Boys of Summer (39 page)

“Sure,” Ian jabs, pointing at me with his beer, “because you are the master at
fixing
relationships.”

I kick sand at him, and he protects the mouth of his cup with his hand.

“Actually,” Mike says, suddenly growing quiet, “I did have an idea. But I'll need your help.”

Ian and I look at each other in surprise, sharing the same silent thought:
Since when does Mike ever ask for help?

Then, in unison, we turn back to him and say, “Anything.”

MIKE

I
wake the twins bright and early the next morning. They grouse and grumble and try to pull covers back over their heads, but I'm not having it. I yank the blankets right off their beds and with a way-too-cheery-for-this-early-in-the-morning voice say, “Come on! Rise and shine! Up and at 'em! The sky's awake! It's a beautiful day!”

Then, when I run out of wake-up clichés, I jump up onto the top bunk, lift up Jasper's pajama top, and give him a big fat raspberry right on his stomach. He giggles and twists and slaps at my face until finally he's up. Then I proceed to do the exact same thing to Jake.

“What's going on?” Jake says sleepily a few minutes later as he squirts toothpaste onto his brush.

“I need your help.”

They turn to each other with matching dubious looks. I always wonder what it must be like for them. To feel like you're constantly looking into a mirror. Jasper is silently elected to speak on the duo's behalf.

“What
kind
of help?” he asks with clear skepticism.

“Don't worry,” I tell them. “It involves thievery and shenanigans. It's right up your alley.”

They share another look, this one of surprise, but seem to take my explanation as an acceptable one and start brushing their teeth at warp speed.

My dad has prepared a breakfast feast. I think he's made every single recipe on the Martha Stewart website. The twins sit at the small table in the kitchen, gobbling up their blueberry ricotta pancakes drenched in citrus syrup, and crispy applewood bacon, barely taking time to breathe, let alone chew.

“Easy,” I tell them. “I don't have time for you to choke to death. Not today.”

“This is really good,” I tell my dad as I take a bite of the spinach-and-egg-white frittata. “Like,
really
good.”

He beams as he starts rinsing the pan in the sink. “I'm glad you think so. Because I wanted to talk to you about something.”

I perk up, continuing to shovel egg into my mouth while keeping my gaze on my father. He dries his hands and tosses the towel over his shoulder. It's a small move, but it strikes me as so professional. So chef-like.

“How do you feel about taking over the roofing business?”

Even the twins stop eating at that one. All three of us look up at him in bewilderment.

“What?” I ask. “But roofing is your life. You love it. Why would you give it up?”

He bobbles his head back and forth. “I'm getting a little old to be skipping around on roofs. As is evident from this.” He taps his healing leg. “Plus, I've been talking to Mamma V down at the club, and she wants to retire soon. I think I might be a good replacement. Of course, I'll need some decent training, which she's offered to do. It'll take a few months to get me up to snuff, but—”

He's rambling now, sounding nervous. I ease his anxiety by cutting him off. “Dad, I think that's an amazing idea. The menu down there could use some serious shaking up.”

He chuckles. “Right?”

“Will you still cook for us?” Jake asks, his eyes wide with concern.

“Every day, champ,” my dad says, ruffling Jake's hair.

This seems to be a satisfactory response, and the boys go back to chowing down on their breakfast.

Dad turns back to me. “I just thought since you've decided to stay, you'll need something a little more full-time. I mean, if you don't like roofing, that's one thing.”

Honestly I hadn't quite figured out what I would do once the summer was over. All I knew was that I wanted to stay. The Locks is where I belong. These people—even the terrible villain twins—are my home.

“You can try it out for a few months,” Dad offers. “And if you don't like it, we'll sell the business to someone else. What do you think?”

I glance at the two boys, who are both licking the citrus syrup from their plates. Then I turn back to my dad. “I think that's as good an idea as any.”

He smiles at me, giving me a firm pat on the back. Then he goes back to the dishes.

I finish my frittata and scoot my chair back. “Okay, boys. Let's get a move on. Someone feed Jules so we can go.”

“I fed him last time,” Jasper whines. “And his name's not Jules.”

I roll my eyes. “Of course it's not. What's his name now? Peter? Paul? Mary?”

Jasper makes a gagging sound. “Mary is a girl's name.”

“Never mind,” I say, but I get a laugh out of my dad. “Someone just feed him.”

“It's Jasper's turn,” Jake insists.

“It is not.”

“Psst.” My dad leans into me as the twins bicker back and forth. “His name is Nike now.”

“Nike?” I repeat quizzically. “Like the shoe? I thought they were on an old-man-name trend.”

“It rhymes with Mikey,” Dad informs me, and then he goes back to the dishes, humming quietly to himself.

I feel a squeeze in my chest as I watch the boys argue. “Okay!” I shout over them, holding up a hand. “Don't worry. I'll feed him. Again.”

By the time we get to the Coral Bay Beach Club a half hour later, we've gone over the plan at least three times, and the boys are
pumped
.

“Are you ready?” I ask as we stop outside the front door of the main building.

Both boys salute me in unison. It's about the cutest thing I've ever seen them do. “We're ready!” Jasper says.

