One Summer

by Jenny Hale

  “It’s been two weeks since you went to your grandfather’s bicycle shop and I haven’t asked you yet if you’re really okay,” Sasha said, changing the subject. Thank goodness they’d moved on from Matt. Sasha pulled her hair behind her shoulders, revealing the silver hoop earrings Alice had gotten her for her birthday.

  Sasha leaned toward her. “You’re more quiet than usual, all in your head somewhere. You okay?”

  Alice nodded. What she didn’t want to admit was that she was okay at this moment, on this day, but she didn’t know if she was really all right. Perhaps going to Gramps’s place might not have been the best timing, given the enormous disruption that Matt’s leaving had caused for her and Henry. His infidelity had come out of nowhere, completely turning their lives upside down, right when she was starting to actually face life without Gramps.

  Sasha had been the first friend Alice had called when all her emotions were at their height, and she had been right there by her side. But thinking back, Sasha—usually the one who could spin any situation into a positive—had been just as brokenhearted, and she hadn’t been able to find anything reassuring to say. The more Alice thought about it, Sasha had been very quiet herself over the last few weeks, her demeanor different. She hadn’t put it together until now, but as she looked at her friend, she knew something definitely wasn’t right.

  “Are you okay?” Alice said, instead of answering.

  “Me? I’m fine!” Sasha said, a little too quickly, before turning the focus back to Alice, her bright red cheeks giving her away. “Matt’s timing is impeccable… Couldn’t he have at least waited for a better time to drop this bomb?”

  Alice shrugged, letting her friend off the hook. This wasn’t the time to talk about it, obviously. “I’d rather know now than carry on like nothing was wrong, I guess. I already feel like he’s robbed me of my time.”

  Sasha offered a sympathetic pout. Alice had gone straight to Sasha’s the night she’d found out that Gramps had died. While he’d been having a few health problems, they’d been nothing too major, and his death had come out of nowhere. He’d been working right up to the day, at his bicycle rental shop in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It sat directly on the beach next to a busy fishing pier, full of tourists lining up at the binocular stations. He lived upstairs and ran the shop from the bottom floor. After work, he spent most of his free time fishing.

  “Have you had any luck selling the bike shop?” Sasha asked, as if she could read Alice’s mind. She waved to Henry. He was running along, laughing every time Einstein followed his lead. He yelled for them to look and both of them acknowledged him with their biggest smiles. Sasha pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, and Alice could see the concern in her eyes as she concentrated on her.

  “The realtor’s had a few calls asking for specifics and she said there’s been one person who’s toured the property, but she hasn’t heard back yet.”

  She watched Henry as she decided if she should actually entertain the thought that had been going around in her head since Matt left. Their breakup had brought back a memory of the boy she’d met one summer’s day at Gramps’s shop all those years ago, making her wish for something better. She and the boy had had ice cream that day, and she could still remember the smile on his face as he looked at her, holding his cone. It had gotten her thinking… The upheaval of losing Matt had completely changed her outlook on the bike shop. It wasn’t so difficult to be there anymore; instead, it was calling her home—maybe she could settle down there and still, in a way, be close to Gramps.

  Finally, she said, “I’ve been playing with an idea—it’s crazy—but what if I moved there and opened some sort of shop in its place?” She had been thinking a lot about what it would be like to spend this summer at Gramps’s beach house; the shop downstairs, the ocean out her window…

  “I’d miss you!” Sasha pouted. “It might be nice to get away from everything, though,” she relented. “I know I’d like to get away.” She had that odd look on her face again, but she ironed it out, producing a smile for Alice’s benefit. “Tell me more!”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about it,” Alice said. “But the bike shop barely made Gramps any money. The shop was so small, he couldn’t house much inventory, so the turnover was high, but it still didn’t give him enough to really become comfortable financially. He never seemed to mind, but for Henry and me, I’d need something more to keep us afloat.”

  Sasha looked over Alice’s head in thought. “So what could you fit more of in that little building, then?”

