28. Summer
Summer
MONDAY
The gate creaks. I go get the wetsuit Maya lent me last night, folded over the deck railing.
I take off my sandals, my shorts, my T-shirt, and pull the wetsuit on over my swimsuit.
It’s a little tight in the shoulders, but it’ll do.
The neoprene clings to my skin. I tug the zipper up, and the smell takes me back six years. Salt, rubber, summer. Jace.
I leave my things on the deck and cross the yard.
The yellow board is where I left it last night, against the fence. I lift it and turn it over.
J + S
I run my thumb over the inscription. The black marker won’t come off anymore. It’s soaked into the fiber. I tuck the board under my arm and take the path down to the beach.
This morning, it’s empty.
The sky is pale, the air cool, the ocean gray-green and streaked with lines of swell farther out. The waves are bigger than yesterday. They break far from shore, in steady sets, with a low thud.
I spot Jace’s black silhouette out on the water. He’s at the far end of the spot, past the peak, where the waves form. He paddles, stands, disappears under the lip of a wave. Easy. Smooth.
I’ll stay close to shore.
Flip is lying on the sand, muzzle between his paws, eyes on Jace. He watches me pass. His tail thumps twice, then he sets his head back down. I walk toward the water.
The first touch is a shock.
The water is freezing—the Pacific at seven in the morning, early summer, before the sun has warmed anything. The cold climbs up through my ankles, my thighs, my stomach. I grit my teeth. I push the board out in front of me and throw myself flat onto it.
I paddle.
My arms pull, my shoulders heat up, the water races under the board. My hands find the rail, the wax, the rhythm again. Six years, and my body remembers.
A set comes in. Three waves, spaced apart. The first breaks twenty yards out. I dive under it. The board sinks, slides beneath the wave, and I come up the other side.
I let the set pass. I settle on the inside, where it’s calmer. The sky opens, pink at the edges.
J + S
Don’t think about it.
A new set forms farther out, dark humps rolling in.
The first wave passes. The second too. The third is smaller, gentler—that one, I can take.
I pivot, I paddle, the wave lifts me. I feel the drop. I plant my hands on the board, I push… and I stand.
I hold it. Knees bent, wind in my face.
Then the wave closes out. I lose my balance and jump before it can take me. I come up laughing.
I can still do this.
I climb back on the board and paddle out, farther this time, toward the peak.
J + S
Another set comes in, bigger, faster. I should wait, drop back toward the inside.
I don’t.
I pivot and paddle for the second wave.
Too late. I know it the second I push—I’m too far back, the wave has already pitched. My front foot slips. My knee hits the board.
And the lip comes down on me.
The sound disappears. The water sucks me down. The board is ripped away, the leash yanks on my ankle, and I spin—shoulder, back, stomach, I don’t know which way is which anymore.
The pressure is everywhere. On my chest, my temples, in my ears. Bubbles, foam, blackness. I swim up. I think it’s up.
My head breaks the surface. I open my mouth… and the second wave slams me down.
The leash pulls the other way. My shoulder scrapes the sand. There’s water in my throat, in my nose, and I cough—stupid reflex.
I come up, just in time to suck in a mouthful of air.
Third wave.
No breath left. No direction. I don’t know where the surface is. My arms beat at nothing. The pressure comes back, the cold, the black. And the water gets in. Through my mouth, through my nose.
I screwed up.
The fourth wave rolls me. I’m not swimming anymore. I’m not fighting anymore. Everything goes muffled, soft, slow.
I’m going to drown.
Hands close around my hips. A hard yank—and I break the surface.
Air rushes in all at once. I cough. I spit. My lungs burn.
“Hold on to the board!”
Jace.
He shoves his board against me. My fingers clamp onto the rail. I cling to it like it’s a life raft. Jace is behind me, one hand on my back, the other on the board.
“Hang on. Don’t paddle,” he orders. “I’ll push you.”
He guides me toward shore. Between the waves, through the whitewater. I’m still coughing. I spit out water. My arms are shaking.
Finally, my feet touch the bottom.
Jace pulls me by the elbow. I stumble. My knees give out in the shallow water. He catches me by the waist, sets me back on my feet, pushes me toward the sand.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he explodes, standing in front of me, his eyes too green in the morning light. “It’s rough out there today, Summer. You can’t see that?”
He throws an arm toward the ocean. I keep coughing. I can’t speak.
“You haven’t surfed in six years! You paddled out to the peak like you did it yesterday! You stood up too late. You didn’t watch the sets. You weren’t ready.”
