Page 3 of Broken Hearts

“I know,” I mutter back, my eyes blurry with tears.

“Go and get to know your father,” she adds, and I look at her confused. Did she miss the part where I told her he died? There’s no getting to know him now. That ship sailed years ago, and I let it leave without me, watching it from a distance. “Sage, he might have passed away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn about who he was and the life he lived.”

I take in her words, realizing she’s right, but still struggling with this internal battle that he might have been a shitty dad, even if I was also a shitty kid.

“I’m going to book you a flight for tomorrow,” my mom says, and my jaw nearly hits the floor. I begin to argue with her, but she silences me when she holds up her hand. “Listen, you’re off school for another week. It will be good for you to spend some time there before the memorial service.”

I stop trying to change her mind because I know she’s right.

Looks like I’ll be in Hawaii for the next three weeks.

“Nate?”

“Out here,” I yell from the storeroom at the back of the surf shop. Alana wanders in, stopping in the doorway, she crosses her arms over her chest. “Hey, what’s up?” I ask as I shuffle around some new boards that just came in, trying to find space for them. I don’t even know what’s going to happen with the shop now that Mitch is gone. It’s not something I want to think about.

“How you doing?” she asks, giving me a small smile.

I shrug. “Same as I was yesterday,” I reply, even though that feels like a lie. I have no idea how I feel or what I’m even supposed to feel. It still doesn’t feel real.

She takes in the small space, her eyes moving over all the stock that both of us know like the back of our hand. “I still can’t believe he’s gone,” she whispers, her blue eyes filling with tears.

I blow out a breath, making my way over to her. I drop an arm around her shoulders and pull her close. Alana loops her arm around my waist, her head falling to my shoulder. “Yeah, me either,” I say.

I’ve worked in this shop for the better part of nine years, and this is not something I ever contemplated happening. Not in all the mornings Mitch and I surfed together or all the times he went out alone, ignoring the warnings people would invariably give him about surfing late or by himself.

The guy was born to be on the ocean, and he wasn’t ever going to let anyone tell him different. And even though I have no idea what I’m going to do without him, I know that if there was ever a way he had to go, it was always going to be on the water. It’s the only piece of comfort I can take right now, knowing he died doing something he loved.

“What do you think we should do about the shop?” she asks.

“Open it,” I immediately say.

“Do you think that’s the right thing to do though? I mean?—”

“Hell yeah, I think it’s the right thing to do. Mitch would not want us sitting around mourning him or whatever, he’d want us to get on with it, to get more people surfing and enjoying the waves like he did,” I say, the words coming out of me in a rush.

“Yeah, but it’s not our shop,” Alana now whispers. “Is it even our call to make?”

“Fuck it,” I tell her. “I’ve worked here since I was sixteen. It’s as much my call to make as anyone else’s. Besides, who else can we ask? It’s not like Mitch has any other family, does he? Well, besides us anyway,” I tack on, even though we aren’t actually related.

That doesn’t mean I don’t consider him family, though. Mitch is the closest thing I have to a father, and he’s someone who has always been there for me, no matter what. It’s why losing him hurts so fucking badly because I honestly never thought I’d have to picture my life without him in it. I thought for sure we’d still be surfing waves together when he was ninety.

“Yeah, so about that,” Alana says, pulling away from me.

“What?”

She bites her bottom lip, her gaze shifting as she looks around the storeroom again. “So I might have done something,” she finally says, a nervousness in her voice now.

“Alana, what is it?” I ask, my hands on her shoulders as I turn her to face me. “What have you done exactly?”

She scrubs her hands down her face before pushing them back through her long brown hair. “I called Mitch’s daughter,” she admits, her eyes dropping to stare at her feet.

I blink, trying to understand the words that are coming out of her mouth, words that make zero sense to me. “Mitch has a daughter?” I finally get out.

Alana’s head snaps up. “Yeah, you didn’t know that?”

“No, I didn’t fucking know that,” I say, suddenly hurt that a man I thought of as a father didn’t tell me something as huge as the fact that he has a daughter. “How the fuck do you know?”

She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, a sheepish look on her face as she says, “He told me once, a couple of months ago. He was really drunk, and I don’t think he meant to say anything. When he sobered up the next day, he swore me to secrecy. To be honest, I thought you already knew. You guys were so close. I guess I just assumed he’d sworn you to secrecy too.”

---