Killer Summer

Don’t get me wrong. I love the beach. Sage, Nick and I had practically grown up on it, the beach being one of the perks of our long-suffering Long Island youth. I’d left lazy summer days on the beach behind when I moved to Manhattan during college, but three summers ago Sage had joined the ranks of those urbanites who flee to the shore and had been badgering me to get on the bandwagon ever since. I hadn’t been able to allow myself such an indulgence—not with my income. But I had come out as Sage’s guest last summer, and during one brief shining moment, I had even bought into the dream while sitting on what was likely the very same ferry.

Except last time I wasn’t alone. Wasn’t sitting in the damp, half-empty bowels of the boat, breathing in a nauseating mix of sea and fuel. That evening I was with my then-boyfriend, Myles, on the top of the ferry with the wind in my hair, the sun setting and splitting the sky open into a spectrum of color that always induced a kind of silent wonder in me. Myles had felt it, too. I could tell by the way his fingers paused in the midst of the gentle circle he was making on my shoulder. Once the sun had dipped beneath the horizon, we both looked at one another and vowed to come back next summer. “Maybe we can even get our own house,” he had said, a bit of a heady claim, since, at the time, our combined income didn’t even come near the median household income required to support a Manhattan existence, much less a Manhattan-plus-beach-rental existence. But we had just turned the bend on our second year together and were still in that blissful state where everything seemed possible.

By February, when it came time to put down the first deposit, even a shared oceanfront room seemed too much for Myles. “I don’t know, Zoe. Sixteen weekends is a big commitment,” he’d said.

By April, the relationship I had once imagined would see me through the rest of my life was over.

Of course, backing out of the beach house was not an option for me at that point. “What are you gonna do in the city all summer by yourself?” Sage demanded. When I pointed out that I wouldn’t exactly be alone, that surely some of the eight million people who lived on the island of Manhattan wouldn’t be fleeing to the shore, she simply rolled her eyes at me. She knew as well as I did that out of those eight million people, there were only a handful I could truly claim as company. Actually, less than a handful. When Myles had dumped me, he’d taken with him the smattering of friends I had adopted as my own. Now I was left with Sage and Nick, Nick being more Sage’s friend than mine, but who was counting?

“When was the last time we did anything together?” Sage said, and it was this last comment that had me slapping down the first five hundred bucks for a deposit, whether out of guilt at being one of those women who had ditched her friends in favor of her boyfriend, or because I believed what I needed most in the post-Myles phase was the solid bolstering of a summer spent with friends.

“Is this yours?”

I looked up to see an overly freckled, lanky teenager holding a somewhat bruised Vidalia onion. “Uh, yeah,” I said, my gaze dropping to the shopping bag I’d placed on the floor beside my seat. It now gaped open, making me wonder what other vital ingredients I had lost. Not that it mattered. Because the other bit of ridiculousness was that I had missed the earlier ferry because I couldn’t locate a jar of coriander in a timely manner. The first two stores I’d tried had sold out of the stuff. Who knew coriander was in such high demand? Though I did finally find a bottle at Gourmet Garage, I had missed my train and was out of the running for anything but the late ferry. Which meant that, despite all my efforts to please Maggie, I had failed miserably. I had left her a message, but whether she’d had to postpone her gourmet meal until ten when my ferry arrived, or whether she’d been forced to bag the whole thing and was sitting fuming at me over a badly cooked burger at one of the two restaurants in Kismet, was anyone’s guess.

“Um, thanks,” I said, taking the onion from the kid with a grateful smile, though what I had to be grateful for at the moment was beyond me.

“Where’re you going?” he said, making me realize that this kid was not some eager do-gooder but none other than an employee of the Fire Island Ferry Company. At least that’s what his T-shirt said.

“Kismet. Roundtrip.” I hadn’t even arrived yet and I couldn’t wait to get home. He handed me a ticket and I forked over the $12.50 fare. That was another thing I hadn’t remembered when I’d signed on for this share. Between the train, the ferry and the taxi between the two, the commute alone cost nearly thirty bucks. After I handed over my cash and watched the boy amble over to the few remaining passengers, I knew why I didn’t remember how much this trip cost. Myles had paid that first time we’d come out.

