Page 39 of Summer Love

He swirls the wine in his glass. I notice a scar, small, a half-circle at the base of his thumb. White, old, sharp—like a bite.

His only imperfection. Everything else—the shirt, the watch, the hair slicked back, the one disciplined strand—is too clean, too smooth. The mark on his hand doesn’t fit. I wonder where it came from.

Ryan sets his glass down.

“Speaking of potential…”

Here it comes. The house.

“Think about my offer. Three hundred thousand dollars. It’d save you a lot of wasted time.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Good.”

He doesn’t push. He smiles and drinks. That’s his technique—he plants the seed, he waters it, he waits.

The jazz shifts to a new track. Upright bass, piano, slow music that matches the lighting. My foot is throbbing. I cross my legs so my right heel doesn’t touch the floor. The pain doesn’t ease.

Ryan starts talking again. He talks about the agency, a lot they bought near the boardwalk. His delivery is smooth: long sentences, numbers slipped in along the way, names dropped at the right moment. I nod. I lose the thread somewhere between two rental-yield percentages.

“…the Walkers have always been… how do I put it… enthusiastic. But enthusiasm doesn’t pay the bills.”

The name Walker pulls me back to reality. Ryan’s tone is polite, almost kind. He talks about them like slightly naive children who need money explained to them.

“The surf school’s doing fine, isn’t it?” I say.

“It gets by. But between us, since the father died, things have slipped quite a bit. The mother and Jace don’t know how to run the place. They’re surfers. They don’t speak business.”

“Since the father died.” A line on a balance sheet. Not a man, not colon cancer at forty, not three kids.

“The only thing keeping them afloat,” he goes on, “is the kid. Avery. Sixteen, sponsorship deals, brands paying her to wear their logos. She’s the one bringing in the money, not the school.”

My fingers tighten around the stem of my glass.

“You could almost accuse them of exploiting a minor,” he laughs.

I don’t laugh. I think of Jace in his trailer. Of a sixteen-year-old kid on an international circuit with too much weight on her shoulders already.

“Jace does what he can,” Ryan adds. “But this kind of business, in a town like Coral Bay…”

He lets the sentence hang. My fingers find the little gold wave at my throat.

“Nice necklace,” Ryan says.

I drop my hand.

“Thanks. It’s a family keepsake.”

“It suits you.”

His gaze lingers a second too long on my throat, then on my cleavage, then climbs back up. He takes his time—he figures he’s entitled to.

“You know, Summer…” he begins, lower now.

Summer. Not “New York girl” anymore.

“…some decisions get a lot simpler once you’re willing to be a little pragmatic.”