Page 6 of Summer Love

The door to the main building is open. The smell of coffee drifts from the deck, mixed with warm wood and salt air. Dishes clink somewhere in the kitchen. The sun beats down on the deck boards and lights up the tables, still damp with dew.

I walk up to the front desk.

Yumi’s behind the counter, smaller than I remember—more stooped, too. Her hair has gone silver-gray, pulled into a low bun, and the lines around her eyes have deepened.

“Yumi.”

She looks up. Her gaze lands on me—dark, soft, attentive. For a second, nothing moves on her face. Then a slow smile appears and widens as she really recognizes me.

“Summer Hayes! Look who’s back!”

She comes out from behind the counter, a dish towel tucked into the waist of her apron.

She lays a hand on my forearm—a thin hand, marked by decades of cooking and work.

“You look like hell,” she adds.

A laugh escapes me—the first since I set foot in California.

“Thanks, Yumi. Always a pleasure.”

“Rough night?”

“The crickets. The wind. The mattress.”

And a face I refuse to let in.

“Bungalow 17,” Yumi says, nodding. “The mattress is old. I’ll see what I can do. You want to eat? I’ve got rice from this morning, and I can make you⁠—”

“Just a coffee, if that’s okay. My stomach’s not awake yet.”

She studies me for a moment—that grandmotherly look weighing whether you’re eating enough—but she doesn’t push. She disappears into the back kitchen and comes back with a steaming mug, holding it out to me.

The warmth feels good. The smell too—strong, black, bitter coffee, a world away from Manhattan flat whites.

“Evan called me this morning,” Yumi says, slipping back behind the counter. “He’s handling the tow truck. Your car will be waiting in the lot tomorrow.”

“Thanks. In the meantime, I⁠—”

“There are bikes. Behind the building, under the awning. Take one and bring it back whenever.”

I have one, technically. An old beach cruiser, in the garage at the house. Pale pink, fat tires, a wicker basket on the front. Grandpa gave it to me the summer I turned fourteen. The house is a five-minute walk away, but I’m not ready to go there yet.

“Okay. Thanks.”

I take a sip of coffee. My eyes drift to the back wall, where Yumi has always hung photos—guests, surfers, sunsets taken from the deck. Most are old, a little yellowed by the years and the damp.

Two frames sit on a shelf. In the first, a little girl of seven or eight, sitting on the lodge steps. Straight black hair, a shy smile, an oversized T-shirt, Yumi’s dark eyes.

Hana.

The second photo is more recent. The same girl, but transformed. Platinum-blonde hair, black roots showing. Careful makeup, a structured blazer. She poses in front of what looks like a hotel lobby—not the High Tide Lodge, somewhere bigger, newer, colder. She looks to be in her early twenties.

I’d never have connected the two photos if they weren’t side by side.

Hana Nakamura. Yumi’s granddaughter, who used to hang around the lodge in the summers. She was always a little apart from the group, quiet, absorbed in her phone. I never took the time to get to know her.

In the recent photo, she looks like she decided to become someone else. A total identity overhaul—the kind I see every day on the feeds of the brands I manage.