The Forever Summer

by Jamie Brenner

  “So how long are you in town for?” Paul said.

  “Just until Saturday morning,” she said. It’s only a few more days, she told herself.

  The house, like Amelia and Kelly’s, was a perfect beachy-shabby chic. The living room had a skylight and wall-to-wall bookshelves filled with hardcovers. Marin would have loved to check out the titles but Paul ushered her toward the kitchen.

  Thomas and Bart’s kitchen was spacious and full of light, with a farmhouse sink, pale hardwood floors, and a white marble island. It was bright with green accents—lime-green Shaker cabinets, a bowl of Granny Smith apples, a row of large Perrier bottles on the countertop.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Paul said to Amelia.

  She looked up from the counter.

  “Hi, dear—I’m elbows-deep in dough or I’d give you a welcome hug. Make yourself at home. It’s going to get very crowded here in about an hour, so if I were you I’d stake out a spot and relax.”

  Three men bounded into the kitchen and started picking from a tray of artfully arranged crudités. Amelia swatted them away while ticking off introductions.

  Marin knew she would never remember all the names. The men were unabashedly fascinated and delighted by her sudden appearance in Amelia’s life.

  “So you’re Rachel’s sister?” one man asked.

  “Half sister,” Marin said, the words still unbelievable to her own ears. But somehow, in this place, it wasn’t quite as strange as it might have been somewhere else. “Is Rachel here?” she asked Amelia.

  “Out by the pool,” Amelia said.

  Marin grabbed a carrot stick and headed out through the French doors to the back of the house. A porch overlooked a flower garden, an old-fashioned gazebo, and a small swimming pool. That’s where she spotted Rachel, perched on the edge of a chair, talking to a remarkably good-looking guy. He looked like one of the Hemsworth brothers, Chris or Liam or whatever their names were. Either way, definitely swoon-worthy.

  And she couldn’t help but notice that her sister seemed to be swooning.

  Rachel had been surprised, when she arrived at the house, at how quickly Amelia was enveloped by her friends and how extraneous Rachel instantly felt. Oh, she was welcome. And she was certainly a curiosity.

  “Nick’s daughter. After all this time. Remarkable!”

  She learned she was in the home of Thomas Frost Duncan, an award-winning poet and longtime Provincetown resident who was celebrating not just his fifty-fifth birthday but twenty years of surviving with AIDS.

  Thomas had short-cropped white hair and piercing blue eyes. He sat folded in an Eames chair and looked much older than fifty-five. As if reading Rachel’s thoughts, he said, “I never thought I’d reach forty.”

  Unsure what to say to that, she asked about his poetry.

  “I didn’t think your generation was interested in poetry. Just your hundred-and-forty-character Twitter haiku.”

  “Such a cranky old man. How do I put up with you?” Bart said, his warm brown eyes crinkled with affection. “Don’t mind him. In fact, you should go back to the pool with the other young people.”

  “Sure,” said Rachel. “I’ll go check it out.”

  She wandered over to the back patio. It was quiet out there except for a lone guy sitting poolside in a lounge chair. She didn’t want to disturb him. She stood indecisively between the house and the pool until the man sensed her awkward presence and turned around.

  “Hey there.” He gave a half smile, then turned back to the water.

  Whoa. He had cheekbones you could ski jump off and blue-green eyes the color of the bay. When she was young she had been obsessed with a made-for-TV movie about a girl who turned into a mermaid. The mermaid (and Rachel!) fell in love with a hunky lifeguard, played by a gorgeous Australian actor. This guy looked just like him. All he was missing was the accent.

  But this wasn’t a movie, and she shouldn’t be crushing on some dude. That was not why she was there. This was a family trip, and shame on her for even noticing that he was great-looking. Besides, this was a crowd of gay men. She was an idiot.

  She sat on a chair near him but not too near.

  “Hey. I’m Rachel,” she said.

  “Luke,” he said. “How do you know Thomas?”

  “Oh—I don’t. I came with my grandmother. She’s good friends with him.”

