3. Selena
CHAPTER THREE
Selena
I started the voicemail. “Mija, it’s your mother.”
My face must have reflected my emotions, because on the other side of the counter, Elliot had the decency to pretend the smoothie menu fascinated him, even though he’d been ordering the same thing for years.
“I have the most exciting news about an opportunity for the town. Some very important people are interested in hosting an event here, and I’ve been in discussions with them for weeks—I didn’t want to say anything until it was official, but ya es oficial!”
A pause for maximum drama.
Her accent—the one she could dial up or down depending on who she was charming—was fully present, which meant she was truly excited.
“This is going to bring so much attention to Crescent Cove. Atención de verdad, Selena. Attention this town deserves. Call me back, mi corazón. We have so much to discuss.”
The voicemail ended.
I stared at the phone.
The words atención de verdad—real attention—sat in my chest like a barb.
Real attention, as opposed to, say, my volleyball tournament that had raised fifteen thousand dollars for the marine rescue over five years.
As opposed to the nesting surveys I organized every spring, or the rehab tanks Elliot and I had fundraised for, or the fact that our efforts had been written up in the state wildlife commission’s newsletter as “a model for community-driven conservation.” That had been the proudest moment of my adult life.
I’d framed the newsletter clipping and hung it behind the register.
My mother had never mentioned it.
“Bad news?” Elliot asked, still pretending to read the menu.
“My mother.”
“Ah.”
Elliot had dated one of my primas back when he’d first moved here after college, what felt like a million years ago.
We had kept him around long after they’d broken up, and once the Torres family claimed you, there was no escaping.
That I knew well. But I wasn’t complaining about their mild “forced adoption” of Elliot.
Sea lion shifters were some of the only ones who could keep up with my family’s party habits.
At a Torres family party, the drinks never ran out, the dancing went on until morning, and my mother was always the star.
Everyone in Crescent Cove knew Marina Torres.
Everyone loved Marina Torres. She made the waves perform, cresting and curling in patterns that made visiting storm and sea witches weep with jealousy.
Marina was the town’s crown jewel: powerful, generous, radiant…
beloved. She could command a room in two languages and make you feel honored that she’d bothered to acknowledge your existence.
Now, Crescent Cove was home to many ocean witches. Elliot worked with one named Tempest, and I knew at least two more from their morning runs—and corresponding smoothie breaks at Shark Bites. But if you asked Marina Torres, this ocean belonged to her and her alone.
I knew this because she’d always had a sort of one-way frenemies relationship with the Prescotts and Becks, other powerful water-witch families in town.
Families pulled to Crescent Cove by the same ley lines, but my mother always had to be the center of attention and didn’t play well with others she deemed competition. Probably why she always kept me close.
My abuela might have been the same way once.
She was an indescribably powerful bruja who’d come to Crescent Cove from Veracruz sixty years ago, drawn by the ley lines that tangled beneath the coast like roots, and had settled our family here to work with them.
But the abuela I knew was warm, her weathered hands always cradling a baby cousin or working in the kitchen.
That was something my mother hadn’t inherited.
But that was a different conversation. One I wasn’t revisiting. Especially not at—I checked the clock—6:53 in the morning.
“So,” I said, setting the phone face down on the counter. “You wanted to talk about the tournament?”
“Yeah…” He trailed off, his fingers drumming on the counter nervously.
Elliot had built the rehabilitation center with grant money and stubbornness, and the volleyball tournament was the biggest single fundraiser they had. He hadn’t said anything, but I knew he was worried about grants this year, which made the tournament even more critical.
“Worried about funding?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly.”
His eyes drifted to my phone.
“What did she say?”
“Something about an ‘exciting opportunity’—”
“It’s a surf competition.”
I set down the blender.
“What? How do you know that?”
“Saw it on the forums.”
Elliot’s jaw tightened, an expression I rarely saw from him. Elliot was aggressively laid-back. He was the quintessential California surfer—seeing him tense was like seeing a golden retriever growl. Always technically possible, but deeply unsettling when it happened.
“It’s RipTide.”
“RipTide the energy drink?”
“RipTide the energy drink…and their guy. Their whole comeback tour thing.”
He said comeback tour like most people said tax audit.
“Chase Perez.”
The name didn’t mean anything to me, which was apparently highly offensive to Elliot.
“El Tiburón? You seriously don’t—he’s been all over everything for like five years.
Big-wave surfer. Total showboat. You know the type—more Instagram followers than actual talent.
” He scoffed. “Okay, that’s not fair. He’s got talent.
I hate that he’s got talent, but he does,” he grumbled, shaking his head.
“You sound a little obsessed with him,” I teased, but he didn’t hit me with a return volley, which worried me. “So what’s the problem?”
Elliot’s fingers drummed harder on the counter.
“Three years ago, there was a storm swell off the coast of Portugal. World-record stuff the big-wave guys live for. But the government had the whole stretch shut down because conditions were genuinely dangerous. Well, more dangerous than normal.
