Your Biggest Misconception

I sat in my living room with my head in my hands. One glance at the luminous digital clock informed me in bright blue letters that it was two in the morning and I was wide awake.

I had no idea why my body wasn't letting me sleep. It seemed to be against that action tonight.

With a simple sigh I went to change out of my pajamas and into a black tank top along with some short jean shorts. I threw my messy red hair into a pony tail and grabbed my car keys and wallet before leaving the confines of my apartment.

Lack of sleep was something that I didn’t come by often. But when I was growing up we used to live near the water and on the nights I couldn’t sleep I would always sneak out of the house and go down the street to the beach. It always relaxed me and made it easier for me to go back to sleep.

In a sense it was my nightly ritual when I couldn’t sleep and so that was exactly where I was headed right now.

Huntington Beach was peaceful at this time of night for obvious reasons. I guess that's why I enjoyed going to the beach at this time so much. It was silent except for the waves that crashed and to me that was the most soothing sound in the world.

It didn’t take long for me to get parked and to lock up my car. Honestly, it wouldn’t be a big loss if someone stole it. If they really wanted it they were more then welcome to have it but for the sake of me getting to work I decided to lock it. I shoved my wallet into my back pocket and hooked my keys to my belt loop with the scratched up and faded blue carabineer attached to them.

I took my flip flops off once I was out of the gravel parking lot and hooked the thin straps onto one of my fingers. The first steps I took into the sand were enough to calm me instantly. If it were safe I would just sleep here all night. But I knew better then that.

I stopped short of the wet sand and took a seat on the ground. I propped my feet under me so my knees were up in the air and let my slightly freckled arms rest on top of them.

The moon light shone and reflected off of the calm water. The only sounds that could be heard were those coming from the crashing waves. After I had sat there for a few minutes I concluded that the tide was going out. I hated low tides. It was the worst time to try and find sea shells. The currents often would bring them up during high tide but then would suck them back to the ocean depths when low tide came around. Amanda and I had many fond memories of trying to find shells during high tide. We would often skip out of the last school period during high school just to come here during high tide. Our parents still didn’t know about that to this day.

I heard footsteps in the distance but didn't bother looking up. I wasn't here to interact with people but I wasn't surprised someone else was here. It was pretty common for people to come to the beach when they were in need of some peace. I had once read in a book that the soothing sounds often calmed the soul and gave peace of mind when one was troubled. I had found that out first hand though.

I heard the footsteps getting closer and expected them to keep running past me. What I didn’t expect was for them to trip over me like they did. I jerked my head up at the collision and looked to see a man stumbling toward the ground beside me.

He stood up looking slightly dazed and turned to face me. He had puffy eyes which looked like they had shed some tears recently. Something about that seemed unusual when you took in the rest of his appearance. He looked very similar to how Brian looked. Two sleeves of tattoos ran up his arms which now had sand on them from his fall. His black t-shirt clung to his chest and I could tell there was a nice set of muscles underneath it. Black hair was cut short and was spiked up all over his head. Two lip rings hung though the skin of his lip and he had gauges in his ears.

"Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry." I said as I started to stand and help him up.

I could tell he was an Angels fan because he had the infamous logo tattooed behind his left ear. That made two of us fans. I went to help him up but he just pushed me off abruptly.

"Why the hell are you sitting on the ground?" He spat as his green eyes met mine. "I could have fucking broken something!" He said again in yet another harsh tone.

My eyes widened as I placed my hands on my hips. "Well maybe you and your ass should have watched where you were going so you didn’t trip! You could have hurt me just as bad!" My retaliation matched his tone. I didn’t put up with people being rude especially when something had been their own fault. "Out of all the running paths you could have picked you chose to run right over me."

"Well out of all the places to choose to sit you sit right in front of me!"

"I believe I was here first!"

"It doesn’t matter. It's a free fucking beach."

"Fuck you." I said as I turned and headed back toward my car. I didn’t need this kind of encounter tonight.

"I'd fuck you anytime babe." He announced to my retreating back. The nerve!

My jaw dropped as I turned and went to inform him of how rude that was but he had already started back on his run. Someone was obviously in a bad mood.

I huffed to myself as I glared at his retreating form. Who in the world goes for a run this early in the morning? Or late at night, I guess it depends on how you look at it.

I mumbled to myself about stupid men the entire way back to my car. I even got so frustrated that I kicked a lump of sand knowing it wouldn’t accomplish anything but make me feel better.

I opened up the door to my car and climbed in, locking it once I was safely inside. I did my usual ritual when it came to starting it and allowed my good old clunker to take me back home.

***

I woke up around eight in the morning to my cell phone ringing beside me. I grunted and pulled it off of my night stand to see who was calling me. It was Amanda.

"Hello?" I asked groggily.

"Wake up!" She yelled into the phone and then followed it up with a laugh.

"I'm up. Why the heck are you calling me this early?" I groaned as I sat up in bed and rubbed my head.

I pushed some hair out of my face and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "Because! You and I are going to the beach today to go surfing and tanning."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Don’t you have to work today?"

