Endless Summer

“This will be an investment in your future. It’ll be worth it.”

I waited while Adam leaned into the office to tell Mr. Vader what we were doing, and I followed him back into the warehouse. e sailboat was very old and very small.

e hull was a light fiberglass platform with a hole for the metal mast. Adam and I toted the hull, mast, and sail to the edge of the wharf, threw them in, and tossed down a couple of life vests. Adam stepped carefully onto the hull, sat down, and steadied it against the concrete wall for me as I stepped on and sat down. e sitting down was very important. e boat was so small that it would tip and throw us off if we shifted our weight the slightest bit too far, like trying to stand on a basketball. Together we lifted the mast upright, slid it into the hole in the center of the hull, and unfurled the red sail.

“Do you want to drive?” he asked.

“You can drive,” I said.

I scooted around the mast to the tiny bow. Adam slid to the back, taking the rope attached to the sail in one hand and the handle of the rudder in the other. He pulled the sail taut, the wind filled it—and the boat tipped over, dumping us both into the lake.

I came up quickly. e life vests were floating away on the current, but the more important thing was to make sure the mast didn’t fall out of the hole and sink. We’d have a hard time retrieving it from the bottom of the lake, even here near the wharf where it was relatively shallow.

Adam had the same idea. Without a word to each other, we met under the boat. His hair floated weirdly around him and his blue eyes were bright in the dark green water as he motioned for me to turn the hull right side up while he dove after the slowly sinking mast.

I came up into the sunshine for a breath and flipped the hull. Adam surfaced beside me, groaning with the weight of tugging the sail full of water. Together we managed to bundle it around the mast so less water was trapped in it. We pulled the sail and mast out of the water, slipped the mast into the hole in the hull, and peeled the sail into position. Water rained everywhere.

“This is romantic,” I said. “You have a knack. What the hell kind of date is this?”

He laughed. “You’ll see.”

After we retrieved the life vests, I sat on the bow like in Titanic. But without any of that I’m queen of the world bullshit, holding my arms out. Come on, it was a sailboat on a lake. Adam steered us back and forth across the water. e red sail billowed above us in the strong breeze, so we wouldn’t get T-boned by drunks. Unless of course they headed straight for us like in a bullfight.

Sometimes Adam jerked the boat around so fast that I slipped off the bow and into the water. Dunk! ese were not accidents, I thought—the gleam in his blue eyes was too gleamy. He turned the boat only when we were very close to shore, though, where it was safe. I wasn’t too concerned about getting ground to bits by a passing boat motor in the open water.

We made it to the bridge and floated under. e sound of cars zooming on the highway overhead echoed in a sucking sound underneath, with a clack-clack, clack-clack as they crossed from one section of bridge to another. I called over the noise, “How much farther are we going?” I looked back at the Vaders’ house, tiny across the water.

“The party will start soon.”

“Someone there you want to see?”

I thought he sounded bitter. But when I turned around to glance at him, he was the usual Adam, quiet and intense, one finger tapping the boat with barely contained energy.

“Yes, duh. Isn’t there someone at the party you want to see? We can’t make them jealous if we’re not there.”

“Actually, we can.” He nodded to a pile. “Catch that and stop us.”

I hugged the pile and brought the sailboat alongside it. Adam opened the compartment in the hull and pulled a can of spray paint out of the pool of water inside. He popped off the cap, sprayed a little paint into the air as a test, and stuffed the can into the waistband of his board shorts. “Wait here, woman,” he said, then gri

“Uh,” I said. He was already at the top of the pile. “Adam?” He reached to the metal outside edge of the bridge (thank God this side faced away from the setting sun, or it would have been too hot to hold) and, using only the strength of his arms (thank God for calisthenics), hoisted himself up until he stood on the ledge. All I could see of him was his heels peeking over the edge.

I wasn’t worried about him falling. Cameron had fallen off before, and it had only stung. I was worried about the black clouds creeping up on the sun on the far side of the bridge, and the wind picking up. A cold gust caught the sail. e boom swung around suddenly and would have decapitated me if I hadn’t ducked. Not really, but I would have had a blue bruise across my neck, and how sexy is that? I crawled to Adam’s spot in the back of the boat, untied the rope, and lowered the sail. “Hey, Adam.” The clouds blotted out the sun. Far across the lake, the shoreline looked misty with a wall of rain. Lightning forked from the black clouds to the dark green lake.

“Adam, lightning!” I called. My voice was drowned by thunder.

The paint can dropped into the lake. I fished it out and put it back in the compartment. Lightning flashed, closer.

His feet appeared, his legs, his board shorts. With the strength of a hundred push-ups a day, he lowered himself slowly until he hung by his arms from the edge of the bridge. I expected him to drop into the water, because he was like that. He would be electrocuted, just to paint our names on the bridge. Which might sound romantic, except something could sound only so romantic when it involved spray paint.

ankfully, he swung his legs onto the pile and descended the way he’d gone. He stepped carefully onto the boat just as lightning cracked again, so loud and bright we both jumped, and thunder boomed directly overhead. I scooted toward the bow to make room for him.

He raised the sail, saying, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay!” I shouted over the noise of the rain and the deafening echo of rain under the bridge. “Not your fault.”

“It wasn’t supposed to rain tonight.”

“Storms pop up in the summer.”

Pushing the sail into the wind just long enough to give the boat momentum, and pointing the sail out of the wind again before we blew over, he steered us toward shore.

Two piles spa

We made it to shore and climbed partway up the slanted concrete embankment under the bridge. Adam brought one of the ropes from the boat with him. He curled it around his ankle so the howling wind didn’t blow the boat home without us. I curled it around my ankle, too, for good measure.

We both stared forward at the swaying sailboat, red sail puddled on the hull, and the pile beyond it. Rain cascaded off both sides of the massive bridge in sheets. My bikini bottoms didn’t provide much padding between the rough concrete and my ass. e rain had chilled me. I moved imperceptibly (I hoped) toward Adam to bask in his heat.

The noise and echo of the rain filled my ears, but Adam’s voice beside me sounded even louder. “Why’d you go to the shrink?” I looked down. My palm was bleeding. I must have scraped it on the pile.

“Was it because of your mom?”

I wiped my palm on my other hand. Great, now I had blood on both hands. Helpful. I wiped them on the back of my bikini bottoms. Blood stains came out in cold water, and we had plenty of that.

I could feel Adam watching me.

“It wasn’t right after my mom died,” I said. “Actually it wasn’t until sixth grade, when Frances left because McGillicuddy and I had gotten too old to need keeping during the day while Dad was at work. Frankly, I think she was glad to go. Sean calling her Butt I Don’t Need a Governess probably got tiresome.”