Summer After Summer

Chapter 2

June 2003

“I’m so bored,” Ashley says, swatting at a fly on her long, thin, already tanned legs.

We’re sitting at the pool at the Southampton Lawn and Tennis Club, facing the ocean. Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body” is playing on a loop on Ashley’s iPod, which is sitting between us on a small table, with two sweating Diet Cokes.

“You’ve only been here for two days,” I say.

Ashley checks her pale pink nails. “Bored.”

“I’m not the program director.”

“But you are.”

“Why don’t you take a tennis lesson?”

“One tennis freak in my entourage is enough.”

“I’m not a freak.”

“Uh-huh. That’s why you have a list of tournaments you want to win and the ages you want to win them at?”

“It’s bad to have goals?”

“It’s weird to basically already have a job when you’re not even sixteen.”

“But this is when I lay the foundation, I …” I glare at her. “You’re trying to push my buttons.”

“It’s so easy to do it!”

“Fine, fine. No tennis for Ash. Got it.” I think about it for a minute. “You could swim?”

Ashley puts her hand in front of her mouth and pats it in an exaggerated way. Her chunky highlighted hair flows to her narrow shoulders in beachy waves.

“I’m out of ideas,” I say, and scrunch down on my pool chair. My own hair is sun-bleached and pulled back in a high ponytail, still wet and smelling faintly of salt from my workout.

Unlike Ashley, I’m perfectly happy to sit around and do nothing in the hours I have to myself, which aren’t many. Every day is the same—three hours of tennis in the morning, starting at the crack of dawn, then an hour in the gym. Late afternoon is for piano lessons, which I want to give up. But it was my mom’s favorite thing, and since she died last year, it’s the only way I feel connected to her.

In between, I hang with Ashley at the club. It has ten fenced-off lawn tennis courts, a saltwater pool, and an old clubhouse with a gabled roof, weather-beaten cedar shingles, and a long wrap-around porch. It’s stuffy and exclusive, all the things my father loves and I kind of hate. But it’s where my tennis coach is in the summer, and my scholarship is attached to him.

“What about your birthday?” Ashley says.

“What about it?”

“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”

“I have too.”

“Spin the bottle doesn’t count.”

I turn over onto my stomach so she doesn’t see me blush. My sixteenth birthday is a week away, and I haven’t had a real kiss. I’m obviously pathetic. “Who has time for boys?”

“Uh, everyone.”

“The boys here are all dumb.”

“But are they cute? That’s all that matters for kissing.”

I rest my chin on my hands. I can hear my Aunt Tracy telling me to put sunscreen on my back, but I ignore her voice in my head. I love her, but when she tries too hard to mother me, it’s more than I can take. “Hmmm. Well, let’s put it on the list then.”

“Top ten goals for summer?”

“That’s the one.”

“Perfect.” Ashley reaches into her pastel beach bag and pulls out her bright pink day planner. She flips to a page that she’s marked with a Post-it: Ash and Olivia’s Top Ten Summer Goals. The words are surrounded by stars and fireworks, and she’s left slots one to three open. Number ten is Perfect tan. She puts Olivia gets kissed at number two.

“What are you saving number one for? Sex or car?”

Ashley’s been going back and forth on which one she wants more since yesterday. Even though it doesn’t make sense for a sixteen-year-old in Manhattan to have a car, she wants a BMW 3 series for the “status.” I’d poked a finger in my mouth and pretended to hurl when she said that, and she left the space blank.

“I’ve decided on sex.” Ashley stretches her arms above her head. She’s wearing a tiny bikini with black and white polka dots that I’d never feel comfortable in. My shoulders are too broad from tennis, and I have more muscles than normal everywhere else. I’m happy in my tankini that doesn’t make me feel like everyone’s looking at me.

“Bold choice since there’s no boy in sight.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Ooh, I know what we should do!”

“What?”

“Go to the beach.”

“You want to go to the beach? With the sand? And the tourists?” Ashley’s inherited her parents’ snooty attitude toward the vacationers who are just like them, minus the millions of dollars they had to buy a house in one of the new developments a mile from here.

“I was thinking more of the umbrella boys.”

“Oh.” I sit up. The public beach near the club is staffed with teenage boys for the summer. They rent out chairs and umbrellas and run the concession stand. “That’s mostly guys from the local high school.”

“So?”

“I know all of them already. Since kindergarten.”

“Maybe they’ve grown up since you switched to Hampton Prep.”

“I guess.”

Ashley checks her flip phone quickly. “It’s almost lunch time. If we go now, we can get food from the Shack.”

The thought of one of their lobster rolls does sound good. “But what about the calories?”

“It’s first week. No diets.” She stands and starts stuffing one of the club towels into her beach bag.

“You’re not supposed to take that off the property,” I say, then regret it. Ashley knows the rules, and I don’t need to be reminding her like I’m her mother. She still has one of those.

Ashley brings her Vuarnets down over her eyes. They’re pink and cat-eyed, and she brought me a pair too. “I thought you weren’t the program coordinator.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Come on, let’s go.”

I collect my things, shove my feet into my flip-flops, and follow Ashley out of the club grounds, walking single file behind her down the narrow path through the dunes. The club owns its own strip of beach, the Atlantic stretching out in front of it, the cold waves rolling in and crashing into the white-sand shore. As usual, the club’s beach is abandoned, but the public beach is full. There’s music blaring from the speaker on the lifeguard’s station, and the blue and white umbrellas they rent out are twisting in the wind.

