Summer Love (Summer Love #1)

1. Summer

Summer

SUNDAY

The road bends, and the ocean opens up on my right, vast and copper-colored, through a gap in the cypress trees and the wind-twisted pines. Beyond the salt-eaten guardrail, the Pacific stretches toward a horizon so hazy that water and light blur into one.

The opening notes of Phoebe Bridgers’s “Motion Sickness” fill the car. A soft song, almost casual, with acid underneath. Loving someone who destroyed you. Resenting him for it. Knowing better. Going back anyway.

I should change the song. I turn it up.

My eyes are locked on the cracked asphalt, my hands clenched on the wheel since Monterey.

Hairpin turns come one after another along the cliff edge. The rental car is too light, smells like fake vanilla, and shudders under the gusts coming off the Pacific.

Highway 1 is postcard-beautiful. But at every curve the pavement narrows and the mountain presses in, as if it wants to take back what people stole from it.

Sell. Sign. Leave.

Three words, three actions. My whole plan fits in that one line—and that’s exactly how I want it.

The house belonged to my dad’s parents. I spent every summer there from five to seventeen, in this small California town half an hour south of Monterey, between Carmel and Big Sur, right before the coast turns wild.

Grandma left it to me seven years ago. Dad handled it until I turned eighteen.

Since then, it’s my name on the deed—and my problem.

I’ve never had the nerve to deal with it or the money to keep it up.

According to the real estate agency, the yard has vanished under weeds, the paint is peeling, the gutters leak…

and worst of all, nobody wants to buy because of “noise disturbances incompatible with a residential setting”—I’ll find out soon enough what that means.

A single, lowball offer in six months.

That’s why I’m here. Not for the memories—to make up for the agency’s incompetence. Selling is my job—brands, images, stories. A house shouldn’t be any harder.

By now the sun is almost level with the water. The light has taken on that golden shade I know by heart—the one the California coast wears in July, the one that makes you believe everything’s simple: a sky on fire, a calm sea, and nothing else.

Don’t fall for it, Summer.

My fingers find the pendant at my throat, a little gold wave Grandma gave me the summer I turned thirteen, so you’ll think of us when you’re far away. I never take it off. Not in New York, not in the air-conditioned hallways of the agency, even when nothing in my life looks anything like an ocean.

I let go of the pendant and put my hand back on the wheel.

A dark green sign, faded a little by the sun and the sea spray, appears on the shoulder, in white letters:

Welcome to Coral Bay

Welcome… or not. My foot hits the gas—a stupid reflex, as if I could drive through town without seeing it.

Then a sharp crack rings out, like a muffled gunshot.

The wheel shakes, the car pulls to the right and starts to vibrate. Something feels wrong under the tires—nothing to do with the road surface.

I slow down. The vibration gets worse, with a dull, rhythmic sound—flap, flap, flap—that leaves no doubt.

Flat tire.

I pull onto the shoulder, where the road widens before a curve. The engine’s still running, the headlights lighting up a wall of cypress trees and a stretch of rusted guardrail. I cut the music and kill the engine.

The silence is brutal. All that’s left is the hiss of wind in the branches and the rumble of the ocean against the rocks below.

I get out.

The air is cooler than I expected, thick with salt and that dampness I’d forgotten, the kind that clings to your skin. The sky has shifted from copper to mauve, and the first ribbons of fog slip between the pines.

The front right tire is flat, slumped on the rim. I crouch down. A nail is barely visible in the dim light.

Well, shit.

I open the trunk. Spare tire, jack, lug wrench—I’ve never touched any of it in my life.

I look at the tire. Then the wrench. Then the tire.

I went to Columbia. I survive an agency internship in Manhattan on five hours of sleep a night.

I serve burgers at a diner on the Lower East Side with one foot on fire.

But nobody—not my parents, not my teachers, not one of the mentors supposed to prepare me for real life—ever taught me how to change a tire.

I set the jack on the ground, try to slide it under the car—no luck. I try again. Metal scrapes asphalt. Three tries, and my nails are already black.

I rub my palms together—bad idea: the grease smears across both. Out of options, I wipe my hands on the car’s floor mat. I pull my phone off the mount stuck to the windshield.