"Noooope! Mom gave me the day off to hang with you!" I chuckled at how excited she was. It had been a good while since Amanda and I had time to hang out together outside of work. Our schedules usually conflicted with eachother's and so it was a rare occasion these days.

"Oh! Well in that case, give me a few minutes to get up and get showered."

"Alright. I'm downstairs so I'll let myself in." I chuckled as she hung up the phone. Amanda was always the morning person and honestly, this wasn't the first time she had already been at my place when she called to wake me up.

I climbed out of bed and dug out my bikini and boardshorts to change into before heading into the shower. My shorty wet suit was still in her car from the last time we went to the beach. My surfboard was also on top of her car still.

My bathroom was small and cramped but I didn’t mind. It was only for me and so it worked. I set my clothes on the closed toilet lid and climbed in under the hot water.

As I was washing my hair I heard the door to my apartment open and then close. I was glad I had decided to give Amanda a key to it. If I ever got locked out, which did happen on occasion, I knew someone else always had a key to it.

I made my shower quick because I knew she was going to become impatient soon enough and would then proceed to barge in on me. I was towel drying my hair right when that happened.

"What's taking you so long?" She asked as she entered with a hand on her hip.

"Manda, it's eight thirty in the morning. We have all day." I laughed as I left the room after tossing the wet towel into the dirty laundry hamper.

"Psh. All day to waste our time! We have to get a good spot on the beach!"

"It's Friday. People actually work on Fridays you know." She shoved me playfully with her open hand as we entered my bedroom again.

I could see her biting her lip at the view of my room. It was a mess, but not so much of my things. The room itself had paint chipping off the walls and the carpet needed to be replaced badly. There were water spots on the ceiling from when the place above mine had flooded last year. It didn’t bother me much though. It was a roof over my head and that's all I cared about.

"Don't even say it." I told her as I pulled out a bright blue tank top and slid it on over my bikini top.

"Wasn't going to." She said with her eyes raised to the water stained roof.

I grabbed my ready to go beach bag that I kept stocked all the time. It had my sunscreen in it, a towel, extra clothes and flip flops as well as a water bottle. Amanda had a beach umbrella and extra towels that she kept in her car at all times. We were always prepared. You had to be when you lived at the beach because you never knew when the urge to go would come.

"So I've got a story for you." I chuckled as we left my apartment after locking it behind us.

"Ooo do tell!" She said as we exited the apartment building and headed over to her new Honda Civic, complete with surfboard racks, her parents had bought her for her last birthday.

I explained to her about how I had gone to the beach early this morning and how the mystery man had tripped over me. "And then he said he'd fuck me anytime! I couldn’t believe it!" I finished as we were on our way.

Her eyes widened as she made a u-turn at the next signal and expertly pulled into the driveway of the drive-thru Starbucks that we frequented often. "No way! That's so crazy! Did you slap him?"

"No! I should have though. By the time I came over my shock he was already walking away from me."

"Was he at least hot?" She laughed as she turned and looked at me.

I chuckled and bit my bottom lip. "Yes. He was."

"Well damn girl! What are you complaining about?"

"Because he was a jerk about it!"

"What's up ladies? You're early today." A smooth voice floated out at us through the drive-thru.

"Hey Sean. Yeah we have a beach to hit. The usual please." Amanda said sweetly to our friend who knew our orders by heart. Sean was a high school buddy of ours that we had stayed in contact with. He was a cool guy with an awesome taste in music. He would flip if he knew I was casual acquaintances with Synyster Gates.

"Alrighty." He said happily. Amanda pulled up to the window and I handed her my money that she combined with hers. "It's on the house today." Sean grinned at us from the window as he passed out our iced white mochas. We rolled our eyes. Sean was also the store manager and could do as he pleased.

"Then consider this your tip." Amanda laughed as she shoved our money in the tip container.

"You two are something else." Sean laughed. "Enjoy the beach!" He said as he waved us goodbye so he could attend to the car behind us.

"I can't believe him. He gives it free to us every time." Manda said as she drank from the famous green straw as we pulled back out onto the road.

"I know. I don't think it's any use trying to pay though. He refuses every time." I pointed out.

"He does." She concluded. "Ah! I love this song!" She stated as Almost Easy by Avenged Sevenfold came on through KROQ. Amanda was a huge fan of the band and was jealous the first time Brian had come into the cafe. He was in my section and I had no idea who he was, she however, adored him. I tried to let her take his table but she was always too shy. She had said hi to him before and I had introduced them but she often shied away which I found to be strange. He was totally her type, she just didn’t want to admit it.

"I don’t know why you won't talk to him." I told her as she sang along.

"You know as well as I do I'm too damn shy."

"Well you need to fix that because I know he's single." She just chuckled nervously and finished off her vocals as we pulled into the public beach parking. She put her yearly pass in the front window and we both got out.

I opened the back door and pulled out my wetsuit as did she. Slipping the board shorts off I exchanged them with my shorty wetsuit that I let hang off my hips.

Amanda did the same and we both pulled our boards off of the roof of her car. "Did you even check the surf report before deciding we were going surfing?" I questioned as we trudged through the sand, surfboards tucked under our arms and bags slung over our shoulders.

