❝At the beach, life is different. Time doesn't move hour to hour but mood to moment. We live by the currents, plan by the tides, and follow the sun.❞ -Unknown

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was mocking him.

The old contraption was just as battered as it had always been--cracked porcelain with copper-colored trim which had probably been shiny at one point, maybe a generation or two before the phone had entered his custody. He imagined it sitting on a shelf in some old Victorian home in England before somehow working its way into his hands, performing well for a while as a phone before eventually serving as a messenger of doom.

There it sat, on top of the orange crate, looking just as old and useless as it had a week or so ago when he had crouched over it and whispered the fateful words into the receiver--the words which had tasted so bitter and so horrible, yet which he had recognized needed to be flushed out of his system before they did more damage while left unsaid.

"I'll stop bothering you," he found himself mumbling in the same low, choked voice he had managed the other day, feeling like a despairing old man pronouncing his tombstone inscription. Her response had been desperate--"What--Tinkerbell--" but he could have sensed the denial. He could smell the denial. Aria was too polite to admit how she really felt, and he had hurt her. He knew he had. While she had been despairing over her grades, he had been too submerged in his own self-pity to leave any room to care about her.

Deep down, was it true? Did he really want Aria Leedman to fail so he wouldn't feel so bad about his own defeat? Did he want what could set them again on even footing? Did he want her to empathize with him in his own misery?

"Heck, Nicholas, you sit here thinking all day--you could turn into Yoda or something."

Nicholas allowed his lips to quirk up weakly before falling back into a feeble frown.

"He did something right; that's for sure." The lanky figure, taller than him by an inch or two, sank down into the vacant lawn chair opposite the orange crate. "But you know Nick--thinking isn't everything. If you want to change your gears, you have to do it manually. Life doesn't drive you like an automatic."

If anyone could be trusted with endless car metaphors, it was Mason. Tough, greasy-fingered Mason, his blond crown wave of hair swept slickly to the side, found his oyster in the local Kasika garage. At the same age that Nicholas was dropping out of high school due to failure, Mason had dropped out to work at and eventually manage an auto business. If the Verns were ever producing any Yodas, Mason was a much better candidate than Nicholas.

Mason slapped an arm around Nicholas's shoulders in classic drifter dude style. "Something got you down, little bro? You're acting a little... off."

Nicholas sighed, averting his gaze from the omnipresent phone.

"Hm," mumbled Mason, processing the vague reply slowly as he glanced down at his well-worn track shoes. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Nicholas opened his mouth before hesitating.

Mason snorted. "Chicks don't like cars, just the guys who drive them. A good guy with a trashy car passes better than a trashy guy with a good car."

"You're not trashy," Nicholas spoke up, almost in surprise.

Mason laughed again, dismissively. "It's not me; it's the context, man--a dirty garage, poor family, the project apartments. Girls notice this stuff, dude--and they ignore the positive aspects--the cute cars, the pretty beach, whatever. This just isn't the best place for self-advertising to the females."

Nicholas exhaled, thinking of Aria, thinking of how little she knew about his real life, and how quick she had been to lash out and turn him away when she'd learned about a few of his faults. He felt strangely as though he had been dumped--although he could not have been since they hadn't been dating. Still, it was an ending of... something. Something unnamed. Pre-dating? That sounds like a term a scientist would use while examining a fossil, he thought miserably.

"I've never been good with words," was what he said aloud, his eyes fixed sadly on the moist sand burying his feet. His shoulders had slumped forward and he lay miserably in his beach chair in a posture of dejection.

Mason glanced over at him, holding him in his gaze briefly before finally speaking up. "Nicholas, what happened?"

"I met a girl," he managed.

"Yeah, I gathered that."

impress her, Mason. I couldn't force her to join my pity party. So I decided to leave her alone." The words finally escaped him like a deluge he had been working so hard to restrain.

Mason exhaled slowly. "If you keep acting like that, Nicko, you're right--you ain't getting the girl. Listen to me man, you've got to get off your butt, onto your feet, and go claim it."

"How do I do that?" Nicholas mumbled helplessly.

Mason pursed his lips. "Where is she? Go talk to her in person about this. If she has an issue with your work ethic, then go prove yourself. Work hard. Go places. It's in you, man. You just aren't choosing to pursue it."

"Uh..." Nicholas frowned.

"What's up, man? She won't talk to you?"

"She's uh... in there." Nicholas pointed wearily at the phone.

The bewildered expression which emerged on Mason's face following this statement only further secured Nicholas's doom.

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a/n: EVERYONE i am so sorry for my total absence on this book since (april? holy calamari.) for those of you who might not know, i am officially a high school graduate as of last month, which is absolutely crazy! needless to say, my life has been totally wild up until recently, but because i love you guys and i love this book, i'm determined to get back into the groove. my family is just finishing up a crazy cross-country road trip and i'm headed to europe in a week, but i'll be giving what i can to this book. i love you all so much. please offer written feedback. what do you think aria and nicholas will do next? who's your favorite character? who do you want to see more of? let me know!

tina