Chapter 4 Then Fifteen Years Ago
Then Fifteen Years Ago
Two important things happened to me that summer.
The first: I got much better at my job.
I got better at balancing armloads of fried food while maneuvering around the tiny snack bar station.
I memorized coffee and bagel orders for lifeguards, police officers, badge checkers and other regulars.
I figured out (by trial and many errors) the ideal ratio of crushed ice to soda from the fountain.
And, to Kevin Herman’s measured delight, I kept the soft-serve machine sparkling clean and functioning.
The second: I developed a huge crush on Sebastian Nikolaou.
I’d had crushes before, of course. Boys from class. Maren’s aloof older cousin who stayed with her family over Christmas break one year. My sixth-grade math teacher. A long list of fictional characters from books and movies. But this was different—this was … all-consuming.
Whenever Omar or one of his cooks called out “Main!” as they dropped an order on the counter that separated the snack bar from the kitchen, I’d feel heat creep up my neck, because that meant the order was for a table in the main dining room and a server would be coming by to pick it up.
Sebastian and I overlapped on three out of my four shifts, which meant that on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays he stopped by my station at least a dozen times for pickups.
I’d grab the plastic basket of food from the counter before Kevin could (the first time I did this, he complimented me for taking initiative) and seamlessly hand it off to Sebastian just as he appeared, the door swinging closed behind him.
He’d smile and thank me and I’d melt. Every time.
Those interactions alone made me more than happy to jump out of bed at 6:00 a.m.
For the first time I found myself wishing for rain in the summer, because rainy days meant fewer beachgoers, which meant fewer customers, which meant I’d have more time with Sebastian.
On those slow days everyone helped out with prep in the kitchen, so I got to see Sebastian in his element: joking with the cooks, teasing his mom, making up games and challenges with the other servers and hostesses.
About once a week Sebastian and I opened the restaurant together, and I’d memorize every word we exchanged so I could repeat them back to Maren accurately later. He was like a magnet, drawing me in.
And I quickly learned I wasn’t the only one.
The restaurant was constantly whirring with rumors about Sebastian’s love life.
He was sixteen—a rising junior—which meant he had admirers in every grade.
Carly, a freshman who worked the hostess stand that summer, reported that he met someone from her class for frozen yogurt at the mall one weekend, but upon further investigation it turned out to be a group thing—false lead.
A junior waitress named Tina claimed a friend group recently broke up because all three girls were planning to ask Sebastian to prom.
And according to a busser named Helen, he was seeing a girl from New York City whose family had a summer house down the Shore (though Helen admitted she didn’t know anyone who had actually seen this girl).
Sebastian was, by definition, unattainable. Out of reach. Unfortunately, that only seemed to make me (and everyone else) want him more.
Maren and I spent countless hours that summer meticulously dissecting every interaction I had with Sebastian.
We’d endlessly analyze his tone, his word choice, his body language.
By mentioning what time he liked to surf (sunrise, before it got too crowded), was he low-key inviting me to come watch?
Did he actually need my help rolling silverware (each place setting got a fork, knife and spoon wrapped in a white napkin and secured with a navy paper band—a tedious process, but I found comfort in the repetition), or was he just trying to get more time with me?
Maren sometimes took her lunch break at the snack bar, which gave her a front-row seat to at least four or five handoffs so that afterward she could gush along with me about Sebastian’s arm muscles and the way he said, “Thanks, Mariano,” when I handed him a basket of fried food.
When I think back to that summer I sometimes wonder if my obsession really had much to do with Sebastian at all. It was probably one of those classic “idea of him” situations. A puzzle for Maren and me to direct our restless energy toward decoding.
A crush can define a summer—or at least it can feel that way in the moment. But in retrospect I’m also able to remember plenty of things about June, July and August of 2009 that had nothing to do with Sebastian Nikolaou.
Like making dinner with my mom. She taught elementary school, but in another life she could have been a private chef, or maybe an Italian version of Martha Stewart with a Jersey accent.
Her summers off were sacred. I tagged along to her favorite specialty shops and farmers markets while she leisurely browsed for ingredients we could turn into an elaborate meal.
I held my own as her sous-chef, chopping and slicing and sautéing under her patient direction.
We rotated between tried-and-true specialties (shrimp scampi with a crispy breadcrumb topping, a loaf of homemade, no-knead bread and a simple salad was my favorite menu as well as my dad’s) and new ones we found on recipe sites or in vintage cookbooks my mom picked up from the used bookstore in town.
The three of us would have dinner on our small porch, glasses of wine for my parents and a homemade iced tea for me.
Our two-bedroom house was more of a bungalow a few blocks from the beach; we didn’t have a view, but we could smell the ocean and, on quiet nights, hear it, too.
My parents are on the older side and had bought the house twenty years earlier for so cheap it sort of makes me want to throw up if I think about it for too long now.
Unlike Maren, who constantly quarreled with her parents about everything from her clothes to her artistic aspirations, I more than got along with my parents—in fact, I genuinely enjoyed their company.
They seemed to have a good marriage. Not particularly remarkable or passionate, I supposed, but secure.
Steady. Uncomplicated. Even at fourteen, I suspected that a volatility existed within me that made such a relationship unlikely for myself. But I admired theirs nonetheless.
I spent my days off and most evenings with Maren, doing the usual things that beach kids did.
We parked our bikes at the boardwalk and slid under the silver railings to avoid paying for beach badges, then spent hours in the ocean, where we were safe from the badge checkers roaming the sand.
I’d bike home with pruned fingers, my hair stiff with salt water.
Other days we spread our towels at the edge of the jetty and watched high school kids surf and paddleboard, feverishly debating which boys were hottest and which girls had the best swimsuits.
We’d pick up sandwiches from the snack bar (I got a discount, and I still wasn’t sick of the crispy Buffalo chicken wrap).
On paydays we’d pool some money for Twizzlers and a Slurpee from the 7-Eleven and eat on our favorite bench, which was somehow always in the shade, balancing the haul on our laps as we people-watched and gossiped and daydreamed about having money and careers and boyfriends, blissfully unaware of how special what we did have was.
At night we met friends from our class for beach bonfires and makeshift fireworks, all of us buzzing about the start of high school.
It felt like an important summer, one filled with anticipation.
The summer between our childhoods and the beginning of our real lives as high schoolers.
When I look back on that summer I of course think about Sebastian, it being the one that I met him.
But mostly I think about my parents and Maren and how safe and simple it all was.
Even as I was living it, it felt bittersweet, an ending as much as it was a beginning.