  “It’s prime beachfront property—something would work there. But I’ve been trying to answer that question and I can’t think of anything making me as much as the sale of the land itself.”

  She’d decided to save the money from the sale until the right thing came along, but now she wondered if the right thing was sitting in front of her, and opening a business was in her future. She let her mind wander to the white clapboard siding of the building, the bells on the door that jingled as people opened it, the small front porch where she used to sit and drink ice-cold bottles of Coca-Cola, digging her toes into the natural sand walkway just beneath the steps while Gramps was busy with customers.

  “But will the money make you happy? What will it get you? You have the chance to escape to a totally different life, leave everything behind. There’s got to be something you could do with that place that would light your fire.” Sasha caught a drip of strawberry ice cream on the side of her cone with her finger, that unusual look of concern surfacing again before she wiped it away. Whatever it was that was bothering her would be quite a conversation, Alice was certain now.

  “Do you really think I could live and work at the beach?” she said, keeping the conversation on her, as Sasha clearly wanted her to do.

  There was a tiny part of Alice that worried she couldn’t do it. Creating a business from the ground up was quite an undertaking and she didn’t have the expertise for it. She had wanted to go away to college with Sasha—they were both going to study marketing—but when she got pregnant with Henry, she’d decided to do a two-year degree and work at the dentist’s office instead. Sasha had gone on and finished her studies, and Alice had always felt like she’d missed out.

  “Why not?” Sasha gave her a stern look. “Don’t sell yourself short,” she said. “It’s not all about the money and you know that, which is why you’re considering doing something with the building. You own a piece of beachfront property and you have absolutely nothing holding you here in Richmond. Life is too short not to take risks.”

  “I’m worried about leaving my job,” Alice said, looking down at her nearly untouched bowl of ice cream, which now resembled green soup, little flakes of dark chocolate floating in it.

  “You hate your job.”

  “Yeah, but it pays my bills. And we get free spray tans every year at the hygienists’ summer party. And there’s also you. I’d have to leave you and I don’t know if I could make it without you.” Alice had never had a sister, but if she had, she’d have wanted her to be just like Sasha.

  With a doting smile, Sasha stood up and gave Alice a squeeze. “It’s so hot out here,” she said, grabbing the long curls that fell down Alice’s back, pulling them up into a ponytail like she’d done since they were kids. The breeze on Alice’s neck immediately cooled her, but before she could really enjoy the release of heat, the strands came tumbling back down to her shoulders as Sasha picked up her bowl of green minty soup and chucked it into the trashcan. “I’m going to get you another ice cream and I want you to enjoy it!”

  She knew she couldn’t argue with her friend, so while Sasha was at the counter ordering another, Alice walked over to the grassy area where Henry was sitting under a tree, Einstein sprawled across his lap, chewing on Henry’s ice cream cone.

  “He wanted some,” Henry said. “I was okay with sharing.”

  Alice giggled. “That’s very nice of you,” she said, putting her weight on a large tre
e root that made a perfect little bench for her. She stretched her legs out in front of her, the grass cool on her skin.

  Einstein looked up at her and wagged his tail, his deep brown eyes loyal already.

  Sasha came back over, carrying a small cone with mint chocolate chip. “You know, it hit me when I was ordering this: you could open up an ice cream shop in your grandfather’s building! It’s right by the pier. You’d have a ton of business.”

  Henry sat up on his knees, Einstein following his lead and standing, his ears perked, his tail midway between the ground and full-on wagging.

  Alice didn’t know a thing about ice cream or running an ice cream business. What would she even do in the off-season when the tourists had all left? Not to mention, she was still deciding whether it was smart to sink the small inheritance she’d gotten from Gramps into a new company, only to lose it all because she had no idea what she was doing.

  Sasha gave Alice a dismissive look, as if she could see her deliberation. “Say what you will, but to some, that isn’t so crazy.”

  “It isn’t crazy to me,” Henry said, his face so innocent, those blue eyes sparkling at the mere idea of it.

