Page 18 of Stony Point Summer
Ignoring Vinny, Kyle glances over to the cooler. He sets down his paint brush and presses his arm to his damp forehead for a long second. “Yo, Jason. Grabmeone of those waters, too.”
Jason glances back at Kyle from the shade beneath the pavilion, then opens the cooler. He digs around in the ice and comes up empty. “Nothing here,” he calls to Kyle. “Well’s run dry.” When he closes the cooler, he sits on top of it.
“You kidding me?” Kyle saunters over, wiping his hands on a paint-spattered rag. “Nothing?”
Jason, leaning his elbows on his knees, turns up his hands.
“Move it.” Kyle shoves Jason aside and opens the cooler himself. He reaches in, grabs a few melting ice cubes and holds them to his neck. “Man, I need some hydration.”
“Where’s your brother today?” Jason asks him, looking out at the blistering beach.
“Shane? Doing hisowncommunity service. Courts hooked him up with amentor,” he says, air-quoting the word, “instead of tossing him in juvie again. So he’s learning how to lobster.” Kyle hitches his head to the water. “Out there, somewhere.”
“No way. What’s he doing time for now?”
“Stupid shit. Some petty theft, I guess. Pocketed dough from the register at his last job, scooping ice cream.”
“Not surprised. Guy’s had a chip on his shoulder ever since your mother died.”
“Yep. Mad at the world.” Kyle pulls his wallet from his shorts pocket. “Hey, Barlow. Give me some cash.”
“What? Why me?” Jason asks.
“I ain’t treatin’, dude. Pay up and I’ll purchase us all H2O off the ice-cream truck.” Kyle motions to a white truck in the parking lot. The truck’s got jangling bells and a colorful menu splashed across its side panel, right beside a sliding window. Behind that window, some kid takes orders for sundae cups and ice-cream sandwiches and fudge-and-nut-topped vanilla cones. “Cash, man,” Kyle tells Jason while extending his open hand. When Jason forks over a few bills, Kyle works his way down the boardwalk and collects more water funds, which he drops into his cargo shorts pocket. But when he passes Lauren rolling fresh paint onto the planks, he simply hitches his head to her and whispers, “Let’s bounce.”
Glancing over her shoulder, she spots the commissioner patrolling farther down the beach now. Seems the coast is clear to slip away. So she promptly sets aside her paint roller and catches up to Kyle as he heads to the parking lot. Only once she’s at his side does she turn back to see the others—lifting paint rollers, dabbing brushes, pouring white paint into trays, sanding the eaves beneath the shade pavilion. But Lauren leans into Kyle when he loops his arm across her shoulders, pulls her close and leaves a kiss on the side of her head. She looks over athimnow, dabs a speck of white paint off his chin and stretches up to leave her own kiss there, too.
* * *
After stocking up on water for the gang, Kyle and Lauren slowly walk across the gravel parking lot. Children holding soggy dollar bills run past to the ice-cream truck. Teens pass them, too. Their hair is slicked back from swimming; their feet, bare. A weary father hauls a beach cart stuffed with sand chairs and totes and kids’ floaties.
“Want to sneak in a swim before delivering these?” Kyle takes the bag of cold water bottles from Lauren.
“A swim?” Lauren repeats as they round the bend near a community bulletin board.
“A quick one.”
“I don’t know. We should probably get back.”
Taking her hand in his, Kyle tugs her over to a dried-out wood picket fence bordering the boat basin. Tall grasses and wildflowers brush against the fence, reach through the pickets, bow beneath the July sunlight. “Get back to painting?” he asks. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“Like what?”
He nods to the little marina beside them. It sits directlybehindthe raised boardwalk, so they can see their friends hard at work with their brushes and rollers. In the boat basin, most of the slips are empty on this hot day. Only a few cabin cruisers are docked there; moored fishing boats idly float. “Let’s go down there.”
“Are you crazy?” Lauren stops still. “And steal another boat?”
“Hell, no.” Kyle takes her hand again and tugs her to the gate leading to the marina.
“Kyle!” she says in a hushed voice.
“Shh!” As he shushes her, Kyle silently closes the gate behind them and guides her down the steps to a walkway below. On their left is a low concrete wall running beneath the boardwalk. Tall dock pilings lining the top of that wall support the boardwalk up above. And hanging from hooks on those pilings are water hoses used to spray off the pleasure boats in the marina slips.
But the area between the boardwalk planks above and the low concrete wall beneath them is an open, shaded space measuring about four feet, top to bottom. Inflated tubes—the kind towed behind boats speeding along the Sound—are stacked between a few of the pilings.
Kyle glances up to the boardwalk above it all, seeming to gauge if his friends can see him and Lauren behind them, down below.
“Kyle,” Lauren whispers, taking his arm and leaning close into him. “What are you doing?” she asks when he sets down his bag of water bottles.
