Page 44 of Summer Love

The Porsche pulls away behind me. I don’t turn around. The silence that follows is the best part of my night.

The night air is soft, heavy with the dull sound of the waves below. I breathe in. Ryan’s aftershave still clings to my skin—woody, sweet, too much. I want a shower.

I climb the last step up to the lodge. My right foot protests. Every step is a reminder that these heels were a stupid idea—that this whole night was a stupid idea.

I push the door open. The lobby is quiet. Orange light from the deck string lights filters through the big window. From the bar, muffled bass, hushed voices, a laugh.

Yumi’s behind the counter, bent over a ledger, her reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. She looks up when I come in.

“Evening, Yumi,” I say, brightly.

My voice rings false.

“Evening, Summer.”

Her eyes drop to my dress, my heels, then climb back to my face.

“You got any Advil? I think I pushed it a little too hard today…”

She opens a drawer under the counter and pulls out a bottle, then grabs me a glass of water and sets it in front of me. I take two tablets and swallow them.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. It’s just my foot hurting and⁠—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Her voice is gentle, not pushy. She watches me with that look I’m starting to recognize. She won’t press, but she stays there.

I don’t answer. My dress sticks to my skin. I wish I were in bed. I wish this whole day had never happened.

I wish I’d never come back to Coral Bay.

“Yeah. Night, Yumi.”

“Night, Summer.”

I head for the hallway that runs through the main building. Shell-shaped sconces cast a yellow glow over the tile. I pass the lodge’s utility area—the storeroom, the maintenance room—and the shared bathrooms for the long-term cabins. At the end, the back door opens onto the path to the bungalows.

I limp.

No point pretending anymore. There’s no one in this hallway to watch me hobble along in a cocktail dress.

The door to the second shared bathroom is open. A pale fluorescent light buzzes on the ceiling, and the sharp tang of bleach spills into the hallway.

A man backs out of it, a toilet plunger in one hand, a trash bag in the other. He’s wearing coveralls stained at the knees and elbows, and olive-green Crocs. His brown hair is a mess, sweat-plastered to one side of his forehead. A foul smell leaks from the bag—stagnant water and something acrid, organic, that the bleach doesn’t quite cover.

My eyes go wide.

“Noah?” I breathe.

He turns toward me. He hasn’t shaved. Not the deliberate three-day scruff—just uneven, dark stubble, too grown-up on a face I knew when he was a teenager.

And he’s put on weight.

Noah Walker, so thin he was all angles at sixteen, has a rounder face now, broader shoulders, a belly.

We study each other in silence. Him with his plunger and an unlit cigarette wedged between his lips. Me frozen in the hallway, in a dress and high heels, my foot on fire.