  “You’d love to have ice cream every day, I’m sure.”

  Alice knocked off his hat and ruffled his hair playfully. He grabbed it and put it back on. Alice got up and took Einstein’s leash, licking her ice cream down as it melted. She wasn’t completely opposed to the idea and she decided to hold on to the notion of an ice cream shop. She didn’t want to come to a decision right now anyway, so she turned the conversation toward Henry and the day he’d spent with her father.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get home so I can hear all about your fishing with Grandpa Frank.” She tossed her keys to Sasha. “Will you drive so I can finish my ice cream?”

  Chapter Three

  “So tell me,” Alice asked Henry as she tucked his blankets around him, his hair wet and combed to the side after his bath, “how many fish did you catch with Grandpa Frank?” She leaned down onto the other pillow on his bed, the lamplight casting a golden glow in his room. Above his bed, the planets whirled around on the ceiling from his nightlight and the soft clicking of the small machine was almost lulling.

  “I caught seven!” he said, his eyebrows rising in excitement, his blue eyes aglitter. She hadn’t seen him like that since the day his team, The Bobcats, won the little league championship, and she maintained a certain satisfaction from the fact that he’d gotten his love of fishing from her—one thing that didn’t remind her every day of his father.

  That little league game was the last one Matt had attended. It had started to drizzle outside, so Matt offered to keep score from the press box, and he invited Alice to climb up to get out of the rain. Henry made a home run that day, and Matt had called out over the loudspeaker, “Way to go, Henry!” Henry pumped his fists and pointed at his mother with that same smile on his face, making her laugh.

  “Grandpa Frank caught twelve. How can he catch so many?” Henry said, as the memory of his game faded away.

  Alice let out a small chuckle. She’d thought the same thing when she’d gone fishing with her own grandfather. “Grandpa Frank learned from his dad, my gramps. Your great-grandfather was amazing at fishing. He had trophies.” She said the word “trophies” in a whisper to drive home how thrilling it was. Because, as a girl, she’d felt that excitement.

  “You want some slack in the line,” she remembered Gramps saying, the sparkle of the Atlantic behind him as he looked at her with that crease between his green eyes, his skin weathered from years of being in the sun. He would grab her line with his fingers still wet from securing the shrimp onto her hook, and pull just a little. They always fished with shrimp because he swore that shore fishing was better with real bait.

  Alice had done all the things young girls do—tea parties, dress-up, playing with dolls—but there was something about fishing with Gramps that was more fun than any of those other things. The fondness of her memories could’ve been due to the fact that her mother had died too early and she’d spent so much time with the men in her family. Or perhaps it was the wind on her face, or the squawk of seagulls overhead, or the swooshing of the ocean, or the way Gramps told her “good job” with that wrinkle of his nose when she caught a fish—whatever it was, she couldn’t get enough of it. So when he invited her to visit, she always jumped at the chance.

  “I used to fish with my gramps from a big pier that stretched out into the ocean,” she said, her memories inching into their conversation. She tucked Henry’s blankets around him.

  “I wish I could’ve tried that,” he said, his eyelids getting heavy.

  Gramps had told her once that he’d started fishing more after he’d lost Gran. Gran was a character that Alice had pieced together using old photos, family stories, and fuzzy memories. Alice had only been four when she’d passed away of heart problems. From what Alice knew of her, she was a free spirit, dancing and twirling around the kitchen while she dried dishes, always smiling. Alice could remember her shoes: flat, like ballet slippers, dark, and perfect with the shorts she liked to wear. If Alice worked really hard, she could see the pattern on the scarf that Gran used to tie her hair back in the coastal wind. But that was about it.

  Alice had so many more memories with Gramps. She used to love the way he lined up the bicycles outside in a rainbow of color every morning, with the salty breeze blowing against their faces, warm as an oven despite the sun barely peeking over the horizon. When she used to visit him, they’d get up well before dawn, and as soon as those bikes were out, people would show up with their paper cups of coffee from the local shop and rent their bikes so they could take that first morning ride as the orange glow rose up over the ocean. The white sparkles on the waves were like fireworks, the air crystal clear before the day’s humidity set in.

