Page 25 of Rebel Summer

“He was exactly like the Dax I remembered from biology.” Minus the muscles, the array of tattoos, and the overall manliness of his features, but she didn’t need to know that.

“So he’s flirtatious under the guise of not caring?”

I needed to shut this down quick.

“Why are you asking me? You should know him better than I do. You stayed on the island after high school.” I tucked my long skirt underneath my legs as another gust of wind threatened to expose me to the elements.

She made a noise like I was crazy. “I only admire from a distance, like a proper low-threat stalker, thank you very much. If he actually spoke to me, I’d probably faint.”

I huffed out a laugh before changing the subject. “Anyway, how’s the B&B? Got any rooms available for me for the summer?”

“I’m so sorry. I wish we did, but we’re booked solid for the next few weeks. There might be something available after that, though. Do you want to just stay with me?”

“Thanks, but I’ll be alright. Let me know if a room opens up.” Crashing at a friend’s house was tempting, but I couldn’t bear the thought of inconveniencing anybody because of my stupidity. I wanted my own space, but if that couldn’t happen, this would be great motivation to get me back to Nashville in seven weeks.

If not sooner.

The truth in the words of a t-shirt in one of the town square tourist shops hit me like a ton of bricks.

Life is a beach.

The silverware clanked on the dishes later that night as I moved the cauliflower rice and roasted chicken around on my plate. I sat at the kitchen table my parents had bought after my mom complained that our previous table wasn’t large enough to throw dinner parties. Now, in a twist of irony, my dad’s new wife was the one hosting events at the house.

Bless her heart, Angela had been attempting small talk all evening, chattering endlessly about things normal families would probably discuss at the dinner table. She brought up the abnormal heat and the wind the island had been getting. She talked about the new community pool hopefully going in over the summer and how nice that would be for all the kids on the island. She chatted about the farmers market and how she couldn’t wait to go back again this Saturday to get some of the goat milk lotion that had made such a difference for her skin.

But there was a storm brewing at our table. My dad had been given time to absorb what I had told him about my morning in court and hadn’t said a word to me since. But with each impatient bite of his food and every grunt given in reply to Angela’s chatter, a budding hurricane grew in the space between us—a tension I remembered well throughout my life.

I wanted to balk at the feeling. Push it away. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I had spent my entire life attempting to prove myself worthy to someone who had never deemed me as such. I graduated at the top of every class and graduated with honors in every degree I attained afterward, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still nothing but a disappointment to him.

It was almost a relief when he wiped his mouth with his napkin and spoke.

“Even with your blatant disregard for everything my attorney and I told you to say, I’m still going to try to keep this out of the press. But I do know there are people just itching to spread the news that Clayton Brooks’s daughter is here serving a community sentence.”

Deep breaths. Remain calm.

Swallowing, I said, “I don’t think there’ll be that much gossip. Everyone will know it was an accident.”

My dad stared at me incredulously—like I was missing something so completely obvious. “They’ll know that my daughter pleaded guilty to a DUI. And that’s all they’ll have to know.”

“Didn’t Larry Donalds get a DUI for driving the golf cart drunk on the beach last year?” Angela asked, her timid voice attempting to cheerfully dislodge us. A piece of my heart softened at her attempt.

“Well, Larry isn’t running the biggest campaign of his life at the moment. And it’s all going to be ruined because my daughter came home for the weekend.”

Obviously, Dr. Barb didn’t have an egotistic politician for a father. The way he could so casually destroy me in one sentence or less was a work of art. I forced myself to speak.

“Dad, it’s a local senator election. You’re not running for president. I’m not going to jail. I think you’ll be fine.” My body tensed after I spoke the words, as though I were bracing myself for something coming. There were two parts of my personality at war with each other: the part that cowered under my dad’s disappointment and the part that was trying to never let myself feel that way again.

He stared at me, betrayal written all over his face. His words were a careful mix of control and seething anger. “Now, I’m a senator. But what if I do run for president one day? Everything we do in this family is monitored. You think I’m causing all of this fuss for myself? It’s to keep all of us safe. If you don’t think everything you’ve done isn’t going to be found out by reporters, you’re grossly naive. Which makes this whole thing beyond maddening. You pleaded guilty to a DUI, instead of fighting something I know I could have fixed.”

“I was guilty, Dad.”

He banged his hand on the table, causing the dishes to jump along with me and Angela. For all his anger, he didn’t yell. He hissed and seethed like a snake, but never yelled.

“I golf with the judge, for Pete’s sake. You weren’t drinking. It was just a completely idiotic…” He looked like he wanted to say a lot of words just then but reined it all in and, through gritted teeth, ended on, “…mistake.”

Mistake.

My body tensed. There was that word again. It always seemed to find me. My dad had the tone down perfectly, with the hiss of the S and just the right inflection of speech to punch the gut. Suddenly, memories of being a child and crying under my covers came rushing back over me. It was amazing how one small word could set me back a decade or two of mental and emotional growth.

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