  He nodded with a polite smile. Dimples! What was wrong with her?

  “So how do you know Thomas?” she asked.

  “He’s my father.”

  “Really?” she said, not bothering to hide her surprise.

  “Yes,” said Luke. “You know, most people here are on their second lives.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know that much about this place. I just got here yesterday.”

  “Oh, well—you’ll see. P-Town is the land of reinvention. Everybody’s got a story.”

  I just want your story, she thought. “Do you live here?” she asked.

  “Just visiting,” he said. “I teach at the University of Rhode Island.”

  Cute and smart. “What do you teach?”

  “Urban planning.”

  And socially aware. Stop it.

  How old was he? Early thirties, she guessed. She started to say something but noticed he was distracted, fixed on something or someone over her shoulder. She turned to see Marin. Marin, looking like a radiant, dark-haired angel in a diaphanous white sundress.

  Rachel felt an unfamiliar pang of territorial angst.

  For the first time since learning about Marin, Rachel wanted a few more minutes of being an only child.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Marin stood in front of the row of lounge chairs while Rachel stumbled through introductions to the hot guy, followed by an awkward explanation of their half-sisterhood.

  “Interesting,” he said. “And I thought I had a complicated situation with my dad.”

  Kelly and Paul appeared.

  “We’re going to duck out and get a drink,” said Kelly.

  “Correction,” said Paul. “We’re going out to get drunk.”

  “You’re leaving?” Marin asked.

  “Bart’s friends are in recovery, so this party is dry; Paul and I want to have a celebratory round,” Kelly said. “In case you’d like to join us.”

  Marin had two choices: Continue to talk with the hottie—and suffer the dagger eyes of Rachel—or get good and drunk.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said. “Lead the way.”

  Rachel’s sigh of relief was shockingly blatant—or maybe Marin had imagined it. Suddenly, she was really annoyed with Rachel. Annoyed with her innocent doe eyes. Annoyed with her for her pathetic, obvious crush on this guy. Annoyed with her for the endless pit of need that had dragged Marin into her life and turned Marin’s own life upside down.

  “Care to join us?” Marin said to Luke. He seemed to consider it, then said, “It’s a little early for me. Thanks, though.”

  “Suit yourself,” Marin said.

  The bar was, as everything here seemed to be, within easy walking distance. A-House was nestled on a side street off Commercial. It was a white clapboard building with an American flag waving atop the porch roof. A hanging wooden sign out front read ATLANTIC HOUSE BAR. It was old-fashioned and non-remarkable-looking, but when Marin glanced up she noticed beautiful stained-glass windows on an upper floor. They didn’t really fit with the rest of the exterior. But this was what Provincetown seemed to be so far: at first glance, you saw one thing; after a closer look, you saw something you wouldn’t necessarily expect.

  Inside, it was dark and smelled like decades’ worth of faded cigarette smoke. Behind the bar, Christmas-tree lights. And in the farthest corner of the room, another small, stained-glass window. Mariah Carey played over the sound system: “Vision of Love.”

  The bartender looked up wearily, as if it were the end of a late Saturday night instead of eleven in the morning in the middle of the week. He had a sun-weathered face, a buz
z cut, and a full sleeve of tattoos. Marin couldn’t tell if he was forty or sixty.

  Marin, Kelly, and Paul sat at the bar, front and center. Directly behind the bartender was a carved wooden bust of a merman.

  “Hey, Chris. Three kamikaze shots,” said Paul.

  A kamikaze? Marin was a wine drinker—that was it. To her left, a giant screen played the Mariah Carey video that went with the song.

  “To Thomas’s birthday,” the bartender said, sliding the shots in front of them and downing one himself.

  “To Thomas,” Marin said along with Kelly and Paul. She swallowed her shot. Vodka with lime juice? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that it was strong.

  “Fifty-five,” Kelly said. “And I can’t believe I’m past fifty.”

  “Yes, you are, sweetheart. But you don’t look a day over thirty-five. You and Julianne Moore. The hottest old redheads in the world.”

