The Beach Shack Circle (Laguna Beach #6)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The cake had seventeen candles on one side and seventeen on the other, and Joey had arranged them in two perfect arcs that met in the middle. He was now lighting them in a specific order he’d apparently decided on in advance, working from the center outward.

“Inside out,” Joey said, shielding the flame from the ocean breeze with his free hand. “It’s better for wax control.”

Bea leaned over the table to look. “What does that even mean?”

“It means the interior candles establish a heat base before the exterior ones are lit, which prevents uneven melting and drip migration.” He moved to the next candle. “I’ve been doing research.”

“Birthday cake research,” Bea said, looking at Stella.

Stella looked back. One second. The look that meant are you getting this? Bea’s mouth twitched. Stella raised the camera and got Joey mid-explanation, one hand cupping the flame, his face lit from underneath like a man defusing a bomb made of buttercream.

She’d had the camera up since about six o’clock, when Anna had started rearranging the patio tables for the third time and Tyler had told her they were fine the way they were and Anna had moved them again anyway because Anna didn’t hear the word fine the same way other people heard it.

It was Bea and Stella’s birthday party and there was no rule against photographing your own birthday party. She’d checked.

Through the viewfinder, the Shack patio looked like something she’d want to remember when she was old. The string lights from the wedding were still up because Anna had called them temporary in November and it was now February and nobody was pretending anymore.

Two round tables pushed together into one long one.

Eleven chairs and Bella the cat on the twelfth, because Bella apparently now believed all furniture was hers.

The ocean was changing—getting louder as the light dropped, like it had been waiting all day for the tourists to leave.

The sky going from pink to that deep February blue that lasted about ten minutes.

“Blow them out,” Bea said, nudging Stella’s elbow. “Before Joey starts a laminated instruction sheet.”

“I already made one,” Joey said. “It’s in the kitchen.”

They blew them out together on three. It took two tries because Stella pulled the camera down for the first attempt and missed the shot and made everyone relight and do it again.

“That’s cheating,” Tyler said from the far end of the table, where he had Lindsey’s hand on his arm and a glass of something in front of him.

“Artistic necessity,” Stella said.

“Not a real thing.”

“It’s been a real thing since about four seconds ago.”

Tyler laughed out loud. Lindsey squeezed his arm without looking at him, which was Lindsey’s way of wanting more of it.

Stella got the second attempt. Thirty-four candles going out at once, Bea’s face caught in the last flicker and then not, the smoke curling up toward the string lights in thin blue lines that dissolved before they reached the bulbs.

She clicked off one more frame and let the camera drop.

Meg was cutting the cake, the scent of chocolate carrying on the ocean breeze.

She’d brought her good knife from home because she said the Shack’s cake knife had been dull since approximately 2019 and nobody had replaced it because replacing things at the Shack required filling out one of Joey’s procurement request forms and nobody wanted to fill out one of Joey’s procurement request forms.

Meg sliced with clean, even strokes, and Anna passed plates down the table.

Luke got the edge piece because Luke always got the edge piece.

Margo got what she was given and didn’t care.

Tyler got a piece with a frosting rose on it that he picked off and ate first, like a man who understood priorities.

Bernie got a corner with extra frosting because Anna knew him.

Michael got a small white bowl of berries.

Anna set it in front of him without a word—blueberries, raspberries, a few slices of strawberry arranged the way Anna arranged things, which was with more care than she’d ever admit to.

Michael looked at the bowl, then at Anna.

He actually smiled, and Stella caught it through the viewfinder—click—and let the camera drop before anyone saw her taking it.

“Thank you,” Michael said.

Anna was already moving down the table with the next plate. “You’re welcome.”

Bernie took a bite and closed his eyes. He chewed slowly, fork still in his hand, and then opened his eyes and pointed the fork at Meg.

“Meg,” he said. “This is not a hobby cake.”

Meg tried to look casual and couldn’t quite pull it off. “It’s a birthday cake, Bernie.”

“This is a cake that knows what it’s doing.” He took another bite and shook his head slowly. “You’ve been holding out on us.”

Meg cut herself a second, smaller piece and ate it standing up at the rail, which was the closest thing to a compliment Meg ever gave her own cooking.

Joey, who had been monitoring the candle situation from the end of the table, leaned back in his chair. “I’m saying it for the record. Wax control made a difference.”

