Last Kiss of Summer

Chapter One Sera

Chapter One

Sera

There’s this moment on the Sagamore Bridge where time stretches out.

From way up here, you can glimpse the ocean just beyond the canal.

Even through the early-morning fog I can see it—a sliver of blue, promising me a good summer, maybe even a great one.

I’ve been waiting for this. It’s been a painful two years since my family came down to Cape Cod, and it’s felt like even longer.

I fiddle with the beaded bracelet on my wrist—a reminder not to waste the time I have left.

I was born with a heart defect and had a transplant as an infant.

My heart came from a girl named Edith B.

Eichman, EBE for short, and two summers ago, it started to fail me.

But I’ve been stable since January, and after two years of being stuck in Brookline to be near my doctor, we’re finally coming back to our happy place.

As our car creeps slowly over the bridge, I nudge my sister out of the way and snap a photo.

I send it off to Maddy with a text to meet me for coffee before her shift.

I can’t wait to see her. We’ve planned to spend all summer doing our favorite things—thrift shopping, lying around at Northport Beach, walking the nature paths, eating Maddy’s baking concoctions, and going art hunting. I have time to make up for.

“No photos,” Abbi groans, and tugs the hood of her oversized sweatshirt over her red curls.

She let her boyfriend, Cam, borrow her car for a gig in Providence, so she got stuck with the early wake-up call like the rest of us.

“The sun is barely up, and it’s overcast,” I tease, knowing she was out late with her friends from Emerson like she has been almost every night since finals were over.

How she maintains a 4.0 GPA with a double major in political communication and journalism, a minor in environmental studies, and such an active social life is some kind of genetic marvel I didn’t inherit. “Why are you wearing sunglasses?”

“Because they’re vintage.” Abbi’s voice is low, warning. “I wouldn’t dare shove them in a tote bag.”

“Because you’re tired?” I toy with the idea of calling her out for being hungover, but I’m too giddy to start a serious round of negging that I’m bound to lose anyway.

I count that as emotional growth. Graduating from high school must have anointed me with some new level of maturity. Or maybe it’s just self-preservation.

“Look.” I point past her face, and she swats my hand away.

“It’s the ocean—big deal. I’ve seen it hundreds of times.”

“Abigail,” I whine a little, knowing I should be nicer to her after all she’s done for me in the last couple years: taking a semester off school in the fall when I had surgery, being my emotional support as things got bad and my friends from school politely faded away.

Without her and Maddy, my second-best—no, best-best—friend, I think I would’ve kicked the bucket from sheer boredom instead of heart failure.

No volleyball, no school, no art camp, just one day after the next of Is today the day I die?

“Seraaaa,” Abbi whines back, but there’s a smile at the corner of her freckled cheek, so I know she’s not mad at me. “Don’t forget to make a wish before we’re off the bridge,” she reminds me, tucking herself back up into a ball. “Maybe that Luke hasn’t gotten any cuter.”

“Luke’s not that cute,” I mutter.

Abbi snorts, seeing right through me even with her eyes closed.

I sigh, annoyed, and pivot back to my window. The familiar murky blackish green of the canal makes my heart ache as it winds south around a corner into the mist.

I’ve been trying not to think about Luke, my once-upon-a-time best friend, and Abbi knows it.

Two years ago, as we drove home to Brookline a few days early, my bridge wish was for there to be nothing seriously wrong with my heart.

Clearly that didn’t work. After weeks of back-to-back appointments and tests and monitoring, I was diagnosed with stage-three hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

I barely had time to think about my crush on Luke and how wrong I’d been to think he liked me back.

It wasn’t until weeks later that it really hit me.

He’d rejected me. And he hadn’t even checked in to see why we’d left the Cape so abruptly.

After a year of trial and error, I had minor surgery last October, and then we finally found a medication that works.

EBE will need to be replaced one day, but my doctor says I have about five years before my health starts to decline.

I’m feeling good now, and I want to do all the things I didn’t get to over the last two years.

I have a job teaching at my old art camp, and my parents agreed to a gap year for me to think about what’s next.

I’m not sure what that will be, but I know I want more.

More time for fun and travel and as many new things as I can squeeze in before I need a new heart and have to slow down and get through that major surgery.

I have plenty to think about without dwelling on Luke and how much of a crap friend he turned out to be, or what could’ve been between us if I hadn’t misread everything.

As we exit the bridge and pick up speed again, I swear the clouds part.

We’ve finally left mainland Massachusetts behind for the next three months, and the summer is wide open.

Everything here feels brighter. The trees are a deeper green, and the air is warmer even in the damp misty weather.

It feels like the whole place is celebrating our return.

I’m not going to let Luke ruin this summer.

I put my headphones back on and choose the playlist Maddy and I have been building together—Sera and Maddy’s Summer of Greatness.

*

And then we’re there. Scrappy tan and brown baby rabbits peek out of the tall unmowed grasses on the main drag. We all exclaim at the new four-way stop they’ve put in on our street corner and the new street sign with Beach Rose Lane done up in cursive.

“About time,” Dad says as a group of kids around my age zip by on their bikes. Fishing rods are strapped to their backs as they head toward the docks. They all lift their hands at us—locals—and we wave back even though we don’t know them.

Our cedar-gray Cape house sits snug next to a towering rhododendron that was the perfect hiding spot for hide-and-seek when we were little.

A row of beach rose bushes on the left acts as a divider from Luke’s house, with its painted blue front.

The tires pop over the white crushed-clamshell driveway.

Before we’re fully stopped, I throw my door open and step out to unlock the garage.

Once I punch in the code and the door starts to creak up, I head for the skinny path around the right side of the house.

Dad’s been here to do upkeep, but there’s something a little abandoned-looking about the backyard patio.

The firepit is rusty and full of dead leaves, and the double-seater swing hanging off the pergola is broken, one side resting crookedly on the sandy dirt.

At the back of the yard, though, the old playset and tree house both look sturdy.

It’d make a good painting, and I can’t wait to unpack my watercolors.

I heave open the heavy sliding door that leads into the kitchen just as Abbi and Mom come in from the garage with the first round of bags.

“I’ll help,” I offer, kicking my sneakers off and hop-sliding across the smooth wooden floor in my socks.

Mom waves me off. “No, no, go get settled in. I know you’re dying to see Maddy.

” She dumps the bags on the dining table and looks around the dark-wooded kitchen.

“I’m so glad to be back,” she says, reaching out and touching my light brown hair—the same color as hers.

I take after her Jewish half. Abbi’s red hair and freckles come from Dad’s Irish relatives.

“Me too,” I say with a smile. “We’ll bring back muffins,” I promise as Dad comes in with another armful of things.

“Two for me,” he says, dropping bags of groceries and turning toward the basement. “I’ll turn on the water.”

Mom calls out, reminding him to be gentle with the pipes.

We don’t need another incident like we had when I was eleven and we had to go next door to shower for two weeks.

I will be avoiding Luke as long as possible, and needing to use the Tisdales’ shower would make that tough.

I grab my backpack off the table where Mom left it, and she swats playfully at me when I reach for one of the suitcases.

“Get outta here. I mean it.” She lifts a box out of Abbi’s hands too. “You too, Abbi. Go air out your rooms and then get out of the house. I bet you could use a coffee. You’re moving a little slow.”

Abbi shrugs, caught, and I smirk at her before dashing to the corner past the fridge.

Hidden in what looks like a tiny cupboard, there’s a set of stairs that lead to my room, which is in the older part of the house.

Mom and Dad added on the garage and their bedroom above it when they bought the place, but Abbi’s and my rooms are in the original upstairs.

I make my way up the dark narrow stairwell and step on the creaky first floorboard of my room.

I open all three windows, including the one that looks over the rosebushes at the Tisdales’ next door.

I spy to see if they’re awake, but it’s barely 8:00 a.m., and the navy-blue curtains of the bedroom facing mine are pulled shut.

I catch sight of a Congrats, Seniors! sign in their yard next to a couple little-kid bikes and a half-set-up volleyball net that a gray cat is sniffing suspiciously, but no human movement.

I feel a twinge of relief, then spot Luke’s old black truck in the driveway.

It’s covered in dew, and I remember leaning out the passenger window as the wind whipped through my hair, the music loud, Luke pulling me closer to whisper something in my ear, his breath shivering down my spine.