37. Summer
Summer
THURSDAY
Iwalk into the back room of Tide I grab a slice as it goes by. The banana bread is warm, dense, the pecans crunching between my teeth. Really good.
Sierra taps the notebook in her lap; her rings click against the stiff cover. She waits for everyone to settle in. I sit down between Maya and Harper, my back against the wall. There are two or three more women than last week, including a grandmother in a floral dress who brought cookies.
It’s warm, loud—too perfect.
“I’ll make tea,” I say. “Anyone want some?”
A few hands go up. Maya asks for an Earl Grey if I can find one.
The kitchenette is tiny. A counter, a sink, a kettle, two shelves full of mismatched mugs. I step up to the faucet to fill the kettle… and end up with wet feet.
I look down.
Water is spreading across the floor, out from under the cabinet. A puddle widening around my sandals.
“Sierra? I think we have a problem…”
Maya leans over, takes in the damage.
“?Ay, no!”
The water isn’t gushing, but it won’t stop, and the kitchenette floor is already soaked. Sierra races off for mops. Chiara grabs a bucket. Ruby doesn’t move from her chair, but she points under the sink.
“It’s the fitting. You can see it from here.”
“Great, Ruby. And what do we do with that information?” Sierra says, a mop in her hand.
“We call a plumber.”
“At this hour?”
Everyone turns to Miles, who throws up his hands.
“I’m a bartender! Marine biologist, at a stretch. Not a plumber.”
“You can at least help bail,” I shoot back.
“That I can do.”
He grabs a dish towel. Chiara mops up with paper towels, Maya and I with mops.
Sierra watches the puddle spread, worried.
“We need to shut off the water,” I say. “Where’s the valve?”
“No idea…” she sighs.
Chiara’s paper towels are useless. The mops are barely better. We wring them out over the bucket again and again, but it keeps getting worse.
“Call Noah,” I say. “He’ll know what to do.”
Sierra’s fingers tighten on the mop.
“Are you two fighting?” Chiara asks, surprised.
Sierra shakes her head.
“No, it’s not that. But we don’t really talk anymore.”
“I don’t think Noah really talks to anyone anymore,” I say gently.
“Call him,” Ruby says from her chair. “The water doesn’t care about your feelings.”
Sierra picks up her phone. Her finger hovers over the screen. Finally she makes the call and puts it on speaker. After four rings, Noah’s gruff voice comes through.
“Yeah?”
Sierra clears her throat.
“Noah, sorry to bother you, but… there’s a leak at the bookstore, under the sink. It’s coming out pretty fast.”
Silence on the other end.
“On my way,” Noah finally says, then hangs up.
Sierra slips the phone into her pocket, not convinced he’ll actually come.
We keep mopping. Maya wrings out a mop in the bucket. Miles has rolled up his sleeves and holds his dish towel with a seriousness that’s unlike him.
Ten minutes pass.
The bookstore door opens.
Noah comes in wearing stained coveralls and olive-green Crocs. A toolbox in one hand, an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear.
He crosses the bookstore without a word, sets the toolbox on the kitchenette counter, then kneels in the water in front of the sink.
“It’s the fitting,” he says.
He tightens it. The water keeps leaking.
“Yeah… no. The seal’s shot.”
He reaches under the sink, feels around behind the trap, and turns off a little valve none of us had spotted. Then he digs through his toolbox, pulls out a wrench and two or three tools I can’t identify, and leans in under the cabinet.
“Give me five minutes.”
Most of the women have sat back down. Maya and I gather up the soaked mops and towels. Arms crossed, Sierra stays standing by the kitchenette, watching Noah work without a word.
Harper, who hasn’t moved from her cushion, watches Noah closely. Her gaze slides over him, lingers on his shoulders, his back, a little too low to be innocent.
Noah doesn’t notice. Kneeling in front of the cabinet, wrench in hand, he works fast, his movements practiced. His hair falls over his forehead.
I smile. Noah’s put on weight, smokes too much, wears Crocs—and yet Harper can’t take her eyes off him.
Sierra returns to her spot at the center of the circle.
“Okay. While Noah saves my bookstore…”
She taps her notebook. The group refocuses.
“I collected your suggestions this week. Three titles for next month’s book club. First option: a medical romance. Second option: a sports romance about figure skating. Third option: an M/M.”
“The M/M!” Miles cries.
Everyone laughs. Ruby raises her flask.
“Same here.”
“Let’s do a show of hands,” Sierra says with a smile.
She picks up her tablet, scrolls through the three covers, and sums up each story in a few words—just enough to make you want it.
“Who’s for the medical romance?”
A few hands go up, including Chiara’s.
“Who’s for the sports romance?”
Three hands. The cookie grandma hesitates.
“And the M/M?”
Miles, Ruby, Harper, Maya, and three or four others.
“Summer?” Sierra prompts.
I haven’t raised my hand.
“I don’t think I’ll still be here in two weeks.”
I hope I won’t still be here.
The thought rings hollow, even in my own head.
Harper nudges me with her elbow.
“So? Me neither. Just vote, who cares!”
“Okay. Anything but the skating one for me.”
Harper frowns.
“You used to be a pro skater, yeah? Maya mentioned it.”
“Championships, the Olympics, Team USA—yeah.”
“So what was it like? Because from the outside it looks…”
“Glamorous?”
“I was thinking more ‘brutal.’”
I nod. Harper’s an athlete. She gets it.
“It’s getting up at four thirty to be on the ice by five. Technique, programs, off-ice sessions, back to back. College classes crammed between practices. Homework on planes. And starting over the next day.”
I look down and go on.