“Noted,” Stella said, aiming the camera at him.

“You’re not writing it down.”

“My camera is writing it down.”

Joey considered this, apparently decided it was an acceptable form of documentation, and went back to his cake.

The table was full and lively—Tyler and Lindsey at one end, her phone between them, Lindsey showing him something that made Tyler lean closer than the phone required.

Anna and Michael at the kitchen door, Anna talking with her hands the way she talked when she was excited about something, Michael listening with his whole body and his mouth doing the not-quite-smile.

Luke and Meg in the middle, Meg gesturing at a spot on the frosting where she’d apparently made an error only she could see, Luke nodding as if frosting topology were a subject he’d been studying for years.

Bernie at the corner, eating with unhurried appreciation.

Joey looking around before he set a small plate down for Bella, possibly actually believing that no one noticed.

Stella shot all of it. Click. Click. Click. She was seventeen and she was here. And happy.

Margo set her fork down.

She didn’t stand. Margo didn’t stand for speeches. She sat, which made them feel less like speeches and more like something she was mentioning because it had occurred to her.

“Okay,” Margo said. “Two things.”

The table went quiet. When Margo spoke, people listened.

“For a lot of years,” Margo said, turning her coffee cup slowly on the table, “we didn’t know there were two of you. We had our hands full with one.” She looked at the coffee instead of the room, and the room held its breath. “Turns out two is better.”

She smiled at both Bea and Stella.

“And who knew,” Margo said, “that on the other side of the world, right around the same week, your cousin was showing up to do the same thing. Different hemisphere. Same family.” She picked her fork back up. “Happy birthday, young ladies.”

Stella had the camera up for the end of it. She got Bea’s face when Margo said two is better—the way Bea’s eyes went bright and her mouth pressed together because she was trying not to cry at a table full of people who would absolutely tease her about it later.

She got Tyler mid-laugh at something Anna said, his head tipped back. She got Anna refilling Michael’s water without being asked, and Michael moving his berry bowl to make room for the glass without looking up.

And she got one she almost didn’t take. Bernie, during Margo’s speech, not looking at the girls.

Not looking at the cake. Looking at Margo.

His fork resting on the plate, forgotten, his face doing something she’d seen in the darkroom a hundred times but never at this angle—soft, unguarded, aimed at the woman with the coffee cup who was not looking back.

Stella pressed the shutter and didn’t look at the frame.

By nine-thirty the dishes were mostly done and the patio belonged to the two of them.

The adults had moved inside because it was February and cold and nobody over forty thought the patio was the right call at this hour.

Anna and Michael had taken over the kitchen—Anna washing, Michael drying.

Margo had said goodnight and kissed both girls on the forehead, one and then the other, and walked home.

Tyler and Lindsey had left holding hands in a way that suggested they’d forgotten other people could see them.

Joey was inside laminating the candle-arrangement diagram for what he called posterity and Stella suspected was because Joey needed a project to transition out of being at a party.

Bernie had left ten minutes ago. Stella had watched him push himself up from the table with one hand on the chair and one on the edge, slowly, the way he’d started doing this year. Tyler had caught it too.

“Bernie,” Tyler said. “When are you going to get that knee looked at?”

Bernie reached for his cane and tucked it under his arm. “Later,” he said, straightening carefully.

“You said later six months ago,” Anna called from the kitchen door.

“And I’ll say it again six months from now.” He looked at the cane under his arm like he was carrying it for someone else. “The knee is fine.”

“The knee is not fine,” Margo said from the grill, where she was standing with a rag in her hand, not cleaning anything.

“The knee is my knee, Margo, and it will be fine when it’s ready to be fine.”

Margo pressed her lips together and said nothing, which was louder than anything she could have said. Bernie looked at her for a second—just a second—and then walked to the door, carefully but walking, and said goodnight.

Stella and Bea had the string lights and the ocean and the cold February air that turned their breath visible at the railing.

“Seventeen,” Bea said, leaning on the railing and looking out at the water.

“Can hardly believe it,” Stella said, leaning beside her.

“Happy birthday,” Bea said softly.

“Happy birthday,” Stella said, and squeezed Bea’s hand and wondered what her life was like before she’d become best friends with the cousin she hadn’t known existed. She couldn’t remember.