50. Summer
Summer
The apartment is exactly as I left it. Enormous and immaculate and utterly still.
Void of life.
Surfaces have been dusted and wiped, the space air-conditioned, and everything in its rightful place, but it doesn’t feel lived in.
I drop my keys on the entryway table and roll my suitcase through the spacious foyer, the wheels humming against the polished marble floors.
I make it to the kitchen and stop.
It’s all steel and stone and fancy German appliances that cost more than most people’s cars. This kitchen was even photographed for Home and Architecture magazine—the dream kitchen.
I plant my palms against the cool island top and run my hands over the dark veining in the stone and find myself thinking about limestone. About brass-polished faucets and a kitchen that smells like freshly brewed coffee, Bolognese sauce, and burnt toast.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Stop it, Summer.
I cross to the window and crack it open, peering out over the city. It’s an endless blanket of lights and glass with skyscrapers reaching into the midnight sky. The air that floats in is thick with horns and voices and the noise of a city that never sleeps.
I stand and listen, aching for the sound of seagulls and wind through the leaves.
I shake my head and back away.
Addie trails in behind me with her phone in her hand. “Sorted the driver.” She glances around the apartment. “Do you want me to have someone unpack that?” She nods at my suitcase.
I look down at it. “I can unpack my own suitcase.”
She raises both hands. “Just thought I’d ask. You seem … tired.”
She discards her own bags and heads over to the wine fridge—yes, I have a built-in wine fridge—and pulls out one of my finest Chardonnays. Then she grabs two long-stemmed glasses from the cabinet above the sink.
“Thirsty?” she asks.
“Fill it to the brim.”
A crease forms between her brows. “You okay?”
“I’m fine—”
“Sit down,” she says.
“Addie—”
“Sit. Down.”
I do.
She sets the glasses on the counter and looks at me.
I perch on one of the island barstools and watch her uncork the bottle and pour.
She slides a glass across to me and leans on her elbows on the other side of the island. Her hand snakes out, taking hold of mine. She squeezes gently three times. We’re okay. “Talk to me,” she says.
I sigh. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Bullshit. Yes, you do.” She lifts her glass in cheers. “Lay it on me.”
I twist my lips to the side, fishing for the right words. “I think …” I trail off.
Her eyebrows lift. “Well? You think what?”
“I don’t want to be here.”
Addie nods slowly, as if she was expecting it. “Where would you like to be?”
My lips part. I’m about to respond when a knock sounds on the front door.
Addie straightens. “Who’s that?”
I shrug. “No idea.”
“Did we get all the bags?” She cranes her neck, double-checking our luggage when another knock sounds.
I wave her off. “I’ll get it.” I point to her glass. “Finish your drink.”
She slips onto a stool, snatching her drink and taking a sip. “If you insist.”
My sneakers squeak against the floor as I walk to the door and open it.
“Summer, lovey! How are you?” My neighbor, Marlowe, pulls me in for a tight one-armed hug, and my shoulders involuntarily tense at the contact.
She draws back like she’s read me immediately—which she has. Marlowe misses nothing. She might be wild, but she’s switched on.
“Sorry,” I say, my cheeks heating. “I just … I wasn’t expecting the hug.” I attempt a laugh, but it comes out hollow.
She flicks her hand. “No worries at all, honey. Two years on the road will do that to a person. I once spent six months on a yacht in the Mediterranean with a prince. I came back unable to be touched for a fortnight. My, my, I had my work cut out for me.” She pauses.
“Different circumstances, of course, but the principle stands.”
Marlowe lives across the hall—we’re the only two on the top floor, which gives us a neighbors-by-default intimacy I’ve always enjoyed.
She’s in her late sixties but looks ageless.
She always dresses fabulously. Tonight she’s wearing a floor-length silk robe in a shade of emerald with feathers drifting around her wrists and ankles.
Her hair is enormous and platinum blond, and her glasses are thick-rimmed and tortoiseshell.
Around her neck she wears three separate strings of pearls.
And on her feet—fur slippers. One says Fuck, the other says You.
She is, without question, the most spectacular woman I’ve ever encountered in my thirty years on this earth.
She’s also—very awkwardly—holding a battered cardboard box against one hip.
“It’s lovely to see you,” I say, stepping back to let her in. “You look amazing, as always.”
“Oh, this old thing.” She smooths her free hand down the feathered hem.
