61. Summer
Summer
We walk. Three blocks west, two south. Jace’s hand stays in mine. Neither of us speaks.
The air is warm, almost sticky. An Uber Eats guy brushes past us on an e-bike, a square insulated delivery bag on his back.
We pass a bodega with harsh neon, the graffitied security gates of the closed-up shops.
One storefront vanishes behind scaffolding and sheets of plywood.
Somewhere far off, an ambulance siren wails—on Houston, maybe.
My building finally comes into view—red brick, a fire escape zigzagging up six floors, a few lit windows. I dig out my keys.
“It’s not big,” I say, shoving the door open—it creaks, probably hasn’t been oiled in years.
“Want to see my trailer?” Jace says with a wink.
I let out a short laugh—my first in eight days.
The hallway smells like fried food from the Thai place downstairs and cheap lemon cleaner. The stairwell is narrow, painted a dingy beige, bare bulbs on the ceiling. A TV blares somewhere above us—a sitcom, probably.
We climb to the third floor. My right foot throbs with every step. I ignore it.
“This is it.”
I push open the apartment door. The hall is cluttered, dim. We pass the kitchen and living room and the bathroom, then three closed doors—my roommates’ rooms—before we reach mine, all the way at the back.
The room is tiny. The mattress, right on the floor, takes up almost all of it; my laptop and a fan share what’s left. On the wall, a jury-rigged shelf sags under a stack of marketing books and the internship binder, a clip-on lamp hooked to the edge. The window faces a blank brick wall.
Jace sets his backpack down, then goes to the window and looks out.
“The view’s better in Coral Bay.”
“You think?”
He turns and smiles. The corner of his mouth still tips up a little higher on the right than the left. I’d forgotten that detail—or made myself forget it.
I sit cross-legged on the mattress. I don’t have it in me to stay standing. Jace takes off his shoes and sits across from me, back against the wall, legs stretched out. Our knees almost touch.
One question’s been gnawing at me since the diner.
“How did you find me?”
“Elena.”
I think back to her call yesterday, her questions about New York, my internship, the diner. So it wasn’t a coincidence.
“I reached out to her on Instagram,” Jace says. “She was willing to help.”
I smile. He asked my sister for help—someone he barely knows, someone he knew I wasn’t close to anymore. An almost absurd lead. He followed it anyway.
“The bet…” he starts.
He clears his throat.
“A hundred bucks. Miles and me against two guys from Venice, met them on the beach the day before. We were talking surf, it got heated, and we bet we’d go out under the cliffs. At The Last Ride.”
“That’s it?” I say, barely a breath.
He holds my gaze.
“Yeah. Nothing to do with you.”
“Why at night?”
He manages a sad smile.
“To get that bullshit over with fast. And be back before you woke up.”
He’s talking about the night before, at Star Park. The fair, the whole crew, the string lights, the music. How he’d arranged for just the two of us to ride the Ferris wheel alone. The kiss at the top, when the car stopped. The question he asked right after—whether I wanted to be his girlfriend.
“Noah was in the car below us,” Jace says. “He saw us.”
“He never said anything…”
“No. That night, in your room—it wasn’t a bet, Summer. There was never a bet about you.”
He already said it at the diner, two hours ago. Here, I really hear it.
“I was in love with you,” he adds, quieter. “Since the summer before. Maybe even earlier. Except…”
He stops, runs a hand over the back of his neck, then goes on.
“You were aiming for Columbia. I didn’t even know if I’d finish high school. Noah was the brains of the family. I just wanted to surf. That was it. I couldn’t see myself telling you, ‘Hey, I’ve got nothing to offer you, but I’m in love with you.’”
“Jace…”
“I figured it was better to say nothing. And then that night happened. The next morning, I made the dumbest bet of my life. And after that…”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
“And Noah?”
“He was in love with you too. Before I was, I think.”
I knew that. Hearing it now, from Jace, takes me back to the run with Noah, to what he let slip at the edge of the cliffs.
I had a crush on you. Had it bad, actually.
“Noah didn’t make up that there was a bet,” Jace says. “He made up what the bet was about. He knew we’d spent the night together. He was jealous.”
I close my eyes for a second.
“Call him,” Jace adds. “It’s the truth, I swear. He’ll tell you.”
“No need. I believe you.”
I burst into tears. Jace leans in and wipes my cheeks with his thumbs, one, then the other. Then he pulls me against him and holds me.
