I look up at Dad. “Are you going, too?”
He shakes his head and pretends to sort through the mail. “Not this time.”
But isn’t this supposed to be the last time?
“So, it’s settled,” Mom sings again. She swipes a hand beneath her nose and sniffles. “We’re going to the beach.”
“Yay,” I say, deadpan.
“Carrie,” Dad growls.
I force the corners of my lips to turn up. “Yay,” I sing, pumping my fist in the air. “We’re going to the beach!” I look up at Dad. “Can I go back to my room now?”
He glances toward my mother and she just shrugs. He leans over and kisses my forehead. He smells like wood chips and aftershave.
I start toward the hallway, and my mom’s voice calls to me.
“Carrie,” she says. I look back toward her. “I think I’m supposed to tell you that I’m dying and that this will be my last hurrah and that I want you to share it with me. But I’m just going to tell you that I want to spend the summer with you, even if you act like this the whole time, because I’ll take what I can get.”
Tears start to burn my eyes and I blink them back furiously. “I’ll go,” I whisper.
Dad puts his hands on my shoulders from behind and squeezes. “But she vows not to enjoy a single minute of it.”
Mom laughs. But it’s a sound with no joy in it at all. “I’ll take it.”
I nod and run toward my room. I go inside it and lean heavily against the wall. I leave my door cracked so I can hear what they’re talking about. But they’re so quiet that I can’t hear a thing. I do know, however, that my mom doesn’t leave until the early hours of the morning.
Nick
I let myself into the Michaels’ beach house and look around. It hasn’t been opened in a while, years probably. At least three. I don’t remember seeing Mrs. Michaels here even after the separation. I am pretty sure that she got the house in the divorce, because she’s the one who sends the checks.
I’d love to know what happened to cause the separation. And I’d like even more to know what caused Carrie to ditch me completely. A letter every now and then would have been nice. Or an e-mail. There are so many ways to communicate now that I can’t even think of all the ways she could have contacted me.
I nose around in their house and pull the dust covers off the furniture. It makes me sneeze and my eyes water, but someone has to do it. I rummage around under their counter until I find some furniture polish, and I go around and get rid of the dust that’s left and I vacuum. I’ve done worse things for money, and Mrs. Michaels is more than generous. She’s paid me way too much to take care of her lawn for a long time. I step outside when I hear a car door, thinking it’s the air conditioner repairman here to do the service. But as I go down the steps, I just see the neighbor’s son as he gets something out of his trunk.
I have never hated anyone quite as much as I hate this guy. His family rented the house next to Carrie’s all last summer, and I got to know him fairly well during that time. I even invited him to hang out with me and Malone a few times. Until he met Jackie. Then I spent all my time keeping him away from her, until I finally gave up and let her get her heart broken. He’s part of the reason why she is the way she is now. She doesn’t trust herself to make good choices around men anymore.
He raises his hand in a weak wave. “Nick,” he says. He gestures toward the Michaels house. “Somebody moving in?” he asks. I already removed the hurricane shutters and opened the house up.
“Nobody you need to know,” I toss back. I want to say “mind your own freaking business” but I keep that part to myself.
“Hey,” he calls, and he follows me around the corner of the house. “Do you know where I can find Jackie?” He grins lazily at me as he leans against the house, while I tip the cover off the air conditioner.
“Why do you want her?” I ask without looking up.
“She’s a fun lay, man. You know that.”
His nose is crooked from the last time I hit him. And that was over Jack, too. “She’s off-limits,” I say, grunting as I move the heavy metal.
He rubs the bridge of his nose, his lazy grin turning into a scowl. “You doing her again?”
“None of your business,” I say.
“Then you won’t care if I go looking for her.”
I get to my feet and advance quickly, so quickly that he stumbles back to lean against the house. I prop his chin up with my forearm, and he squirms until he realizes that he’s not going to get free. He just balances there on his tiptoes, trying to take in a breath. “Stay away from Jack,” I say. “And from Amber and Rose and particularly the girl who lives here.” I let him down and point toward the house. “She’s off-limits, too.”