“It’s Christmas at the rink. Vacations that don’t exist. Ankles that swell, a back that gives out… and you keep going, because the next competition is in three weeks and you’re not allowed to be tired.”
The side conversations die down. I feel everyone’s eyes on me.
“And even when you’re off the ice, you’re not free. You eat what you’re told. You sleep when you’re told. Your body’s a tool. And when the tool hurts, you keep quiet.”
Ruby unscrews her flask, takes a sip, says nothing.
“Your coach was your mom, right?” Sierra asks softly.
“My manager too. The one who decided everything.”
“That’s… a lot for one person,” Maya says.
“My parents divorced when I was four. My dad’s a literature professor. Gentle, loving… but always buried in his books. So my mom took over. She saw I had talent. She built my whole life around skating.”
I look at my hands. These fingers that laced skates, took the falls, hundreds of hours of it.
“All year, I did what she wanted. The schedules, the competitions, the diets, the extra coaches. And in exchange… I got Coral Bay. The deal was simple: ‘If you want to come back next summer, you do what I say.’”
Chiara winces.
“And it worked,” I say. “Because Coral Bay was the only place I had friends. The only place where no one asked me to jump, to spin, to weigh in, to perform. When I was little, I spent two months here, at my grandparents’.
When skating got more serious, a month. Then three weeks.
The last year, I got two weeks. And I had to leave a few days before the end. ”
It was the only place I ever felt at home in my whole life.
No one in the circle moves. The only sound is Noah’s wrench.
“You lived to come here,” Sierra says, her brown eyes locked on mine.
It’s not a question.
“Yes. All year long.”
“And that’s where you learned to surf,” Harper guesses.
I smile. I remember the burning sand under my bare feet, the smell of salt air and sunscreen.
“I was five. It was my first summer here. My grandmother had let me play in the yard, and I slipped away. I ran all the way to the beach.”
The creak of the wooden gate. The path through the dry grass. The beach, endless.
“And I saw two boys in the water. The younger one, four, on a foam board. More floating than surfing. The other, six, already on a real board. And their father watching, standing in the water up to his thighs.”
Chiara sets down her piece of banana bread and forgets to pick it back up.
“Jace and Noah,” Sierra murmurs.
I nod.
Jace had smiled at me. A kid’s grin, teeth a little too big for his face, hair soaked, nose peeling. He’d swum to the edge, grabbed a little foam board lying in the sand, and held it out to me.
“Their father, Tom, came over. He asked if I wanted to learn. I said yes.”
The cold water on my ankles. The fear. The joy behind the fear.
“My grandmother came running out. She’d lost me ten minutes earlier, and she’d searched the yard, the house, the garage.”
Ruby bursts out laughing.
“Tom knew my grandparents,” I say. “He told her, ‘She’s with me, Helen. I’ll bring her back after the lesson.’”
Grandma wasn’t reassured, but she said yes because she trusted Tom Walker.
“I was terrified of falling off the board. I kept saying I was going to sink. And Tom told me…”
I stop. It’s like I can hear his voice again.
“‘If you fall, we’ll get you. Nobody drowns here.’ He’d pointed at the boys. ‘And those two—they’re ready to dive in.’”
And Jace had raised his hand, like he was saying, ‘Yeah. I’ll dive in.’ And I believed him.
“It was the start of everything,” I say. “Coral Bay, surfing, the summers here.”
Jace.
“She used to train in front of the house,” Noah says.
I jump and turn around. I’d forgotten he was listening. He’s still kneeling in front of the sink, wrench in hand.
“On the porch or in the yard,” he goes on. “I filmed her. Her mom wanted proof. She didn’t mess around.”
Nobody says anything. Sierra watches Noah with an expression I can’t read.
Noah turns and meets my eyes. Does he remember me at fourteen, running drills in my grandparents’ yard? The phone in his hand? The videos he sent my mother so she could check I wasn’t wasting my vacation?
He came every day, sat on the porch steps, and filmed. I thought it was friendship. It was more than that.
“Your framing was terrible, Noah,” I say, moved despite myself.
“Never had a complaint.”
He gives a half-smile, then turns to the sink and gets back to work.
Ruby pulls a Tupperware out of her bag.
“Brownie, anyone?”
Miles raises his hand—just as fast as last week. Ruby cuts, hands them out. Chiara waves it off.
Miles leans toward me.
“Can you drive us back?”
“Yes, Miles,” I say, laughing.
“Perfect,” he says, taking a piece. “Then the night can begin.”
Five minutes later, Noah reopens the little valve, waits a few seconds, then straightens up. He wipes his hands on his coveralls, puts away the wrench, closes the toolbox.
“We’re good. It’s fixed.”
“Thanks, Noah,” Sierra says.
She steps in to hug him, but Noah backs away a step. She doesn’t push it. He digs for his lighter in his pocket, grabs his toolbox, and tucks it under his arm.
“You coming tomorrow?” Sierra asks. “Game night at the lodge?”
“Yeah. I’ll be scrubbing the crappers.”
He crosses the back room, passes us without a word. Harper follows him with her eyes. He doesn’t look back. The bookstore door closes behind him.
Book club picks back up. The voices rise.
“Okay, the M/M wins,” Sierra announces. “I’ll order copies this week. They’ll be on the shelf by Monday.”
“I’ll get it on Kindle,” Harper says.
“You’re breaking my heart,” Sierra says, a hand on her chest.
“I fly back to Australia in ten days, Sierra. Not gonna lug an extra book home.”
“You don’t have to go back…”
Ruby tips a splash from her flask into the cookie grandma’s mug, and the old woman barely protests.
I look at the sink. The floor’s still damp, but the water’s stopped running.
Noah came. He fixed it, and he left.
“Nobody drowns here.”