Have a Great Summer

Chapter 1 Now

Now

Everyone assumes the worst thing about living in a beach town year round is the off-season lull. The truth? It’s those glorious summer days filled with constant reminders that other people are on vacation and you are not.

Take, for example, the fact that I—a twenty-nine-year-old woman—bike to work in the summer, not because I’m particularly nostalgic for the time when my baby blue beach cruiser was my only mode of transportation nor as part of my efforts to be environmentally conscious, but because parking is a nightmare.

A year ago some benny (what Jersey Shore locals call the New Yorkers and North Jerseyans who flood our beaches every summer) discovered that no one checks the meters in my office’s employee lot and spread the word like tourist gospel.

Or take the forty-three-minute line I waited in for lunch at my favorite bagel place today, packed between a group of college girls in bikinis that looked like they had been purchased on Instagram and a sunburnt dad bartering with a four-year-old (one more hour in the ocean in exchange for three bites of lunch—fine, how about two?).

I scarfed down my toasted cinnamon raisin with cream cheese in two minutes, which left me exactly zero minutes to bike back to the office.

And while you’re at it, take the Jeep I park my bike next to when I arrive at the city clerk’s office a few hours later. It’s a black Wrangler with the doors off, two sandy surfboards strapped to the roof. The kind of car that brags, I’m off the clock. Jealous?

As I lock my bike, I silently hope that the Jeep’s driver is here to pay a parking ticket.

Inside, I wave to Linda. She smiles at me from behind the counter and holds up a finger, then disappears into the rows of filing cabinets to grab the documents we spoke about on the phone.

I’m here for a story—or, at this point, I suppose it’s really just a pitch.

A few weeks ago I’d heard rumblings that a buzzy Manhattan-based restaurant group was eyeing Brantley Beach for its next concept, so I’d emailed Linda, asking if she could keep an eye out for any leads.

She’d called me this morning with an update: Sure enough, Diamond Group had applied for a local liquor license.

I scan the drab waiting room. There are only three other people here: Linda’s coworker and the couple she’s helping at the far end of the counter, their backs to me.

The Jeep’s owners, I assume. I listen for keywords, but instead of “parking violation” I catch “marriage license application.” Figures.

I take a seat along the back wall and pull my laptop out of my bag, then balance it on my thighs so I can catch up on emails while I wait.

The contents of my inbox remind me just how desperately I want the Diamond Group news to be true.

If they really are opening a restaurant in town, Shore Life will want to cover it.

I’ll want to cover it.

Partly because it has the potential to be an exciting food story, with appeal beyond our usual Monmouth and Ocean counties audience. But mostly because it has nothing to do with weddings.

Because honestly? I’m starting to get sick of weddings.

My whole career up until now has revolved around them.

After college, I landed a job as a severely (though predictably) underpaid editorial assistant at the biggest bridal magazine in the country, Ever After.

I couldn’t afford to live in New York City (even with the three potential roommates I’d found in a Facebook group, it would have been a stretch), so I opted to move back in with my parents and commute an hour and a half each way via train from the town where I grew up, smack-dab in the middle of the New Jersey coastline.

Ever After was my dream job. It didn’t matter that the hours were long, or that my salary roughly translated to minimum wage (a hefty chunk of which went straight toward my student loans), or even that I wasn’t writing as much as I’d hoped.

I’d gotten a job in “the industry”—something I’d been warned by countless professors and friends’ parents and parents’ friends would be next to impossible these days.

And yet there I was, researching floral trends for the staff writers, fetching samples for photoshoots and transcribing interviews with famous planners, designers and (my favorite) chefs.

The editor in chief was brilliant, creative and devastatingly chic, but also kind and supportive—so different from the Miranda Priestly incarnate I’d conjured when I’d first accepted the role.

I managed her calendar with the steadfastness of a president’s chief of staff.

I wanted to be her. I fell in love with the job, the team, the city—and somewhere along the way, I fell in love with weddings, too.

Each morning I settled into my squishy plastic seat on NJ Transit, turned up my podcast and watched the shore give way to skyscrapers, content.

The problem with a dream job? Eventually, you wake up.

Two weeks after my one-year anniversary of working at Ever After, the publisher called an all-hands meeting. She announced we’d be decreasing our frequency from twelve issues a year to six, and that only half of the staff would be keeping their jobs. I wasn’t one of them.

I spent the next month refreshing job boards on LinkedIn and Ed2010 to no avail: It was 2018, and it seemed like all of the big New York City publishers (and most of the small ones) were facing a similar fate.

I sent LinkedIn messages to every writer and editor and stylist and photographer I’d crossed paths with during my first year as a working adult and set up phone calls with a few.

Everyone promised to keep me top of mind for any openings or freelance opportunities.

But something about the way they spoke warned me not to get my hopes up.

I felt my connections to that world severing as quickly as they’d formed.

I breathed a sigh of relief when an editor from a local website called Shore Life emailed me about an opening for a lifestyle reporter, based right in my hometown.

The company was shifting its budget and editorial strategy toward content designed to bring in either a new audience or ad dollars.

And, as it turned out, weddings attracted both.

No matter that I was twenty-three and unwed myself—my experience at Ever After meant I was the perfect candidate to become Shore Life’s resident wedding expert, responsible for churning out dozens of digital stories per week: roundups of the season’s biggest trends, local vendor spotlights and a big, monthly feature on a Jersey Shore wedding that would soon become my “Real Weddings” column.

I wasn’t ready to give up on New York, but Shore Life felt like the perfect solution for the time being. I could save some money, build up my clips, then try again next year.

But instead of just one year, six passed.

I’m still working at Shore Life, I’m still single—and I have major wedding fatigue.

I flood my editor’s inbox with pitches for non-wedding stories, and she reluctantly approves about one a month to appease me.

Which is why I really need that document Linda found to confirm my suspicions.

I glance toward the counter but she still hasn’t returned. That’s when I hear his voice.

“I’m sorry, Claire. I honestly just didn’t think of it.”

I know that voice. I haven’t heard it in thirteen years, but that hardly matters—I’d never mistake who it belongs to.

I freeze, my fingers hovering an inch above the keyboard, and shift my gaze to the left as subtly as possible, toward the couple.

And now that the man has turned to face the impossibly beautiful blond woman next to him I can see that he is, in fact, who I think he is.

Sebastian Nikolaou. The subject of a big, embarrassing, years-long high school crush. And—though I doubt he even realizes it—the first and only guy to truly break my heart.

His hair is a little different—still thick and dark like I remember, but cut much shorter on the sides, with what remains of his once-wild curls combed into submission.

The woman next to him is pretty tall, maybe five feet nine, but still he towers over her.

His already olive skin has taken on a deep tan, like it always did this time of year.

He wears a white knit polo, navy blue chinos that skim his mile-long legs and buttery leather loafers, an expensive-looking watch on his wrist. It’s jarring to see him so dressed up, so adult-looking.

He’s thirty-one now, I realize. Whenever a flash of him appears in my mind—something that has happened more often than I’d care to admit over the years—he’s always sixteen or seventeen and wearing either swim trunks (no shirt, no shoes) or a navy blue Bubba’s shirt, khaki shorts and white Vans—his uniform for the two high school summers we worked together at his family’s restaurant.

“Well, I really thought we’d get this done today,” the woman says, a pinched look of desperation on her pretty face.

She looks effortlessly chic, wearing a chambray blouse tucked into white linen trousers, her tiny waist cinched with a leather belt, and a pair of designer sandals.

“It was hard enough for me to even get this week off. I don’t think I’ll be able to get out this way again until the wedding. ”