Fourteen
The streetlights are on by the time Grace turns her bicycle onto Surf Street, the asphalt dappled with orange islands of light.
Shadows stretch long, the sun now almost fully set.
The block is mostly quiet, save for a few kids up near the dune, their lit-up sparklers creating temporary illuminated arcs in the air.
Grace watches them as she pedals, her skin sticky, hair tangled in knots from her ride.
She wonders, briefly, how it would feel to be a kid again. Carefree. Lost in a world of play.
From somewhere nearby, a dog barks. Her eyes still on the children, it takes a second for Grace to fully register the sound.
Before she does, a blur of golden fur darts across the blacktop.
It barrels toward her, unleashed and at full speed.
It all happens too fast—the running, the jumping, the unsolicited licking—like a strange sensory-rich dream.
Grace stumbles, nearly loses control of the bike—but catches herself just in time.
And then, she pauses—really pauses—and sees.
“Wait,” she whispers, her heart suddenly fluttering, wild and unexpected, like a dozen butterflies.
The dog settles, but not before giving Grace one last round of inquisitive sniffs.
Goose bumps ripple across her skin, her whole body reacting like she’s just plunged into water that’s ten degrees too cold.
The dog continues to paw at her, as excited and rambunctious as a puppy, though it’s clear she’s not one.
Grace pets the animal’s head, patting around as if she’s trying to feel out a memory. “Sandy?”
130
“Actually, that’s Hooper,” a voice—one that’s all too familiar—says from the steps of house Number 116. “Sandy died ten years ago.” Sadness paints the person’s tone. “She was a good dog, though. Loyal right to the very end.”
Grace turns in slow motion—an actor right before the big reveal. Not that she even needs to in order to understand what’s happening. Already, she knows who she’ll see in the shadows when her head makes it the full 180 degrees.
Ray.
Right there. Sitting on the steps. Looking at Grace. Holding a beer.
It’s as if no time has passed. Yet, of course, it has. Years. Entire lifetimes. Whole relationships. Identities that came and went. But here they are. Here he is. The same gold-rimmed eyes. The same invisible pull. A thousand memories tightening like a piece of leather inside her chest.
“Hooper’s friendly, though.” Ray takes a sip. “She’s just feeling you out, trying to determine if you’re someone she knows.” He sets his can down next to him. “Hoop! Come here, girl!” An obedient listener, the dog bolts. She licks Ray’s arm, then settles in a heap at his feet.
“Hooper,” Grace echoes, her fingers numb. She works to untangle her legs from the bike—clumsy, disoriented. “Richard Dreyfuss,” she says once she’s steady. “Like in Jaws.”
“Some things change.” Ray raises his shoulders slightly. “Some things don’t.” He pets Hooper’s body. “It’s still my favorite movie.”
You’ll love this place, he told her the summer she turned thirteen.
This movie. The two of them, alone, in the island’s cinema.
The story. Hands inching closer on the armrest. It’s a perfect plot, Porter.
Staying long after the closing credits. Not needing to do anything.
To be anything. I bet you could write something like that one day. Believing him.
Grace wheels the bike up onto the sidewalk, then sets it in the driveway in front of the Jeep. She stands there, everything inside her quivering, unsure how to proceed.
131
How many summers of her life has she walked into this same scene?
Ray, there on the steps, waiting for her on that first day, knowing the precise time she and Birdie would arrive back after running their errands to finally settle in.
Always, she ran to him—at fifteen, seventeen, twenty-three, and all the years in between—her arms wrapping around him as her body came back to life, as if the rest of the year it’d been in hibernation.
You’re back, he’d say. No matter her age, or how much she grew, or the clothes she wore, he’d smile with his whole face. You’re still you.
She’s not the girl she was back then. Right now, her body doesn’t care. Her skin flushes. She might as well be sixteen.
In the street, the kids—out of sparklers—sprint home, their laughter echoing behind them.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” she asks, trying to sound brave, though her voice subtly shakes. Even after all this time, he looks like he belongs here. Like he’s part of this place. Of her.
Ray adjusts his backward baseball hat. A few longer strands of hair poke under its sides.
