10. Summer
Summer
TUESDAY
I barely slept. Three-hour time difference from New York, the crickets, the mattress, Jace, Ryan, the hundred thousand dollars, Luke not recognizing me—all of it on a loop behind my eyelids, until I gave up around five. Might as well turn the insomnia into something useful.
I walked here this morning. I set my bags down by the back door—the rest of the supplies I couldn’t carry yesterday, plus a water bottle. The key turns in the lock, the door resists, then gives, releasing a smell of must, dust, and wood. The house is dark.
I turn on my phone’s flashlight.
Come on, Summer. Get to work.
I start with the most urgent thing: making this house breathe.
Downstairs. Living room. I open the windows and push the shutters—they stick, creak, finally swing open. The blue dawn light comes in, timid. The sea air rushes through. The dust starts to dance.
The kitchen. Same motions: windows, shutters. The draft carries away a little of the musty smell. Grandma’s mug is still in the drying rack. Best Grandma in Coral Bay. I pick it up, set it in a box I left open on the counter—the one for things to keep.
The hallway. The two bedrooms. The bathroom. I move from room to room. Windows, shutters. Each room that opens is a tiny victory against time.
The stairs. Upstairs. I pass my bedroom without stopping. The door stays shut. That’s how it’ll be.
Dad’s room. Windows, shutters. The bathroom. Window. And my grandparents’ room. The last one.
The light comes in—warmer already, the blue has turned to gold. The cool morning air wraps around me. I’m about to head back when I hear music.
Not blasting, but loud enough to carry the thirty yards between the house and the school. A guitar riff, a bassline, and a melody I know by heart. “Surfin’ USA” by the Beach Boys. At six in the morning.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Jace.
I step up to the window. The Walker Surf School yard is bathed in dawn light. A Bluetooth speaker sits on the windowsill of the trailer.
The door opens and Jace steps out, shirtless, his wetsuit pulled up to the waist. I kill my phone’s flashlight with a quick flick and hold my breath.
Jace stretches facing the sea. Arms over his head, fingers laced, then a slow twist of his torso, feet anchored in the sand. His brown hair, too long, falls into his eyes. He pushes it back with one hand.
And he sings… way off-key. He butchers the lyrics of “Surfin’ USA” between stretches, like no one can hear him.
No one except the neighbor trying to sell her house.
I should close the window, turn away, go back to my boxes and my dust.
I don’t move.
He grabs his board, propped against the trailer, and crosses the yard. Flip appears out of nowhere—a white, sandy tornado that leaps around him, barks, runs in circles, stops, takes off again. Jace says something to him I can’t hear. The dog couldn’t care less and keeps running.
Another nuisance. I try to believe it, but it’s hard when you scratched said nuisance’s belly just the day before.
Jace reaches the beach. There’s no one else—just him and his dog. The water is smooth as glass. He wades into the ocean and paddles out past the first waves. Flip runs along the water’s edge, barking at nothing.
Then the first wave comes.
Jace stands. His silhouette cuts against the morning light—a dark line on the curve of the wave, fluid, precise, perfectly balanced. The water breaks around him in white spray, and for a second there’s nothing but him and the ocean.
He surfed like that at sixteen, too. Some things don’t change.
I watch a few more seconds, then I set my jaw and close the window.
I have a house to sell.
I leave my grandparents’ room and head back downstairs.
Every white sheet I pull off kicks up a cloud of dust, revealing an old piece of furniture I know by heart: the floral couch, the coffee table, the shelves…
I cough, sneeze, cough again. The air in the house is thick despite the open windows, heavy with six years of dust. I sweep up the gray dust bunnies in the corners. Upstairs, the floorboards creak under my feet. The house protests, like it doesn’t want to be woken up.
I tackle the furniture. I open the drawers, the cabinets, the bins. I sort what I find into boxes.
The first one: things to keep. Grandma’s mug is already in it.
I add a framed photo: Grandpa and Grandma on the deck, a summer evening, tanned, smiling, a glass of wine in hand.
The photo’s yellowed, but their faces are intact.
Then a record, found in the living room cabinet.
Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, the album Grandpa played over and over on Sunday mornings, barefoot in the kitchen, making his scrambled eggs.
