Boys of Summer

by Jessica Brody

  I shake my head. “You know she’s gonna be there until the bitter end. Just to mess with us.”

  Mike groans. “I know. And it kills me.”

  I hear a scraping sound and look over to see that Ian has cleaned his plate and is now wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Well, I’ve gotta run.”

  I blink at him in confusion. “Huh? But we just started hanging out.”

  He rubs anxiously at his chin. “Yeah, but I actually have other plans. I’ll catch you guys later, okay?”

  Before I can argue, he’s scooting his chair back and carrying his empty plate inside.

  Mike leans back in his chair and stretches his arms above his head. “Yeah, I should probably get going too.”

  I stare at him, openmouthed. “What? Why?”

  What is happening right now?

  He crumples his napkin and places it down on his half-finished steak. “I promised I’d help out a little at the club.”

  I’m pretty sure he’s lying, because he won’t meet my eye. I’m itching to call him on it. To demand a better explanation. A real explanation. But then I think of Harper and me on that boat. Her body sprawled out on the bench seat, her shirt unbuttoned, the soft moans that escaped her lips as I kissed her.

  And my mouth feels clamped shut.

  “Thanks for the steak, man,” he says, picking up his plate. “It was delicious.”

  I sit in stunned silence as Mike disappears into the house, and a few seconds later I hear the front door opening and closing.

  Cursing, I push my chair back and stand up, then grab my plate and dump the huge hunk of untouched meat into the trash. Just like that, in the span of less than a half hour, my perfect Fourth of July went right out the window.

  Why does it feel like the more I fight for just one last normal summer, the farther it slips away from me? Why does it feel like our little group—the one that tossed footballs on the beach and snuck beers from the fridge and got drunk watching Crusade of Kings—is a thing of the past?

  And why do I have this nagging suspicion that everything I came here for, everything I chased all the way to this island, is gone forever?

  I lean over to grab another beer from the cooler and raise it up in a lonely, single-person toast.

  Then I wait ten full minutes before texting Harper.

  CHAPTER 29

  MIKE

  The rest of July is a blur of lawn mowers and roofing tiles and weed whackers and trimming shears and late nights walking on the beach with Julie. I spend most of the hot days on Grayson’s roof and then have to stay late at the beach club to work on the grounds. Julie always waits for me, staying extra hours in the kids’ camp with the boys until I’m finished, before she walks us all home. Then I turn around and walk her home.

  I feel guilty that she stays so late so often, but she swears she doesn’t mind. I offered to pay her once, but she wouldn’t have it. She knows we need to save every cent that we have. She knows that even with the extra money Grayson’s dad has so generously been giving me for my hard work on the job, we’re still struggling to keep our heads above water.

  She knows because I’ve told her. Because that’s all we do on those long walks to my house and then back to her rental cottage, purposefully weaving through town or taking longer routes around the marshland to prolong the night. We tell each other things.

  She tells me about her friends back on the mainland, her family, her experiences being homeschooled for the past two years because of girls bullying her at school. I tell her about the twins, how my parents weren’t even planning to get pregnant again and then two popped out. I tell her about how that started us on a downward spiral with money and I had to help out, taking shifts in the kitchen with Mamma V. I tell her about Mamma V and the time she got Grayson, Ian, and me out of a jam by telling Officer Walton that she had ordered us to let those crickets loose in the beach club spa. I tell her how weird it is to grow up as a local on a tourists’ island. Like home only belongs to you in the off-season.

  The only thing I don’t tell her about is Harper.

  It’s as though I’ve sectioned off all of those memories with DO NOT CROSS police tape and have somehow managed to steer clear of them. She doesn’t ask about ex-girlfriends, and I avoid the same kind of questions with her.

  I’ve come to look forward to our walks. They’ve become the highlight of my long, strenuous days. Julie is so easy to talk to. And it’s nice, for two hours a day, to live in a world where Harper doesn’t exist. Where she isn’t a permanent tattoo on my past. Where my identity isn’t completely intertwined with hers.

