Chapter 2: Chapter 2
“What you got there?” Finn asked, flicking Trent’s chest.
Trent sunk his teeth into his bottom lip and laughed. Finn raised his eyebrow, but it was a pointless cue when most of it was hidden behind his glasses. He pushed them into his hair and widened his eyes.
“Well?”
“You listening to that?” Trent asked, jutting his chin out towards Brody and his adoring friends.
Finn smirked, then wiped the expression away with his hand. “Most entertaining.”
“Well I might just add to the entertainment.”
Trent tugged the mystery item out of his T-shirt. Finn shook his head at the sight of the kids float. The fin that poked from the foam was small, and gray in color, not dazzling silver, and the size of a tractor wheel like Brody had described it.
“Washed up by the rocks, the twenty-ton megalodon.”
Trent shook the flimsy float and laughed.
Finn raised his eyebrows. “But his story is so convincing, frozen in the ice and drifted down from the Artic. Only to revive itself on the coast of Cornwall, and pursue him on his surfboard…”
“Should have heard him earlier, he said he climbed on its back and rode it.”
Finn clutched his stomach and smirked. “He has a talent for storytelling.”
“What surprises me is no one challenges him, no one says he’s talking out of his ars—”
Finn raised his hand fast. “Watch it, kids about.”
Trent snorted, and flashed a smile at the nearest family packing up their belongings.
“I’m gunna go bust the brat’s story.”
Trent stepped forward, but Finn pressed a palm to his chest to hold him back. He didn’t stare straight at Brody, but he looked at him out of the corner of his eye.
Brody smiled brightly, his eyes were wide, and he puffed his chest out proudly as he told his tale of almost being swallowed by a shark the size of a blue whale. Despite his arrogance, he was adorable, and the thought of him being humiliated filled Finn with unease.
“Let him have this one.”
Trent pushed his glasses into his dreadlocks and frowned. “Let him have this one? He’s going to terrify the whole town with this story.”
Finn shrugged. “If people are worried, they will ask us, and we’ll tell the truth. You can’t go embarrassing him in front of his friends.”
Trent shoved the float back under his T-shirt. “You are far too soft on that one, and we all know why…”
Finn looked down at the sand and clenched his toes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Since he started coming here, you’ve been drooling all over the sand.”
Finn scrunched his face. “Bit of an exaggeration.”
Trent held his thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart. “Yeah, but only a bit, that’s the messed-up thing. You’ve got the hots for the beach brat. I know it, you know it, and so does he.”
“Is it not alright to think someone’s hot? Your eyes follow every bikini wearing woman that walks by.”
“Yeah, I look, and sometimes I go talk, sometimes it leads to more, sometimes it doesn’t. The difference is, you started lusting after him last summer—
“The summer before that,” Finn interrupted, “and if you condense all the days I see him, it’s probably like six months I’ve fancied him…”
The surfing season lasted from April to October. Brody was at the beach nearly every weekend, and he often appeared for a quick surf in the afternoon during week days. Finn eagerly waited for him to appear and sagged in disappointment on the days he didn’t.
Trent slammed his palm to his forehead. “Two summers ago and you still haven’t so much as talked to him.”
“Sometimes it’s nice to appreciate from afar.”
“Now that’s just cowardly.” Trent mumbled.
Finn folded his arms and huffed. “He’s some sought after surfer, is pretty much a celebrity on this sand. His friends follow him around, he turns up with a different guy each week. I’m not gunna put my heart out there for him to stamp on, no matter how hot he looks.”
Trent raised his eyebrow. “‘M not saying put your heart out there, I’m saying put something else out there. He’s not a relationship kind of guy, he enjoys sex with no strings. That could be fun.”
“I’m not into that.”
Trent growled. “Two years, Finn, you’ve lusted after that guy for two years. Maybe if you sleep with the guy, you’ll finally be able to move on, and find someone who wants a relationship.”
Finn pressed his heel into the sand and cocked his jaw. “If I sleep with him, and that’s it. It’s like admitting it couldn’t be anything more. Not to mention it would be awkward seeing him here.”
“It’s already awkward, last week he sat licking an ice cream and your face practically caught fire.”
Finn wagged his finger. “I told you, I didn’t feel well.”
“Yeah, and you rushed away to your truck, then returned twenty minutes later, blushing and unable to look anyone in the eye. We all know what medicine you used on the backseat…”
Finn quickly rubbed at his reddening cheeks. “I told you, something I ate didn’t agree with me. I took an Imodium to settle by stomach.”
Trent bunched his lips and hummed.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone