Chapter 33
SUMMER
The coffee was the best I had ever tasted in my entire life. It was perfect. Rich and smooth and perfect. I closed my eyes and just appreciated the hell out of it.
“You’re being weird about the coffee,” Becca said.
“This is exceptional coffee.”
“It’s the same coffee we always buy.”
“It tastes different today,” I said. “It tastes incredible. Like manna from heaven.”
We were sitting on the patio enjoying our regular coffee. Everything smelled like salt and jasmine and the remnants of last night’s fire. And perfect. The sky was brighter. The ocean sounded better.
“Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” I said. “It feels incredible out here. We live in the best place on earth.”
Becca frowned. “It’s the same air as yesterday.”
“It’s not,” I said with complete conviction. “It smells fresher. Cleaner. Brighter.”
The kids were already set up in the far corner of the patio in the shady area. Both had their books and were sharing a bowl of grapes. They were quiet and content, completely oblivious to what their auntie had been doing a few years ago.
I took another sip of my coffee and sighed like a woman without a single problem in the world. I had problems but none of them felt important just then. Everything felt manageable.
Becca made a sound. I turned to see her staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She looked out at the water. Sipped her coffee. Looked back at me. “You’re glowing.”
I snorted. “That’s such a dumb thing to say. People don’t glow.”
“You do. Your cheeks are pink.”
“It’s the morning air,” I said. “I just told you. It’s exceptional today.”
“Uh-huh.” She took another sip of her coffee. “So, what happened after I went to bed last night?”
I looked at the ocean. “Nothing.”
She snorted, expressing her disbelief.
“Nothing happened,” I said. “We sat by the fire. Dad went home. I went in. Went to sleep.” I gestured vaguely. “A normal night.”
Silence.
I could feel her looking at the side of my face. She knew me way too well for me to offer up such an obvious lie.
“Sum-mer.”
“Bec-ca.”
“There is a broken piece of lattice on the south side of the house,” she said pleasantly. “And I swear I saw a man running across the yard carrying his shoes.”
I said nothing. I pressed my lips together and stared very hard at a bird gliding above the water.
“The coffee really is exceptional today,” I said.
She started laughing. “He climbed the lattice,” she said.
“Keep your voice down.”
“You guys act like teenagers.” She laughed.
I couldn’t stop the laughter that burst from my chest. I had been holding in that laugh since he knocked on my window. It had taken monumental strength not to explode with laughter last night watching him struggle.
“He got stuck in the window,” I managed.
“No.”
“He fell through and knocked the picture off the wall.” I couldn’t stop laughing as I replayed it all in my head. “Poor guy probably has bruises. He got stuck halfway in, so I pulled on him. Hard. He fell on the floor.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Oh my God. Then what?”
I sipped my coffee. “Then things progressed.”
“Progressed,” she repeated.
“Oh yeah.”
She sat back in her chair and looked at me with wide eyes over the rim of her mug. “Summer Banks. You naughty girl.”
“So naughty. Three times naughty.”
“I’m jealous.”
“He had to climb back out this morning when you woke up and I may have pushed him a little too hard. Poor guy is going to be the one walking funny today.”
Becca stared at me and laughed. “I can’t believe you. Why didn’t he just text you or knock on the door like an adult?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably because he left before Dad did.”
“You two kids,” she joked.
“I know.” I sighed and sipped my coffee. “I’ve been on dates since him. A few. And they were perfectly fine. I dated Bodhi. It was all fine.”
“Fine,” she said.
“It felt like we’d never been apart,” I said. “Like the last four years were just a bad dream and this is where we were always supposed to end up.”
“Oh, man,” she said with a sigh. “You have got it so bad.”
I didn’t even try to argue. I knew she was right. “I know,” I said.
“You are in love with him.”
Which I knew. And that was exactly why September was going to be a catastrophe.
“I never stopped,” I admitted quietly. “I thought I had. I told myself I had. But seeing him again and the dinner last night. His face when he talked to the kids, and the way he and Dad got along.” I stopped and took a long breath.
“I’m right back to that first summer. Puppy love, sunshine and rainbows. Us against the world.”
Becca set her coffee mug down on the small table between us. I watched and waited. The laughter had faded and she was very serious. I knew that look. I waited for her to find the words.
“Pause,” she said.
I stopped mid-smile. I felt it fade. I’d been on both ends of that word my whole life.
Mom had taught us how to use that word. Not as a command, but as an invitation.
Stop. Listen. Be open. We’d passed it back and forth between us ever since she was gone.
She used it on us throughout our childhood.
When things spiraled and we were having a meltdown over something or nothing, she’d simply say pause.
It worked. It wasn’t stop. It was a breath. A moment to think and recalibrate. Just taking a second to think and catch our breath. A pause wasn’t to be argued against or rejected. That was the beauty of it.
I set my own mug down. “Okay,” I said.
“I’m happy for you,” she said. “I want you to understand that. I’m so happy for you, Summer. Last night was the most alive I’ve seen you look in years. Maybe ever.”
“But,” I said softly.
“Not a but,” she said. “Just a pause.” She picked up her mug again, looking away from me and out at the water.
“Things are moving fast. And I know that feels right. I know it feels like it’s supposed to move this way because there’s all that history and all that time you lost and it just feels like catching up. ” She glanced at me. “But it’s fast.”
“I know.”
“You invited him to dinner last night,” she said.
“I know.”
“Summer. You have never once, in your entire adult life, invited a man to family dinner. Not one. Not Bodhi. Not that guy that built furniture and was obsessed with you. None of them.” She paused to let that sit.
“And I watched you do it last night like it was the most natural thing in the world. It did feel natural. He fit right in.”
“He did.”
“That’s not nothing,” she said. “And I think somewhere underneath all the glowing and the amazing coffee, you know that.”
I had known it the second I invited him to dinner. It had come out so easily. I had made a decision without fully understanding what it meant to have him over for dinner. My dad didn’t say anything, but I knew he felt how important it was.
“I know,” I sighed.
“Your heart is in this,” Becca said. “Maybe deeper than you even realize yet.” Her voice was gentle.
She’d always been honest with me. I did the same for her with her ex.
We had to look out for each other and that included having tough conversations.
“And that’s not a bad thing. That’s a beautiful thing. But I need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Talk to him,” she said. “Not in six weeks. Not at the end of August when it’s already too late and you’re standing at the window watching him load up his car.
” She looked at me with kindness in her eyes.
“Sooner. Now. I know you and you’re going to be all about living in the moment, but you’re not that young carefree woman anymore.
I think things are going to be much harder this time. ”
“I know.”
“You also need to talk about what happens when Judd’s port falls apart,” she said.
“Because it sounds like he’s going to make that happen.
And once he does, the reason he’s here is gone.
Does he go back to Texas? Is that it? Does he have any reason to stay in Surfside once the job is done?
And if he leaves, Summer, does he have any intention of ever coming back? ”
I had been thinking about that from the moment I learned he was coming back to town.
Last night I had been able to pretend the end of summer was a million years away, but it was happening soon.
He was going to leave. Would it be another four years before I saw him?
Would he go off and meet a woman and get married? Have kids?
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You need to find out now,” Becca said firmly. “Not six weeks from now.”
Ocean laughed at something in his book and the sound of it broke the moment between us. River shushed him without looking up from her own pages.
“What if I ask and the answer is no?” I said quietly. “What if he says he’s going back and that’s it?”
“Then you know,” she said. “And you make your choices with your eyes open. Which is so much better than what happened last time. I’m not saying you don’t enjoy the rest of the summer, but I’m saying guard your heart. Brace for impact.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I know.”
I needed to ask Colt what his plans were. Not because I wanted to brace myself for the worst but because I was done building something in the dark without knowing if it had any foundation under it at all.
I checked the time. “I better shower. I have a private lesson in an hour.”
The shower was hot enough to fog the mirror in under a minute. I stood under the spray and let it work on the knots in my shoulders and the ache in my lower back and tried very hard not to smile like a complete idiot. I was a little sore. Worth it.
I pressed my forehead against the cool tile and let the water run down my spine and thought about what Becca had said.
But there was something she wasn’t considering—he could stay.
He could stay in Surfside. He had a house here. He loved it here. Why did there only have to be the one option? I turned and let the water hit my face.
Texas was his home. The Anderson name was built into that land the same way my mother had planted herself in front of this beach. I understood that. I respected it. It was one of the things I loved about him.
Even if he wanted to stay, what did that look like?
A man like Colt Anderson had big responsibilities.
He had investors and board meetings and all that boring stuff.
He had brothers and a father and a mother who had built something in Texas that required his attention and his presence.
He had a life that existed a thousand miles from where I was standing.
And I had a life here. My family was here. I couldn’t leave. He couldn’t leave. So, where did that leave us?