“Now. How was the tour? I caught you on Entertainment Tonight. You looked stunning, by the way. Whoever does your hair deserves a raise. I even downloaded that app. The one where the young kids apply makeup and bitch about millennials.”
“TikTok?” I guess.
She clicks her fingers. “That’s the one! Couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but there was a lovely young man doing something extraordinary with highlighter and tarot cards. I watched it seventeen times.” She tuts to herself. “Seventeen.”
“Marlowe.” I nod at the box. “What’s that?”
“Oh!” she says, as if she forgot she was holding it.
“Yes. Right. This.” She shoves it into my arms, shaking out her hand with a little grunt of relief.
“It arrived about a week after you left, apparently delivered to my door instead of yours—you know what the boys downstairs are like, bless them. Couldn’t drive their fingers up their own asses.
” She taps the label on the side. “Lost in transit by the looks of it. Seems like it had quite the journey from California before it landed with me.”
My head snaps up. “Did you say California?”
She adjusts her glasses. “I believe so. Oh God. I better not be going blind too.”
I look down at the box in my arms and spot my name on the label.
Summer Hayes. Care of a solicitor’s address in Ocean Grove, California.
The temperature plummets and my knees threaten to buckle.
Marlowe’s eyebrows draw together. “Summer, love. Are you all right?”
I blink. “Yeah. Thanks for bringing it over.”
“Summer?” Her voice gentles. “You’ve gone a funny color. It really doesn’t suit you.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
Fine.
“Well, all right, then. I’ll leave you to your evening. Good to see you again, pet.”
I nod. “Sure … you too.”
She grins widely and wickedly before turning in her Fuck You slippers and shuffling back across the hallway.
I stand in the doorway, frozen.
“Sum?” Addie appears beside me, booze in hand. “What did Marlowe want?” She flicks her gaze to the box. “What’s that?”
I look at her. “It’s from Ocean Grove.”
Confusion flashes across her face. “Did you order something?”
I shake my head no and spin on my heel to carry it to the kitchen, depositing it on the bench. Then, I locate the scissors, hands shaking, and cut the tape. Addie watches me as if I’m about to perform a magic trick.
Inside, wrapped in brown paper and tied with kitchen twine, is a stack of notebooks. Different sizes and different colors.
I lift out the top one, flipping it over in my hand. It’s worn and soft-covered and battered at the edges.
The cover is plain navy. I open it to the first page.
The handwriting sucks all the air from my chest.
My eyes dart to the date scribbled in the top right-hand corner.
2015.
“Summer, what is it?”
I can’t speak as I scan the first two lines. I almost fold from the punch to my gut.
“Sum?”
My breath stutters out of me. “It’s his journals.”
“Whose journals?”
The letters all blend into one as my vision blurs. “Chase’s.”
The counter meets my hands before I realize I’ve reached for it.
“Whoa!” Addie wraps an arm around my back to help steady me. “Easy.”
I look up at her. “They’re his journals,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “They’re his entries from when I left.”
She cautiously takes the notebook from my hands, reading the first page once, then twice before she places it down. She rifles through the box before focusing on me. “Couch. Now.”
I end up on the living room floor, belly down as I read entry after entry, my heart slowly ripping open. Addie lies beside me and doesn’t speak as I continue my task.
Chase, at eighteen, three weeks after I disappeared.
It still hurts, missing you. But if I had to choose, I’d take that hurt over and over again if it meant I had the privilege of knowing you, rather than never knowing you at all.
Even though it was just a brief moment, it will always be one of my favorites.
That small snapshot meant everything to me.
I hate not sharing the little details of my day with you.
I hate even more not hearing about yours.
I hate moving through a world that you’re no longer a part of.
Even though you’re not here, you still manage to fill the empty spaces in my day.
No matter how busy life gets, you’re there in all the quiet moments.
It feels like I’ve been carrying a hollow space inside me where you used to be.
You made me feel so much that I could barely catch my breath.
I know some things in life aren’t meant to last forever, and that’s why we cherish them when they happen.
And I do. I can listen to every song and read every book, but nothing compares to your words, Hayes.
They’ll always be what I loved hearing most.
I flip through another journal.
Chase at twenty.
If I wait, it’ll never be me. But if I move on … it’ll never be you.
Chase at twenty-one.
What haunts me most isn’t what we were. It’s what we never got the chance to be. What I fear more than anything is that while you’ve moved on and created a life for yourself, you’ve forgotten me. That I’m the only one lost in this, the only one wondering, hoping, hurting, and holding on.