Chapter 14
COLT
The meeting ended fifteen minutes ago. I was still sitting at the desk in the study, staring at the wall and trying to decide what to do.
The investor meeting had been brutal. Thirty talking heads on a Zoom call was always going to be chaotic.
Add in the fact it was about money and things were a hundred times worse.
I closed my laptop, sat back in the desk chair, and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, rubbing my jaw and contemplating every life choice.
I got up and walked to the window that faced the ocean.
I’d spent the last three hours discussing the very beach I was staring at.
The meeting had not gone well. That was the diplomatic version.
The less diplomatic version was that thirty people, most of whom had never set foot in Surfside Cove, had spent the better part of the afternoon talking themselves into walking away from the whole thing.
I’d spent a significant portion of that time talking them off the ledge.
By the end of the meeting, I wasn’t sure I’d succeeded.
Judd had pretty much abandoned me. It was his project.
I was one of the largest investors, but it was his thing and he seemed to be prepared to let me do all the heavy lifting.
The postponement argument had been gaining ground.
The many reasons for why we should hold off or scrap the location and look for something else just kept piling up.
Community opposition. Negative press. Timeline delays on the permits.
The vandalism, which Judd had not wanted to disclose to the board, but someone had clearly already briefed them about it.
It had made headlines. It wasn’t going to stay a secret.
The relocation argument was also being considered. One of the investors had found three spots in Oregon and another one up near Santa Barbara. Two in Washington state. I’d shut that down fast. I’d walked them through the data again. Data I had spent nearly a year gathering.
Judd had closed the meeting without resolution, which was its own kind of answer.
He’d said he wanted to reconvene in two weeks with updated numbers and a revised community relations specialist. Apparently, he’d been making calls and was pulling out the big guns to spin the negative into something positive.
I changed out of the clothes I’d been wearing for the meeting.
I wasn’t the guy that wore a dress shirt and tie with nothing but boxers on below the waist. I dressed for the meeting like we were all meeting in person.
But now it was time for a T-shirt and jeans.
Cody was in the living room watching golf when I walked in.
“Beer?” I said.
“Hell, yeah. Let’s go.”
We walked down to the beach and followed it north toward the strip of bars and restaurants that ran along the waterfront.
The evening crowd was already thickening.
Summer people in sundresses and flip flops.
Couples strolling. A pack of teenagers were being loud, like teens did. Like we all did at one point.
We headed to what used to be our regular hangout. It used to be named The Pelican. It wasn’t called that anymore. I stopped at the entrance and stared at the sign above the door. Saltwater Social. White neon letters and nothing like the old place.
“When did that happen?” I asked.
I remembered the place being a mom and pop shop. An older couple had run the place. They owned it for thirty years. They were good people. I remembered they always planned various events that were family friendly. They were snobs toward the tourists like some people tended to be.
“Come on,” Cody said.
We went inside. The bones of the place were the same.
Same layout, same view of the water through the big open windows along the front wall.
But everything else had been stripped and replaced.
It was aggressively coastal aesthetic to the point it looked ridiculous.
All the cheap decor meant to make it look like a seaside bar was overkill.
It had an ocean view—let that be enough.
We found a high-top table for two and sat down. The bartender was a young woman with a sleeve tattoo. She didn’t give off the beachy vibe. More like motorcycle chick that could kick anyone’s ass that got out of hand.
“What can I get you?”
“Two Coronas,” I said.
Cody waited until she moved away. “You look like a man who just sat through a firing squad.”
“That’s about right.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that Judd closed the meeting without a resolution. Three of the other investors are making noise about pulling out.”
The waitress returned with our beers. Cody handed her his credit card. “Keep the tab open.”
“Got it,” she said and walked away.
“You were saying,” Cody said.
“It’s bad enough that the relocation argument is gaining actual traction.”
Cody had the good sense not to say I told you so, even though I could see it sitting on his tongue. He had told me so, but I had data. The data said I was right.
“What does Judd want to do?” he asked.
“I genuinely don’t know anymore. He closed the meeting and told everyone he’d reconvene in two weeks.
He’s apparently bringing in some kind of community relations specialist. Someone who specializes in turning public opposition into a feel-good story.
They’ll find a couple locals and package a story about how great the business will be for them.
Send the kid to college and so on. You know how it goes.
” I picked at the label on my bottle. “He wants to hire someone to make the people of Surfside feel like they’re being heard while he does exactly what he planned to do from the beginning. ”
“That’ll go over great,” Cody said.
“It won’t,” I agreed.
Cody looked around the bar. “Damn, this place has no personality.”
“The change the people around here fear,” I muttered.
“You remember the summer Frank set up the volleyball tournament?” Cody said.
I looked at him. “You’re doing it too.”
“What?”
“Getting nostalgic about this place.”
He shrugged and looked around. “Hard not to. I keep expecting Elena to come out from the back with a plate of something she wants us to try. Remember she used to make jalapeno poppers. She assumed since we were from Texas, we knew all about spicy food. She used to bring out food nobody ordered and just set it down. Just because she felt like it.”
The bar was filling up around us. I was working on my second beer when the door opened and a familiar, boisterous laugh filled the space. I groaned. I didn’t have to turn around to see who it was.
