Page 200 of Summer Love

“I said yes.”

Maya sets down her glass. Kai, who’d been leaning back, leans forward. Mom opens her mouth, closes it.

“For the money, first off,” Jace says. “The school needs it, and it’s more than we bring in from six months of adult sessions. But also⁠—”

He takes a breath before he goes on.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s what happened to me, that’s all.”

Mom puts her hand on his forearm. Maya, for once, doesn’t crack a joke. Avery looks at Jace with pride. Summer strokes his thigh with her thumb.

I just watch my brother.

A year ago, Jace would never have said that. For years he hid that leg. Even from us. Tonight he just told six people he’s going to stand in front of a camera, in shorts, and tell a journalist how it happened. And he didn’t flinch.

Maya stretches, half-yawns.

“A ver, to recap: Noah’s going to college, Jace is becoming a model, Summer’s running a multinational. Me? I’m grabbing a beer.”

Laughter around the table. Summer closes her laptop and says:

“Okay. If nobody else has an existential announcement⁠—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” a woman’s voice cuts in.

I turn around. Yumi crosses the deck, her kitchen apron tied around her waist. A few feet behind her, a young woman follows. Small, very pale, platinum-blonde hair, dark roots starting to show. She’s wearing a fitted white blouse, high-waisted pants, thin heels that click on the wood. Her phone hangs against her hip by a gold strap, in a faux-marble case. Her eyes take in the pool, then the table, like it’s a problem to solve.

“This is my granddaughter,” Yumi says, stopping next to Mom.

I narrow my eyes. Despite the corporate outfit and the bleached hair, I recognize her. As a kid, she spent her vacations at the lodge. A year younger than me. Not a surfer. She was always around, without ever really joining the group.

“Hana?” I say.

“No. It’s Anna. A-N-N-A.”

“She’s the one taking over the lodge,” Yumi goes on.

“And you?” Mom asks.

“For me, it’s time to stop,” Yumi says, smiling. “A childhood friend’s waiting for me in Florida. We decided we’d grow old together.”

Mom nods and puts a hand on Yumi’s arm. Two widows who never needed many words to help each other out. Two places kept afloat for years: the lodge and the surf school.

Yumi turns to me.

“Noah, would you show her to her bungalow? The big one, number 1.”

It’s a rhetorical question. Yumi asks me for something, I do it. That’s how it’s been since I was eighteen.

“Sure.”

I stand, grab my lighter and my pack of cigarettes. I leave the folded T-shirt on my chair. Hana doesn’t say goodbye to the table, just a vague nod.

“This way.”

We go around the pool, off the deck, and onto the bungalow path, lined with solar lanterns.

The big one’s all the way at the end, the only one with a porch on three sides.