The Last Summer of Us (16 page)

Down the beach, Steffan whoops and throws his hands into the air, running around in a small but triumphant circle. Jared has jumped for the ball, missed and landed on his back in a cloud of sand. He's not moving. Which means he's sulking. Only a little, but you don't get to be captain of the rugby team without a hefty dose of pride, do you?

I watch as he rolls over and straightens up, dusting himself down and leaning forward to brush the sand out of his hair. I can hear Steffan chanting “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,” as he does his little victory dance, and Jared rests his hands on his knees, glancing up at me. He doesn't move, other than to flash me a grin.

A little way further back, Steffan has put one hand on his hip and appears to be doing the dance to “Greased Lightning”. So when Jared explodes up from his defeated pose and bolts across the beach, sand scattering up and away behind him, Steff is caught completely off guard. I see him freeze, and I think I see him mouth the word “Shit” as he shifts his weight and starts running in the other direction.

He's fast – but he's not fast enough, and Jared has a head start. Steff puts up a good fight, ducking and dodging across the beach – but it's inevitable. He sees it coming and stops dead, throwing out his arms and tipping his head back just as Jared charges at him, tackling him and throwing him bodily to the ground.

The ball's just sitting there. It's exactly where it landed, just behind Jared's original sandy heap of shame. Which means it's not far in front of me. The two of them are still picking themselves up (predictably, Jared's bounced straight back up; Steffan's a little slower, but he's making up for it by hurling handfuls of sand at Jared, so there's that…).

I wonder.

I stretch. I stand up. I stretch some more. And then I start running, straight for the ball.

And the second I'm committed to running for it…that's when they spot me.

“Shit.”

Suddenly I know how Steffan felt.

Only I've got
both
of them running full-tilt at me.

“Shitshitshitshitshit…” I run faster, but the sand is softer here and it sucks at my heels, slowing me down.

I throw a single, desperate glance around me…and there they are. They're flanking me.
Oh god…

True to form, I stop exactly where I am and throw my hands around my head, screwing my eyes shut. I'm fully expecting to be sacked, tackled, whatever you want to call it…but instead, I find myself being lifted off my feet and scooped up. Steffan. Steffan has reached me first.

And he's not putting me down.

In fact, he's jogging towards the water.

He's still jogging towards the water.

“Don't. You. Dare.”

“Never had you down as a rugby fan, Lim.” He's wading into the water.

“Steffan, I swear…”

“I always figured swimming was much more your thing.”

“
Steffan…!
”

The arms that are supporting me suddenly whip away, and I'm flying through the air before I have a chance to yell…and I hit the water with a splash.

Because they are bastards, the pair of them are standing there at the edge of the waves, taking photos of me on their phones – which of
course
they brought down with them from the car. I, meanwhile, find myself sitting in shallow water, fully clothed and with my hair dripping over my face. And a mouth full of seawater.

Well,
fine
.

Dignity, Limpet. Dignity.

I smooth my hair back from my face and wipe the seawater away from my eyes. My lips taste of salt and sunscreen.

I'm not going to let them off that lightly.

The two of them are still standing around being smug and amused and, well,
them
. Fine. Fine, fine, fine.

I half-stand. I slump down again.

I half-stand again. And I slump back down.

They've stopped sniggering. Jared nudges Steffan. I can see their heads leaning closer together.

Good.

For extra effect, I rub one of my ankles.

Well. It would have been effective if a larger wave hadn't smacked into the back of me the second I leaned forward to do it.

Still.

They're coming. Jared first; Steffan a couple of steps behind him. Steffan thinks I'm trying to trick them – which, of course, I am. He knows me too well.

“Limpet?” Jared pushes his sunglasses up onto his head, squinting as sunlight hits the water.

“It's my ankle,” I say. “Can you give me a hand up?”

I see him hesitate – and I can hear Steffan's hissed warning. Jared gives me a measured, sideways look and, for a second, I wonder whether he's going to dart back out of reach along with Steffan. But then he holds out his hand and I take it.