When I’ve calmed down a little, he takes my right wrist gently and runs a finger over the braided bracelet.
“I bought it at the fair the summer before,” he says. “A girl was making bracelets at a booth near the carousel. I went back and forth for an hour.”
“Why?” I say, sniffling.
“I was scared you’d think it was lame. Or worse—that you’d figure out what it meant and turn me down. The morning of the bet… I left it on my pillow.”
“I found it under the bed the other day.”
I cry without a sound. Jace sets my right foot on his thigh, his thumbs pressing into the arch. I smother a sigh.
“And now?” I finally say.
Jace’s hands go still.
“Come back to Coral Bay with me.”
I shake my head right away.
“I can’t.”
His face darkens. I take a long breath.
“Jace… I did two years at Columbia with no grants, no scholarship money. I’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in student loans.
I got a six-month grace period after I graduated, and I’ve been paying them back for eight months now.
The internship barely covers my rent. The diner is what puts food on the table. With tips, I just about get by.”
I nod at the room—the hundred square feet, the mattress on the floor, the bare walls.
“This is my life. Since I left college.”
He nods, silent.
“If I leave the internship now, I’ll have nothing to show on my résumé except that I quit. And in this industry, that can burn you. I need to at least finish it.”
His thumbs start working my foot again.
“I get it,” he murmurs.
He’s not blaming me for anything. He’s just resigned. That’s the part that hurts most.
“I’ve got six months left,” I say. “But after that… I could look for a job in San Francisco. In marketing, or digital. It’ll take a little time—I don’t have much experience yet—but it’s doable. And in this field, one or two remote days a week, that’s pretty standard now, so…”
I stop. It feels like I just set off a bomb between us.
“We’d be close,” he says, and his smile comes back. “Honestly, that’d be amazing.”
Jace didn’t come all this way to make me give up everything I’ve built. He’s not asking me to choose between him and my plans. He crossed the country to tell me he loves me. Close, for him, is already huge.
My eyes start to burn again.
This time, I have no doubt left. He meant it. In my bedroom six years ago, in his trailer two weeks ago, and here, now.
He reaches for his backpack, pulls out the little cherry-red board, and sets it on my knees.
“You put it in the ‘Help yourself’ boxes. I grabbed it.”
I turn the board over. Future and Olympic are crossed out in marker. Only Champion is left.
I run my fingers over the crossed-out words.
“You’ve always been my champion,” he says. “Barefoot in the sand or on skates.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. Carefully, I set the board down beside the mattress.
Jace digs into his bag again and pulls out a book.
“Here. From Sierra.”
I recognize the cover—the M/M the book club picked. I raise an eyebrow—a bookmark sticks out a third of the way in.
“You started reading it?”
“A few chapters on the plane. To pass the time.”
“And?”
Jace makes a face.
“Wasn’t disappointed.”
I laugh—really laugh, this time. He smiles and sets the book down next to the board.
I climb into his lap and my lips find his.
Not like in the trailer. Not like at seventeen, in the Ferris wheel car or on the yellow board. The kiss is slow, sure. This time, I’m the one choosing.
My hands find the back of his neck, lose themselves in his hair, slide back down over his shoulders and under his T-shirt. His fingers move up my thighs. I hold my breath.
He pulls back a little, rests his forehead against mine.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because if you’d rather we—”
“Jace. Shut up.”
He smiles and kisses me. The kiss goes deeper.
The mattress is too narrow for two, but it doesn’t matter at all. Our clothes come off one by one. I reach for my toiletry bag at the foot of the shelf and take out a condom.
Then there’s nothing but his skin against mine, his mouth on my neck, his hands on my hips. When my fingers brush over his scar, he flinches, but his self-consciousness fades fast. I let my hands slide over that thigh I already know by heart.
He puts his hand on the back of my neck like he never wants to let me go again.
This time, the little voice that kept telling me I was only a bet finally goes quiet.
When I fall asleep, later, his hand is still in my hair.
I wake in the middle of the night.
A siren wails somewhere far off, then a car horn.
New York is never really quiet, and the night is never really dark.
City light filters through the window, orange and shifting.
Jace sleeps on his stomach, head turned toward me, one arm draped around my waist. His breathing is slow, deep.
Like he’s sleeping for the first time in days.
I watch him. He’s here, in my too-small bed, twenty-five hundred miles from Coral Bay.
My wrist rests in the small of his back. The braided bracelet—blue, turquoise, and white—lies right against his skin.
I close my eyes.
Six months.