Chapter 12 Summer
I sink deeper into my seat at the very far end of the table of volunteers. When I showed up to this morning’s Surf’s Up planning meeting, it had been with the hope that, since these typically take place in the evenings, I’d be spared the vicious stares from a full committee.
No such luck.
Even with the baseball cap pulled low on my head, I can feel their eyes on me, teaching me the very same lesson I’d learned at sixteen when my mother imploded my world: In a small town, scandal travels fast. And it kills you slow.
Twelve days later, yesterday’s news remains today’s news, and I’m still the woman who dated an almost-married man.
“Summer? Did you have something to share?”
I chance a glance out from under my hat.
Grant looks at me expectantly from the head of the table, while every other face is pointed at me.
Across from me, Danica, who’s never given me less than a friendly smile, now stares me down with disgust. She’d confided in me a few months ago that her live-in boyfriend had left her for someone else, and I seem to have become a lightning rod for her anger.
“The pop-up market,” Grant clarifies. “How many businesses do we have registered so far?”
“Um…” I sit up, flipping through the notebook in my lap.
“We’re quite a bit behind on the projected numbers.
It—I…” I close my eyes, fighting the inner defeat, but it’s futile.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and it might be best to hand this project to someone else, on account of the whole…
” Somebody snickers. I hear not-so-subtle whispers of married and homewrecker.
“Are you sure, Summer? I know how much you enjoy running this,” Grant says kindly. News must not have traveled to wherever he lives. I wonder where that is. Whether they have apartments for rent.
“I think it would be best. I don’t want it to suffer,” I say quietly. Registration has never lagged like this, and as much as it kills me to give up the program I built from the ground up, I have to accept that it’s now better off without me.
“Do we have anyone who’d like to take it over?” The words are barely out of Grant’s mouth before Danica’s hand shoots into the air. And the moment Grant claps his hands in his signature dismissal, I’m hustling out of the Pine Point community center.
Waves crash in the distance, my favorite sound since Dad first took me surfing as a five-year-old. I haven’t had it in me to take my board out since Parker’s confrontation with Denny, and my body throbs as though protesting its own momentum away from the ocean.
I avert my eyes from the beach and head straight for my car, adjusting my hat for maximum coverage. All that remains is my lower periphery, flip-flops and sneakers moving around me as I hurry along, late for work.
I wonder if Parker will show up today. Where the hell has he been, anyway?
It’s taken everything in me to refrain from grilling our friends and colleagues on his whereabouts, settling instead for the conflicting crumbs they let slip.
He’s off sick. He’s taking some vacation days.
He hasn’t been seen in days. He was in a fun mood at Oakley’s tonight.
Meanwhile, the lights are never on at his place.
I’m still too angry to see him. Livid that he’d skip work this week, when all I want to do is see him.
And mad at myself for being this irrational headcase to begin with.
But if he even thinks about skipping the planning party tonight for his and his sister’s birthday, I will march across that damn street and—
“Summer. Hey.”
I stumble to a stop mere feet from the safety of my car.
Denny stands just ahead, hair soaked, with his forest green surfboard tucked under an arm.
The dam holding back the tears inside me buckles, threatening irreparable destruction at the complete ease in his face.
Like we’re old friends meeting again after years apart.
When I don’t say anything, Denny’s eyes wander to my car. “What happened to your Jeep?”
“It’s Parker’s Jeep. He lets me drive it when I surf. It fits my board better than my car.” My voice sounds raw, weak, nothing like the cold hard bitch I’m trying to be. “How’s your fiancée?”
Denny gives a smile. “She’s good. I’m headed home for the weekend now.”
“She was the dog you visited on the weekends?” Great job, Summer. You had a real winner with this one. I don’t wait for his confirmation, pulling out my car keys and stepping around him.
“I’d still be into… hanging out. If you are.”
His words have me pivoting on the spot. “You’re asking me to be… what? Your piece of ass on the side? Why would I agree to that?”
He shrugs like it’s the world’s most reasonable request. “We had a good time, didn’t we?”
“So everything you said and did—all the dates and the cooking. You were just laying the groundwork to get me in bed?” His loaded silence is all the answer I need. “You really think I’m desperate enough to keep that going?”
I don’t wait for him to say anything. I wrench open the driver’s side door, jabbing at the ignition once I’m seated.
In which dimension of this universe does he think I’d ever knowingly enter into an affair?
But my hand pauses on the door, stopping before it forms a barrier between me and this man whose actions have made me feel more worthless than all the men that preceded him combined.
Who’s so thoroughly broken me that I’ve been hating my own best friend to distract myself from what Denny’s done to my insides.
It’s so stupid and twisted to care what he thinks about me. He ceased to matter the moment I found out he was engaged. But part of me still wanted to believe that there was something in me worth falling for.
