49. Summer
Summer
WEDNESDAY
Iopen my eyes. Light slants through the blinds, a little milky. The ceiling is low, curved at the edges. The trailer smells like wax, eucalyptus... and Jace.
It all rushes back—the scar, his hands, the “you okay?” murmured against my ear, his thumb drawing slow circles on my hip until he fell asleep.
I turn my head.
The bed is empty. The sheet is rumpled on his side, the pillow still dented, but Jace is gone.
My stomach clenches—a sharp cramp that yanks me out of the fog of waking.
He’s gone. It’s happening again.
The last time, I was seventeen. We’d made love, I’d slept against him, and in the morning the bed was cold.
I’m a fucking bet.
The thought comes back too hard—not the faint echo of last night, but the original version, the one that won’t let me breathe.
I push the sheet back. My shorts and T-shirt are balled up at the foot of the bed, next to Jace’s too-big sweatshirt. Hands shaking, I pull them on, then rush out of the trailer barefoot.
Flip is waiting in front of the little deck, tongue lolling, covered in sand. He spots me right away and bolts for the steps, tail wagging, eyes wild.
“Flip, no.”
He stops dead, spins around, and trots back to Jace.
Jace is crouched next to the food bowl, a huge bag of kibble wedged under one arm. Bare-chested, he’s wearing tight boxer briefs and some kind of black sleeve around his left thigh. His hair is a mess.
“Easy, big guy. You’ll get your breakfast.”
He pours the kibble. Flip shoves his snout into the bowl with an obscene noise.
Jace catches my eye and his face lights up. He smiles at me; the cramp vanishes all at once.
I’m being ridiculous. He didn’t leave. He was feeding his dog.
This time it’s real.
“Sleep okay?” he asks, getting to his feet.
“Yeah.”
My voice is a little hoarse. I don’t tell him about the panic when I saw the empty bed. Should I?
I follow him into the trailer. He turns on the coffee maker. I sit down on the bed, feet tucked under me, and watch him work. He gets out two mugs, sliced bread he sticks in the toaster, a jar of peanut butter.
“What do you want to do?” he asks, spreading peanut butter.
I want to stay on this bed. I need to get out of here. I’m torn between the two.
I take the mug he holds out.
“I’d like to go for a run with Noah, if he’s free.”
I take a sip. The coffee is strong, almost bitter, but good.
“Okay.”
No comment. No pointed look. No question.
“See you later, then,” he says. “If you want, I can help you after my lessons.”
“Help me...?”
“The yard. You’ve got what, three days of work left?”
I smile.
“About that.”
“I’ll come by at the end of the day.”
He bites into his toast, standing against the counter. There’s a little peanut butter at the corner of his mouth, and I hate what it does to me.
Morning suits him—the faint shadows under his eyes, the hair every which way, before the students, before the instructor smile.
I finish my mug. We don’t talk much. That’s fine with me.
The rest of the day goes by fast.
The inside of the house is done. The walls are repainted, the floors sanded, the kitchen up and running. I’ve cleared out the garage, tossed what needed tossing, kept what mattered. Nothing spectacular—it’s a rental, not a model home—but it’s solid, clean, livable.
I said yes to the roommate setup. With three bedrooms rented, the math holds up: rent the others can afford, and enough coming in to really keep me afloat. And the idea of seeing my grandparents’ house lived in by people I know appeals to me more than I’d have admitted a few days ago.
That leaves the yard. Three days, maybe less, if Jace keeps his promise to come help at the end of the day.
Midafternoon, I decide to tackle the hole in the fence on the beach side. A rotted post, the sagging wire mesh to pull taut and reattach. I set the toolbox down in the grass, grab gloves and a pair of wire cutters. I crouch to size up the damage, and I look up.
On the beach, in front of the surf school, Jace is teaching a group.
They’re little—six, seven years old, I’d guess.
Wetsuits too big for them, foam boards in the sand, faces focused like their lives depend on it.
Jace kneels in front of a blond boy. He holds the boy’s arms, shows him the stance, repeats the motion.
The kid tries and falls. Jace gets him back up, laughs with him, shows him again.
Farther out in the water, Kai and Maya have another group—teenagers, more independent. Kai is calm, Maya is all gestures. But it’s Jace I’m watching.
He notices a girl who’s afraid to lie down on the board. He goes over to her, crouches, talks to her, waits. He doesn’t push her, doesn’t force her. After a moment, she lies down, and he puts a hand on her back to steady her.
He’s naturally patient. Like his father.
The same way of getting down to the kids’ level, the same gentleness when they failed for the tenth time, the same laugh. I was nine when he died, but I remember his lessons: no one yelled, no one counted mistakes.
Except Tom would never have bet on a girl’s body.
My fingers tighten on the cutters.
Tom and Maggie. I know their story by heart. All of Coral Bay knows it. People tell it around campfires, the old-timers trot it out after one drink too many, and at the Walkers’, it came up often at the table.
Tom, the reigning world champion, met Maggie at a surf competition in Australia.
Love at first sight—for him. Maggie wasn’t convinced, but she eventually agreed to dinner.
Then they each went their separate ways.
She told him it was better that way: she was Australian, he was American, she was twenty-five with a career she couldn’t afford to wreck.
Tom had gotten her number, though, and they started writing to each other. A few months later, another competition, a night together. Maggie made him promise they’d never see each other again. But they called every day.
At the WSL final in Los Angeles, Tom won. Maggie passed out during her heat and ended up unconscious in the water. Tom went with her to the hospital, passing himself off as her boyfriend. The doctors told them she was pregnant. He had to be the father.
He convinced her to come back to Coral Bay with him, and he married her.
He ended his career at thirty and promised to help her get back to the top after the baby was born—Jace.
He kept his word. Twice, even, because Noah came along two years later.
Maggie had a strong finish to her career.
They had eleven years together, then Tom died of colon cancer, a little more than a year after the diagnosis.
That’s a love story. Not perfect, not simple, but real. He chose to be with the woman he loved, he put their story ahead of the last stretch of his career, he kept his promise. It’s the start of a romance, at least. Because a romance ends well. Their story ended in a hospital bed.
My story doesn’t look like that.
My story is a boy who bet a hundred dollars he’d sleep with me, a night I believed in, an empty bed in the morning, and six years of silence. And now he looks at me the way he used to—and I don’t know if I can believe it, or if it’s just the grown-up version of the same trap.
On the sand, one of the kids jumps into Jace’s arms, and he catches him, lifts him, tickles him. The kid shrieks with laughter. Jace laughs too—a real laugh, head thrown back.
I look away.
Maybe it’s a love story.
I grip a piece of wire with the cutters and twist.
Or maybe not.