat, and goes under. It is cool, sharp. Salt in his mouth, in his ears. He surfaces with a grunt and pulls the board toward him, flipping it over.
“Shit,” he mutters.
One of the fins has sheared clean off. Sirius is going to murder him. He winces. The board is one of Sirius’s better ones—lightweight, carbon core, custom tail. Evan angles it under his arm and starts the long paddle back in. Water sheeting off him in rivulets as he trudges up the beach.
Someone is watching him. A blond guy, maybe late twenties, is standing with his own board, nose buried in the sand. Tan lines, shark tooth necklace, hair still wet. Local, probably. He grins at Evan when Evan makes it out of the water.
“Fucking tight out there, bro,” he says, nodding toward the surf.
Evan shakes the water out of his hair. “Was, until that last set.”
He tilts the board slightly, exposing the sheared off fin.
The guy frowns at the bored. “Gnarly, dude.”
Evan offers a half-smile.
“You from around here?” asks the blond guy.
“Yeah, up there,” Evan says, jerking his chin toward the cliffs above. “Been out of state for a while—just moved back.”
“Sweat, welcome home man;” the guy says. “The names Pete.”
Welcome home.
The words catch at something in Evan's chest. Home. Is Palos Verdes Estates home? It has never really felt like it. But then again, where has? Not New York. He pushes the thought away and nods in response.
“Thanks man, I'm Evan.”
They climb the path together, Pete talking the whole way—laid-back and loose, like he had nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there.
At the top, Pete holds out a fist for the bump. “It's been real dude. Yo, a couple of the guys are throwing a keger tomorrow night out at Flat Rock Point. It’ll be chill. Fire, tunes, edibles. You should totally come.”
Evan gives him a nod and the edge of a smile. “Yeah, cool. Might swing by.”
And he does. He hasn’t really planned on it. But Friday evening rolls around, and he finds himself wandering the house aimlessly, no real plans, nothing pulling at him. Since coming back to Palos Verdes Estate his days have all taken the same shape—surfing in the mornings, days full of working on his script, dinners alone, long evenings listening to the waves. So he figures why the hell not. It's not exactly in his comfort zone—a party, or any social gathering, full of people he doesn't know. But something, something—he's not quite sure what, maybe boardroom, maybe the fact that for the first time in years he can't just turn up at Reg's and tag along to whatever he's doing—something makes him go.
By the time Evan pulls up near the trailhead for Flat Rock Point, the sun has dipped below the waves. He kills the engine, slings the keys into the glovebox, and steps out into the warm salt-laced breeze. The faint thump of bass is already threading through the air—muffled but unmistakable. He follows the familiar path down, worn smooth by years of feet. The cove stretches out before him, laughter rising over the music. There is a firepit going—dug into the sand—and beside it, a keg, tapped and dripping foam. About thirty people are scattered across the sand and rocks—some clustered around the fire, others perched on upturned crates or stretched out on blankets. Evan slows as he steps off the trail, letting his eyes adjust, getting his bearings. He scans the crowd, wondering if coming had been a mistake.
Even when Evan had lived here before New York, his social circle had been small. Well—small was maybe being generous. It had Reg, Sirius, Dora and James. But Sirius was more of a big brother than anything, Dora was his sister—and James. James was…Evan isn’t really sure what James had been. Sirius’s best friend. Maybe Evan’s friend? His first crush? James had held a complicated place in Evan’s life. Mostly if he is being honest his social circle had consisted of Reg and Reg alone. Their friendship had always skirted the edge of co-dependence—two kids both as bent as wet noodles and unsure what that meant, they’d kept mostly to themselves. And then in New York when Reg had come into him self, when he’d developed a life outside Evan, instead of doing the same Evan had just tagged along. A party without Reg there beside him is way out of his comfort zone. Evan is just starting to think maybe he should bail before anyone notices him—when he hears his name. Pete is grinning at him, standing near the fire, holding court with beer in one hand and the other raised in his direction.
“Yo dude,” he says, grinning like they were old friends, “you made it.”
Evan shrugs. “Figured I owed the Estates at least one beer.”
“Hell yeah,” Pete laughs, loud and loose, “come meet the crew.”
A tall, broad-shouldered guy in a linen button-down, Casey McClaggen—“Call me Mac,”—clasps Evan’s hand like they were closing a deal. He has perfect too white teeth and a vocabulary full of words like synergy.
Another guy, tall with frosted tips and a petite blonde girl tucked against his side gives a relaxed wave. “Frank,” he says, and then nods toward the girl. “This is Alice.”
She smiles—bright and cheerful. “Hi.”
A dark-eyed girl with a razor-sharp smile introduces herself as Emmeline and launches into a rapid-fire conversation about favourite surf spots. She seems genuinely baffled when Evan mentions he’s been away for seven years, like the idea of going that long without surfing simply doesn’t compute in her concept of the world.
Two guys built like linebackers—both in backwards caps. Flint and Bones, (Evan isn’t sure if those are nicknames or their government names) but they are surprisingly friendly for dudes shaped like refrigerators.
Some, like Emmeline are in their mid twenties like Evan, a few—like Pete and Mac— are in their late twenties or early thirties. Half have some vague familiarity to them—he’s not sure if it’s real familiarity, it could be, they’re all from Palos Verdes Estates, he probably went to school with half of them, or if it’s just that they’re all so overtly SoCal that they feel familiar. They’re all nice. No one seems to mind that he’s come alone, or that he doesn’t know anyone. Evan feels a bit off kilter. He’s gotten so used to the cool aloofness of New Yorkers that the easy friendliness of Pete, Mac, Alice and Frank catches him off guard, feels oddly disarming.
Pete is a social gravity well, pulling conversation into orbit around him with effortless goofy sort of charm and a surfer drawl so thick Evan findes himself biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself laughing at the frequency with which Pete uses the word dude.
Evan's about four beers in, grinning as he listens to a story Bones and Flint are competing over telling, when he feels the tug of what could have been, finds himself wondering, vaguely, if these people might’ve been his crowd—his friends—if he hadn’t left. If he’d chosen differently. If he had been different back then. Unbidden, Barty’s voice surfaces in his head: edged with disdain.
“Really, Ev? Trust fund dilettantes whose idea of critical consciousness involves smoking weed and positioning surfing as a worldview?”
Evan can almost see him—hands tucked in the pockets of a vintage leather jacket, slouched like cynicism incarnate on a barstool somewhere in Brooklyn. Evan used to think he was brilliant—thought he was real. Realer than anyone else. All that righteous anger wrapped in thrift-store layers and ironic detachment, quoting Žižek between drags of a cigarette like gospel. But now—watching Pete, face wide open, grinning and nodding along as Mac launches into a philosophical tirade on the kinetic energy of surfboards—Evan finds himself less sure. Less sure of what is real, what is authentic. And even more so, of what he wants. Of where he belongs in it all. Not in New York, not with Barty— he's learnt that the hard way. If not there, then where?
Would it be so bad to belong here with people like this? Is it even possible for him? He hasn't managed it here before, and he wonders for the first time if that had been the fault of the world around him, a world that didn't want him, like he has always assumed, or if it had been his fault for not trying hard enough.