He clenches his fists.
“Did you forget everything I taught you, or what?”
The line isn’t calculated. But even through the cold and the rising tears, I hear it.
“Everything I taught you.”
My lips tremble, and the tears come—hot, salty, mixed with the seawater dripping from my hair.
I burst into sobs. I’m shivering. I’m bent double on the wet sand, crying like a little kid.
Jace doesn’t say anything else. He crouches down.
He unclips the leash from my ankle, his fingers warm against my frozen skin. He coils it, sets it down in the sand. Then he gets an arm under me and tries to lift me.
“Come on. Up.”
“I can’t,” I rasp.
“Yes, you can. Up.”
He lifts me. Nothing tender in the way he does it. One arm under my knees, the other across my back, and I’m against his chest, soaked, frozen through, unable to protest.
His heart is beating fast—faster than mine.
His breath stirs my hair, ragged, uneven.
“Harper!” he calls over his shoulder.
I turn my head. Harper and Sierra are on the beach, a few feet from us. I didn’t hear them arrive. Harper’s eyes are wide, Sierra has a hand over her mouth.
“Take the boards back to the surf school yard,” Jace says without stopping.
Harper nods. She doesn’t ask a single question.
There’s something uneven in the way he walks. A heavier weight on one side, a hesitation on the left.
He cuts through the side entrance of the lodge, the one that opens onto the pool.
Noah is sitting on a barstool, coffee in hand, cigarette at his lips. He’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday, rumpled. His hair is a mess. He hasn’t slept, or slept too much—hard to tell. He looks up and freezes.
“Shit! What happened?”
“She got worked,” Jace says. “Four waves.”
Noah sets his coffee on the counter and stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray. He jumps to his feet, moves past Jace, and pulls over a lounge chair.
“Set her down here.”
Jace lowers me onto it and steps back. The fabric is cold against my back. My teeth are chattering.
Noah turns to Harper and Sierra, who’ve just come in behind us, out of breath.
“Sierra, a big towel—the linen room, end of the hall. Harper, some tea—the kitchenette, behind the front desk.”
They nod and disappear inside.
Jace steps back again. Arms crossed, he plants himself against the wall, a few feet from the lounge chair, and waits.
Noah crouches in front of me.
“Summer. Look at me.”
I obey.
“Did you hit your head?”
“No.”
“Is your vision blurry?”
“No.”
“Does anything hurt?”
I shake my head. My throat burns. My nose is running.
“Okay. Let’s get the wetsuit off.”
He reaches behind me for the zipper and works it down, then slides the neoprene off my shoulders, my arms. I’m too stiff to help. He pulls the rest down to my ankles and frees my feet. The air hits my wet skin and I shake harder.
Sierra comes back with a big white towel. Noah drapes it over my shoulders and rubs my back through the fabric.
I breathe. The air won’t come right. The taste of salt lingers in my throat.
“You’re gonna be fine,” Noah says. “You swallowed water and panicked. If you’re still coughing in ten minutes, we’ll figure it out.”
“I didn’t panic,” I murmur.
“You panicked,” Jace confirms.
I don’t have the energy to answer.
Harper returns with a steaming mug. She sits on the edge of the lounge chair, hands me the mug, and puts her hand on my knee. She doesn’t say anything. She’s just there.
The shivering eases. The tea is scalding and too sweet.
Sierra is sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes on me.
Noah stands, wipes his hands on his shorts, retrieves his cold coffee from the counter.
He takes a sip and grimaces, then sets it on the little table by the lounge chair and drops down beside me.
I look up at Jace, still motionless, his face closed off. He’s watching me with an expression I can’t read.
“Thanks…” I manage.
“Don’t thank me. Watch the ocean next time,” he grumbles.
He pushes off the wall, but he doesn’t leave. He moves to the edge of the pool, leans back against an umbrella pole, and folds his arms again.
Flip, who trotted behind us all the way from the beach, lies down against my thigh. His muzzle is warm through the towel. He whines twice, pushes his nose against my hand.
Then Captain crosses the deck.
Flip lifts his head. His ears prick up. The big tabby strolls between the lounge chairs, tail high, without giving him a glance.
The dog leaps up and knocks over Noah’s coffee.
“Damn it, Flip!” Noah yells.
The dog tears off after the cat and disappears behind the bougainvillea, barking.
Harper bursts out laughing. Sierra smiles. Noah stares down at his spilled coffee.
“Perfect. I had nothing planned anyway.”