“Who is she?” he asks, and I curse myself for even bringing her up because I just drew a great big target on her back.
“Go into town and take your pick of women. But leave my friends alone.” Leave mine alone. I consider Jack and Amber and Rose and the rest of the summer regulars to be off-limits. And Carrie—she’s mine. All mine. Until she tells me she’s not.
“We’ll see,” he says over his shoulder as he walks away.
Carrie
Dad glares at me from across the table, and I wince when he digs the toe of his dress shoe into my shin. He nods toward my mother like he wants me to pay attention to her. She’s sitting beside him across from me in the booth and I don’t know what to say to her. My feelings toward her haven’t changed. She left us. I want nothing to do with her.
“So, Carrie,” she says, “I arranged for someone to set up the beach house.”
I nod, and chew my Eggplant Parmesan slowly. “That’s good,” I mumble after I swallow.
She laughs. “The poor guy got stuck with all the hard work.” She looks at my dad. “John, do you remember how hard it was that first day at the beach? Taking the shutters down and getting it ready for the season?”
Dad gets a faraway look in his eye, but he nods.
I fill my mouth up so I won’t have to talk.
“No one has been there since the last time we went as a family.”
I was fifteen the last time we used the beach house. “Why?” I blurt out.
“Why what?” she asks, looking confused.
“Why haven’t you used it?” She loved the beach house.
“It just wasn’t the same…” She lets her voice trail off.
“You never took him there?” I ask. I refuse to say his name. The man she left us for doesn’t deserve a name or a face.
Her face reddens and she looks down at her food. “No.” That’s all she says. Just that.
That surprises me. She really loved the beach. I would have thought she’d want to share it with him.
“So, how’d you find someone to open it?” Dad asks. He’s trying. I don’t know why he wants to, but apparently he does.
“I used one of the local boys,” she says. She smiles at him. “I wish you were going with us.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.” He doesn’t look at her. He just looks down at his plate.
Mom lays her fork down and says, “Well, I guess we should get going. We have a long drive.”
I let my fork drop to the plate with a loud clatter. “Fine,” I say. I throw my napkin in my plate and get up.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom or anything?” Mom asks.
“Patty, I’m eighteen years old. I think I know when I need to go to the bathroom.” She holds up her hands like she’s surrendering.
Dad transfers my suitcase to the back of Mom’s jeep. Then he walks over to me. I fall against him and rub my cheek against his chest. “I’m going to miss you,” I whisper.
“I’ll miss you too.” He rubs my back in gentle, soft sweeps. “Be kind to your mother,” he urges.
“Why?” I mumble.
He sets me back and tips my face up. “This is her last summer. Make some memories.”
“Okay,” I breathe. But I
know I won’t.
We get into the jeep and I realize that the roof is missing and the windows are down. She’s not planning to drive from Charlotte to the Carolina coast like this, is she? “Can we put the top up?” I ask.
She puts her sunglasses on, grins at me, and shakes her head. “Nope.”
Then she jerks out of the parking lot so fast that I have to reach for the oh-crap handles. As she pulls out onto the road, my long blond hair starts to fly around my face. She looks at me, grins again, and opens the glove box. She roots around until she finds an elastic hair band. She holds it out to me between her thumb and forefinger. I take it and pull my hair back.
She runs a hand through her short cropped hair. “That’s the beauty of chemo,” she says with a shrug.
I just turn and stare out the open window.
“Are you going to talk to me at all on the ride?” she asks. But she doesn’t look upset. Just curious.
“Probably not.” I lean back heavily against the seat and slide my feet out of my sandals. I lift them to rest on the dash.
“Okay then,” she says. And then she turns the radio up as loud as it will go, until my feet are thumping and my ears vibrate.