Bodhi Finn walked in with two guys I vaguely recognized from the bonfire. One of them was tall and lean with the look of a longtime surfer. The other was shorter, stockier, wearing a hat backward, probably a gym rat.
“Don’t,” Cody said quietly.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’ve got the look. You’re stiff. You’re cranky. And he was with your girl.”
“Not stiff. Always cranky. And she’s not my girl. And he’s not with her now.”
“That guy over there is not worth your time.”
I turned my bottle again. “I’m not thinking about him.”
It killed me to think of him touching her. Kissing her. Making love to her. But I hadn’t been living like a monk. There was zero expectation she would live like a nun.
But it still pissed me off.
The conversation at the other end of the bar drifted over in pieces.
Something about the protest on Friday. I knew they were likely the ones organizing the thing.
It was unlikely Bodhi knew about me and Summer, but guys picked up on the territorial thing.
He suspected there was something, so he was going to make it very clear he’d had her.
The protest wasn’t anything too serious.
I wasn’t worried, but Judd and the other investors were acting like it was a personal attack.
Although the post on Facebook was gaining some serious traction.
A hundred and something likes turned into three hundred in a matter of hours.
People from inland and up and down the coast were promising to show up.
You couldn’t stop something like this once it had momentum.
The harder you pushed against it, the more you fed it.
The people of Surfside had found something to rally around and they were going to rally whether Judd liked it or not.
The most he could do was make sure none of our people were anywhere near it and that the building was secure.
Anything else was going to make us look exactly like the villains they already thought we were.
What I couldn’t quite reconcile was the fact that I agreed with them.
Not about the port. I still believed in the project.
I believed in the data and the opportunity and the genuine economic benefit that a well-run cruise operation could bring to a coastal town that was slowly being priced out of its own identity anyway.
The money was coming whether we built here or not.
Surfside was going to get run over. It might not be today, but it would happen.
Cody had been doing a decent job of keeping my attention occupied with a running commentary about everything and nothing. It was annoying the hell out of me.
“Cody, I’m good,” I told him. “I’m minding my business.”
“Anderson.”
Bodhi stopped at the edge of our table with a beer in his hand and that stupid smile on his face. His buddies hung back.
I turned to face him. “Bodhi.”
“Saw the pictures.” He shook his head slowly, the grin still in place. “Somebody really doesn’t want that port.”
“Looks that way.”
“Can’t imagine why.” He took a pull from his beer. “Beautiful stretch of coastline. Perfect waves. I mean, what’s not to love about dropping a cruise terminal right in the middle of all that?”
“All that money flowing into town will be terrible for the economy,” I said, not hiding my sarcasm.
Bodhi tilted his head. “You know what I keep thinking about? All those families that have been coming here for thirty, forty years. Generations. Little kids learning to surf on that same stretch. And one day they’re going to show up and there’s going to be a parking structure where the dunes were.
” He paused for effect. “That’s going to be a real bummer for them. ”
“I appreciate the concern,” I said.
“Just making conversation.”
“Sure.”
He looked at Cody then, like he’d just noticed him. “You’re the brother, right?”
“Guilty,” Cody said pleasantly.
“You surf?”
“Some.”
Bodhi nodded slowly. “So you two just roll in here, drop a few million on a project that nobody asked for, and then act surprised when people push back.”
“It’s business,” I said. “People have opinions.”
“Can I ask you something?” Cody asked with a smile that told me I better be ready for incoming fists. “I mean this genuinely. Is the puka shell thing making a comeback, or is that just a you thing? Because I feel like boy bands are back.”
Bodhi blinked.
“I thought we were doing an eighties fashion revival but maybe we’re up to the nineties.”
“Fuck you, man,” Bodhi said.
Cody shooed him away. I waited but no one was throwing fists.
“We should go,” I said. “I’m not interested in fighting the locals.”
We closed the tab, making sure to leave a healthy tip. We walked along the beach back to the house.
“You remember that summer when Dad grounded us both for two weeks and we snuck out anyway.”
I knew exactly which summer. “I was thirteen.”
“That whole group of kids used to meet down by the jetty after dark. Capture the flag. We used those glow stick things for the flags.”
“Different time,” I said.
“Different everything.”
“Remember that kid Tyler?” Cody asked.
“The one who broke his wrist falling off the pier.”
“Yep.”
“I wonder sometimes about all of them,” I said. “That whole crew. Summers just felt like they lasted forever back then. Like we owned this beach. Like nothing was going to change.”
“Everything changed,” he said. “Still changing.”
We reached the gate to our property. I punched in the code and headed up the path. I remembered the many nights we dragged ourselves home sunburned, covered in sand and completely exhausted. Those had been the best days of my life.
“You happy?” he asked.
I looked at him.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Not asking to be a pain in the ass. I genuinely want to know.”
I thought about it. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m good at what I do. I’m good at seeing where money should go and making it go there. I don’t hate the work.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I thought about the mornings I went for a run on the beach and the way everything just felt right. Sitting on the patio watching the sunset with a cold beer in hand. Listening to music with a beautiful blonde.
I didn’t say any of that.
“I’m working on it,” I said.
Cody nodded. “Yeah, me too. Being here makes me think we might be doing life wrong.”
I didn’t say anything because I was thinking the same thing.