Page 3

Alexa Play: Grow Up by Late Night Thoughts

O ur first shift went quickly. It was on the shorter end since it was our first day, and honestly, it wasn’t complicated.

See a table with dirty dishes? Clear dirty dishes.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Until you die.

Just kidding, that’s a little dramatic, hahaha. But after my seventeenth lap to the dishpit, I was starting to see why Blake had warned us against ‘getting lazy.’

I was an adrenaline junkie, constantly on the hunt for my next hit of dopamine. Repetitive shit like bussing tables was the definition of my worst nightmare.

Happily, Turtle was used to keeping my ADHD ass from getting fired, and he immediately turned it into a competition.

He assigned points to all the different types of dishes and started a tally. First one to get to a thousand points got first dibs on the next day’s swells.

Nothing lit a fire under my ass like a friendly competition, and by the end of our shift, both the manager and Blake were shaking their heads in awe.

“You two are the best bussers we’ve ever had,” Blake said as Turtle and I met up with her at the host stand. We’d changed out of our uniforms and were ready to check out Leviathans with our new local guide.

I snorted. “Pretty sure I’m the best busser you’ve ever had. I hit a thousand points way before this joker.” I laughed.

Turtle smirked at me and shrugged before winking at Blake. “This guy’s a little competitive.”

She giggled, her blue eyes twinkling with amusement. “I can see that.” The light in her eyes dimmed slightly as she realized what that meant. Competitive dudes tended to do dumb shit like riding monster waves despite the warnings of cute local girls.

Turtle was right. I was competitive. I was also prone to severe hyperfixation.

The second we’d learned about Leviathans while surfing in the East, my mind latched onto the notion of riding these monsters like a super magnet.

It was a familiar feeling, and I knew the signs of my next great obsession brewing. Once I got it in my head that I was going to do something, there was quite literally nothing on the planet that could stop me, not even myself.

I ran at two speeds. Either completely enthralled with something to the point that I ate, slept, and breathed it or completely uninterested to the point that I couldn’t even focus if someone mentioned the topic .

‘It’s always feathers or steel with Finn,’ my mother used to tell people, almost as if it were a good thing to be completely incapable of finding the middle ground on anything.

Seeing the concerned look in Blake’s eyes, I knew she was already starting to see this dangerous quality in me.

“You gonna take us to Leviathans or what?” I asked, and she nodded slowly. Her brows pinched together as if suddenly wondering if showing us the beach at all was a good idea.

I’d bought that shack because I knew it was close to Leviathans, but I hadn’t been able to find the beach itself yet. It wasn’t like it was marked. According to Blake, even local surfers were wary of the treacherous waves.

Blake drove an old Volkswagen Golf. I noted her fish board strapped to the roof and grinned. Nice. Knew she was cool.

I let Turtle ride shotgun since he was clearly trying to get with her. She surprised me by driving us only four minutes down the road from my beach shack. She parked on the side of the road and turned off the car, motioning for us to get out.

“Down this way,” she said, leading us into a nearly completely hidden dirt trail that led into the brush.

As soon as we passed off the road and into the wild terrain that surrounded the rocky coast, I felt a thrill rush through my body.

My pupils blew, and all the blood in my body seemed to rush to the surface of my skin, making me feel both hot and cold at the same time. I trembled as we walked, and each step closer to the distant crash of waves sent my heart rate into a tailspin.

I hadn’t physically reacted to something like this since the very first time I felt the sand between my toes, and I swallowed, somewhat unnerved at how powerful of a reaction I was having to my environment.

At the end of the trail, we stood on a rocky outcropping off the edge of a cliff, overlooking a small, hidden beach.

The cliff had what looked like a manageable stairway of natural stone that would be easy enough to climb down if you were careful .

However, I couldn’t move.

The second my eyes processed the view before me, my bones locked up, and my breath caught in my throat.

My entire body was tingling, and I shivered as one of the most powerful surges of dopamine I had ever experienced ripped through my veins.

Here, the water wasn’t the bright blue I was used to, but a deep navy so cold it felt like a warning.

The white caps on the waves were violent peaks of salt, marking the beginning and end of each swell.

I nearly panted with excitement as the water crashed against the rocks and sand in savage bursts.

My fingers tingled as I watched the sharp edges of the waves cut through the terrain like a hot knife through butter.

We were high enough up that the waves below us appeared diminutive, and it was only experience that told me they were much larger than they appeared.

Every swell that rolled into that small, dark sheet of sand at the foot of the cliff must have cleared at least fifteen feet.

A little over half the size of the twenty-five-foot Leviathans I hoped to see this winter, but still.

The sheer power… the energy of the ocean below me called to every single one of my pleasure centers.

I could almost hear the ocean calling my name, challenging me to conquer it.

The hyperfixation that had been brewing within me solidified in that instant.

There was a ‘snapping’ sensation in my chest, and I knew I would conquer this beach or fucking die trying.

“See what I mean, Finn? This isn’t even the high season.

This beach is dangerous . More experienced surfers than you have literally died here.

You need to take this really seriously,” Blake said.

She glanced at me, clearly hoping that this little field trip would have convinced me to stick to safer swells.

However, Turtle took one look at my face and chuckled. He knew what Blake had just done was having the complete opposite effect on me .

It was fucking on.

“I’m going to shred this beach to pieces,” I vowed, my voice coming out low and breathy.

I was so excited at the thought that I was borderline turned on.

I felt a throb between my legs that had nothing to do with the hot blonde that had shown me the beach that had just fundamentally altered my brain chemistry.

“You’re a psycho,” Blake whispered, her blue eyes wide and her face so pale she looked like she might pass out.

I gave her a grin that I was sure confirmed I was, in fact, a psycho.

“I need to learn everything there is to know about how these waves break, and I need to learn fast,” I told her, and she shook her head, looking at Turtle like he would take her side in this matter.

He just shot her a Lazy Turtle Smile ? and slipped his hands into the pockets of his board shorts.

His shoulder-length, wavy brown hair whipped around his handsome face as his dark eyes shone with a look likely very similar to mine.

“Baby Girl, when the Finn Man decides he’s gonna ride, not even the devil could stop him. No talking him out of it now.”

“Be serious. You could die.”

I watched another fifteen-foot wave crash against the beach with the power of a small bomb. White sea foam shot into the salty air like shrapnel, and my grin widened.

“Then I guess I’ll die happy.”