I can’t help but wonder who will be at the beach when we get there. All the people I once knew? Amber? Rose? Nick? Oh, God. Nick. I wonder what he looks like now. I wonder if he’s even still there. I want to ask Patty all these questions, because she might know the answers, but I’d have to talk to her to do that.
Mom rests her left wrist on the steering wheel and shifts with her right hand. Once we hit the highway, we’re all breezy air and noise. And I’m fine with that because I don’t have to talk to her. I don’t even have to pretend that I like her.
###
I wake up with a jerk and a squeal of the brakes, and my eyes open. My skin is gritty, and I have never felt less like myself than I do at this moment. Where are we?
We’re in the driveway of the beach house. That much looks familiar. But I have to blink my eyes a few times before I remember how I came to be here.
“We’re here!” my mother sings. She shoves my shoulder. “Help me unload.”
It’s late. Almost midnight. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”
“Nope.” She doesn’t say any more than that. She just shoves my shoulder again and I get out. I start unloading suitcases and boxes of food and supplies.
The house looks different. I remember it as larger than life. But it’s not. It’s small and quaint. It’s all beachy, with fishing signs hanging in the carport and fishing nets decorating the space. None of us fish. I never did understand those being there.
The inside is just like I remember it, but smaller. It’s painted in yellows, blues, greens, and peachy colors. And the furniture is just as bright. I walk through and push open the sliding glass door. I step onto the deck and the ocean wind wraps around me, covering me in wet, cool, refreshing air.
I lift my face to the breeze and close my eyes, inhaling deeply. For a second, life is perfect. Then she steps outside with me, and it’s not.
I walk down the steps that lead to the ocean and let my feet sink into the sand. I hear the sliding glass doors close behind me with a slight bang. She’s gone back inside. Good. I walk down to the shore until the sand starts to suck at my feet.
This place used to be magical. But now it’s just that place that belongs to my mother.
The saltwater laps at my shins, tugging me in with its greedy grasp. Maybe if I just try to focus on the ocean, I can make this work. This trip doesn’t have to be about her. It can be a little about me, too, can’t it?
I turn and look back at the house. The light in the living room goes off. What? I start back in that direction and open the sliding glass door. My mom’s bedroom door is closed. She just went to bed?
“Good night, Patty,” I whisper, throwing up my hands.
I take a quick shower and go to my old room. The sheets are folded up on the bed, so I put them on it and then slide between them in a T-shirt and my underwear. I can’t believe she went to bed without a word to me. Then I remind myself that I’m not supposed to care.
###
I wake up the next morning and stumble into the hallway. I can smell coffee brewing and I walk toward it. If there’s one thing I get from my mother, it’s the love of the coffee bean. I’ll take it iced, brewed, instant, or any other way you want to present it, as long as I can have some. As though on auto pilot, I walk toward the kitchen.
I hear shuffling and see that the fridge is open and someone is rummaging around in it. She’s wearing jeans? At the beach?
But then the person stands up, and it’s not my mother at all. He’s blond and tall and he’s…not my mother. His eyes go wide for a second and he freezes. Then they start to take a lazy slide down my body. My seriously under-dressed body.
I cross my arms in front of my chest, since I’m not wearing a bra. “Who are you?” I ask. I step behind the counter, trying to put something between me and him as I tug on the hem of my T-shirt.
His brows shoot up. He has the end of a cheese stick hanging out from between his lips. He bites down hard and chews for a second with one eye closed. Then he grins. “How quickly she forgets,” he says. He hitches a hip against the counter and looks at me. There’s a quirky grin on his lips and I find myself wanting to smile along with him. Well, I would if I wasn’t wearing just my undies.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
It hits me like a ton of bricks when I realize who he is. “Nick?” I gasp out.
He grins and I know I got it right. How I missed it to begin with, I’ll never know.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
He points toward the door. “I came to mow the grass, and your mom was on her way out the door for chemo, and she said to help myself to some food. So I did.” He smiles again.