No service. Figures.

I sit back down behind the wheel, the door open. The light has dropped again. The mauve has given way to ink-blue, and the cypress trees are just black shapes now, cut out against the sky.

And I wait. A long time. The cold settles in. My phone still isn’t picking up anything.

9:15 p.m. Three cars have gone by since I stopped, but none of them pulled over.

I’m still in mine, engine off, doors locked now. I rub my arms through my denim jacket—perfect for a summer night in Brooklyn but ridiculous here, on this cliff road hammered by the wind off the Pacific.

People think California is warm. But not on the coast, not at night, not here.

The sound of the waves carries up from the rocks below. I’d forgotten that sound—the slow breathing of the water drifting into my room through the open window on summer nights. The night when…

No. Don’t think about that.

I catch headlights in the rearview mirror. A car’s coming, slower than the others. It slows down even more.

I tense up. I’m alone, on a deserted road, at night, with no signal. Everything women are taught to fear.

The vehicle stops behind mine. The headlights blind me. I squint… and make out the light bar on the roof and the lettering on the hood:

Police

Relieved, I lean back against the seat and close my eyes for a second.

The doors open and two figures take shape in the glow of the headlights. One comes toward my car, a flashlight in hand. The other hangs back, fingers on the holster at his belt.

I roll down the window.

“Evening, ma’am. You having some trouble?”

I blink, raise a hand to shield my eyes. And behind the beam is a face I haven’t seen in six years.

The square jaw, the straight posture, the broad shoulders under the uniform, that almost rigid control that makes it seem like nothing could ever rattle him.

“Evan?”

He lowers the flashlight. His hazel eyes go wide.

“Summer?”

Without thinking, I rush out of the car.

Six hours on a plane to San Francisco, three hours on the road, a flat tire, an hour alone in the dark—and the first person I run into on this coast I ran from is Evan Carter, eighteen the last time I saw him, in a police uniform instead of the boardshorts I always knew him in.

I throw myself into his arms—exhaustion and relief have blown through every filter. He doesn’t push me away, doesn’t hug me back either.

I hear a metallic click behind him. The other officer has stepped forward, hand on his weapon.

“It’s fine, Cole,” Evan says without turning around. “I know her.”

I loosen my hold. The second officer eases his hand off his pistol grip, but his wary eyes stay on me.

“Sorry…” I stammer. “Do I have to call you Officer Carter now?”

My cheeks burn. Evan studies me for a second, then a smile flickers across his face and he swallows it right back.

“No, no… Flat tire?”

“Obviously. Had to spice up the trip somehow.”

“You try to change it?”

“I tried to get the jack under the car. Does that count?”

This time, he gives me a brief smile.

“What are you doing here, Summer?”

Simple question. Simple answer.

“I’m here for my grandparents’ house. The sale’s dragging, so I came to see for myself. Two weeks, tops. Then I’m gone.”

My internship just ended. The extension they offered me doesn’t start until mid-August. In between: three weeks. Two to handle the sale. One to catch my breath before going back to work.

Evan nods, silent. His eyes linger on me a second too long, and I sense a question in them he doesn’t ask.

“As for your car,” he says, “I’ll call a tow truck first thing tomorrow. It’ll be fine here tonight. Want us to drop you somewhere?”

“The lodge, please.”

I grab my bag from the trunk and settle into the back of the police car. It smells like leather and cold coffee. The seat is hard, no headrest. There’s a grille between me and the front seats.

I buckle the seatbelt. I’m not under arrest. Just stranded, with a sworn cop for a chauffeur.

But it’s still strange.

Evan takes the passenger seat, turns halfway toward me and watches me through the grille. His partner drives. The dash radio crackles—distant voices, codes I don’t understand.

“Is Yumi still at the lodge?” I ask.

“Yeah. But she’s starting to talk about stepping back. That’s not like her.”

“What about Luke? Still working at his parents’ store?”

“At the Market, yeah. He took it over last year.”

I nod. Luke DeLuca, with his brown curls, his gold chain, and the smile that put everyone at ease. At ten he was already helping out in that grocery store, between sessions at the skatepark.

“And Miles?”

“Bartender now.”

