Shipwrecked Summer (2 page)

   I glanced over at the bedside clock blinking 5:15. Perfect time for a beach stroll; the lifeguards had just gotten off for the day, which meant most of the families packed it in with them.

Moms didn’t like it much when they had to rely on their own two eyes to watch their kids in the surf. Life was so much better when they could bury their noses in the latest beach read, glancing up only once in a while to make sure the lifeguards hadn’t let their precious babies turn into shark bait.

  “Anything you like, Alexa,” my grandmother replied, though her pause lasted just a second too long, her voice subdued. “This is your summer and your house. You don’t need my permission to do anything.”

    I smiled at her. “Thanks. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”  

   I found my flip-flops by the door and jogged down the front steps, my shoes slapping against my heel with each movement. Even though our house rested right off the ocean, we still had to walk around the duplex and over a long wooden bridge that preserved the dunes and connected the concrete street to the sand.

  The beach was quieter now than it probably had been just half an hour ago. With the hordes of families gone for the day, fishermen began to dig their rods into the sand right off the jetty.

A few yards down the beach, a group of guys played a pick-up game of wiffle ball and I sighed, loneliness washing over me like it did at the end of every day. I still didn’t have what I wanted.

   Or, at the very least, even a prospect for love.

    Can’t a girl catch a break just once?

   The lifeguards drag their stands up to the dunes at the end of every shift, far enough up the beach so the tide can’t come in and sweep the wooden benches out to sea, never to be seen again.

Rather than walk down near the ball game and look at all the guys who would probably never give me a chance, I hoisted myself up into the deserted lifeguard stand, giving myself a spectacular view of the ocean as the sun began to lower in the sky.

   Even though I decided to sit here so I could avoid the guys, I couldn’t stop my eyes from wandering back over to them. Six of them played in all and that right there should have presented me with six chances to find love, or, heck, I’d probably even settle for like and nothing else at this point.

    Pia always told me she was sure I’d meet a guy in school at Wisconsin. That’s your time, Lexie. Don’t force it now. It’ll be your reward for working so hard to get yourself there.

  But that was easy for her to say. She had it all: the acceptance to a great school (she’d be at the University of Michigan in the fall) and the adoring high school sweetheart. It still stung every time I heard that phrase because now I’d never be the girl who got to live out this wish.

   Ever since I’d watched this movie with my mom when I was eight where the girl marries her high school sweetheart and lives happily ever after, I’d been dead-set on being able to tell people I’d met my husband while hanging out behind the freshman lockers at Spring Dells High. Yes, it really is a sweet story, I’d say as they swooned over my good fortune.

   But I guess that wasn’t in the cards for me. And, really, what could I do about it? There was no use complaining, no use wishing for something that could never happen. All I could do was go forward, find someone now, make something happen today, this summer in Ship’s Wreck, on Fresh Water Island, in this moment.

    And I would.

   I had to.

   “Make this summer count,” I muttered to myself as a wave crashed to the shore and trickled back out to sea.

    “Do you always talk to yourself while you’re trespassing on private property?”

  I jumped, startled by the intrusion. I glanced down, ready to snap at whoever it was that had ever-so-rudely interrupted my thoughts, but my breath caught in my throat, making it impossible for me to think of anything witty to say.

   A tall boy with a mop of wild blonde hair, deeply tanned, golden skin, and green eyes that mesmerized me despite the annoyance flashing in them now stood at the bottom of the lifeguard stand, glaring up at me. He wore red lifeguard shorts and a tight white T-shirt that clung to all the right places on his toned chest and arms. His chiseled calves looked hard as marble, probably from all the hours of jogging on the hot, dry sand.

   No, I didn’t think he was that cute or anything.

    “Uh…what?”

    Good going, Lexie, I thought. You’re so clever.

   He nodded at the lifeguard stand. “You were just talking to yourself,” he said. “And you’re sort of on the stand and that’s private property. Belongs to the state and all that. You know these things are off limits to the public, right? The big red ‘KEEP OFF’ painted on the front didn’t tip you off?”

    I frowned. “You know this thing is just a painted piece of wood, right? I’m not hurting anybody.”

   “You know I’m a lifeguard and I can’t do my job without it, right?” he shot back, traces of a strong Jersey accent coming out in his voice.

   “What are you talking about? You’re finished for the day. And besides, your job is to make sure nobody drowns on your watch. I think you can do that without this stand. Or do you take it with you when you have to save someone from a rip tide?”

   He put a hand on his hip, red whistle swinging as it dangled around his neck. “Listen, smart ass, would you just get off this bench so I can do what I have to do?”

   I rolled my eyes, jumped down, and dusted off the back of my shorts. My shoe fell to the ground when I flung myself off. Nobody would ever make the mistake of calling me graceful.

    “What’s your problem, anyway? Some kid stuff sand in your whistle today?”

   He glared at me, his green eyes flashing. “I just don’t like it when people mess with my things. I’m sure you’d be the same way if this was your stand, part of your job.”

   “All you had to do was ask me to get down. It’s not like I would’ve said no.”

   “Look, just think next time before you go and do something stupid like this. Meaning, stay off the lifeguard stands.”

   “I really don’t know what your problem is,” I said. “All I was doing was sitting here, minding my own business during your off hours while this thing wasn’t even being used for anything! If someone needed it, I’d leave when they asked me to! What’s wrong with you?”      

    He looked at me for a few seconds and I felt my cheeks flush with warmth under his stare.  

    “Nothing is wrong with me. Excuse me for getting annoyed when someone makes it difficult for me to do my job.”

   “I don’t need this. I have enough things to deal with without you turning into high and mighty king of the beach on me,” I said. “Enjoy your stand.”

