Bombora (2 page)

Caroline had her doubts about my moving here, probably because she worried about not being able to keep an eye on me, but for the most part I haven’t had any trouble. For an author, the ratio of rabid fans to people who don’t give a shit is pretty low, and in Cardiff it’s almost zilch. At first there was some excitement to have a best-selling author in the neighborhood, especially one with a troubled history like mine, but after threatening a couple of lawsuits, Caroline was mostly able to keep me out of the local papers. Not to mention I’m usually too boring to warrant much attention. With Rob nearby and a couple of other famous musicians and actors who call Cardiff home, I quickly faded into the fabric of everyday life. Hugh Dorian—though around here I go by my real name, Hugh Fessenden—is just another guy with an inflated salary and too much free time on his hands.

Even after Nell’s parents eventually moved away, haunted by memories of her childhood, I was welcomed into the community with open arms, if maybe a few more sympathetic looks than I normally like. Pretty much everyone who grew up here knows about Nell and mourns that someone so kind and well liked should have lost her life to a mugging gone horribly awry. I took up surfing because there wasn’t much else to do, and it’s a nice way to break up the monotony of my day when I’m not out promoting a new book or struggling to justify the recent publisher’s advance. Luckily I embarrass myself a lot less out there on the waves than I used to. Some might even call me proficient.

I wish I could say being a well-known author has made for an active social life and lots of friends, but that isn’t really the case. For one reason or another, I keep to myself. Privacy is a hard thing to come by in a small town, and I’d hate to make the mistake of divulging too much of my life to the wrong person. Writers, even the famous ones, don’t have it as bad as the Brads and Angelinas of the world, but we still see our fair share of public interest. That I’m under thirty and, I suppose, passably attractive seems to make me a natural target for gossip, especially since some of my stuff got optioned for film adaptations.

While I can’t say it’s something I ever
really
worry about, there have been a few incidents to make me think twice about who I let into the inner circle. I often used to wish Nate lived closer than Ohio, but his own family was a full-time job, especially since Emilia opened her dance studio and Liam started middle school. My mom died when we were little and my dad a couple of years ago from a heart attack, so for the most part I lie low and have fewer than five people on speed dial. I talk to Nate all the time, but brothers don’t count; he just harasses me about being a bore, anyway. “How’s the free booze and groupies this week? Or did you spend another Saturday beating off to Internet porn by yourself?” is his usual refrain when he calls.

Like I said, no one I really hang out with on a regular basis.

Except, that is, for Phel.

W
HAT
is there to tell about Phelan? Way too much and not enough. He’s both the most unremarkable and the most interesting guy I’ve ever met. To this day, I have no idea how the hell he wound up in a place like Cardiff—although how does anyone end up here? His story probably isn’t all that different from mine. Then again, he could have escaped from a circus for all I know, or fallen from the sky.

I met him on the beach a couple of months ago while on a morning walk with my dog, Callie. He was having some trouble. Beginners take to the surf all the time around here, and normally I don’t think anything of it, but Phel stood out a bit more than the rest, wrestling with his wetsuit like it was a live animal and not a piece of neoprene. It being late July, there were a few kids gathered together for lessons, their small bodies zippering easily into the suits before they grabbed their bodyboards and paddled into the surf after their instructor. Certainly there was no rocket science involved, but this poor schmuck couldn’t seem to figure out which end of his suit was up—not what you’d call an experienced surfer.

I probably would have continued on my way if Callie hadn’t sprinted away from me in her excitement to catch a slow-moving target. Phel looked up when he found himself under the investigation of seventy pounds of Australian shepherd.

“Uh… hey,” he greeted me awkwardly, and his nose wrinkled in the universal sign for people who like dogs a lot more in theory than in practice. “Can I… help you?”

The incongruousness of the question made me snort. I decided to rescue him before Callie could get any more friendly, and she whuffed happily as I approached over the sand. “Get back here,” I told her with mock sternness, and she played her little game of running back and forth across the beach between us, inviting one of us to chase her around.

Phel wasn’t having any of it. “Is this an off-leash area?” he asked peevishly when I got close enough. “I didn’t think dogs were allowed to just….” With a look of frustration for the wetsuit, he threw it down on the sand with a lame slap.

“What, judge people’s surfing ability?” I asked. The sun was glaring kind of awkwardly from behind Phel’s head, and I had to shield a hand over my eyes just to make out a vague impression of his facial expression. From what I could tell, he looked a combination of embarrassed and exasperated. That’s Phel down to a T—always too much going on below the surface to get a proper read on the guy. “Don’t think many people care round here,” I pointed out, “and Callie won’t give you half as much trouble as that wetsuit.” This earned me a glare, and a little spark of humor made me add, “By the way, it goes ass-side down.”

“And you’re the expert?” snapped Phel. I shrugged. The gesture drew another grunt of frustration from him, then Phel motioned at the discarded pile. “I just… I’ve been cooped up for days, and supposedly surfing is the one good thing to do around here. So far it’s a disaster.”

“Have you surfed before?” I asked neutrally. We both knew I’d already guessed the answer.

In all fairness, Phel called me on it. “What does it look like?”

“Touché.” I stooped, half to put the guy out of his misery and half to save him from further embarrassment, then grabbed his wetsuit off the ground and stretched and untangled the neoprene until I held out a neat person-sized article in front of me. “You should get yourself an instructor if this is your first time,” I suggested. “Waves can get pretty intense out there if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know even less about where to go for that kind of thing,” he answered. “I borrowed the board from… some friends I’m staying with.” There was no denying the emphasis on the word “friends” was weird, but I tried not to comment since it would only make him more uncomfortable. Say what you want about writers, but we’re pretty good at psychoanalyzing on the spot. I didn’t need a psych degree to know Phel was lying to my face about something he didn’t want to talk about. However, the fact that I had one didn’t hurt. He was definitely lying about something.