And with all my strength, I pull.

He's off-balance and topples over with surprising ease, landing almost on top of me. I can hear Steffan splashing away to safety, laughing and shouting, “I told you!”

Jared spits out a mouthful of water. He's just as wet as I am. I was hoping for Steffan, but I'll take what I can get.

“Feel better now?” he asks.

“A bit. Mostly I just feel…well, kind of soggy.”

“You want to get him?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“You grab his feet.” There's that grin of his again, and suddenly we are conspirators. “Wait till I say.”

He pushes himself up and out of the water, and he holds his hand out to me. I take it, feeling his fingers close around mine for the second time. They feel strong, I notice now, but somehow rougher than they should. Rougher than I was expecting.

He wades out of the water, shaking it out of his hair and letting it drip off his fingertips. Caught in the sunlight, it looks like he leaves diamonds in his wake. Steffan's watching with his arms folded and a generally amused expression. That evaporates when Jared clamps his arms around Steff's upper body and yells “Now!” at me. I splash towards them and – as instructed – grab Steffan's feet. We have him.

“My bloody phone's in my pocket—” he begins – but he doesn't have time to finish because…whoops…he's in the water too.

Steff shakes his head rapidly, flicking water everywhere and blinks up at me. “Well, fine.” He staggers to his feet, unsteady on the shifting sand – and then he winks at Jared and the two of them lunge at me – and I'm in the water again, spluttering it out under a silken sky.

Steffan isn't happy about being wet. Not even a little. So he stomps, squelches and grumbles his way off towards the car in search of dry clothes and returns triumphant. The sun's hot enough that mine feel half-dry already, just from sitting out in it, and I don't plan on moving any time soon. Mind you, I don't say no to the towel he throws at me – and I don't say no to the beer he brings back with him either.

Following the sun, we've shifted back towards the rocks – and I've compromised with Steffan by moving a little closer to the car. Well, I say “compromised”. I guess I mean that on his way back (with said beer and towel), Steff sat down at a point midway between us and the slipway and refused to move.

Jared simply shrugged. “I think he wins, doesn't he?”

“He always wins,” I grumble.

Not that it's so bad. If you discount the awful smell of cigars. Because, yes, Steffan also came back with that box he lifted from his dad, and is alternately coughing and puffing away on one.

Here's the thing. I understand cigarettes. Sort of. I mean, I'm not a fan, exactly, but I get it. Cigars, though – what's that about? It's some kind of blokey posturing, isn't it? It's like when Steffan decided to get his ear pierced last year, then actually saw someone else getting theirs done and flat-out fainted in the middle of the shop. Bless him.

Steffan's prone to attacks of blokey posturing. He's the one who got so face-meltingly drunk at a party one time that we had to carry him home. He's the one who got a tooth knocked out in Newcastle Emlyn one Saturday night. He's the one who got detention for a week for bringing…well, let's not go there, shall we? And to think he has the nerve to go on about “the femrage”.

Jared lies back on the sand, his T-shirt drying off on the rocks behind us. I can't see his eyes behind his sunglasses, and I don't dare look too hard in case he's watching me. One part of me wonders why on earth he'd be watching
me
, and yet part of me knows that Jared is always watching. Always. He watches everything, everybody, the way a stray cat watches the world around it from beneath a bush; hiding until it knows who to trust and who to fear.

There are few people he trusts, I know that. Steffan, of course. Me, I suppose. His grandparents. His uncle, who left last year… But who else? Not his father, that's for sure. And as for his mother…

Maybe what's happened to him is worse than either my situation or Steffan's. Our mothers are dead. One taken by cancer, one by drink. But Jared's? Jared's mother is still walking and talking and out on the town and being felt up by her new boyfriend in a taxi outside The Farmer's Arms. And even so, she's as dead to him as ours are to us – more so, maybe, because we still have their ghosts to cling to. My mother flits through my dreams, as heavy as gossamer and as dark as the moon. I feel her there, although she's gone when I wake. And I know – I
know
– that there are no real ghosts, that when we die we die and that's all there is to it. I know that all that remains of my mother is faded photographs and bones in a box and memories that already feel half-forgotten; foxed at the edges. The ghost that walks with me is of my own making: cut and stitched of my own grief and guilt. But Jared's? Jared's mother
haunts
him. Whether he's awake or asleep makes no difference.

