only crashing through in waves

i felt like i had been at the beach all day, waiting for the other David and my parents to show up so we could hop on a plane for Toronto. the beach was impossibly deep, the white sand spanning to forever from the subway station right in front of it. the sea was rough. the waves were coming in at sharp angles and i was instantly reminded of the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, minus the surfers. it was even hotter than i expected. my black hoodie was suffocating me and rubbing against my irritated skin. David had already been there when I arrived, barely said hi and headed straight for the sand. i waited further back and ran into Stevie B again in the parking lot. we had met earlier at some strange gathering with Joey and a few other people from my distant past. he had pulled me aside in a different parking lot and told me under his breath that all of them had been staring somewhat hungrily at Amy. nothing serious, he told me. but you could tell he was bothered. i sincerely shrugged it off. besides, Joey seemed more concerned about finding more high rise construction work now that he had mortgaged a house, a car and countless other things. the old cart before the horse routine - typical Joey. i felt almost no pity for him and we talked about just that as i got into Stevie's car. "if i would have done the same thing back at Apple Pie, we would have recorded with the Chandlers," he joked, emphasizing the last bit in his signature way. i was waiting for more jokes about the Digi-02 and latency. instead he made a sharp right and went back to talking about all the equipment he was going to buy for the studio once his business dealings were done and he could finally settle in. i kind of started to feel sorry for him; i felt i had heard all this before. it was only back at the beach that i remembered he was scared of flying. he assured me he'd be fine this time. that's when my parents walked out of the subway. introductions all around. i told them Stevie would be flying with us as well. we would go back to find David and then get going. we started into the water together and then i warned my mom the waves were really rough. i said it in a way that would simultaneously prove my own toughness, except the wave that suddenly formed the second the words spilled off my tongue became a thing of sheer terror. rising in that same impossible distance, it went from six feet to two hundred feet in what seemed like the blink of an eye. everyone screamed and started to run. i saw the wave crash right behind me, then swallow me from behind. i wondered in that instance if i had taken enough of a breath to deal with the aftermath.