“She’s gone?”
He nods, a curious expression on his face. “To the hospital. A friend picked her up.”
“Oh.” I play with a loose thread on the sleeve of my shirt, because I don’t know what to say to him.
“She’s not well, huh?” he asks. His gaze is curious, though. Not sympathetic.
“Guess not,” I say.
He holds out his half-eaten cheese stick. “Want some cheese?”
“Ew. No thank you.”
His eyes narrow. “I seem to remember that once upon a time we swapped more spit than there is on this cheese.” He laughs as heat creeps up my cheeks. “Are you aware that you’re in your undies?” he asks.
“I was kind of hoping you weren’t aware of it, actually. I didn’t know anyone was here.”
He points to his face. “And you have pillow marks on your face.”
I scrub a hand down my cheek. I probably have dark rings of old mascara under my eyes, too.
His voice softens. “And you’re hot as hell looking like that,” he says quietly.
My heart trips. “God,” I breathe.
He grins. “Got to get to work,” he says. He shakes his cheese at me. “I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Okay,” I say quietly with a wave.
He laughs as he slams out the door. I hear some rattling and then the mower starts up. I sink onto a barstool. Crap. That wasn’t how I’d hoped that would go. Seeing Nick again, I’d hoped to be pretty. And put-together. And better than the last time he saw me. But I was none of those things.
I was just me. And just me isn’t enough to keep anyone around.
I pour some coffee and take it to my room. My reflection mocks me from the dresser mirror. Indeed, I do have dark shadows of mascara under my eyes, and my hair looks like rats have crawled into it and taken up residence. God, why does it have to happen like this? Why couldn’t I have known he was here so I could be prepared? And why is he mowing our grass? And why didn’t my mother tell me she was going for chemo?
I wash my face and brush my teeth, and then put on a bathing suit. I’m at the beach, and I
fully intend to take advantage of it. I have no idea when my mother will be back. I take a bottle of water, a shirt, and a towel and settle on the beach so I can begin to get my summer tan on. It’s windy on the beach, so I lather myself in sunscreen. The sun can be deceptive even when it doesn’t feel as hot. I lie back and close my eyes. The warmth of the sun seeps into my skin, and I feel all loose and languid in no time.
It was really strange seeing Nick after all this time. He’s grown up. I guess I have too, but my age doesn’t seem quite so jarring. The last time I saw Nick, he still had braces, because I remember him cutting my lip with them when he kissed me for the first time. It was at my fourteenth birthday party. We were dancing on the sand to a slow song playing on the speakers Dad dragged onto the porch just for my party.
His hair looks like it has been kissed by the sun and he’s broader than I remember. As broad as a doorway. He used to be skinny, but now he’s…not. He’s sexy. And he seems so much older than me. We’re both nineteen, and I’m pretty sure that he graduated this year just like I did. Amber and Rose are the same age as us. I think Mom said they’re here, too. They’re both summer people like we are. Nick was the only one who hung out with us who actually lived here, aside from the friends he brought around. His parents had a trailer in a nearby park. It wasn’t like our houses, which sit directly on the beach. We met him one day walking down the beach at dusk. I’ll never forget that day.
“You three look like you could use some directions,” a voice called out from beneath the pier.
Amber grabbed my arm and Rose whistled quietly. “Goodness, he’s handsome,” Amber breathed.
“We’re not lost,” I said. “But thank you.”
He was standing under the pier with two other boys. They laughed to themselves, but he wasn’t laughing. We kept walking, and he jogged backward in front of us, not even bothering to look and see where he was going.
“Are you sure you’re not lost? Because I could have sworn you were trying to find the way to my heart.” He laid his hand on his skinny chest and batted his blond lashes at us dramatically. “It’s easy. Chocolate and kisses. Not necessarily in that order.” Suddenly, he tripped and fell onto his back. He just laid there and laughed.