A Summer Remade (7 page)

I clear my throat, search for my voice, yet the sound that follows is hardly more than a whisper. “I think your place is better than mine.”

“Hey. No stealing places.” He leans into me, his closeness like a blanket of peace.

Drew sets our connected palms on the dock between us, the air thick with questions neither one of us knows how to ask.

A motion light at the back of the Culver’s house flicks on. Our hands drop.

“It’s just a cat,” His statement is meant to reassure, only instead it reminds me of the way he looked holding the cat I believed to be a rabid wildebeest on my front porch.

He must recall the scene too because soon we’re both lost to a fit of hopeless laughter.

The change in breathing causes me to yawn, and I rub my eyes. “What time is it?”

Drew slips his phone from his back pocket. “Almost one.”

I groan. “Guess we should head back.” But even as I speak the words, I know it’s the opposite of what I want to do. I could stay and talk with him on this dock all night.

I stand, slip on my shoes, and watch Drew do the same.

“You sure you’re okay staying at the cabin tonight?”

He’s rephrased this question about two dozen times since he got back on the island, which reminds me…“Hey, you never told me where you went today.”

We start the trek up the trail to the Culver’s house. It’s the same trail, that if followed far enough, leads to the back of my cabin.

“You never asked.”

“Oh, so that’s how we’re playing it now? I have to spill my guts open and you get to be all tight-lipped about your mysterious trip to the mainland?”

Drew reaches for my elbow and pulls me over a rocky incline in the pathway. “I’m not tight-lipped.”

“Then where were you?” I’m starting to wish I would’ve dropped the subject several statements back.

“A doctor’s appointment I couldn’t reschedule. You know how those are.” His shrug is simple, yet his face, his face says far more than his words.

“Sure.” My mind has already leapt off the cliff of worry.

“It’s just routine, Joss. I’m fine.”

As Drew says my name, he takes my hand. And that’s how we walk. All the way back to my cabin.

Whatever this thing is between Drew and me, wherever it might go, or however long it may last, I’m grateful for it tonight. I’m grateful for him.

After he shuts all my open windows and checks the cabin over again for any stray cats, he instructs me to lock the door behind him. I doubt there’s been a single crime on the island for years, but I’ll appease him.

“Goodnight, Joss.”

With a wink, he’s gone.

It’s that wink that keeps me from falling asleep, but it’s the continuous buzz of my phone that wakes me.

Crap. I forgot to call my mom. Again.

‡

“I
put an
offer on the condo yesterday.”

This is how our conversation begins. I haven’t spoken to my mom on the phone since the day I came to the island, believing all I needed was a little time and space to deal with a word I hated almost as much as divorce: condo.

But I was wrong.

I yank the front door open, trip down the porch steps, and start up the driveway. My chest aches when I pull in my next breath and tug my sweater tighter around my middle. The chilly morning air is definitely fresh, but it comes with a wave of shivers.

“I’m hoping you might help me pick out some furniture before summer’s over and you go back to school. You’ve always had such a gift for decorating.”

I push my legs to walk faster up the rocky driveway. Her flattery falls on deaf ears. I don’t want to talk about decorating the condo. I don’t want to talk about anything that will happen after I leave this island—my safe haven.

Tall, bushy trees shadow my every step. And I don’t care that those steps are from my slippered-feet or that my hair looks like a nest of bees attacked it. But I do care that all my mom wants to discuss is a stupid condo. Not my feelings, not my pain, not my emptiness.

She continues without missing a beat, “I just want you to feel a part of this new place. I know how much you hate change.”

And yet, somehow, change just keeps smacking me in the face.

My steps halt. If I couldn’t breathe before, then I’m about two seconds from keeling over now. The phone slips down my face several inches as I stare at a sign staked into the roadside.

One that points to my cabin with a red arrow.

“Joss? Are you still there, honey?”

Hot, rage-filled tears inch their way up my throat and into my eyes.

“When were you planning on telling me, mom?” Anger cuts out the shape of every letter as I speak.

“Tell you what?”

“The cabin.”

Silence. It eats into my ear from the phone.

“Oh.” She sighs. “I was getting to that. I didn’t want to tell you over text, and you wouldn’t call me back—”

“You’re
selling
the cabin?” The screech of my last few words echoes in the hollow, tree-lined pathway to the cabin’s front door.

I stare at the eighties style “glamour shot” picture on the real estate sign. Dotty Harrison and Associates. I want to kick the cheesy smile off her face.

“We haven’t been there as a family in years, Joss. And there are many better vacation rentals on the island than our little shack.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” She sounds confused, though I know she’s not clueless. She’s in every memory I hold dear at this cabin. She and my father both.

“Don’t pretend this place doesn’t matter to you. Sure, we haven’t been here as a family for a few years, but…” I shake my head so hard my vision blurs. “You can’t sell it!”