  Avoiding her in my stories is like getting to rewrite my history. I get to have a version of my life in which I made different choices. Wandered down different avenues. Kissed different girls.

  Maybe even a version of my life in which I never took her back that first time.

  I don’t see Harper around the island that much. We’ve both done an excellent job of avoiding each other. Either out of respect for the other, or for the sake of our own sanities. But it doesn’t mean I don’t think about her. It doesn’t mean her face doesn’t occupy the other twenty-two hours of my day.

  In fact, I haven’t seen much of anyone this summer, apart from Julie and the twins and Mamma V, who always keeps a plate warm for me in the kitchen for after I finish landscaping the grounds.

  It seems like everything has kind of shifted since the Fourth of July. A slight turn of the kaleidoscope, and the island is a totally different place.

  Even though I’m at Grayson’s for more than five hours a day, the house is eerily quiet. His father has been on the mainland for work a lot. Whitney is always off gallivanting around the island the way Whitney does. Grayson has been mysteriously MIA. And even Ian has kind of vanished into the ether. I occasionally see him on his way out in the morning, but he never tells me where he’s going or what he’s doing. And I don’t ask, because whatever (or whoever) it is seems to have finally dragged him out of his funk. He seems almost happy again, and I don’t want to mess with that.

  We all know how fragile Ian’s happiness can be.

  Tonight I’m working especially late. The beach club had Movies under the Stars at the pool, where they project a film onto a large screen near the deep end. People gather around in lawn chairs and on floating rafts, drinking and eating popcorn and basically making a huge mess.

  One of the regular janitors called in sick, and I got stuck on cleanup duty. And let me tell you, that popcorn? It gets everywhere.

  When I finally finish pulling kernels out of the pool drain, it’s nearly ten o’clock. I check my phone and immediately feel the familiar pang of guilt for making Julie wait so long for me.

  I carry the final tray of dirty dishes to the kitchen, where Mamma V is struggling to scrub out a soup pot that’s probably half her size.

  “Why are you doing that?” I ask, setting the tray down and rushing over to help her. “What happened to Jason?”

  “The new dishwasher?” Mamma V lets out one of her signature harrumphs. “I sent him home. He’s terrible. He left residue in all my pots.”

  I gently push her out of the way and take over the scrubbing.

  Mamma V collapses noisily into a nearby chair. She watches me with a half smile. “You were my very best dishwasher, you know that?”

  I roll my eyes. “Something to be proud of, I suppose.”

  “It is!” she insists grumpily. “You should always be proud of doing something well. No matter how menial the task may seem. These new boys, they have no sense of pride in their work. They think they’re above it all. They’re going to run off and put on their white collars and work in an office one day. They think this job is just a bridge to get them where they want to go, so they don’t even try. Don’t you become one of those boys, Mikey!”

  I chuckle. “I’ll try not to.”

  She grunts. “You say that, but that ungrateful girlfriend of yours has sunk her poisonous claws into you. She wants to take y
ou away from here and turn you into some snooty New Yorker. Don’t you forget where you’re from, mister. There’s no shame in working hard. No matter what color your collar is.”

  I frown into the sudsy pot. I haven’t told Mamma V about the breakup. I never tell her about any of the breakups. She has always been fairly vocal about her dislike of Harper. And I’ve always been afraid that if I told her we were broken up, she’d get so excited, it would be too hard to explain it to her when we got back together.

  I look over at Mamma V. She’s grabbed a pot holder from a hook by the stove and is fanning herself with it. For some reason I get this burning desire to talk to her. About everything. About Harper. About New York. About how this treasure map that I’ve been holding on to my entire life, thinking it will lead to the future I want, might turn out to be a fake.

  But before I can get a single word out, my phone chimes with an incoming text message, shattering the moment. I quickly set the pot aside and dry my hands before checking my phone.

  Shit.

  It’s from Julie asking if I’m almost done.