“That’s cool, man,” I said. Before I could think twice about the impulsiveness of the gesture, given my tendency to avoid people, I extended my hand. “I’m Hugh.”

Though Phel responded with a proper handshake, something seemed to dawn on him after he spent a couple of moments looking at my face with a puzzled expression. Two guesses what that was. “Hugh Dorian,” he said slowly. “I thought you looked kind of familiar, but I’m not great with faces. Plus it’s entirely possible I’m just going crazy.” His mouth snapped shut at this. Hesitantly, he added, “You
are
Hugh Dorian, right? The writer?”

Next time I’d ask for a smaller jacket photo or, fuck, a composite sketch that didn’t quite get my nose right. “Got it in one,” I told him instead, trying not to sound bent out of shape. “Here I thought I was undercover.”
Please don’t ask me for a fuckin’ autograph
, I thought.

Now that he’d stepped closer and correctly guessed my identity, I was able to get a much clearer look at Phel’s face. He was pretty handsome, I had to admit: scruffy and wild-haired in a rakish way, full lips that probably made a lot of women jealous, huge blue eyes. Not surprisingly, he was shorter than me by a few inches, compact but for his broad shoulders and strong legs. Despite the gruffness of his voice, he was actually pretty young—early thirties was my guess, around Nate’s age.

The difference was that Phel looked tired, more tired than I could remember having seen a person look, the exception being myself in the mirror the night Nell died. It made me wonder what stories lay behind the shadows under Phel’s eyes, and to be honest, I still wonder. But that day we were just getting our introductions out of the way, and it wouldn’t be another few weeks until I worked up the nerve to ask why he was the most miserable guy in San Diego County.

“Sorry for spoiling your anonymity,” he apologized. “For what it’s worth, you don’t look a whole lot like your jacket photo—it makes you look short, for one thing, and kind of smug.” At this, I blinked, and Phelan immediately backpedaled. “But you don’t look short or smug here, I mean. You’re tall and kind of stun—”

“Can I stop you right there?” I interrupted. This was getting ridiculous. The guy spoke like he’d gone to finishing school at Eton but had less tact than Howard Stern. “I think I get the idea.” A regretful look crossed Phel’s face. Nevertheless, I was glad when he didn’t try to apologize again. Instead I surprised us both by asking, “How would you feel about me teaching you how to surf? I wouldn’t charge anything, and I’d sleep a lot better at night knowing you won’t die a watery death on my watch.”

“I can pay in beer,” said Phel, and that, as they say, was that.

That first meeting was a little awkward, plagued as it was by Phelan’s enigmatic qualities and tendency to talk about his past life like it’d all happened to someone else, but we’ve been hanging out every day since then, having graduated from early-morning surf lessons to the kind of stuff regular friends do, or at least insofar as I’ve ever had a regular friend. You know: coffee, football games, movies, beer. We also run together a lot, and the first time I saw his fast, steady gait on the beach as he plowed ahead of me despite my much longer strides, I knew how he got those leg muscles. Phel’s kind of a natural athlete, even though he knows nothing about real-people sports like basketball or football, and tons about weird shit like fencing and cricket and polo—and baseball, for some reason, though he dodged the question when I inquired about the source of his info. His knowledge of the Texas Rangers would have made Nate proud. He’s even come around to tolerating Callie’s high-energy canine demands, after enough of her persistent affection.

While there’s no denying he’s still the weirdest person I know, at least I understand a few more of the reasons behind that. The purpose of Phelan’s visit to Cardiff is so he can rest up and pull himself together before he figures out what he wants to do next with his life—I guess the less polite way to put it is that the dude had a nervous breakdown and retired to Cardiff to recoup.

I’ve tried to get more of the story out of him, but the most he’ll give me is he made a mistake with the wrong person and had the misfortune of getting caught. There’s nothing to suggest he knows what even happened to the other guy, but from the sounds of it, that doesn’t matter; Phel’s family disowned him either way, being the staunch religious types that don’t much care for gay love affairs. Phel has never used that word—love—but I can tell by the look he gets when he talks about the man in question that there’re still some feelings there, stuff that won’t be cured by a few weeks of R & R. I feel bad for him, but that isn’t why we’re friends. More than anything, I think we understand our mutual need for privacy and a reliable person to have your back.

After all, those things aren’t exactly easy to come by, not even in sunny Cardiff-by-the-Sea. I just wish we’d known enough to appreciate them before they got swept away with the tide.

Phel

M
Y
DAYS
at the Palermo Springs Centre for Addiction and Mental Health all start the same: I wake up around seven, shower, go to yoga, shower, have an uninspiring breakfast of fresh fruit and oatmeal, dress to meet Hugh at the beach for a few hours before lunch, shower, then go to my afternoon session with Willa, my counselor. Evenings I have to myself. For the record, I don’t have OCD—it’s just necessary to bathe several times a day to keep from smelling pervasively like seawater or sweat in this climate. Growing up, I split my time between the East Coast and the Midwest, so with the exception of New York in August, I’m not exactly built for these kinds of temperatures. No one wants to be the sweaty guy in group therapy, not with all that hugging.

Hugh is fond of mocking the predictability of my days, but Willa says routine can be grounding in times of chaos. There’s not much chaos in my life—more like a void—but if a routine can feel like a tranquil island in stormy seas (Willa’s words, not mine), I don’t see why it can’t serve the same purpose if the water around you is totally becalmed and empty. Besides, I kind of like yoga and having nothing else to do each day besides surf and hang out with Hugh and think about why I’m here. I don’t just mean here in the philosophical sense, though that’s part of it. Mostly I mean this slip of a town called Cardiff-by-the-Sea.