“Is that… what he wanted?”

Evan shrugs.

“It’s Miles. He always acts like everything’s fine, so it’s hard to tell.”

A smile escapes me. Miles Bennett. His pink hair and that soft, bright energy that followed him everywhere.

Silence falls. The road unspools in the headlight beams—curves, redwoods standing in the night like columns, and now and then, through gaps in the brush, the absolute black of the ocean under a moonless sky.

I could ask. It would be normal, right? Checking in on everyone.

But the two names that matter stay stuck in my throat, and I do nothing to dislodge them.

One is going from one competition to the next on the pro surf circuit—the life he always dreamed of.

The other is studying medicine, far from here.

That’s what I’ve been telling myself for six years, and I don’t want Evan to correct me.

Or confirm it. I don’t know which would be worse.

“Not much has changed around here,” Evan says, turning his attention back to the road.

There’s a note in his voice I can’t quite catch. Irony? Weariness?

“It’s Coral Bay,” I murmur.

Around a bend, lights appear, clustered along the coast.

Coral Bay. Three thousand year-round residents, triple that in summer. One main street, a crescent beach, a lodge, a surf school—and everyone knows everyone.

A sudden nausea rises in my throat.

You sell. You sign. You leave.

The police car comes to a stop in front of the High Tide Lodge a little after ten. The main building is dark, except for one light above the entrance. Evan gets out first, comes around the car, and lets me out.

“Front desk closes at eight,” he tells me as I climb out with my bag.

“I’ve got a code for the bungalow.”

He nods, but doesn’t get back in right away. His hand stays on the open door.

“Thanks for everything, Evan.”

“No problem. I’ll text you in the morning about the tow.”

I give him my number and save his in my phone, which got its signal back once we hit town.

“Summer… Coral Bay’s small. You’re going to run into people.”

His voice stays even, but I catch something like a warning in it.

“Goodnight, Evan.”

He shuts the door, gets back in front, and the car backs out. Its taillights disappear at the end of the drive.

I’m alone.

I push the door open. It isn’t locked. The lodge smells like waxed wood. A nightlight above the front desk fills the lobby with a warm glow that softens everything—the rattan armchairs, the little coffee tables, the vintage surfboards mounted on the reclaimed-wood walls.

My eyes catch on one of them. White, worn, with a logo the years haven’t erased—the stylized W of the Walker Surf School. I look away.

Behind the picture window, the pool is a smooth black surface, ringed by folded lounge chairs.

Farther off, the bar opens onto the night, its empty stools lined up along the counter.

Some nights the place is packed—tourists, music, colorful cocktails, surf films projected on a sheet strung between two palm trees. Tonight it’s deserted.

I cross the lobby quickly and go out the back door.

A gravel path winds between the bungalows, lined with succulents and solar lanterns. My footsteps crunch in the silence. The breeze off the ocean is lighter here, and brings the sound of the waves.

Bungalow 14… 15… 16…

Bungalow 17. Of course.

I was seventeen that summer. On July 17, I found out the most important night of my life had been nothing but a fucking bet.

Three years later, on a March 17, my foot gave out on the landing of a badly entered triple lutz.

A dull crack—my career and my future had just shattered along with my right foot.

There’s no such thing as chance. Or if there is, it’s got a shitty sense of humor.

A small wooden deck leads to the door, like the one in front of every other bungalow.

The boards creak under my feet as I step up to the keypad, next to the handle.

I find the code in the booking email and punch it in.

The beep rings out in the night, almost obscene in the middle of all this nature.

The door opens. The inside of the bungalow is simple: pale wood, a double bed with white sheets, a cramped bathroom, and a ceiling fan turning slowly overhead. But I notice only one thing: the window—or rather, what’s behind it.

The ocean.

Black, vast, almost invisible under the stars. A few pale reflections shiver on the water, lost in the fog. The sound of the waves comes in through the half-open window, closer now, almost intimate.

I set down my bag and move toward the window. The salt air rushes into my lungs.

Below, the beach. Crescent Beach, with its gentle curve and pale sand. And then, of course, the surf school. Invisible, but there. My fingers close around my pendant.

I’m back in Coral Bay.