The Summer Remains (16 page)

I followed Cooper to the pier and waded in a tide pool while he fished. In Jax Beach the water was usually a muted slate color, but sometimes it changed with the light of the sun like a pair of hazel eyes, and today it happened to be a beautiful shade of dark green, like an emerald in the shadows. The beach was crowded but not many people were by the pier – they were too afraid of the sharks that congregated there because of all the bait in the water. (Typical of us to head straight for the danger.) The weather was on the humid side of comfortable, as was often the case in northern Florida in the summer, and after I got out of the water I sat right on the edge of the sand and put my feet in the cool sea to fool myself into thinking it wasn’t so gross out. By now I’d figured today’s “fishing trip” was actually just an excuse for me to meet Kevin, Cooper’s best friend. I’d told Cooper there was no rush, that I was sure I’d meet him eventually, but for some reason he was, like, weirdly insistent on introducing me to all his different friends and family members, which was cute I guess.

“I’m so sick of pretending I care about fishing,” Kevin said as he dropped beside me. We’d already been introduced, but I guess I had to acquaint myself now. With dreads protruding from the half of his blonde head that wasn’t shaved, weird hipster tattoos all over his arms and chest, and gauge earrings, he looked more like an attendee at a Grateful Dead concert than the trendy surfers that populated Jax Beach. I found that odd, since Cooper’s easy confidence had made me picture him as coming from the popular crowd in high school, the kids who sat in the middle table in the cafeteria, soaking up all the attention. Kevin looked more like an emo kid from the corner table where all the skateboarders and rocker chicks sat, shooting spitballs at the popular crowd instead of sitting with them – to be more specific, he looked like
my
kind of person.

“You mean to tell me a champion surfer doesn’t like fishing?” I asked. “Isn’t that, like, against the rules?”

He gave me a weird look. “Oh, didn’t Coop tell you? I do love surfing, but I’m also totally gelaeophobic, and fishing doesn’t exactly help that. I’d rather not know what was out there if I had the choice.”

“Come again? What-a-phobic?”

“Fear of sharks. I have it.”

“Wait. You’re a surfer with a phobia of sharks? What?”

“Not just that, I’m deathly afraid of the water in general,” he said. “I saw a little girl get bitten by a shark while standing in waist-deep water down in Cocoa Beach when I was ten, and I’ve never been the same. But by that point I had already fallen in love with surfing and there was nothing I could do about it – I was a goner.”

“I know what you mean,” I said under my breath, a chill running up my leg even though the temperature currently hovered somewhere between Inhospitably Muggy and Suicide-Inducingly Hot.

“So what’s your love life like?” I asked to move things along. “Any boy news to report?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I wish. I’d let you know if I had some. The last guy I dated ended up cheating on me with a Spark guy. How tacky is that? Like, as if relationships weren’t hard enough before, now we have to deal with our boyfriends being able to get on their phones and sext whoever they want in secret. Why couldn’t I have been born in the ‘20s, so I could dress like a flapper and not have to worry about Spark?”

“Agreed,” I said with a nervous little laugh. “Even though…”

“I know,” Kevin said as he gave me the side eye. “Coop told me all about the Spark thing.”

I cringed hard. I didn’t think Cooper had been telling people about me, and
that
. I shriveled into myself a little as I wondered what
else
Kevin knew.

“It’s fine, though,” Kevin said. “So you had a lonely moment. Who hasn’t? I bet you don’t regret it for one second.” He motioned at Cooper.

“True. I don’t.”

“But seriously, you’re good for him. Better than anyone I’ve seen, actually. He seems…different now. Happy. Less stressed. And it’s good that you’re, like, handling all his baggage – his devotion to his mom and whatever. Most girls are annoyed by it, since it leaves no time for them.”

I watched Cooper’s back muscles ripple in the sun as he tossed out his fishing line. “Something tells me they all got over it.”

“True again.”

“How many girls
have
there been, by the way?” I asked as matter-of-factly as I could, since I am a monster and sometimes I don’t even know how I live with myself.

“Um, a good amount,” Kevin said, sort of halfway apologetically. “Not by his doing, though. Coop’s the guy who always made all the girls fall in love with him by being so nice and charismatic and, like, smart, and whatever, but trust me, he was clueless beyond that point. He’s the most oblivious guy I’ve ever met, actually. He never really had a male role model in his life, and that sort of hit his confidence hard, I think. He only dated anyone when
they
pursued
him
. But, I mean, just look at him – he
did
get pursued a ton.”

“Yeah,” I said. In my peripheral vision I could see the judgy look Kevin was giving me.

“Does it change your view of him to know that you’re not, like, the first girl to take him for a ride around the block, or whatever?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was testing me or not.

Cooper shifted the angle of his body a little as I watched him, his rippling abdominal muscles casting shadows on one another. I felt my face warm up as I turned to Kevin. “Something tells me I’ll get over it.”

When the sun sank behind our heads, the shadows cast by the palms and hotels along the shore creeping ever closer to the water as the day wound down, Cooper finally came and sat beside me. As I rubbed my leg against his I wondered if there was anything in the world better than this. His hair was getting golden like his skin, which looked spectacular against his warm brown eyes. I guess I was getting sort of sun-kissed, too. In that moment I wished very much that I could sit right here next to him, being that young and that beautiful, forever.

“Sorry,” Cooper said, “this one shark was eluding me and kept eating my bait and then swimming off.”

“Oh no,” I said, mocking disappointment. I liked him so much more when he was unburdened, acting young and easy like this. “How tragic it is that you didn’t get to reel in a deadly shark while standing five feet away from me. The horror!”

“Hey, I like catching them!”

“Why, though?”

He looked out at the sea, puffed out his chest, and exhaled. “I don’t know. They’re trash fish, you can’t really eat them or do much with them, but lemme tell you, they fight like hell.”