“Perez decides he’s going to surf it anyway.
But not just surf it—film it. The whole thing was supposed to be this viral moment, right?
Him and his crew, charging a closed beach during a storm, conquering nature, whatever garbage sells energy drinks to teenagers.
He convinced his whole team to go. Including this guy, Marcus Webb.
His best friend. They’d come up together, competed together, the whole deal. ”
I leaned against the counter. I didn’t know where this was going, but I knew the tightness in Elliot’s voice. He was talking about the ocean being disrespected, which, for a guy who’d dedicated his career to cleaning up the damage humans did to marine life, was about as personal as it got.
“The footage was apparently insane. Massive swells, forty-foot faces, footage that would break the internet. And it did break the internet, just not how Perez planned.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, getting little water droplets everywhere.
“Marcus took a wave wrong. Got dragged across the bottom. Shattered his collarbone, punctured a lung, nearly drowned before he got pulled out. The rescue was on every news channel by morning.”
“Jesus.”
“Marcus survived. Spent three months in intensive care. Never surfed competitively again.”
Elliot’s voice was flat now, which only happened when he was furious, something I only saw when he pulled a seabird out of a six-pack ring or cut fishing line from a seal’s fin. It was a quiet fury at people who treated the ocean as if it existed for their entertainment.
“And Perez? Perez walked away with a world record and not a scratch on him. Lost some sponsors, laid low for a bit, did the whole ‘I’ve learned from my mistakes’ press tour. And now he’s back, bigger than ever, with a sponsor who loves his ‘bad boy’ image.”
He made air quotes around “bad boy” with an impressive amount of aggression.
“Because apparently nearly getting your best friend killed is just branding now.”
I was quiet for a moment. Outside, people were drifting onto my beach, too many towels and not enough sunscreen in hand.
“And that’s who’s coming here,” I said.
“That’s who your mom invited here.”
I don’t think Elliot knew how much that statement upset me.
“The thing that gets me,” Elliot continued, lower now, turning his empty smoothie cup in slow circles on the counter, “is that the whole thing happened because one guy decided the rules didn’t apply to him.
That the ocean was his playground. That likes mattered more than people.
” He met my gaze. “And now he’s coming here with a corporate sponsor to take over our beach. For content.”
Our beach.
He’d said our.
Because it was.
The north shore wasn’t just where I held the tournament; it was where Elliot’s turtle nests were.
Eggs that wouldn’t hatch until the full moon, completely defenseless against the chaos a corporate surf circus would bring.
The noise, the lights, the foot traffic, the generators, the crowds—all of it could be catastrophic.
“If they set up on the north shore—” I started.
“I know.”
“The light pollution alone—”
“I know, Selena.”
We looked at each other across the counter, and the beach was quiet. There was just the distant sound of waves and the silence of two people who loved a place that was about to be treated like a backdrop.
“Placing a lot of blame on a single guy for this big competition,” I said slowly. “You’re not exactly an unbiased source, Ell.”
“I’m extremely biased. I’m also right.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive, but they don’t tend to work together.”
He grinned—the first real one since he’d walked in.
“You sound like a fortune cookie.”
“You sound like a guy who’s about to volunteer to help me fight a surf competition invasion.”
“I mean, obviously.” He stood up rapidly, slapping his hands on the counter.
“Those turtles are my patients. If some energy drink bro and his film crew set up shop ten feet from an active nest, I will personally drag them into the water by their ankles. And then I will shift, and then things will get very uncomfortable for everyone.”
“Please don’t body-slam a RipTide executive in sea lion form. As funny as that would be.”
“No promises. So what’s the plan?”
I glanced at my phone, still face down on the counter. My mother had a way of making her plans sound inevitable. She was like the tide, already moving, and your only option was to move with it or get swept under.
But I’d had a lifetime of experience with her.
What was the plan?
The plan was the same as it always was. Show up.
Do the work. Take care of the beach and the turtles and the tournament and every other small, unglamorous thing that kept Crescent Cove running while people like Chase Perez and companies like RipTide swept in with their cameras and branded tents and took whatever they wanted because small towns were too desperate to say no.
The plan was to be exactly who I’d always been: the girl who stayed. The girl who handled it. The girl whose magic was too small to matter but whose stubbornness was big enough to fill the gap. This was my town, my beach, and I was going to protect it.
“The plan,” I replied, “is that I’m going to call my mother back.”
Elliot raised his eyebrows.
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
He nodded, gave me an encouraging salute, and left.
I picked up the phone. Stared at it for three long seconds.
Then I poured myself a shot of tequila from my emergency bottle, drank it in a single gulp for courage, and hit call back.
She picked up on the first ring. Of course she did. Marina Torres was always ready for an audience.
“Selena! Mi amor. Did you get my message?”
“Hey, Mom,” I said, and braced myself for the oncoming tide.