45. Summer
Summer
Irun the roller over the shutter, careful not to go past the edge.
The navy blue goes on in an even strip. The second coat takes better than the first: the paint grips the wood, no drips, no streaks.
I’ve got paint on my forearms, in the crook of my elbow, and a splatter on my right knee I haven’t bothered to wipe off.
Flip sleeps in the shade of the big cypress tree, muzzle resting on his paws.
Since this morning, I’ve sanded down the last traces of the first coat and started on the second. The sun has swung over the house.
I reload the roller, roll off the excess against the tray, and start the next strip. “Golden” by Harry Styles plays on a loop on my phone.
Footsteps crunch on the gravel. I look up.
The gate’s open. Jace just walked in. His hair still a little damp from the shower, he’s wearing long shorts and a T-shirt with a cracked orange wave across it. He must be done with his lessons. Flip wags his tail but doesn’t get up.
Jace stops a few steps away and looks at me.
I know I look like a disaster, in my stained shorts and old T-shirt, paint on my skin and sawdust in my hair. I set the roller down in the tray.
“Need a hand?” Jace asks.
“No, I’m done.”
“Come on. I want to show you something.”
He holds out his hand. I hesitate a second, then take it. His palm is warm, a little calloused. Flip gets up, stretches, and follows.
We head toward the surf school.
We walk along the small single-story building, its salt-worn wood siding, its sheet-metal roof jutting out over the boards lined up against the front wall.
Jace takes me around back, where the students don’t go: the storage corner, between racks of broken gear, torn wetsuits, cracked boards.
The shade is cool. The sound of the waves comes through muffled.
My heart speeds up. I know it’s ridiculous. But Jace is holding my hand, he’s brought me somewhere out of the way—I can’t help imagining he has something else in mind.
At the very back, Jace stops in front of a rack and nods toward a board. Sky blue, with a black stripe running the full length. The nose is intact, but near the tail, the rail is gouged by a wide, rounded bite.
I freeze.
“You kept it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He shrugs.
“No idea.”
The bite mark is wider than both my open hands. The fiberglass has yellowed around the break, like a healed wound. Six years this board has sat out behind the building.
Jace watches me closely. One corner of his mouth lifts.
“You thought I brought you back here for something else.”
It’s not a question. Heat climbs to my cheeks.
“Maybe.”
He leans toward me, brushes the back of my neck with his free hand… and he kisses me.
It’s soft, slow, different from last night’s kiss outside my bungalow—that one was edgy, loaded with too much.
I put my hand on his chest. Under my palm, his heart beats faster than his mouth lets on.
He moves in closer. I step back, laughing.
“Jace… I’m covered in sawdust.”
“If it bothers you, I’ve got a shower…”
I look down at my arms, my legs, the navy paint, the wood dust, the dried sweat.
“At this point, I’d need a pressure washer.”
He laughs and pulls me toward his trailer.
Inside, he hands me a towel, a T-shirt, and a pair of boxers. The T-shirt is old: faded gray cotton, Walker Surf School printed across it in white letters worn almost off—it dates back to his father’s time.
Jace steps out; the door shuts. I stand in the middle of the room for a moment.
I know this place—I came here yesterday, under circumstances I’d rather forget.
But today, the light is different. The late-afternoon sun comes through the window over the sink, slides across the cleared counter and the two mugs turned upside down by the coffee maker.
I take off my shorts, my T-shirt, my swimsuit. The shower is narrow. The water takes a while to heat up, then runs lukewarm, and the sawdust rinses away in brown streaks across the shower floor. The paint is more stubborn—I scrub my forearms, my knee, and the navy fades before it disappears.
I wrap the towel around myself, pick up the T-shirt… and bring it to my face.
My stomach knots. Jace’s smell… impossible to forget. For as long as we’ve known each other, I’ve always stolen his T-shirts and hoodies. I’d find an excuse every time—I’m cold, I’ve got nothing to sleep in, this one’s more comfortable. He never said anything. He just smiled.
I pull on the boxers, the waistband barely holding on my hips, then the T-shirt, which hits me mid-thigh. The white letters are cracked across my chest.
I open the door and step out, barefoot, hair wet.
Jace is sitting on the trailer step. He’s rubbing Flip’s belly, the dog stretched out at his feet. When he hears me, he turns around.
“Wow…”
I blush, the way I did at seventeen.
Without a word, we go inside and kiss. Against the door first, my hands in his hair, his on my hips. The T-shirt rides up under his fingers. Then we back toward the bed and sit side by side.