“Just tell me why it was me,” I call after him.
I swallow the lump in my throat before stepping out of my car.
He made it a few steps away, but Denny turns, board swinging with him.
“If you want to fuck around on your fiancée, that’s your problem.
But why did it have to be me? I told you on our first date that I wanted a serious relationship.
You knew I was in it for the real deal, and you strung me along anyway. Why?”
Denny releases a long sigh. “You said it yourself, Summer: You’ve failed at dating for years.”
My heart picks up speed, slamming into my rib cage, sensing danger. Still, I press him for more. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Honey, come on. What do you expect? With all those tiny outfits you wear, ass practically hanging out of your shorts? All that weird sex shit you read about in books? You use your oven as shoe storage—I had to teach you how to scramble an egg.” With a small laugh, his gaze fixes on my nose ring.
I have a sudden itch to take it out, to drape myself in thick fabric rather than the fitted leggings putting my every curve on display.
“You need a vibrator to get off—do you know how emasculating that is?”
My lip trembles and I hate myself for it. “I don’t know how to fix that.”
“And I’m sure there’s a guy out there who could live with it.
But when you want to be a wife and go years without any takers, then maybe it’s time to accept there’s something wrong there.
Hell, your dad avoids you, your mom wants nothing to do with you.
You’ve been following this guy Parker around all your life, and not even he wants you that way.
Never made a single move on you.” He gives what I think is meant to be a sympathetic smile, but it’s all poison-tipped sharp edges, carving into me, bleeding me out right here in this parking lot.
“You’re the good-time girl. The one you laugh with, mess around with before it’s back to reality.
And that’s completely okay. Honey, not everyone’s wife material. ”
For some reason, I nod. And the quiet words out of my mouth are “Okay. Thanks.”
That makes him smile wider, even as tears gather on my lash line. I try to gesture to my car, but my arm is made of lead. “I need to… I have to go to work.”
I manage to shut the car door before the tears fall, but only just. They trickle, then pour. Harder and faster the longer Denny’s words cycle in my brain.
Tiny outfits, good-time girl. Dad avoids you. Never made a single move on you. Nothing to do with you, back to reality.
Never made a single move on you.
I rip down the driver’s side visor. In the mirror, my eyes are bloodshot, lips puffy, face soaked. With badly shaking hands, I pick at my nose ring until it falls free, and launch it into the back seat.
My teeth dig into my lip painfully hard; I’m trying to stifle my sobs but also make it hurt enough to forget—to offer a distraction from the words twisting and tearing inside me. When that doesn’t work, I reach into my purse for my phone, thumb hovering over Parker’s contact.
But I can’t make myself do it. We’ve gone weeks without speaking after the awful things I said to him, and I couldn’t withstand parsing through our fight only to hear that our friendship is over. Not ever, but especially not in this state.
I hit a different contact.
The phone rings, and I put everything I have into gathering myself. I hold my breath, shove the tears off my face. It rings and rings, and I grip the steering wheel with my free hand, willing my fingers to stop trembling. I wipe my nose on the back of my arm.
It rings and then cuts off, my dad’s voicemail recording filling the inside of the car. I close my eyes, listening to his voice, but it brings me none of the peace I’d been searching for. I cough a breath into my lungs in a last-ditch effort to calm down before the tone sounds.
“Hi, Dad! I was hoping you had a minute to talk!” I barely sound like myself. I clear my throat, hoping it helps.
But could he even tell the difference?
When was the last time we spoke—truly spoke, without rambunctious toddlers distracting him or my stepmother in the room? When did he last ask me about something that wasn’t work, or my friends, or—ironically—the latest town gossip?
“I just wanted—” My breath catches, and I swallow it down.
But what does it matter what I want?
I want my family back, but I get sent straight to voicemail. I want a partner, but I’m too defective to attract one. I’m… me. A good-time girl. Not wife material.
“Never mind, Dad, I… I totally forgot I need to be somewhere.” I hang up, dropping my phone into the passenger seat.
Denny might be a monster, and I might hate the things he said. But it doesn’t make them untrue, does it?
For years, I’ve tried to convince myself that I wasn’t the problem—that sooner or later, my life would fall into place.
A little longer, and I’d find the right person.
A little longer, and my dad’s life would slow down.
A little longer, and my mother would start missing me.
A little longer, and I’d have a proper home again.
So, I’ve kept at it.
I’ve dated. I’ve called, I’ve attended every family dinner. I’ve built friendships throughout my small town. I’ve dated more, and thrown parties, and smiled, and tried harder, and hoped harder, and all for what?
Here I am, crying alone in my car.
Wiping my face with the back of an arm, I yank open the glove compartment. Pull out an ancient, mangled notebook, and a pen that takes several aggressive scribbles to get the ink flowing again.
It’s about damn time I see myself for what I am.