Page 89 of Summer Love

“She skates. My mom coaches her. Even in summer—exhibitions, training, ice seven days a week. Elena doesn’t get a break. My mom never lets up.”

I had Dad. I had part of my summers here. Not Elena. She’s never had a place where my mom didn’t exist.

“But if you’re not on the outs… it’s not too late,” Sierra says.

“I guess.”

I could send her a text. Just one. See what happens.

Noah comes back from the pool house, a skimmer net in his hand. He moves along the pool, fishes out a few dead leaves, drops them into a plastic bucket. His cigarette has gone out; he relights it without stopping.

Then he spots Sushi, the little calico, digging in a bougainvillea pot.

“Hey! Get out of there.”

Sushi lifts her head, looks at him, keeps digging.

“I said, get out of there.”

He sets down the net, steps closer. Sushi darts toward the bungalows with a piece of root between her teeth. Noah presses the dirt back down, shakes his head, and goes back to working his way around the pool.

Harper smiles, then her eyes come back to me. She takes a sip, sets the mug down on the low table.

“Oi. The guy who pulled you out of the water this morning—he looked like he wanted to kill you and save you at the same time. What’s the story with you two?”

“The last summer I came here…”

I stare at the skimmer net Noah’s sliding across the water.

“We dated.”

Harper and Sierra wait, hanging on every word.

“And it ended badly. I blocked his number,” I add, lowering my voice.

I look up. Noah’s at the far end of the pool, his back to us, leaning over the water. Far enough.

“Noah’s too,” I murmur.

Sierra raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t say anything.

“And I never came back.”

Harper nods. She doesn’t ask why.

Sierra’s gaze moves from me to Noah and back. She doesn’t push either.

My shivering eases. Harper sips her tea. Sierra closes her eyes, her face turned to the sun. Noah straightens a lounge chair, opens an umbrella, locks it in place. He takes a drag, blows out the smoke, moves to the next umbrella. The same sequence, not a wasted motion.

Back then, I knew what his days looked like. We talked almost every day. Not just summers—all year long. We sent voice memos—five minutes, sometimes ten—fired off at any hour. He’d tell me about high school, some idiot teacher, a run-in with Jace. I’d tell him about New York, skating, my mom. We didn’t call often, but the voice memos never stopped. Whole months of talking without seeing each other.

With Jace, it was different. Fewer texts, fewer words. A photo of the ocean, no caption. A surf video. A song sent at midnight, no comment. The year before that last summer, he wrote more often. Not walls of text. Just more. A few words at night, a photo in the morning. I watched for them.

Noah’s messages were a given. Jace’s, I counted. And then I blocked all of it.

Noah fishes out one last leaf, tosses it in the bucket.

I miss him.