Page 75 of The Summer I First Saw You
I thought I’d recovered my love of surfing, my appetite, my anticipation of weekends and evenings and hours off, but they’ve again lost their appeal in Daisy’s absence. I need them back. I need her back.
She arrives on Sunday morning smelling of coconut and rose and sunlight. She’s got a bikini on under her sweatshirt, and I’d assumed we’d surf but I want too much from her in the limited time we have.
No sooner has she reached the main floor than my mouth is on hers and I’m tugging that sweatshirt overhead.
“I’m sorry,” I groan as I lift her onto the counter. “If you’re dying to surf—”
She laughs, reaching into my shorts. “I came here for something else entirely, I promise.”
I untie the bikini and groan as I palm her breasts, leaning down to pull one tight nipple and then the other between my teeth.
I slide her shorts and bikini bottoms off and sink to my knees, pushing her thighs wide. She leans back on her forearms. “Fuck,” she hisses, sliding her palm along my scalp. “So much better than surfing.”
It passes too quickly. I’m flicking my tongue over her swollen little clit one moment, moving her to the couch, taking her to bed—and she’s gone the next. And in her absence…what is the point of anything? Why am I working? Why am I living alone in Santa Cruz? What did I even want from life before she entered the picture?
And how am I going to continue like this?
On Tuesday morning, I tell the office I’ve got a meeting, and she arrives after her mother has left for work.
I’ve already got my wetsuit on, a concerted effort on my part to make this not all about sex.
She drops her keys on the counter and grins. “Are you serious right now?”
“You said you wanted to surf,” I counter.
She crosses to where I stand and pulls at my zipper. “Going forward, just assume it’s a euphemism.”
Later, when she’s collapsed above me, her sweaty chest clinging to mine, I run a hand down her spine.
“Cabo,” I tell her. “That’s where we’d go if it was possible.”
“Mmmm,” she says dreamily. “Is this before or after the trip to Costa Rica?”
I laugh. “After. And then we’ll go to Portugal and surf there.”
She presses upward, smiling. “And will we stop at Île du whatever-it-is that Oliver suggested?”
“No,” I whisper, cupping a breast, pinching a nipple. “I want this view to be mine alone.”
She sighs, glancing at her phone. “I should go. You’ve got to actually be at work, and my mother’s never going to believe I was surfing for four hours if she comes home for lunch.”
“When will I see you again?” I ask, pulling her back to me.
“Sunday, I guess.” I hear the disappointment in her voice and it matches my own. Sunday is too fucking far away and I’ll get too little of her when it arrives.
I throw on clothes and see her to the door, watching from the deck as her car sputters down the road. When I turn to head back in, the emptiness of the house hits me hard, along with the pointlessness of it all. Why am I here? Why am I at a job I hate? How did I end up in this fucking place, where the only thing I want from life is the one I can’t have? I distract myself by ordering the couch Daisy picked out before I get ready to head to the office.
I suspect I’m mostly doing it to feel like there will be a little of her still here after she returns to school, and I already know it won’t be enough.
The following morning, Caleb calls. I’ve been expecting a lecture about Daisy ever since that day I lost my shit at the theater.
“Hey.” My voice is cautious. “What’s up?”
“Had a few things I wanted to run by you,” he says, “but I thought I’d better check in anyway. I just heard Daisy moved back to Bridget’s. You good?”
“You’re worried now? You didn’t seem too happy a few weeks ago.”
He sighs. “I wasn’t. It’s still weird. But as Lucie pointed out, she and Daisy are only a few years apart. I think it’s just that she was always so much younger than us. That’s how I knew her.”