  “I gotta go,” I tell Mamma V, and bend down to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Off to meet the boys?” A frown suddenly tugs at her mouth. “I haven’t seen them around here much. Are you three getting along?”

  I bite my lip. I hate lying to Mamma V, but I know that I don’t have time to explain everything that’s been happening this summer. Especially when I’m barely able to explain it to myself.

  “Sure,” I tell her. “We’re getting along fine.”

  She gives me a conspiratorial smile. “What kind of trouble have you been getting into these days?”

  “Only the best kind of trouble,” I assure her with a wink.

  She swats me on the butt with her pot holder as I leave.

  The boys are both asleep in cots when I get to the kids’ camp, and Julie is sitting in a nearby chair reading a book. She grins when she sees me, depositing the book into her bag and standing up.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “It was movie night. A janitor called in sick. And there was popcorn. Everywhere.”

  She laughs. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But I do,” I tell her honestly. “I worry about it. All the time.”

  Julie’s expression shifts. Her radiant smile fades ever so slightly, and she looks at me with an intensity that until this moment I didn’t even know she had. “Mike,” she says with a quiet gravity, “out of all the things you have to worry about, I’m not one of them. Okay?”

  I grab her hand and give it a quick, grateful squeeze. “Okay.”

  Without another word we turn toward the sleeping boys. I pick up Jasper because he’s the most difficult to carry, and Julie bends down to scoop little Jake into her arms. I feel this peculiar warmth in my gut as I watch Jake wrap his arms and legs around her like a baby monkey.

  She catches my eye and flashes me another smile, her radiance returning in full force.

  When we get to the house, my dad is yelling at the TV. “No! You can’t cook the toro! It’s a fatty tuna. It needs to be raw!”

  “Sorry,” I whisper to Julie. “He’s gotten really into these cooking-competition shows lately. This is the one where they have to make a meal out of mystery ingredients.”

  “Hi, Mr. M.,” Julie says as we slip by him to the boys’ bedroom.

  He barely looks away from the screen as he calls out, “Hi, Julie.” Then he goes back to yelling at the TV. “Citrus marinade? Amateur!”

  “He really needs to get back to work,” I whisper as I deposit Jasper onto the top bunk. Julie lays Jake down on the bottom, and I kiss them both good night. We retreat toward the hallway, but a tiny groggy voice stops me just short of the door.

  “Mikey?”

  It’s Jake. I step back toward the bunk bed. “Yeah?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Julie and I are going to take a walk on the beach. But don’t worry. Dad’s here if you get scared.”

  Between the two of them, Jake is the one who gets the worst nightmares. He’s also the one who still occasionally wets the bed, which is the reason he’s on the bottom.

  “I like Julie,” Jasper murmurs from the top bunk. His face must be smashed against the pillow, because the words come out garbled and nearly incomprehensible.

  “Me too,” Jake agrees.

  I turn and flash Julie a smile. “You have a fan club,” I whisper.

  “She’s so much better than Harper,” Jasper murmurs.

  I freeze on the spot, my stomach instantly clenching. It’s a good thing the bedroom is dark, because I’m pretty sure my face is as white as a sheet right now.

  “Okay, good night.” I quickly shut the door.

  I hurry Julie back through the house and out to the front porch. “I’ll be back in a bit,” I tell my dad, but he’s too absorbed in his show to hear me.

  “Sorry about that,” I say once we’re outside. I take a deep breath, unsure how to proceed. I knew it was only a matter of time before her name came up, before I was forced to talk about her. I guess now is as good a time as ever.

  “About what Jasper said,” I begin anxiously.

  But Julie stops me with a tender hand on my arm. “I know,” she admits softly.

  I blink at her in surprise. “You do?”

  “The twins talk about her sometimes. At the club.”

  “Oh.” I try to make my voice sound completely neutral and unaffected, even though my mind is reeling. I want so badly to ask what they’ve said about her, what kind of secrets they’ve unknowingly revealed about this part of my life that I’ve worked so hard to keep hidden.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, Julie tells me anyway.

