29. Summer
Summer
After a few minutes, Flip comes barreling back, tongue lolling, paws caked with dirt. He circles my lounge chair twice, sniffs my ankles, and takes off again, claws clicking on the slats.
“Jace, get your dog,” Noah calls. “Before he takes out one of the cats.”
Jace whistles. Flip hesitates, nose pointed toward the bougainvillea where Captain bolted. Then he gives in and trots over to his owner.
Jace heads back toward the surf school, Flip at his heels. He doesn’t look at anyone.
I watch him go. He disappears around the corner of the main building.
The pool water is flat, almost white in the morning light. It smells like chlorine and the coffee Flip knocked over. I wrap both hands around the mug Harper brought me earlier.
The towel slips off my shoulders. My swimsuit is still soaked, and my hair, stiff with salt, sticks to the back of my neck. The sun warms my skin without quite chasing off the cold.
Harper comes back out of the lodge with two steaming mugs. She hands one to Sierra and keeps the other.
“Green tea. It’s all they had. The rest was fennel tea, and nobody bloody deserves that.”
Sierra takes the mug with a smile. They settle onto the lounge chair across from mine. Harper sits cross-legged. Sierra pulls her braids over one shoulder.
At the edge of the pool, Noah crouches, a pH test vial in one hand. He pulls a cigarette from his chest pocket, lights it, takes a drag, then compares the color of the liquid against the scale printed on the label.
I pull the towel tighter around me.
Breathe.
“You should call someone,” Sierra says gently.
“My dad. He’s all I’ve got.”
Then I remember my phone is sitting on the nightstand in Bungalow 17.
“I’ll go,” Sierra offers.
She sets down her mug and stands before I can protest. I watch her cross the deck, skirt the main building, and disappear toward the bungalows.
Harper takes a sip of tea. She doesn’t try to fill the silence. Good.
Sierra comes back a few minutes later, my phone in her hand.
“My dad’s in Oxford for the summer,” I explain. “Research program at the university.”
I lift the phone to my ear. It rings, then voicemail kicks in. I hang up without leaving a message.
“Will he call back?” Harper asks.
“When he sees the missed call, yeah. He doesn’t usually keep his phone on him…”
It’s not indifference. It’s just Dad. Head in the clouds, heart in the right place, phone on silent in the pocket of some jacket he isn’t wearing.
Poolside, Noah straightens up. He grabs the pool cleaner’s cord and pulls it out of the water. Cigarette wedged between his lips, he winds the cord around his arm and heads for the pool house.
“You got any brothers or sisters?” Harper asks.
“One half-sister. Elena.”
Three years since I’ve said her name out loud.
“You two on the outs?”
“No. Our only connection was my mom. When things blew up between her and me… I lost Elena too.”
Sierra turns the mug between her fingers. Her rings clink against the ceramic.
“Do you regret it?” she asks.
“Yes.”
I’ve known it for three years; it’s the first time I’ve said it.
“What’s stopping you from calling her?”
I sigh. Nothing’s really stopping me.
“She skates. My mom coaches her. Even in summer—exhibitions, training, ice seven days a week. Elena doesn’t get a break. My mom never lets up.”
I had Dad. I had part of my summers here. Not Elena. She’s never had a place where my mom didn’t exist.
“But if you’re not on the outs… it’s not too late,” Sierra says.
“I guess.”
I could send her a text. Just one. See what happens.
Noah comes back from the pool house, a skimmer net in his hand. He moves along the pool, fishes out a few dead leaves, drops them into a plastic bucket. His cigarette has gone out; he relights it without stopping.
Then he spots Sushi, the little calico, digging in a bougainvillea pot.
“Hey! Get out of there.”
Sushi lifts her head, looks at him, keeps digging.
“I said, get out of there.”
He sets down the net, steps closer. Sushi darts toward the bungalows with a piece of root between her teeth. Noah presses the dirt back down, shakes his head, and goes back to working his way around the pool.
Harper smiles, then her eyes come back to me. She takes a sip, sets the mug down on the low table.
“Oi. The guy who pulled you out of the water this morning—he looked like he wanted to kill you and save you at the same time. What’s the story with you two?”
“The last summer I came here…”
I stare at the skimmer net Noah’s sliding across the water.
“We dated.”
Harper and Sierra wait, hanging on every word.
“And it ended badly. I blocked his number,” I add, lowering my voice.
I look up. Noah’s at the far end of the pool, his back to us, leaning over the water. Far enough.
“Noah’s too,” I murmur.
Sierra raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t say anything.
“And I never came back.”
Harper nods. She doesn’t ask why.
Sierra’s gaze moves from me to Noah and back. She doesn’t push either.
My shivering eases. Harper sips her tea. Sierra closes her eyes, her face turned to the sun. Noah straightens a lounge chair, opens an umbrella, locks it in place. He takes a drag, blows out the smoke, moves to the next umbrella. The same sequence, not a wasted motion.
Back then, I knew what his days looked like.
We talked almost every day. Not just summers—all year long.
We sent voice memos—five minutes, sometimes ten—fired off at any hour.
He’d tell me about high school, some idiot teacher, a run-in with Jace.
I’d tell him about New York, skating, my mom.
We didn’t call often, but the voice memos never stopped.
Whole months of talking without seeing each other.
With Jace, it was different. Fewer texts, fewer words. A photo of the ocean, no caption. A surf video. A song sent at midnight, no comment. The year before that last summer, he wrote more often. Not walls of text. Just more. A few words at night, a photo in the morning. I watched for them.
Noah’s messages were a given. Jace’s, I counted. And then I blocked all of it.
Noah fishes out one last leaf, tosses it in the bucket.
I miss him.
I press the cold mug between my palms.