I would despise Myles for walking away from me after I had suffered through law school with him if I didn’t understand why he felt it necessary to walk away. He had recently turned thirty. His father had just died. I knew these were the kind of mind-altering events that might make a person do irrational things. I should know. My father hadn’t died, but he’d left when I was ten and was as good as dead to me, because I hadn’t seen him since. And I had rounded the corner on thirty a full two months before Myles did. Yes, I’d felt the chill of age coming on, the clutch of anxiety that comes from not having lived up to my own expectations. Not that I felt a need to dump him.

Okay, so now I was angry. And even more nauseous as the ferry jumped over a wave that would have surely sent a spray on my face if I had been sitting on the top of the ferry in the setting sun like I had that time with Myles. But there was no sun—not even a star—and there was, of course, no Myles. I wasn’t even sure there would be Sage, since my cell phone battery died on the train and I couldn’t let her know I was on my way. Sage, who acted as if her whole happiness this weekend was dependent on my arrival, if those messages she’d left were any indication. Sage, who had likely hooked up with the bartender, or the guy she’d been flirting with who worked the docks, or any one of the other myriad men she had at her fingertips, and forgotten all about me. Sage, whose biggest worry in life was whether or not there was fresh lime for her tequila.

“Kismet,” the scrawny fare collector bellowed, practically in my ear, now that he was done collecting fares from the few other idiots braving this late night ferry ride. “The first stop on this ferry will be Kismet!” I looked out the window, trying to figure out just how far from the dock we were, but all I could see was the darkness and what seemed liked endless water.

Yeah, Kismet.

Everyone gets what they deserve, I guess.

Including me.

2

Sage

Beach Blanket Boomerang

“It’s not that I don’t want to…”

I paused as I pulled on my jeans, giving Chad’s hard-on a meaningful look. “Well, that’s clear at least.”

“C’mon, Sage, you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do,” I replied, bending to search the floor for the tank I had tossed off in a frenzy of passion. Passion? That was a laugh. This kid wouldn’t know real passion if it bit him in the ass. Maybe that was the problem, I thought, locating my tank top and yanking it over my head. He was a kid. Twenty-two, I think he said. I turned to the bed again, my eye roaming over his sulking yet adorable face, his well-muscled chest and perfect abs.

Had twenty-two looked that good when I was twenty-two? Clearly, I hadn’t appreciated it enough back then.

It was a damn shame. I wasn’t sure what was more of a shame—that he was so hot or that I had spent the past two weekends at the beach trying to seduce him only to get nowhere. At least I hadn’t had to spring for dinner tonight—which was usually what happened when you went out with these young guys. Chad had gotten off work at seven, but the minute I saw him waiting for me at the dock, I was hungry for something else. So we had a couple of drinks at The Inn, a local bar, then headed back to the beach house he shared with his friends. His friends had conveniently not been around when we came through the door, practically tumbling over one another to get to the bedroom. And I was just three minutes away from getting that gorgeous piece of equipment of his inside me when suddenly he brings up the girlfriend. The girlfriend. He might have mentioned the girlfriend before he had me naked and panting on his bed.

“At least you had an orgasm,” he offered.

I stared at him. This was obviously some strange side effect of living your formative years during the Clinton presidency. Apparently his little girlfriend wasn’t an issue when he had his head between my legs. But the minute I maneuvered for more than oral sex, suddenly it’s, “I can’t. I have a girlfriend.”

Blah, blah, blah.

Sliding my feet into my flip-flops, I said, “Sorry, Chad, but I’m more of a penetration kind of girl.”

And because I didn’t want to hear another word about it, or because the sight of that beautiful body was starting to make me feel wistful, I left.