  Henry inhaled deeply and wriggled like he always did when he was fighting sleep, but the busyness of his day was more than he could battle and sleep was winning over.

  Alice quietly set the pile of books they’d read earlier onto the floor, as Henry slipped into dreamland. She stayed on the edge of his bed, thinking. Henry didn’t remember visiting the Outer Banks where Gramps had had his bicycle shop. He’d been so small the last time they’d gone. He’d seen Gramps on Thanksgiving, and Henry always received a ten-dollar bill in his birthday card from him, but life had gotten in the way and they hadn’t gone to see him like they should’ve—in recent years, it had always just been easier for Gramps to make the drive to see everyone here.

  Gently, Alice pushed a wet strand of hair off Henry’s forehead and he breathed in again in response. She wished Henry could’ve experienced the long evenings they’d spent on the pier after a rainstorm, when all the tourists had piled into the movie theaters and shopping malls to avoid the rain, Gramps closing the bike shop early as a result. He’d pull out a can of soda for both of them—she could still hear the snap and the fizz as he released the top with his thick fingers. She’d skip up next to him as he’d grab his tackle box and two poles from the corner of the shop. Sipping the sugary sweetness of the soda, the icy drink refreshing in contrast to the muggy heat that steamed from the asphalt road, they’d make their way to the pier.

  After they’d fished, Gramps would bring her back to the shop, where she’d climb up on the counter, folding her legs underneath her, and they’d nibble on cookies that he would always make just for her—eating Gramps’s cookies was one of her favorite memories. She could remember the smell of baking mixed with the tires of all the bikes and the salt of the sea. It was its own unique scent that could never be replicated.

  She was unsure if it was the late hour or the fact that she struggled to let go of things, but she had a shockingly strong pain in her chest when she thought about never setting foot in the bike shop again. She tried to rationalize it, telling herself that Gramps wasn’t there now, and she wasn’t a little girl anymore, but no matter what she said to try to convince
herself, the idea crept in that she might not be doing the right thing by selling.

  She tiptoed out of Henry’s room and called Sasha. She wanted to talk to her anyway to see if she could get out of her what was going on. By the way she’d acted during their ice cream date today, it certainly seemed as though Sasha was having some inner turmoil about something as well.

  “I’m really having second thoughts about selling Gramps’s property,” she said honestly after Sasha picked up. “Even if I have no idea what to do, I’m struggling to part with it.” The good thing about Sasha was that, while she always saw things through rose-colored glasses, she listened as well, and took in Alice’s point of view. “I’m afraid I’ll miss it.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know anything about marketing or projections or inventory…”

  “You’re thinking about the ice cream shop!” she nearly squealed through the phone. When Alice didn’t say anything, still trying to decide if she’d lost her mind or not, Sasha continued, “You have a natural knack for marketing! I remember the ideas you used to give me when I was in school. Was ice cream what you want to do? Or something else?”

  Alice twisted a loose string on the throw pillow of her sofa. “Everybody likes ice cream.” Was she convincing herself?

  “True… I’m a bit rusty on the marketing side, but what if I helped you? We could do it together; we always have great ideas when we use both our brains! Remember the A you got me in my content marketing class?”

  “I didn’t get you that A. You got it. It was you who thought of that YouTube video on relaxation! Remember all those wonderful comments people left, feeling energized and excited? That video ended up getting almost five hundred thousand views!”

  “Yes, but it was you who created the content. I just made the video.”

  “You’re being modest, and kind,” Alice said with a smile. “Anyway, I couldn’t ask you to help me in North Carolina while you’re trying to interview for jobs here.” Sasha had been working at her husband Landon’s real estate agency until the divorce and now she was in search of something new. She’d been pounding the pavement for months, and she was waiting for a call from the Martin Agency after a very successful round of interviews.