Page 56 of Summer Love

“No. But I know one.”

He runs his index finger along the scar that cuts across his forehead, thoughtful.

“Flip?”

I just smile.

“Okay,” Luke says, scanning the bag. “I’m not asking any questions.”

“Smart move.”

He loads the items into a paper bag while I tap my card on the reader.

“Summer… I’m still sorry about last time. Really.”

“For what?”

“For when you came in. For not recognizing you.”

“Luke, that was two days ago. It’s fine.”

“No, I feel bad about it. But since then, stuff’s come back. Like… the pink bike.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“You had a pink cruiser, right? You used to lean it against the surf school fence. One day the wind knocked it over onto a board.”

“Jace almost killed me.”

“There. That came back.”

He taps his temple with a fingertip.

“That’s how it works. The memories come back in pieces. Not in order, not the useful ones first.”

He slides the bag toward me. I leave it on the counter.

“Luke… what actually happened to you? You mentioned a skate accident, a head injury… but I don’t even know what happened.”

He crosses his arms. Not defensive—more like he’s picking up an old story he knows too well.

“I was eighteen. Second year on the international circuit. I was competing at the X Games in Southern California.”

He tells me about the ramp, the cameras, the crowd. A trick he’d landed twice in practice, never in competition. And the fall.

“No helmet. At eighteen, I still thought I was invincible. End result: headfirst into the coping. I didn’t get up.”

He points to his scar.

“Two days in a coma. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t even read anymore. The letters were there, but they didn’t mean anything—like a foreign alphabet. It took me months to relearn all of it. Reading, writing, remembering certain people… Some things never came back.”

He gives a shrug too casual to be convincing.

“And now?”

“Now, I’m okay, most of the time. I get migraines. Memory gaps. Sometimes I lose the thread of a conversation and people think I don’t care, when really my brain just checked out without warning.”

He smiles, a little bitter.