  “Thanks?” Kelly said, laughing.

  “I hate that you didn’t have a big party last year. I say we have a ridiculous, all-night soiree right here for your next birthday. It should have a theme.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Kelly waved the bartender over for another round. “But you better check in with my better half. You know she always has something planned.”

  “Don’t I know it, you lucky bitch. You and Amelia, Thomas and Bart—you all make me almost believe in marriage. Though it is a little sickening to be around all that love and devotion.” Paul turned to Marin. “What about you, gorgeous? Do you have a boyfriend? Some hot suit waiting for you back in New York?”

  Marin burst into tears.

  “Oh, honey! Was it something I said?”

  “No,” Marin sobbed. She missed Julian so much, the emotional pain was nearly physical. Her entire body ached.

  She couldn’t let it end with that last terse phone call. She should have told him the real reason she was in Provincetown. Given him a chance to be her friend again. They didn’t have to figure out the other stuff yet.

  “Oh, look what you’ve done, gossip queen!” Kelly admonished Paul, throwing her arm around Marin. “Just ignore him.”

  “It’s okay. It’s fine. It’s just…” And the whole story came rushing out: her job, falling for Julian, getting busted at work and fired.

  “No fraternization at work? This whole town would shut down,” said Paul.

  “Marin, this will sound trite, but trust me—I had a very bumpy start in my relationship with Amelia—”

  “Understatement!” chirped Paul.

  “Can I finish, please? Hon, you have to just say to yourself that if it’s meant to be, it will be. It sounds like a cliché but clichés are just recycled truths.”

  They downed their drinks, and then Kelly ordered another round and headed off to the bathroom.

  “I hate to be a lightweight but I really can’t keep up with you two,” Marin said.

  “We’re just getting started. Kelly needs to get blitzed, I can tell.”

  “Really?”

  “Birthdays can do that to you at our age. And she had her own health scare last year. So I think this just dredges up that old ugly beast, fear of mortality.”

  She glanced behind her. Kelly was still in the dark, nether regions of the bar.

  “Is she okay now?”

  “She’s fine. But these things make you think. Carpe diem and all that.”

  Marin wanted to say something, but the thought floated away. She was well and truly buzzed. Chris slid the next round across the bar.

  “Carpe diem,” Marin said, and they clinked their shot glasses together.

  Kelly reappeared and scolded them for not waiting for her.

  “You know what we never did?” said Paul. “We never got our tattoos!”

  “We never got our tattoos,” Kelly repeated.

  “You promised.”

  “What tattoos?” said Marin.

  “Long story,” said Kelly.

  “We should go right now,” said Paul.

  “Amelia will kill me. She hates tattoos.”

  “Honey, you’re a breast cancer survivor. You’ve earned the right to mark that in some way.”

  “That’s true!” said Kelly. “Maybe I’ll get her name. That way she can’t be too angry, don’t you think?”

  Marin nodded. At that point, it all sounded perfectly reasonable to her.

  Had Marin been flirting with Luke? Rachel couldn’t tell if she was just being jealous and ridiculous or if there was actually a vibe between the two of them. Then again, why would Marin be interested in Luke? Wasn’t she supposedly still hung up on her ex-boyfriend back in New York?

  So much for sisterly loyalty.

  The poolside was, by that time, populated with guests who had spilled out of the crowded house. Lunch organized itself in a sort of free-form potluck.

  “I see my dad in the summers mostly,” Luke told Rachel over paper plates filled with tuna salad and chips. “I alternate Christmases between him and my mom.”

  He had grown up in New Jersey. Thomas had been a high-school English teacher, his mother a school administrator. “When I was twelve, my dad basically announced, ‘This isn’t right for me, I need to live my authentic life.’ And that was it.”

  “Your poor mother. She must have freaked.”

  “You know, not really. She was upset, but not upset with him, because she knew he couldn’t change the way he felt. If he could have made it work with her, he would have. I guess the split was as amicable as it could be under the circumstances.”

