My parents divorced two years ago when I was sixteen. I wasn't surprised or upset, I was just annoyed that they decided to do it two days before my birthday. My mom decided to move to Florida, where she was born and raised, and I decided to stay here in California until I finished my highschool education. I missed my mom, though I would never tell her that. I live with my dad in the house I grew up in. Living with him is...

I pondered everything as I drove out to King's Bay the following morning. Did I really want to stay in California, or was I just overwhelmed with my current freedom, and Callie? Was I just caught up in the novelty in being somewhere different? I kept coming back to the fact that I wasn't sure what I had to return to. I could find a job out here, and Callie was here. Callie . . . I couldn’t sort out my feelings about her....

After that weekend, I went to King's Bay whenever I could. June somehow turned into July without me noticing. I spent as much or more time at Callie's place than I did at Manny's. Manny invited me to various parties and barbeques and get-togethers, but I always begged off. I wanted to be with Callie as much as possible. One day I came down with some kind of virus that made me as sick as a dog, and only Manny hiding my car...

We swam. We surfed, we rested on the beach and we swam some more. I'd never seen anyone as at home in the water as Callie. She was one of those people that made you think if mermaids were real, she'd be one. If she'd grown a tail and headed out to the horizon, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised. I noticed after a while that the beach wasn't as crowded as I had expected. That struck me as odd. Summer was in full swing. I...

The weekend was over too soon and we headed back to Manny's. I took a couple of days to explore at a more leisurely pace. I walked around to see what there was close by, used my bike to go farther away, and went to another beach or two. As beautiful as the California scenery was, I missed Ithaca. It was all just so different. Different trees, different terrain, even different smells. With Ithaca on my mind, I called Penny...

We arrived at King's Bay on Saturday morning somewhere between nine and ten. It was the kind of day and place where keeping track of time just made no sense. Why limit your enjoyment, even by noting the time? King's Bay was incredible. I'm no poet, but this place almost made me wish I was. The water was a cool dark blue out to the horizon. There were mountains to the north and the sun had risen behind them so that it hung...

King's Bay I worked like a dog for that company for eight years and what happened? They fired me. Bright side? Nice severance package. So screw it. Instead of diving right back into the overcrowded pool of job hunters, I decided to take it easy for a while. I deserved it; I'd barely taken a day off for the last eight years, so I was going to take that package and use it to fund a long, lazy summer vacation to make up for...

“You don’t send audition tapes for porn, stupid,” Amber said. “You go audition in person, or they find you, and they videotape that. You haven’t seen those things on the internet?” Kona laughed. “You didn’t know those were fake? Like, they totally pay real porn stars for that. They just pretend to be talked into it on camera.” Amber shrugged. “I bet some of it is for real. Everyone gets their start somehow, and its not by...

She waited on the front porch for almost an hour before she finally gave up on Amber and re-assessed her options. Absent-mindedly scrolling through her calls, including the six most recent ones to Amber, all unanswered, she got to the two that she had missed from Robbie. “Robbie,” she said in monotone, still a little bit stoned from the hits she took with her brother that morning. Since then, the big tasks already conquer...