50. Summer
Summer
THURSDAY
The bus is parked crooked by the board rack, engine hatch open. Jace is crouched behind it, hands buried in the engine. He’s wearing a T-shirt that was white this morning. Now it’s dirty gray, streaked with grease.
“How much more is this crap gonna cost me?” he says through gritted teeth.
He straightens, steps back, wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist. A dark smear clings above his eyebrow.
Flip’s lying in the shade of the van, muzzle between his paws, ears down.
I walk over. The sun beats down on the yard, on the rows of boards. The smell of gas is acrid, mixed with neoprene.
Jace looks up at me. Right away, his face lights up. Not a big smile—he’s too wiped out for that. But his shoulders drop and the crease between his eyebrows smooths out.
“I needed to see you right now,” he breathes. “I grabbed poke bowls from Luke’s this morning. They’re in the cooler.”
He nods toward the little blue cooler sitting in the shade of the building. He grabs a rag wedged in the back pocket of his shorts and wipes his hands. The grease doesn’t come off. It just smears.
He grunts, tosses the rag onto the rear bumper, and heads for the hose on the wall. He picks up the bar of black soap and scrubs his palms together under the stream. Gray water runs onto the sand. He comes back shaking water from his hands, then wipes them on his shorts.
We settle onto the wooden bench, under the tin roof. Jace opens the cooler, pulls out his water bottle, then the two paper bowls. Salmon, avocado, sushi rice, radish, edamame. He hands me a pair of chopsticks and a bottle of jasmine tea. Caught off guard, I look up at him.
I drank it all the time when we were teenagers. He didn’t forget.
I clear my throat.
“What’s wrong with the van?”
“No idea. It’s been hard to start for two days. This morning it stalled three times in a row. And it reeks of gas when the engine’s running. Luke’s coming by—I called him.”
He digs his chopsticks into the bowl, stirs the rice.
“Is it bad?”
“No clue. Really not the time,” he sighs.
I don’t answer. Between the PT bills, the school barely breaking even, the gear getting old, and Avery on the circuit, there’s no cushion. You don’t replace an old VW bus for three hundred bucks.
We eat in silence. The wind carries sand up from the beach. Flip gets up, comes over and rests his muzzle on Jace’s thigh, sniffs the poke bowl with pointed interest.
“No,” Jace says without looking at him.
Flip sighs and lies back down.
“I finished the yard,” I tell him.
“All of it?” Jace glances up.
“The hedges, the gate, the back steps. I’ve still got the rental contracts to finalize, a couple of admin things, and after that, I can go home.”
Home. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.
“Home?” he repeats.
“New York, yeah. The yard was the last big job. Once the contracts are signed, I can handle the rest remotely.”
Jace sets his bowl on the bench. His hands are still black with grease in the creases of his knuckles.
“What about us?”
He stiffens. The words slipped out.
I look away. The school’s yard is empty—Maya and Kai went to the lodge for lunch. A gull’s perched at the far end of the building’s roof.
“Jace… we need to talk about some things first.”
“About what?”
I take a long breath.
“The bet.”
His jaw tightens.
“Summer… we already talked about this.”
“No. We acted like it was settled. That’s not the same thing.”
He rubs at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. The grease leaves two gray smudges beneath them.
“Can’t we just… move on?”
His voice is tired, a little clipped. He’s already on edge because of the van. And here I am, piling on.
But I have to.
“No,” I say. “We can’t.”
He doesn’t answer. He stares at the bus, the open hatch, the guts of the engine. His face says it all: he doesn’t get why I’m bringing this back up.
A screech of tires makes me jump. A white truck pulls up next to the bus. Luke climbs out, slams the door, and comes toward us, a canvas bag over his shoulder.
He smiles at me, leans in, and pulls me against him for a second. His curls smell like basil and coffee.
“You okay?”
He raises an eyebrow. His eyes go back and forth between Jace and me.
“Yeah, just tired.”
Luke lets it go. He sets his bag down and turns to Jace.
“Okay. Show me the beast.”
Jace stands. They head to the back of the bus. Luke crouches, sticks his head into the engine compartment.
“So what’s the problem?”
“It stalls on startup. Three times this morning. And the engine coughs when it’s cold. Reeks of gas even when it’s not running.”
Luke grabs a flashlight from his bag, shines it on the open engine. He runs a finger along a line, pinches it, checks his hand.
“Your fuel line’s leaking.”
He wipes his fingers on his shorts, leans in further, checks something else.
“And the fuel pump’s starting to go.”
He straightens, brushes off his knees.
“You’re lucky it gave out here and not on the highway.”
Jace closes his eyes for a second, opens them again.
“How much?”
“The line’s no big deal, but don’t put it off. I’ve got one in the truck—I’ll swap it right now. The pump, you’ll have to order the part. For a bus like this, you can find one online, sixty, eighty bucks. Don’t worry about it, I’ll handle it. I’ll put it in this weekend.”
Jace exhales, caught between relief and frustration.
“Every time you fix this rolling piece of junk, I wonder why you never opened your own shop.”
Luke shrugs. His gold chain bounces against his chest.
“I would’ve liked to.”
He leans back toward the engine, starts unscrewing something.
“But somebody’s got to keep the Market running. That store is my parents’ whole life. They still come in to help out, but they’re getting old. My mom’s back hurts. My dad’s tired. And Chiara leaves for UC Santa Cruz in the fall.”
“That’s good for her,” Jace says.
“Yeah. It’s great.”
His voice says otherwise. Not bitterness—resignation. Luke isn’t complaining, he’s just stating it: the Market is on him.
“Meanwhile,” Luke adds, tugging on a blackened line, “you run your cars into the ground and I’m the one who fixes them.”
“That’s because you’re the only one who knows what to do,” Jace says.
“It’s because I can’t say no. Cazzo.”
The line comes loose in his fingers. A few drops of gas drip onto the sand. Luke wipes his hands with a rag, inspects the part, and tosses it in his bag.
I stand, gather the empty bowls, stack them.
“Okay, I should get back to it. I’ve got to finalize the rental contracts.”
Jace comes back over to me.
“Summer… what you wanted to tell me, let’s talk about it tonight, okay? Let me take you to dinner.”
“I can’t. I’ve got book club.”
“Okay. After, then?”
I nod. He holds my gaze for a moment, then goes back to the bus and crouches down next to Luke.
I walk off. Flip hesitates, gets up, follows me a few steps, then turns around and goes back to lie down in the shade of the van.
Behind me, a wrench knocks against metal. Luke says something I can’t make out. Jace answers.
I keep walking toward the house without looking back.