  Rachel told him about her single-mother upbringing, her father a father only in his genetic contribution. And that she had learned of his death only last week. “Now it’s too late,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Luke said. She immediately regretted complaining. Such a downer!

  “No—I mean, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m here, Amelia is amazing. I’m really thankful to meet my grandmother.”

  “And your sister.”

  Are you thinking about my sister?

  More people trickled out to the pool. Everyone wanted to say hi to Luke, all of them full of recollections of the last time they had seen him and anecdotes about what had happened since his visit the previous summer. Rachel started to feel silly just planted by his side, so she reluctantly excused herself.

  Inside the house she found Blythe perusing the living-room bookshelves. She stood out, overdressed in a pair of well-tailored gray slacks and a cream-colored summer-weight cashmere cardigan with a scarf knotted around her neck.

  “Amelia texted me that you were all here but I don’t see Marin anywhere,” Blythe said.

  “Oh, she and Kelly and Paul went to a bar.”

  “Really?” Blythe said, incredulous. Not happy.

  Rachel nodded. “Apparently the party is dry, and they all went out for a drink.”

  “Marin isn’t a big drinker. And certainly not a day drinker.”

  Rachel shrugged. “We’re on vacation.”

  Over Blythe’s shoulder, she spotted Luke heading toward the front door. Alone. He noticed her and gave a little wave.

  “You’re leaving?” she called out, realizing she sounded like a girl upset that the boy she liked was ditching the middle-school dance.

  “I need a little breather. I’m going to stop by Herring Cove for a while.”

  “Herring Cove?”

  “The beach,” he said. Then, after hesitating for a second: “Do you want to come along?”

  That would be a definite yes. No use pretending otherwise.

  “I’ll see you later, Blythe,” she said, leaving Marin’s mother looking confused, possibly about to protest.

  Maybe having an overly involved mother wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  Luke opened the passenger door of his Jeep and she climbed in. The sky had grown overcast, and the breeze had turned into wind.

  “There’s a sweatshirt or two in that duffel in the backseat if you’re cold,” he said. “It will be even
windier at the beach.”

  She turned around and unzipped the duffel. It felt strangely intimate to be going through his stuff, but it had been his idea. She pulled out a navy blue University of Rhode Island hoodie and pulled it over her T-shirt.

  “Thanks.”

  She stole a glance at him in profile and bit her lip. He was ridiculously handsome, clearly intelligent, nice as hell.

  She tried not to think of the way he’d looked at Marin. Rachel was not adept at the politics of love and relationships. She’d never had a serious boyfriend—serious meaning lasting more than a few weeks. Which was especially ironic, given that her mother was never without a boyfriend, usually someone inappropriately young and almost always underemployed.

  “Why didn’t you ever get married?” Rachel had asked her once.

  “Because men are for fun, and marriage is work,” her mother said.

  And so, on some basic level, Rachel didn’t get the point of relationships. She’d never seen one work out. She’d also never yet experienced that all-consuming rush of infatuation that seemed to drive everyone else in the human population.

  Luke turned on the radio, and an old Kings of Leon song filled the car. Rachel felt a surge of energy, a high-powered adrenaline rush that took her breath away. He drove northwest onto Bradford and she closed her eyes, the wind whipping through the open-topped Jeep. Minutes later, he pulled around a bend and into a nearly empty parking lot. Luke jumped out and came over to open her door.

  “This is the beach?” she said.

  “Yeah. Past these dunes.”

  The hills of sand were threaded with plants and a smattering of deep pink flowers. Rachel took off her sneakers.

  “We don’t have flowers growing on the beaches in California,” she said.

  “They call them beach roses,” he said.

  Rachel followed him down a path to a wide patch of wet sand. The ocean was gray and foamy, and not many people were around.

  “This isn’t how I imagined the beach. Where is everyone?”

  “It’s late in the day and cloudy…the tide is high. If you were here midday in July, you’d barely have room to walk.”