My fingers linger on the sleeve. The Beach Boys… This morning’s song. Jace’s song.
I set the record in the box. Some memories refuse to be thrown out.
The other boxes: everything else. Broken knickknacks, old magazines, things with no value, no memory.
After an hour, I try to rinse my sponge under the kitchen faucet. It coughs, spits air. No water. I’d forgotten.
Shit.
My water bottle’s already empty. I’ll have to ask the lodge for water jugs this afternoon. In the meantime, I make do with what I have—which isn’t much.
The dust has won. My arms are gray to the elbows, my T-shirt’s gray with dust, and I’ve sneezed more times in two hours than in a year in New York. I lean the broom against the wall and decide I need some fresh air.
The yard.
Outside, the sun’s climbed higher. I tug on my gloves, kneel in the overgrown grass, and start pulling weeds.
The earth is damp under my knees. The roots resist, then give. My gloves get stained. Sweat runs down the back of my neck. It’s primitive, thankless—and it feels incredible. Every clump pulled is a piece of yard reclaimed from neglect. My hands work and my head goes quiet.
Almost.
Because Walker Surf School is right there, and the morning sounds reach me over the fence—voices, boards, the VW bus engine. Jace must be back. The day’s starting, the first students arrive, the school comes alive.
And I’m pulling weeds.
“You’ve got a whole operation going here.”
I look up. The sun blinds me for a second.
Maya’s standing on the other side of the fence. In each hand she holds a reusable cup with the High Tide Lodge logo, printed in green on cream. She’s wearing a long-sleeve rash guard, and her smile is as bright as it was yesterday.
Jace’s girlfriend.
“Figured you could use this,” she says, holding a cup out over the fence.
The smell reaches me—the same coffee as Yumi’s.
“You didn’t have to—”
“I know. But you look like a girl who needs caffeine, no?”
I peel off a glove, take the cup. The first sip is bitter, scalding, perfect.
“Thanks.”
She rises onto her toes and takes in the yard—the pulled weeds, the trash bags, the shears stuck in the dirt.
“You’re doing all this by yourself?”
“No one else to do it.”
“You’re brave. Or crazy.”
“Both, probably.”
She laughs. An open, easy laugh that asks for nothing in return.
Then she pulls a book from under her arm and holds it out to me.
“Here. A gift. Well… a loan.”
I look at the cover. A man’s torso, water droplets on skin, and a title in gold letters: Stroke of Desire, by Dani Heart. Maya smiles.
“It’s exactly as hot as it looks.”
I flip the book over. The back cover: a swimmer, a physical therapist, rules you absolutely do not break.
“Sierra found it.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Sierra… Brooks?”
Maya nods.
Sierra. The braids, the handmade rings… The most level-headed one of the group—the one we always kind of overlooked, and who never complained about it.
“She’s the one who runs the bookstore on Main Street?”
“Tide & Tales, yeah. She opened it two years ago.”
So she’s in Coral Bay, too…
“We’ve got a book club, Thursday nights, at the bookstore. Fifteen or so of us, depends on the week. Girls’ night—guys are banned.”
Maya winks.
“Want to come? We’ll talk about this gem.”
“Thursday’s in two days…”
“Just start it. You don’t have to finish. But trust me, three chapters in, you won’t be able to put it down… Nobody knows Dani Heart yet, but Sierra says she’s about to blow up.”
I look at the book, then at Maya—her easy smile, her coffee, the school behind her.
She’s part of Jace’s world now. I’m not.
“I’ve gotta go,” Maya says. “Got a beginner lesson at nine. Bueno. Summer, you’re coming Thursday, okay? It’ll do you good.”
Without waiting for my answer, she heads back toward the school, light on her feet, her curly ponytail swinging behind her. I’m left standing in my overgrown yard, a lodge cup in one hand, a novel with a shirtless swimmer on the cover in the other.
The sun’s burned off the mist. The surf school hums. Somewhere in the yard, Maya calls out instructions to the first students. Flip barks.
I glance at the house behind me, shutters open, windows wide, breathing at last after six years.
I came to empty it. Not to fill myself with what’s around me.
I prop the book on the living room windowsill, pull my glove back on, and get back to work.