“Joss, listen to me.”

“All I’ve done is listen to you! I’ve listened to you fight. I’ve listened to you complain. I’ve listened to you tell my father you don’t love him. That you haven’t loved him since I was skipping around in pigtails. I’ve listened enough!”

I lift my chin, try to stop the flow of tears by reversing the pull of gravity. It doesn’t work. Just like my plan to restore the house. Just like my plan to restore my family.

From the roadway, I have a perfect view of the cabin. But this time, instead of the warm memories it usually provides, I feel nothing but the stab of gut-wrenching loss.

“I’m sorry.”

She’s crying, but I can’t let myself comfort her. Not over this.

She sniffles loudly into the speaker. “We have to sell it, and this prime time to have the cabin go on the market. Dotty says the island gets the best real estate activity during Fourth of July. She called me yesterday, said from looking in the windows the place looked great inside. Really clean. I’m glad you’ve been able to enjoy one last summer.”

I close my eyes, and tears land on my chest. A woman was looking in my windows yesterday? While I was slaving over smelly carpet?

And I never even had the chance to show my parents all my hard work.

I clamp my teeth so hard my jaw throbs.

And then understanding dawns…what my mother’s saying without actually saying it at all.

“You need the cabin sale to purchase the condo, don’t you?”

Her silence confirms my fear.

*

I walk.

I walk and I walk and I walk. The tread on my slippers is threadbare; the light cotton fabric damp with dew.

And still I don’t stop moving. Because I can’t stop thinking.

My legs carry me down to the dock, and even though I know the chances of Drew waiting there for me are slim, I search for him anyway.

In less than four days, my ears have grown accustomed to his laughter, to his easy way of speaking, to his dependable optimism that tells me—even without words—that everything’s going to be all right.

Even when it’s not.

I sigh. He’s not here.

Tasting the salty air on my tongue, I kick off my soggy slippers and step out onto the dock. The morning breeze lifts the frazzled ends of my hair and tickles my cheek. Each stride feels purposeful. Daring.

Toes curled around the last cold plank at the ledge, I lean forward to peer into the placid water.

But the tear-stained face floating in the liquid mirror does not reflect a little girl. It reflects an adult. A young woman who’s dedicated her happiness to the stability of her family.

“No more.” The words carry across the vast water, their meaning resonating in my chest.

In the time is takes a lonely seagull to travel from the shallow end to beyond the horizon’s edge, the dutiful child in me disappears.

And Joss Sanders, the Rebel, has surfaced.

Soaked slippers in hand, numb toes and feet, I hike the path back to my cabin. The second I’m inside, I dive toward the junk drawer and yank it open.

And there I find my prize.

A black Sharpie.

‡

I
watch Drew
pull in, park, and leap up my porch steps two at a time. All the while, I lounge quietly on the Adirondack chair I rescued from the cobwebs an hour ago.

He doesn’t see me as he raises his fist to knock on the door.

I clear my throat. “Morning.” I’m the one to surprise him for a change.

Drew hops back a step and glances left, his eyes wide. His gaze free falls from the top of my head to the tip of my Converse-covered toes. “H-hi.”

It’s the stutter that gives him away. Drew likes what he sees. And
I like
that Drew likes what he sees.

The extra time spent on my hair and makeup this morning after my “little moment” on the dock was apparently time well spent.

I open my mouth to save us both the awkwardness of recognizing that I no longer resemble some kind of island-hobo when he speaks.

“You look really pretty.”

Really pretty.
The sweet and simple words corkscrew into my heart.

Too many people think boldness is the same as bluntness. But I disagree. Drew’s boldness doesn’t stem from the need to say everything that’s on his mind. No, he chooses his words carefully and lives by the honesty-is-always-the-best-policy rule. Which makes a compliment from him a thousand times more amazing.

His gaze steadies on mine.

I could take flight with the number of winged creatures filling my abdomen.

“Thank you.” A swirl of heat rises in my chest, then swims across my shoulders and down into my back and arms. I uncross my legs, plant them flat on the porch, and stand. “Did you want to come in?”

“Uh…not exactly.” Drew tugs on the back of his neck. “I was hoping you might be free today.”

“Do you mean
free
as in not ripping up soggy carpet, deep cleaning freezers, or rearranging old cabin furniture? That kind of free?”

Drew’s light laughter fills the space between us, my heart skipping to a new beat. “Free as in, would you like to come with me into town for the day and—”

“Yes!” I need an adventure—something to take my mind off of…well, everything. An adventure with Drew is a thousand times more exciting than sitting here alone.

“You didn’t let me finish. What if I was about to invite you to go garden supply shopping?”

“Then I’d tell you I’ll pick out the very best hoe you’ve ever laid eyes on.”