  “They said she’s the girl who used to climb through your window at night.”

  I bark out a laugh. “I didn’t know they knew about that.”

  “And that she hates Ned.”

  “Who’s Ned?”

  Julie shoots me a confused, almost worried look. “Your dog.”

  “Oh! Right. The dog. Sorry. He’s had a few name changes.”

  A cool breeze blows between us, and I immediately notice the tiny goose bumps that appear on Julie’s arm. I run back inside to fetch her one of my hoodies. She slips it on gratefully, zips it all the way up, and pulls the hood over her head.

  I have to admit it’s difficult to see her in it. Harper used to love wearing my sweaters. She was always stealing the softest ones and refusing to give them back, until I had nothing left in my closet but the hard, crunchy old stuff that the twins had spilled stuff on a hundred times.

  “How do I look?” Julie asks, posing like a model.

  How does she look?

  She looks incredible.

  She looks adorable.

  She looks like everything I’m not sure I’m ready for her to look like.

  “Comfy,” I finally respond, and she giggles.

  “I am comfy!”

  “Well, there you go.”

  We start walking back toward the beach. Julie chatters incessantly about some of the kids at the camp, particularly the crazy ones, but I’m only half listening while I attempt to build up the courage to continue our previous conversation.

  It isn’t until we reach the sand that I’m finally able to say, “Hey, I’m sorry about the boys. About what they told you.”

  Confusion flashes over her face.

  “About . . . ,” I continue, but I can’t even bring myself to say her name. Why am I here with this beautiful, amazing, vivacious girl if I can’t even say her name?

  “Harper?” Julie says it for me, and it’s even stranger coming from her lips.

  “Yeah.” My voice sounds like someone has been hacking at my throat with razor blades.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” Julie says sympathetically. “We all have a past.”

  I nearly trip over my own two stupid feet. That word. It’s like a dagger in my chest.

  Past.
<
br />   We all have a past.

  Is Harper really my past now? But how can that be, when she has always been my future? The thought of Harper being just a fading spot in my rearview mirror is making it hard to breathe. Sure, she told me this time it was over for good. Sure, we’ve managed to avoid each other for weeks. But that’s just what we do. That’s what she does.

  Eventually she’ll come back, right?

  But is that even what I want anymore?

  The last few weeks, hanging out with Julie, have been amazing. They’ve been refreshing. They’ve been fun. Harper can be fun too, but mostly Harper is just complicated. That’s the thing about Julie. She’s so very uncomplicated. And yet here I am, walking the beach with her, thinking about Harper.

  Thinking about the past.

  I guess I’ve always just assumed that Harper would become my future again. That she’d never stay buried in the past. It’s always been a given with us. But now it seems the likelihood of us actually getting back together is getting smaller with each passing day.

  This is definitely the longest we’ve ever been split up. Harper’s little “breathers” have never lasted more than a week, two at most. But it’s been nearly two months since she stood in the Cove, our special spot, and told me it was over.

  And for the first time all summer, I think I might be starting to believe that she meant it.

  “Ooh!” Julie squeals, running ahead. She bends down and digs something out of the sand. “This could be it!” She unburies a small white seashell and holds it in her palm. Then she reaches into the pocket of her khaki shorts and pulls out another white seashell that looks almost identical. She compares the two, side by side, and her face falls. “Nope. Not it.”

  She drops the newly uncovered shell back to the ground and dusts off her hand.

  “What was that?” I ask, catching up with her.

  She holds out her open palm. “This is the first shell I found when I got to the island. I’ve been searching for its other half.”

  “Its other half?” I ask, intrigued.

  She continues walking. “Yeah. You know, all clamshells come in a pair. They were once complete before they broke apart and scattered along the beach. I’ve heard it’s good luck if you can find two halves that are a perfect match. It’s my goal to find the match to this one before the end of the summer.”