Page 191 of Summer Love

I give her a little shoulder bump. She hip-checks me back and keeps heading for the exit.

“Don’t worry, your real life’s waiting for you here.”

I know.

The automatic doors slide open. The cold air hits me. Early November in Northern California—it’s less brutal than New York, but it still bites.

The ground is wet and shining. The mist clings to the HOURLY PARKING sign above us and turns its light into a yellow halo. Sierra makes a beeline for the back row.

“Your chariot awaits,” she says, nodding toward an old purple Subaru Outback.

The bumper disappears under a cluster of stickers—a black-and-white one stands out, MY BODY MY CHOICE, peeling at the edges. A long scratch runs down the passenger door.

Sierra pulls out her keys, heads for the trunk. I slow down and turn around.

Noah walks behind us, eyes down, shoulders slightly hunched. The lighter’s back between his fingers. The yellow neon light falls on his badly cut hair, on the NASA T-shirt that doesn’t pull tight on him anymore.

He looks up, meets my eyes.

I smile at him. He manages a half-smile.

It’s not like before, but from a distance, it almost looks like it. The summers, the crew—and Jace at the end of the road.

CHAPTER 63

Jace

I’m sitting on my board, legs in the black water. The cold bites at my ankles, but the wind died overnight; all around us, the ocean is glass. To the east, pink climbs over the ridgeline.

It’s rare to have this many of us at the morning session. Maya on my right, can’t sit still. Kai on my left, motionless. Evan farther out, sitting straight on his board. Miles and Luke to his left—Miles talking enough for two, Luke nodding without a word.

Sierra isn’t here. Neither is Harper—she went back to the Gold Coast at the end of summer. Maybe she’ll come back next summer. Or not.

Noah isn’t here either. He comes once a week now, sometimes twice. Last Tuesday he had a decent session—got up on four waves.

He runs on the sand every morning. I often see him at the lodge gym in the evenings. He still smokes too much, but he spends a little more time with the crew now, and sometimes he laughs when Miles says something stupid.

Not healed, but fixable. One day I’ll get my brother back. Not the one from before, but close.

“Jefe, you taking that one, or you planning to watch it roll by?” Maya calls. “¡Vamos!”

I smile without turning around.

“You take it.”

She paddles, catches the wave, drops in, blows her line. I hear her cursing in Spanish from the whitewater. Kai smiles, says nothing.

A board paddles out from the beach. I freeze.

It’s yellow.

I know that board. It’s Summer’s. It lives in the Hayes garage—I saw it again just yesterday, putting tools away.

I squint. Blonde hair low against the board.

No. Impossible.

I turn my head toward Kai. Motionless, he watches the figure paddling out.