“Thought I’d drop by, see if the owner ever fixed the front light.
” He glances up at the porch lantern, the glass still cracked all these decades later.
“Remember that summer you freaked out when you saw the giant moth and smacked it with your sandal?”
“Ray . . .” She doesn’t repeat her question. It’s already there, lingering between them, thick and unanswered, like so many other things.
He positions his arms on his thighs, looks down at the steps, then up at her the way he always has, some secret in his eyes, like he can see something about her no one else can.
“Maybe I could ask you the same thing,” he says, the sound of his voice—the echo of it here on this street—enough to make her heart twist.
It was easy to say they’d loved each other for years, though that wasn’t really the case. For every twelve months that passed, they only ever saw each other for seven sandy, salt-crusted days.
Summer friends.
132
A summer romance.
That was the rhythm of it, from the first time their families met the week Grace turned nine and staying that way long after their first kiss under the glow of boardwalk rides the year she turned thirteen.
Up until that night, they were buddies. The two of them.
Meg. A few other kids from neighboring families.
They played Frisbee. Flew kites. Walked to the arcade.
Went on long swims. Like most things on Sea Drift, their feelings were slow to start.
A sideways glance. A too-long hug goodbye.
A late-day walk on the beach, just the two of them.
In the beginning, Birdie told Grace to go slow and just enjoy her trips without getting boy crazy.
But as the seasons pressed on, even she saw it was more than that.
By the time Grace was eighteen and preparing for college, it wasn’t just a summer crush anymore.
It’d become a full-body ache. They never committed to a long-distance relationship, both knowing it’d never work.
Ray would be down south for art school; Grace would be busy studying writing at Penn State.
It was a dream. A cute movie plotline. It wasn’t realistic.
Instead, they lived their lives, each of them evolving and finding themselves a little more with each month that passed. Every August—regardless of new friends or the spark of other romantic interests back home—they both ran to each other on that familiar stretch of coastline.
Until the year they both turned twenty-five.
That August—the Murphys’ final trip to Sea Drift—a heavy fog hung over the week and refused to lift.
Everyone knew it was an ending to more than a vacation.
Despite the adults making promises to keep in touch, and Meg and Grace chatting about visits (Seriously, though—let’s plan something!), deep down, they all knew it was just talk.
Up until Friday night—the last before both families packed their cars and drove away—Grace and Ray didn’t mention it.
Not directly. But it was there, floating in every moment of silence, as quiet yet omnipresent as the waves.
“What if we didn’t leave?” Ray said late that night out on the fishing pier.
The adults were having margaritas on the Murphys’ deck while the 133“kids”—all of whom were legal adults now—had one last bonfire on the beach.
At some point, while everyone else was distracted by beer and music, Ray took Grace by the hand, and they walked off.
“What if we just stayed here forever? Turned our annual vacations together into a real life?”
Since college, they’d both hovered in that strange limbo stage—grown-up, but not quite.
Ray, doing graphic design down in Virginia and bartending to pay the bills.
Grace, bouncing from place to place, scribbling down story ideas, trying to work up the courage to do the things she actually felt she should.
For the first time in her adult life, she had a plan.
Not a yearlong Band-Aid, but a real one.
In September, she’d move to Manhattan—had already signed a lease on a studio apartment and accepted a copywriting job at a small publisher—a way, she hoped, to plant one foot in the door of the industry.
It was a step, a real one. An opportunity to get serious about turning her chaotic twenties into something steady.
“Ray, come on.” Grace had laughed and leaned back on his chest. Out in front of them, the moon shone down on the ocean. “It’s a beach town. People don’t live here. Not for real.”
“Some people do,” he countered.
“Yes, but they’re retirees,” Grace pointed out. “Not twenty-five-year-olds trying to build their résumés and pay back student loans.” Above them, the stars dotted the sky like glitter. “Maybe fifty years from now, after we’ve both actually done some stuff—real stuff—first.”
Ray wrapped a strand of Grace’s long hair around his finger, gave it a gentle tug. “Did you ever hear the story about the fisherman and the businessman?”
“Why do I feel like an impossible-to-solve riddle is incoming?”