“Don't mess it up,” I tell them. “And don't start giggling, or she'll know something's up.”

Jake slowly lowers his saluting arm. “Is this really going to make Julie come to the house more?”

I reach out and ruffle his soft hair. “That's the plan, buddy.”

“Then let's do this!” Jake shouts, adding a kung-fu-style kick. “Hi-YA!”

Jasper and I share a look of befuddlement. Then Jasper takes his brother by the hand and leads him inside. “C'mon, crazy karate kid.”

I laugh as I watch them go. My nerves are shot, but I have faith in my little brothers. There are really no two people better suited for the job.

Grayson and Ian meet me on schedule at the beach club snack stand. Grayson is yawning and sipping coffee from a travel mug, while Ian seems bizarrely alert and raring to go. He must be excited to finally have a task.

“Thanks for coming, guys. This beach is just too big to do this alone.”

“No problem, man,” Ian says, slapping me on the back.

“We're here for you,” Grayson says, but he's yawning during the whole thing, so it sounds more like, “Waaah heee fohhhh yoooo.”

I check the time on my phone. Any minute now.

“So how do we even know what we're looking for?” Ian asks, and just then, right on cue, Jake and Jasper come running out of the kids' camp building and into the small, enclosed playground. Jasper is covered head to toe in tie-dye, making him look like a member of the Blue-Orange-Yellow-Green Man Group, and Jake, as clean as a whistle, is grinning, with his hand stuffed suspiciously into his pocket.

Things went either terribly well or terribly wrong. Sadly, given the nature of this plan, it's hard to tell just by looking at them.

I run over to the fence. “Did you get it?” I ask, my heart starting to pound in my chest.

Jasper grins wickedly and nods as Jake withdraws his hand from his pocket, pulling out a small white clamshell.

But not just any shell.

Julie's shell.

Jasper chortles giddily. “She had tie-dye everywhere!”

“Jasper got her good!” Jake adds.

“And after she changed her clothes, Jake snuck into the locker room, found her shorts, and got the shell!”

“You guys are awesome!” I praise, giving them both high fives. “Did she seem mad?”

They both look almost confused by the question. “Mike,” Jasper explains rationally, “Julie doesn't get mad.”

I laugh. “Touché.”

“What does that mean?” Jasper raises his eyebrows quizzically.

“It means you're right.”

Jasper rolls his eyes. “Of course I'm touché. I'm
always
touché.”

“Jasper!” another staffer calls from inside. “Come get cleaned up!”

He shoots me a dirty look. “I have to shower in the men's locker room now. You owe me big-time.”

I smile. “I owe you both.”

I watch them scamper back into the building, and I carry the magic shell to the beach.

“Pull out your phones,” I command our little group. “Take a photo of this shell. We're looking for its
exact
match. Not a close match. An exact match. Every shell has one. The other half of this baby has to be somewhere on this island. Grayson, you go left and cover the area from here to the lighthouse. Ian, you go right and search the area from the marshland to the old docks. I'm going to take the stretch of beach from here to the Winlock Harbor Inn. Meet back here in one hour with every possibility you can find.”

The guys nod, and we break apart. I move in a grid pattern, the way I've seen people do in search-and-rescue scenes in movies. I have the original shell, so you would think my part would be easiest, but it's not. It soon becomes evident to me that every single shell on this beach looks nearly identical. It's so easy to be fooled, thinking you've found the right match, when actually it belongs to another half entirely.

As I search, combing through sand and surf, my pants soaked up to the knees, I think about Harper. We talked on the phone last night. After the bonfire I felt the need to call her. She seemed surprised to hear from me, but then we just started talking. About her first week in New York, about the twins, about my father's newfound passion for cooking. It was nice. I'd forgotten how easy it was to talk to Harper. Without all the complicated emotions confusing everything.

It was always too complicated with us.

It was never easy or simple.

For so long I thought Harper was my other half. The shell that made me whole again.

But in the end she wasn't my perfect match. She was just the
first
match that I found. The first shell I picked up off the beach. I had barely been searching at all. But it looked enough like the real thing that I convinced myself it was, for six years. I convinced myself that the shell fit, that the ridges and grooves lined up, when they were always just the slightest bit off.

Maybe Grayson is Harper's other half. Maybe he'll move to New York and they'll continue to fall in love, and they'll get married and bring their children back here on vacation every summer. Or maybe he's not.

Maybe Harper will meet some hot Broadway director in an audition, or a wealthy finance guy on the subway. Maybe she'll fall in love with him instead.

In any case it's just nice to realize that her future is no longer tangled up with mine. It runs alongside it. We are friends, living parallel lives. Maybe our lives will intersect again. Maybe she'll come back to the Locks to visit. Maybe she won't.

But no matter what happens to either of us, she'll
always be that first shell. That first special half I found on the beach.

And that means something too.

When the guys and I meet up again an hour later, my vision is a dizzying blur of seashells and seaweed and pebbles of sand. We dump all of our finds into a huge pile and begin to sift through, comparing each one with the original, trying to fit the ends together to see if they lock. I'm starting to get discouraged. All of these shells look alike, and yet none of them matches up to Julie's.