    I turned to walk away, thinking maybe I should go for a quick swim to wash the nasty taste of confrontation off my skin.

   “Hey,” he called out after I’d walked a few feet away. I stopped, hesitated for just a second, then spun around and looked at him. “I’m Jeff. Nice to meet you,” he said, then offered me what may have been a smile. “Really.”

   “Lexie,” I replied without even thinking about it.

   He looked at me for another beat or two, nodded, and climbed up onto the stand. I didn’t bother to stick around and see why, exactly, he’d felt the need to kick me off or what sparked his apparent change of heart.

   I wandered back to the bridge, noticing the lights on in the other side of my grandparents’ duplex for the first time in a few years.

   I had no idea what to make of Jeff the Lifeguard. Common sense told me I didn’t want to find out…but something else was telling me that I did.  

   Poppy’s afternoon catch hadn’t yielded the kind of fish he and Grandma had been hoping for, so we wound up calling for a pepperoni pizza and some garlic knots. And that was fine with me. As much as I loved the ocean, I was a lot less fond of eating what came out of it.

  “Oh, Alexa,” Grandma piped up as we sat around the dinner table on the upstairs balcony, nothing left of our meal but a grease-stained cardboard box and a few wayward strings of cheese. “It slipped my mind earlier, but I meant to tell you, we finally have some neighbors in the duplex.”

   When my grandparents had decided to knock down the tiny Cape Cod that occupied our lot for decades, they’d built a monstrosity of a house in its place, turning half of it into a separate unit that they eventually sold. For years, we’d lived next to an elderly couple not unlike my grandparents, but I hadn’t seen them in as long as I could remember.  

    “Francine and William are back?”

  Grandma shook her head. “Francine and William moved to Florida last November. Couldn’t handle the Jersey winter anymore. Terribly wimpy, really.”

   Poppy, the antithesis of my grandmother in every way, nodded vigorously in agreement. While Grandma was flamboyant, happy-go-lucky, and vibrant, my grandfather was reserved, cautious and subdued. And unfortunately, I saw more of myself in Poppy than I did Grandma. Maybe I’d try and work on that this summer, too.

   “Their son bought the property from them,” she continued. “I believe they plan to spend the summer here with their children.”

   I nodded but didn’t say anything. No need to keep this line of conversation going. I had no plans of turning into Lexie the Nanny this summer.    

   “I think Francine mentioned her son has two boys of his own and maybe a girl if I remember correctly.” Grandma steamrolled on, glancing at her husband for confirmation. Poppy only shrugged. “Well, anyway, you should go on over there sometime and say hello. It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

    “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

   As I tried to think of an excuse to leave the table and head downstairs to unpack, the doorbell chimed and my eyes widened.

It could only be Joey or Pia.

I darted inside, nearly catapulting myself down the stairs and into the front door, which I flung open.

   “Hi!” Pia Ritto stood on the front porch in front of me, beaming. I jumped into her arms and she squealed as we collapsed in a heap.

   “Oh, my God, hi!” I cried. “Pia! You look fantastic!” But that was always true. With her thick, long dark hair and shining blue eyes, rare for someone of her Italian descent, Pia rarely looked as if she belonged anywhere other than in the pages of a magazine spread.

   “No, look at you!” she exclaimed. “Can you believe it?” She pulled herself to her feet and offered me a hand. “Summer’s back.”

    “We’re back. Is Joey with you?”

    “No, I thought he might be over here, but I guess not. It won’t be much of a first night without him.”

    “What? Come on, it’ll be great. We don’t need him to have a good time.”

  Pia shrugged. “I know, but we’ve always been together on the first night we’re all in town. It’ll feel so weird without him.”

   “Well,” I said, as I caught sight of a tall, somewhat skinny brown-haired boy making his way down Gull Boulevard. “I think you’re about to get your wish.”

    Pia whirled around and her face, like mine, broke out into a huge grin. “Joey Catalucci! Get your butt over here!”

    Joey looked up at us and smiled as we jogged down the front steps to meet him by the curb.

   “Jeez,” she said after we’d exchanged our hugs. “Will you ever stop growing?”

   He rolled his brown eyes. “Nice to see you, too, Pia. You know how much I hate my height. If one more persons asks me if I hoop, I might show them exactly where they can stick the ball.” He grinned, the tiny gold chain around his neck that we both hated glittering in the glow of the setting sun. “So what’s up for tonight? What’s new around here? Anything I should know about?”

    She and I looked at one another.

    “There’s a new family in our duplex,” I said. “But other than that, I’ve got nothing.”

    Joey didn’t look impressed. “So you guys remember Tack Jordan, right?”

   Joey was the only one in our group who was actually from New Jersey and he had plenty of high school friends who made their way down to the island in the summer. Over the years, Pia and I had gotten to know some of them pretty well and Tack Jordan sat at the top of the list. A teammate of Joey’s on his high school golf team, Tack was the friendliest guy you’d ever meet and because of that, he had all the right connections wherever he went.  

   “He says his buddy is having a bonfire by his house tonight. I told him to count me in and I’d see if you two wanted to check it out…?”

    “Definitely.”

   “Sweet, I’ll let him know you’re in. I guess we should be there around nine and it’s just a few blocks down from here. On Breeze Terrace, I think.”

    I looked down at my phone; it was a little after eight now. “I should probably change.”

   We agreed to meet at the bridge to the beach at nine and head to the bonfire together. I smiled as I jogged up the steps and into the house. This summer was off to the perfect start, just as I’d planned.  

***

    True to form, Pia didn’t show up at the bridge until 9:15. Also true to form, Joey and I stood waiting by 8:55.