Once I was outside, blanketed by the heat, I felt better, though I couldn’t remember a hotter June night in my short history of Fire Island summers. Not that I was complaining. At least we were getting the most out of this summer share. Or I was anyway. I was betting that Zoe hadn’t made the last ferry out tonight and was forfeiting yet another weekend at the beach in the name of work. I wondered why I had even bothered browbeating her into a share. Or Nick, for that matter. I guess I had some stupid idea that a summer out at the beach with my two best friends would be fun, though I was starting to think Zoe and Nick were like my little friend Chad. They didn’t know a good thing when they had it. Zoe was probably still filming poodles, and Nick…if I knew Nick, he was probably down at The Inn or The Out, the only two bars in town, chatting up anyone who would listen about his latest get-rich-and-maintain-his-integrity scheme, a record label he was developing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he found investors here. Nick could be pretty charming. In high school he had convinced the football coach he could create software that might predict the most successful plays based on the stats of the players. Of course, he got caught smoking pot in the woods behind the school a week later, losing any support he had gained for the project. But that was classic Nick. He was brilliant enough to be the next Bill Gates, except he tended to use that B.S. in Business Administration of his for b.s. more than anything else.

It was starting to get on my nerves.

But then, I was on my last nerve tonight, even more so when I saw the lights of our beach house twinkling in the distance. God, it was a beautiful house. An oceanfront, sprawling three-bedroom ranch hovering high above the beach.

“Maggie’s Dream.” My boss, Tom, had named it for his wife. Though now that I thought about it, Maggie’s Dream would have been a lot better sans Maggie.

There was a price to pay for an ocean view. And my price, I had discovered, was Maggie.

I had met them both at the beginning of last summer, at the beach, of course. Maggie seemed fine then—from a distance anyway. She was simply the smiling, semi-Stepford wife of Tom Landon. I adored Tom immediately. Maybe because we had so much in common—we both worked in the garment industry, though I was in retail at the time. Our acquaintance turned quickly into a business relationship when I bought some products from Tom’s ladies’ wear line, Luxe, to put in the store I managed. But The Bomb Boutique was a bit too downtown hip for me to carry more than a few well-styled pieces from Tom’s line, and then it was mostly accessories—handbags and the odd belt. We became friends, though, so much so that I used to tease him about how he needed to add a little hipness to his line if he hoped to win over customers like The Bomb. As it turned out, I won Tom over. By the end of the summer, he approached me about a new venture he was working on, an urban leather outerwear line. And with the promise of a fat salary as the head sales rep for Edge, he lured me on board. It was the best decision I’d ever made. I loved my job. In fact, I lived for my job. Even had dreams of managing Edge myself some day.

Those dreams ended when Maggie came to work for Edge. Suddenly Ms. Stay-At-Home Wife wanted a career, and Tom—sweet, generous Tom—handed her mine on a silver platter.

Now I had to share a beach house with her. For sixteen weekends. Actually, counting this weekend it was only twelve now, since I’d already managed to survive four. Barely.

I started to walk again, feeling my irritation with Maggie rear its head once more, remembering the row she’d started with me tonight for blowing off the big dinner she was planning. As if, just because I was sharing a house with her this summer, I had to be her fucking buddy. Like I really felt like sitting around the table praising her lamb chops when I had a piece of prime booty waiting for me at the dock. She even went as far as saying that I wasn’t a team player, implying that I was somehow threatening my job by ditching out on her dinner party.

Fucking prima donna.

If I’d only known she would be like this when I took this share, I might not have taken it. But I had put the money down back in February—a full month before Maggie had taken over the management of Edge and made my life a misery.

I shuddered as I reached the wooden walkway to the house, wondering if Maggie was still reigning like a queen over her stupid dinner party. The house did seem kind of quiet.

Fuck it. I wasn’t going in there. Wasn’t going to tolerate the satisfied smile on her face when I walked in after the all-too-brief date I had shrugged off her little party for. After all, it couldn’t be any later than nine-thirty.

I headed for the beach, figuring a moonlit walk might do me good.

It was the weekend after all.

And I didn’t have to answer to anyone.

Not tonight.

And if I had things my way…

Never again.