“My god, Steff. You're going to stink.” I waft my hand back and forth in front of my face in an attempt to disperse his vile little smoke cloud.

“You're saying he doesn't already?”

I'd been starting to hope that Jared was asleep. Despite my resolution not to look, I've no idea whether I've been staring at him. I mean…maybe? I don't really know. But he probably has got his eyes shut behind his shades anyway. Hopefully. He stops, his lips still parted as though he's going to say something else.

What, I wonder, would his lips taste like? Like mine, which taste of salt still? Of smoke? Not like Steffan's ridiculous cigar (which is starting to make him look a little green) but a different kind – the kind that hangs in the air and makes you think of autumn.

Jared would taste of safety, I think.

A gust of wind whips my hair into my eyes and I turn my head to brush it away…and Steffan is watching me curiously. Cigar in one hand and beer in the other, his head is cocked to one side – and it dawns on me that he has been watching me watching Jared.

Something flickers across his face; something unreadable…and then it's gone and Steffan is himself again and he's stubbing out the cigar in the sand. “Think I might go for a walk,” he says queasily.

“Awesome! Me too!” I say – a little too brightly, and I know it.

Jared makes an indistinct mumbling sound and yawns, stretching his arms up and then folding them behind his head. “I'll guard the…yeah.”

“Tart,” says Steffan, shaking his head.

“Wanker,” Jared shoots back automatically.

Steffan grins wickedly. “Is it, now? At least I—”

“Enough!” I can't bear to let him finish that sentence. I
do
have limits. He mutters something in Welsh, and Jared flicks up his middle finger as Steff rocks his beer bottle down into the sand, making a small hole to keep it upright. All I make out is “boyo” at the end, but Jared obviously hears it clearly enough because the corners of his mouth twitch into a small smile.

“You're not planning on chucking me into the sea again, are you?” I ask as Steffan falls into step beside me, his hands deep in his pockets as he stares out at the waves.

“Dunno. Could ask you the same thing.”

“You deserved it.”

“So did you.”

There's nothing now but the sound of the waves and the occasional seagull wheeling overhead. The tide is turning, and the swell of the current is throwing the spray higher into the air. You can smell it. We're right on the edge of the water now, but in an hour's time the spot where we stand will be under the sea. If we were to stay here, to hold fast and stand our ground, we would drown.

“You want to talk about it?” Steffan asks.

“No…and yes.” I know what it is he's asking. “I just…I want it to not be my thing, you know? I don't want to be just the kid whose mother died. I mean…I guess I am already, right?' The words tumble out and alone with Steffan, I am powerless to stop them. “I just don't want to be that now, here. I don't want to be that with you guys.”

There's the smallest tic at the side of his lips, but he hides it well.

“Nobody wants to be that kid, Lim. Trust me.”

“I know – and that's not what I meant. I…”

“You meant that you don't want to talk about it because talking about it makes it your…‘thing'. I get it.”

“I know you do.”

“I'm just saying – maybe talking about it'll help.”

“You never needed to…”

“You reckon?” He turns and looks me in the eyes. His gaze searches my face, sweeping over me. “You know Dad sent me to a counsellor, right?”

“No!” I'm so startled by this that it comes out as a squeak. When shocked, I sound like a hamster, apparently.
That
can be my thing.

“Oh, yeah. Every Friday after school for three months.” He bends down, picks up a small, flat stone and skims it out over the water. He watches it bounce one, two, three times before it sinks. “Great way to start the weekend, isn't it?”