Page 105 of Summer Love

He caught me.

His thumb barely moves, and I feel myself flush.

“You could just ask for help, you know,” he mutters.

My shoulders stiffen.

“I don’t need your help.”

I don’t move. His hand finally leaves my waist.

“Get down,” he says.

He climbs down off the ladder and steps aside. I do as I’m told, head down. My legs are a little less steady than I’d like.

Jace climbs the ladder, grabs the shutter, and slides it off the hinges. He holds it at arm’s length and brings it down like he’s carrying a surfboard.

Without a word, he sets it against the house.

I lost twenty minutes on that shutter.

Flip gets up, circles Jace, comes back to me, goes back to Jace. He looks thrilled that we’re both here.

Without asking, Jace moves the ladder, climbs, and lifts the second shutter. The same smooth motion, the same ease. The wood creaks, the panel comes off its hinges. Jace sets it beside the first.

I watch him handle the shutters that felt heavy as lead to me. He’s not showing off. He’s got the strength, the practice, the right technique.

And it bugs me.

He moves on to another shutter. I wipe my hands on my shorts; the blue paint has dried on my fingers. The shadow of the house is starting to stretch across the yard.

“The hundred-thousand-dollar offer… that was you, wasn’t it?” I say.

Jace lifts the shutter, brings it down, sets it on the ground.

“Yeah,” he says.

He moves to the next window. The ladder creaks.

“I couldn’t do better than that. And even then, I’m not sure I’ll get a loan.”

Ryan had made that clear at the agency. “Someone who knows the neighbors very well,” he’d said.

A hundred thousand dollars. It wasn’t a taunt. It’s all he can do.

Jace takes off another shutter.

“If a developer buys it,” he says, “they tear the house down and put up condos.”

He sets the shutter down and climbs back up the ladder.

He doesn’t need to say more. Condos mean neighbors filing complaints about the music, the kids shouting, the van, the boards on the beach. Then letters to the city. Then restrictions. Then taxes climbing, because the whole neighborhood goes up in value.

The school’s land—the plot his grandfather bought back when no one wanted to live here—gets too expensive to keep.

The surf school dies. Not all at once—by bureaucratic suffocation.

“I’ve got an offer for three hundred thousand,” I say.