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The Morning Sessions

Theo was in the water by 6:15, before the light turned gold.

El Porto was empty except for the regulars---three other surfers spaced
out along the break, each in their own rhythm. The waves were small but
clean, two to three feet, the kind of morning that didn't demand
anything. You just showed up and the ocean did the rest.

He'd been surfing since he was sixteen. A summer program his phone had
suggested, back when he was restless and his parents were busy and the
algorithm knew before he did that he needed something physical,
something with a rhythm. He'd taken to it immediately. Nine years later,
it was the closest thing he had to a religion.

By 7:30 he was back in his apartment in Playa Vista, showered and
dressed, coffee in hand. The day's schedule was already arranged on his
phone: a client call at nine, a brand review at eleven, lunch with a
potential partner at one. The afternoon was blocked for creative work,
which meant he'd sit in the office with headphones on while the account
managers handled the noise.

His agency was small---eight people, most of them under thirty---but
they'd built something. Brand strategy for lifestyle companies, mostly.
Surf brands, wellness startups, the kind of clients who needed to look
authentic without doing the work of being authentic. Theo was good at
it. He understood the frequency. He knew how to make something
manufactured feel earned.

At 8:45, his phone reminded him about coffee with Frank.

He'd forgotten. Or not forgotten exactly---the calendar had it, the
calendar had everything---but he'd pushed it to the back of his mind the
way you push anything that doesn't fit. Frank was his assigned mentor,
part of a "leadership development" initiative the agency had rolled out
six months ago. Someone on the board had decided that young founders
needed "perspective," which apparently meant monthly conversations with
retired executives who'd built things in a different century.

Frank had built houses. Literally. A development company that put up
subdivisions across Southern California for forty years. He'd sold it,
retired, lost his wife, and now he mentored young people as a way to
fill the hours. Nice enough guy. Completely irrelevant to anything Theo
was doing.

But the optics were good---"I have a mentor"---and the board was
watching, and anyway it was only an hour.

He grabbed his keys and headed out.

Frank was already at the coffee shop when Theo arrived. He was the kind
of man who was always early, who still read physical newspapers, who
shook hands like he meant it.

"Theo." A firm grip, direct eye contact. "Good to see you."

"You too, Frank. How are things?"

They ordered---Theo's usual oat milk latte, Frank's black coffee---and
found a table by the window. The conversation followed its familiar
pattern: how's the business, how's the team, any challenges you want to
talk through. Theo gave the appropriate answers, the ones that showed
self-awareness without revealing vulnerability.

Then Frank asked: "How's your foundation?"

"My what?"

"Your foundation. The thing you're building on." Frank stirred his
coffee, though there was nothing in it to stir. "When I was building
houses, that was the first question. Not how big, not how fancy.
Just---is the foundation solid? Because you can put up walls and roofs
and all the rest, but if the ground underneath isn't right, it all comes
down eventually."

"The business is doing fine. Revenue's up---"

"I'm not talking about the business." Frank looked at him with the kind
of patience that comes from having outlived your urgency. "I'm talking
about you. What's under all the rest? What are you building on?"

Theo didn't have an answer. He'd never needed one before.

The question stayed with him.

Not constantly---he was too busy for constant anything---but it surfaced
at odd moments. In the gap between meetings. During the long paddle out,
waiting for a set. At night, in that space between intention and sleep
where the mind wanders without direction.

What's under all the rest?

He didn't know. He'd never had to know. The surface was so
well-maintained, so optimized, that the question of depth had simply
never come up.

His mother called that week. Nothing unusual---she called every Sunday,
had since he'd started the company. The conversation followed its
pattern: how are you, how's work, your father says hello. She was proud
of him. They both were. He was the kind of son you could describe at
dinner parties.

"You sound tired," she said.

"I'm fine."

"You always say that."

"Because it's always true."

A pause. Something almost flickered in her voice. "Well. Call if you
need anything."

"I will."

He wouldn't. They both knew it. But the exchange was complete, the
ritual observed, and they hung up with the comfortable distance of
people who loved each other without knowing how to show it.

His mother died three months later.

Aneurysm. Quick. No warning. She'd been making dinner---his father found
her on the kitchen floor, the stove still on, a pot of water boiling
away to nothing.

Theo flew home for the funeral. Gave a eulogy. Accepted condolences. Did
all the things you're supposed to do when your mother dies. People told
him he was handling it well.

He was handling it. That was the thing. He'd been handling things his
whole life. His phone suggested a grief counselor within two days of the
funeral. It suggested meditation apps, support groups, a book about
processing loss. He followed some of the suggestions. They helped, in
the way that suggestions always helped---efficiently, measurably,
without requiring too much.

But something wasn't resolving.

He didn't know what to call it. Not grief exactly---or not only grief.
Something underneath, something that had been there before she died,
that her death had simply uncovered.

He went back to LA. Back to the agency, the clients, the morning
sessions in the water. The routines held. The surface remained smooth.

But Frank noticed.

"You're different," Frank said at their next coffee. "Since your mom."

"Am I?"

"Less here. More somewhere else."

"I'm handling it."

"I know. That's what worries me." Frank set down his cup. "When my wife
died, I handled it too. For about a year. Kept busy, stayed productive,
told everyone I was fine. And then one morning I woke up and couldn't
get out of bed. Not because I was sad. Because I'd forgotten why I was
supposed to."

"That sounds like depression."

"Maybe. Or maybe it was the foundation finally giving way." He looked at
Theo with something like concern. "You're still young. You've got time
to build something solid. But you have to actually build it. The
handling---it's just scaffolding. It's not the thing itself."

Theo didn't respond. He didn't know what the thing itself was supposed
to be.

He went home that night and looked at his bookshelf---the collection of
titles he'd accumulated without reading, the physical books that existed
mostly as decor. On the bottom shelf, behind some design annuals, was a
paperback he'd bought in college: The Curated Self by Elias Vance.

He'd read it for a class---something about technology and society, a
required course he'd mostly slept through. He remembered the professor
talking about it like it mattered, remembered thinking it was
interesting the way old warnings were always interesting. A historical
artifact. Something to consider and then move past.

He pulled it out. The spine was cracked from when he'd read it once,
eight years ago, as an assignment.

He read it again.

This time it felt different. Not like history. Like a mirror he wasn't
sure he wanted to look into.

Six months later, Theo would be in Hawaii. Not for a surf trip---he'd
stopped surfing, for reasons he couldn't fully explain---but for
something else. A pause. A retreat. A word he'd have mocked a year ago.

He would surf every morning, not because an app had suggested it but
because he didn't know what else to do. He would read books---slowly,
badly, the way you do when you've never had to work for understanding.
One of them would be The Curated Self, which he'd pull from a box of old
college things. He'd read it differently now. Not as history. As a
mirror he wasn't sure he wanted to look into.

He would call Frank sometimes. Not on a schedule. Just when he needed
to hear a voice that didn't want anything from him. Frank would ask
questions. Theo would try to answer. Neither of them would pretend it
was easy.

The crack would come eventually. Not a dramatic break---nothing he
could point to and say "there, that's when it happened." More like a
slow fissure, letting in light he didn't know he'd been missing. He
would learn to feel things he didn't have names for. He would learn that
not knowing was a kind of foundation too.

He wouldn't become a different person. He would just become more of the
person he might have been, if anyone had thought to ask.

But that was later. For now, he was still sitting at the lookout,
watching the sun go down, not checking his phone, waiting for something
he couldn't name.

It was a start.

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