Page 49 of The Summers of Us

“Yes, that’s definitely it.” He laughed, deeper than I remembered it being. “What’s your favorite memory of this pier?”

I glanced down the pier through the smudged glass doors, greeted by a blinding orb of sunlight. The sight took me back to a time of laughter whistled through lost baby teeth. I looked back at Everett. “A little after I met you. I was thirteen and Hadley was five. Blair brought us to watch the sunset. She sat in my lap and we shared an orange slushy from the old machine with the clumpy ice. ‘Sharing’ with Hadley meant she drank most of it. The rest of it ended up on my lap.” I tapped the spot on my thigh that once dried sticky from orange syrup.

“You miss her,” Everett said matter-of-factly. His face wore an expression that made me lose my filter.

I nodded. “But she’s with her dad, so it’s for the best.”

One side of my bangs fell from behind my ear onto my face. My hair had dried erratically since swimming, a terrible mix of sea salt and breeze. Before I could fix it, Everett swiped it back behind my ear. He didn’t give me time to react tothateither. Instead, he grabbed my elbow and pulled me into the unexplored depths of the pier shop.

The other side of my bangs fell, but I didn’t let him see me fix it.

Past some sun-bleached boogie boards and clearance beach chairs, next to the creaky bathroom door, a pinball machine collected dust. Like a snapshot from an old beach postcard, it pulled us in with a magnetic force emanating from the scratches on the glass and pin-up girls on the scoreboard. It was fittingly beach themed, with palm trees and a beach horizon lining the interior.

“Did you know this was here?” I wiped the glass like I’d discovered an ancient relic in a dusty attic.

“Of course. I’m not a tourist, remember?”

I squinted my eyes at him, my mouth a thin line. His smile almost broke into a laugh, one side curled halfway down his chin. “Yes, thank you for the reminder. But what would a local be doing in the depths of the pier shop in the first place?”

“Fair point.” He nodded and fished two quarters from his wallet. “Loser buys the winner candy?”

“Deal.” I fed the machine to life with a quarter.

It was a wonder it still worked; half the lightbulbs were out and the other half glowed a dull orange. The bumpers squeaked like windshield wipers on a sunny day.

They worked well enough to land me two bonuses and a handsome 6,530,000 points.

There was something about the rickety button that Everett couldn’t figure out. His pinballs went from the launch, straight past the bumpers, and right back into the launchpad. He gave up and pushed the buttons for fun, bouncing back and forth to the creaky tune. Somehow, he managed 2,340,000 points.

While Everett picked up our order, I mulled over my candy options at the front counter. I had my fingers on my chin like the decision between two candies was akin to deciding to restart your life in a beach house.

I decided on a bag of orange wedges.

Walking on dry sand was already hard, but doing it with hands full of greasy pier food was nearly impossible. I couldn’t see through my bangs, but Everett’s hands were too full to swipe them from my face like he did in the pier.Why did he do that?I couldn’t do anything but step into his foot prints and hope we were almost there.

We made it back to Holden and Haven who had spread our towels into a makeshift picnic blanket.

We ate hot dogs, onion rings, and hushpuppies, washing them down with sodas. I spat out stubborn grains of sand that made their way into my food. Thankfully no hungry seagulls multiplied in front of us.

When I finished my hot dog, I snapped open my orange wedges.

Haven looked longingly at them. I held the bag out for her, ate a few more, then left Haven with the bag as I headed down the beach, my head glued to the sand. I was looking for a new coquina where the waves came up for their shell exchange.

“What are you doing?” Everett stood behind me, wrestling wind-blown hair off his forehead. I wished I could do the wrestling for him like he had done for me.

“Looking for this year’s shell.” I held my necklace between my fingers, touching each of the five shells individually.

“Can I help?” His eyes were like sunset.

I nodded and squinted my eyes from two things too bright to look at.

Everett found a couple coquinas, but they didn’t have holes so he threw them back. We found plenty of ugly, gray oysters. I kept some red and white calico scallops and a white ark shell safe in my bikini top.

Everett found a perfect shark eye, but a few minutes later, he yelped and threw it back to the ocean. “It pinched me!”

“That explains why it was so pretty,” I said with a laugh. Shells didn’t decay until their creatures ditched them.

We wandered so far that we couldn’t see the towels anymore. With my eyes, I traced our footprints in the sand until they disappeared on the horizon. They told the story of two wandering teens on their quest for shells. Finally, in front of some residential houses, where the sand went mostly untouched, hundreds of coquinas littered the beach. I got on my knees and ignored the grittiness against my skin to pick up as many as my palm could hold. Everett joined me until we found enough to agree on one perfect white coquina with a hole big enough for the chain. I didn’t have a pure white one yet.

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