“Ah. The fight,” I said. “That explains it. You’re such a guy.”

“No. I’m just a human. And I fight. That’s what humans do. We have to. There is no other option.”

He stared off into the clouds for a long time as I thought about this and watched him. I noticed something in his eyes that reminded me of myself – the sadness, the insecurity, the fatigue. And suddenly I knew exactly how to help make him happy.

I tucked it away into a giddy little corner of my mind and returned to the sea.

I was just about to say something when a wild shriek caught my ears. I looked around, half-expecting to see a shark attack victim limping ashore, when a blonde girl under the pier jumped up and down and accepted a ring from a quite attractive guy kneeling in the shallows at her feet. Of course there was a crowd of friends taking photos from behind one of the pilings supporting the pier – because if Facebook doesn’t see it, it never happened at all – and once the couple made out in front of everyone, the friends stopped taking photos and jumped out to congratulate them.

I shivered a little and then noticed Cooper staring at me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look…sad.”

“Oh, no, nothing,” I said. “Good for them! Weddings! Marriage! Yay!”

He said nothing, his gaze suspicious.

“Hey, you wanna try your luck before we leave?” Kevin asked me. “My pole’s over there against that trash can.”

“Nah,” Cooper said casually before I could respond, waving his hand. “She’s not big on the whole fishing thing. Feels bad for ‘em.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. I’d told him that exactly one time, on our first date.

“And wait,” Cooper told Kevin. “You’ve never offered your pole to any of my girls before. Why now?”

Kevin smiled at me. “Let’s just say that I trust my pole would be in good hands with her.”

“Great,” Cooper said, “now let’s stop talking about your pole being in my girl’s hands and look at the sunset. God, isn’t this view awesome?”

Kevin checked out Cooper from behind and then gave me a knowing smirk, eyebrows raised. “Yeah,” he said as I tried not to laugh. “It is.”

A little wave surged up around us as we sat there, the tide rising quickly, the words
girl girl terminal girl
repeating in my head. Cooper reached over and splashed me.

“Hey!” I said as I wiped my face, but inside I was suddenly panicking. I didn’t want him to wash off
all
my concealer and see my scar in all its glory, here in the fading but still impressive July sunlight. “I just straightened my hair!” I lied. “I can’t get wet.”

“You did, huh?” he asked as he got up and stared down at me. “So you wouldn’t mind if I did…
this
?”

He stuck his leg into a tide pool and kicked water at me. I screamed and rolled to the side.

“Cooper Nichols, how
dare
you!”

That was it. I pushed myself up – which took more effort than ever – and started chasing him like a child. He ran into the water and I followed, jumping through the waves to catch him, ignoring the dull ache in my side as I did so. I finally reached him and pushed him down under the surface, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me under, too. That’s when I remembered my makeup. I stood up and turned around, hiding my face, as another surge made the water rise up to our shoulders. This wasn’t like the night at the pier – it was still light out, and my scar was totally visible.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

Figuring that there was no hiding now, I turned around with my right hand over my cheek.

“My scar,” I said quietly. “It’s just showing now, that’s all.”

The look in his eyes changed; softened. He crept closer, grabbed my hand, and slowly pulled it down, revealing me – all of me. I had never felt so exposed. I wanted to flinch and turn away because I was a monster, an ugly defected mess-up, but somehow I resisted. Finally he leaned in and planted a kiss on my upper lip.

“No,” Cooper said, a few inches from my face, as my nerve endings went wild with electric delight. “
You
are showing. And it’s okay. You’re alright, Summer Johnson. You’re okay.”

I could tell him
, I suddenly thought. I could totally tell him right now – that I’d been lying all summer and that I wasn’t the person he thought I was and that my days were as numbered as the waves were relentless and that, oh God, I wanted more than anything for him to forgive me and stay.

But like the coward I was, I said nothing.

“I know you’ve been nervous,” he suddenly said, and terror sank into me all over again
.

Oh no. He already knows. I won’t even have to tell him.

“I have?” I asked.

“About the way we met, on that dating app,” he said, weakening my knees with relief. “I’m not blind – I see it in your eyes, in the way you pull away from me sometimes. Kevin told me you were talking about Spark. It’s freaking you out that we met on some shallow, promiscuous app – it scared me a little in the beginning, too. But I don’t care at all anymore.”

As we waded along with the current, we stumbled into a deep hole in the sand and fell into neck-deep water. When we made it to the other side he stood up and laughed, but then he pulled me closer and got serious again.

“See, that’s the thing about this world, Summer – you can find deep places, here in the shallows.”

I breathed, in and out, in and out, my terror subsiding. We waded there in the sea for a moment, rolling deep in the emerald waves, and suddenly I saw the scene through Saviour’s eyes. For one golden moment we were submerged in a weightless ocean of love, a girl on the way down and a boy on the way up, meeting in the middle for one fleeting summer by the sea before cruel fate would yank us apart again – or hopefully not.

“But we still don’t know each other that well,” I said, making one last attempt at pushing back against this thing that was overtaking us with more force than anything I had ever known before, “and-”

“I know you,” he whispered. “I see you, Summer. I know you.”

I just stared at him. This was it. The moment of truth, from an honest boy and a lying girl. I knew what I wanted to say, but did I really know what it meant? Was I old and adult enough to know what it was? Did
anyone
even know what it was? My mother was in her middle ages and still had no idea what it meant, and how to get it, or keep it. I knew this was moving too quickly, and I knew I was perhaps headed for the end of the world, but I couldn’t run from this anymore. All I knew for sure was that in the still of the night, in the quiet of my mind, in the shimmering sea of my soul, my thoughts would always run back to him – I figured that was a good enough explanation.