"Nope!" She grinned happily making me chuckle and shake my head. "I figured if it's that bad then we can just tan! So it all works out." She nodded her head as if she knew exactly what she was doing.

We reached our typically resting spot and set all of our stuff down. We laid out beach towels and set our things on top of them so they didn’t get logged with sand just yet. It was almost a guarantee they would be logged with sand later but we tried our hardest to prevent that from happening.

"Shall we hit it?" Manda asked as we pulled our wetsuits up the rest of the way and pulled the zippers up.

"You bet." We picked up our boards and headed for the waves that were already crashing.

Surfing with Amanda was always a blast. Sometimes we tried to make a competition out of it but we usually ended up laughing the entire time and forgot to keep track.

"Hey bitch! That was my wave!" She laughed as I caught the one she had been going after. I stood up and steadied myself before sticking my tongue out at her. She laughed as I could feel my spill coming and did a graceful dive into the water just for fun. When I surfaced I swam back over to her to watch for another good one.

We had been out in the water for several hours when I finally decided to scope out the shore. My eyes scanned for our things and I was surprised to see a group of men had settled somewhat close to us. There were five of them and some of them were playing with a football I think. It was sort of hard to see. I could tell that one of them was rather intent on watching us and that made me nervous.

"I think I'm going to call it a day." I said to Amanda who was attempting to splash me from her surfboard. She frowned but nodded and signaled that she too was ready to be done. I paddled my board forward and gave a big kick in the water, sending globs over Manda. I laughed and caught my wave as she glared at me.

I got to where I could stand up on the sand and watched as she finally caught a wave to bring her back to the shore. She did a fancy pose on her surfboard which then caused her to fall off rather ungracefully. I continued to wade toward the shore as she surfaced and we both began laughing.

"How was that?" She all but screamed at me.

"Looked painful!" I hollered back. She tilted her head back and snorted.

"I'm one tough cookie!"

"I know. You're over baked." I snickered.

"Hey!" She jogged up to catch up with me and we paused a short ways from the waters edge. I set my board down and squeezed out my hair. Manda took her ponytail out and shook her blonde hair sending water all over the place.

"Oy!" I laughed as she sent some flying in my direction playfully. I picked my board up again and headed up a little further to where our stuff was still lying untouched.

I laid my board down and went to peel my wet suit off the rest of the way. I shimmied out of it and tossed it onto an extra towel to dry.

I bent down again and got my sunglasses out of my bag before slipping them on my face.

A low whistle came from behind me and I immediately straightened up. I felt a blush creeping up onto my face as I slowly turned around, totally unaware that I had been giving a guy a full view until he made himself known.

I let out a small scream as I saw Brian standing a few feet away. He had on black boardshorts and a pair of sunglasses sat perched on his nose. His arms were crossed over his chest as he looked at me with a smirk.

"Oh how embarrassing." I laughed as I made my way over to him.

"Lookin' good there Kali." He teased as I slapped him playfully on his bicep that was flexed.

"Oh shut up." I laughed. "What are you doing here?"

He flashed me another award winning smile before chuckling himself. "Just needed to get away for a bit. The guys and I decided to come hang out here for the beach. Wasn't expecting to see you surfing though." I blushed. I knew someone had been watching us surf. I just didn’t expect it to be Brian.

"Amanda here?" He asked suddenly. Now it was my turn to smirk. He was asking about her.

"Yeah. Yo Manda!" I yelled over.

She whipped around. "What bitch?" She retorted and then stopped short when she saw who I was talking to. She bit her lip and came over.

"Hey Brian."

"What's up Amanda?"

This was perfect. They would finally talk to eachother. "Syn!" Someone yelled at Brian.

"You two want to come meet the other guys?" I looked sideways at Amanda and saw her eyes almost bug out of their sockets behind her sunglasses.

"Sure." I answered for us both shyly.

Brian led us over to where four other guys were now lounging on beach towels. I slowly began eyeing over the other men who looked very similar to Brian.

"Guys this is Kali and Amanda. Girls this is Jimmy, Johnny, Matt and Zacky." He said as he introduced the guys. All of them had their shirts off and revealed the many colored images that were permanently inked on their skin.

My eyes met Jimmy's blue ones first. He was tall a lanky and kind of had a whimsical vibe to him. He seemed very carefree and sort of looked like he had his head in the clouds. However, he seemed extremely cool as he waved energetically at me and I returned it. Johnny was sitting next to Jimmy and he looked extremely short compared to the taller man. He had odd blonde and black patched hair but it seemed to suit him well. From what I could tell, he had the least amount of tattoos and many of his were faces from what I could see.

Beside Johnny sat Matt. Matt was huge and very intimidating. However, once I caught a glimpse of his dimples I knew he would be harmless. His smile was worth a million dollars and he seemed very personable. His hair was cut short against his head but wasn't shaved. He had a silver ring in the side of his lip and very striking hazel eyes.

Lastly came Zacky. I slowly pulled my eyes away from Matt's and gasped at the same time Zacky did.

"You!"