His mouth moves down my neck. I close my eyes.
I’m a fucking bet.
The line comes back. I clench my teeth and push it away. That was before. The bet was a stupid teenage thing. I’ve changed, and so has he.
His mouth slides to my collarbone. My fingers tug at the neckline of his T-shirt. The heat of his skin seeps through the cotton.
His hand goes under my T-shirt; mine settles on his hip, then moves down along his shorts, to his thigh.
His whole body stiffens. He holds his breath.
I take my hand away, rest it on his arm.
“We don’t have to,” I say softly.
We stay still for a moment, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Then he lies down and I lie against him. We keep kissing, but it’s different, softer, slower.
My hand leaves his arm and moves down to his thigh. Under my palm, the scar is uneven, wider than I imagined—a thick ridge through the fabric of his shorts.
Jace freezes again. I don’t take my hand away. I keep my palm open on his thigh, not moving, not pressing.
“I haven’t done it since the accident,” he says, his voice rough.
“You mean… since me?”
“Yeah.”
I push up on one elbow. He stares at the ceiling.
“Why?”
A bitter laugh escapes him.
“One time, a girl… she saw the scar and left.”
I don’t ask anything else. I don’t ask him to show it to me.
I lie back against him, my hand still on his thigh. He doesn’t push it away.
Our first night comes back to me. Seventeen for me, eighteen for him. I thought it meant something. The next day, I found out it was a game, that none of it was real.
For him, though, it was still his last time.
I close my eyes and curl against his shoulder. He puts an arm around me and we stay tangled together, breathing in the same rhythm.
After a while, he murmurs in my ear:
“You hungry?”
“Yes, chef.”
He gets up and opens the mini-fridge. The selection is limited: tortillas, some leftover chicken, a mushy avocado, a half-empty bottle of hot sauce.
“Fair warning,” he says, setting it all on the counter, “I’m not Luke. I can’t cook. I’m only good at one thing: surfing. And even that, not as well as I used to.”
I sit cross-legged on the bed, the Walker Surf School T-shirt pulled down over my thighs, and watch him cut the avocado with a knife that doesn’t look like it cuts much anymore. He presses too hard spreading the sauce, and the tortilla tears.
“It’s perfect,” I say.
“Wait till you see how it turns out…”
“I don’t care how it turns out.”
He doesn’t answer, but his shoulders ease. He finishes the burritos—a little overstuffed, sauce dripping—and grabs two beers from the fridge.
“Beach?” he offers.
We sit on the sand. Flip curls up against Jace. The sun drops. The sky turns orange, then pink, then a shade between mauve and gray.
The burrito isn’t good. The tortilla’s soggy, the sauce too strong, the chicken too dry. It’s the best meal I’ve had since I got to Coral Bay.
We eat in silence, sipping our beers. When I’m done, I rest my head on Jace’s shoulder. His cheek brushes my hair. The waves slide softly over the sand.
The sun touches the horizon before it disappears, and soon the first stars break through. The town lights come up in the distance, yellow pinpoints between the trees.
When the cold starts to bite at my arms, I sit up. Jace stands, brushes the sand off his shorts, and holds out his hand.
“Come on. I’ll walk you back.”
Fingers laced, we walk toward the lodge. Flip trots ahead of us, tail high. I’ve got goosebumps on my bare thighs and arms.
We’re passing Noah’s cabin when a cry rings out—high, not remotely discreet.
“Noah!”
Then a thud, another, and an unmistakable moan.
I trade a look with Jace. We crack up.
“I think his dry spell is over,” he teases.
“Sure looks like it.”
We pick up the pace. Behind us, the cabin creaks.
“They’re really not messing around…” Jace says under his breath.
I elbow him; he laughs again.
I used to love his laugh. I love his laugh. I don’t know anymore.
We reach my bungalow.
Jace stops, lets go of my hand, and takes a step back.
“Stay,” I say.
He hesitates a moment, then nods. I open the door and go in ahead of him.
We slip into bed. The sheets are cool. Jace pulls off his T-shirt and lies down behind me. He slides an arm around my waist and holds me against him. I feel his muscled chest against my back, his breath on my neck, the heat of his skin through my T-shirt.
His heart beats, slow and steady. His fingers settle on my stomach, flat, and stay there.
I’m a fucking bet.
The line is crouched in a corner of my mind. This time, I don’t fight it.
Jace’s breathing falls into rhythm with mine, or mine with his.
Maybe this can work. Maybe he’s changed.
I fall asleep in his arms.