“You sure you want to do this?” I say to Ashley, watching the sand fly up from the back of her flip-flops. They’re Lanzarote she told me, as if I’m supposed to know what that means.

She glances back. “You have a better idea?”

“I think we’ve already established that I do not.”

She grins, her straight teeth newly free of the braces that she’d hated. “Well, come on then. Your future awaits!” She points her arm to the sky, mocking herself and our mission. But she doesn’t stop and neither do I. Instead, we clamber over the berm that separates the two beaches, and plop down onto the public side as the wind whips my ponytail against my neck.

“Who looks like a good prospect?” Ashley asks as she shades her eyes from the sun. The sunnies are cute, but they don’t block out much light.

I scan the crowd. Six guys our age are standing by the umbrella station, wearing khaki shorts and white polos. I recognize five of them from middle school. Guys named Dave and Dan and Mike, who thought it was funny to pull on my braids and tear down my art projects from the teacher’s honor wall. I have no interest in speaking to them.

But there’s another boy—tall, athletic, with dark hair that curls across his forehead—I’ve never seen before.

“Ooh la la, who is that?” Ashley gives a low whistle.

“Shh!”

“He can’t hear us. Come on—let’s say hi.” Ash tugs on my arm.

“Ouch.”

“That wasn’t hard.”

“I wrenched my shoulder when I was playing this morning.”

“You should give that up.”

“The ticket to my future? No way.” Ashley doesn’t understand my passion for tennis, or why I work so hard at it. But she still has a trust fund, so I don’t blame her.

“Maybe you’re about to meet your future right now.”

“On Cooper’s Beach? I doubt it.”

“Come on, quick. Before Becky gets to him.”

She points to where Becky Johnson, a girl Ashley refers to as—no joke—her nemesis, is talking to the new guy and flipping her butter-yellow hair over her shoulder. She’s wearing a small bikini top and cut-off jean shorts.

Ash hustles me over the hard white sand, past multiple families with bickering children and babies in sagging diapers.

“Excuse me,” Ash says with a voice that’s strikingly like her mother’s. “We’d like to rent an umbrella.”

New Guy stands a little taller at the tone and picks up a clipboard while Becky shoots daggers at us. “Name?”

“It’s for my friend here.” Ashley nudges me forward.

Our eyes connect, mine and New Guy’s, and it’s not like in the books. There’s no jolt of attraction or thunderbolt or anything, but there is a warm feeling in my chest because this boy is very cute. His eyes are a deep blue—like the ocean after a storm, I can’t help but think, even though I feel silly, and he has a small trickle of freckles across his straight nose. He’s tall enough that I feel small next to him, which doesn’t happen often when you’re five eight and the boys haven’t finished growing yet. His name tag says “Fred.”

“Name?”

“Olivia Taylor.”

He writes it down with a black gel pen. “You want a lounger too?” He says the word in a way I haven’t heard before, the un sound elongated.

“Where are you from?”

“Boston. Here for the summer. You?”

“From here.”

“You’re the first person I’ve met from here.” He smiles at me, and maybe there is a jolt of something. Whether it’s Ashley’s elbow in my back or the annoyed stare I’m getting from Becky, I’m not sure. It could be Fred, though, which is … I don’t know what this is.

“We do exist.”

“Ha. Yes. I know. My aunt and uncle live here.”

“Where?”

He mentions a house and a street name, and I know exactly which one he’s talking about. An older couple without any children bought it during the winter, and for a week it was the talk of the town. The talk of my father anyway, who’s always extremely interested in the pedigree of anyone new who moves to Southampton.

“So, did you want the lounger?” Fred says, showing his accent again.

“Do we, Ash?”

“It’s ten dollars more.”

I blush at the mention of money. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that we’d have to pay, which is stupid. At the club, everything is paid for by chits that get collated once a month and mailed out to our parents. Or that’s how it works for Ash. I teach clinics three times a week to the younger kids, to work off what I spend on Diet Coke and burgers.

I can’t say any of this to Fred, so I pat myself down like I’ve seen my father do too many times when he’s “forgotten” his wallet at his favorite restaurant. When William does this, the ma?tre d’ makes cooing noises and says he’ll add it to his tab, but that’s not going to work here.

“I’ve got it,” Ashley says, taking out a Black Amex that belongs to her father. “You take cards?”

“Cash only.”

“Hmm.” Ashley taps the card against her chin. “We’re good for it, obviously.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get cash up front. Don’t want to get fired during my first week.”

“Of course not,” I say, tugging on Ash’s arm to keep her from embarrassing me any further. “We’ll do it another time.”

“I’m here every day,” Fred says to me with that same slow smile.

The tips of my ears are burning, and it’s not from the sun. “Good to know.”

He raises his eyebrows twice quickly, then turns back to Becky, who’s got her arms crossed in a way my mom always used to tell me made me look like a spoiled brat.

“Come on,” I say to Ash. “Hopefully they take your card at the Shack.”

We walk toward the parking lot where the Shack sets up its food truck in the summer. I glance back at Fred, hoping to get a last look at him so I can memorize what he looks like. Becky’s still talking at him, but he’s watching us, watching me, and when our eyes lock, his grin goes wide, and I’m definitely feeling something, though it’s hard to describe what it is.

I think it means I want him to kiss me, but that’s silly because we only just met.

“I told you going to the beach was a good idea,” Ashley says as Fred gives me a friendly wave.

My hand raises to repeat his gesture. “I’ll never doubt you again.”