Page 1 of A Novel Summer
One
CapeCod
August
They met on the beach at midnight. Tomorrow, there wouldn’t be a time when all three of them could get together to say goodbye. Shelby bent down and carved their names into the wet sand with a mussel shell. She called her friends back from the edge of the ocean to look before the tide washed over it.Shelby. Hunter. Colleen.
Behind them, the bookshop was dark. They’d just been inside. Colleen’s family owned Land’s End Books, so they were able to make a clandestine, middle-of-the night visit. Shelby wanted to see it one last time before she left.
In the beginning, books were the only thing they had in common: studious, vagabond Shelby; carefree, Cape Cod Colleen; and old Boston money Hunter. Shelby and Hunter met freshman year of college and had been inseparable ever since. Their love of books brought them together, and now it was pulling them apart.
“You’re more emotional than you were at graduation,” Shelby said, putting an arm around Hunter.
Out of the three, she was the most prepared for goodbye. As an army brat, moving away, moving on, was part of life. She was philosophical about it. But Hunter was sniffling.
“Because at graduation we still had all summer. This feels different.”
It was different. School was over, summer was ending, and the future was now: Shelby was moving to New York City to become a writer, and Hunter was moving to Boston for a job in book publishing. Only Colleen would remain on that tiny spit of land, the peninsula that curved out into the Atlantic Ocean like a finger beckoning,Come here. See what you’ll find.
Shelby had found everything in Cape Cod, not just her two best friends, but her first love, and most of all, a sense of home. But New York City had always been the plan. After a childhood moving from place to place, her only constants were the books she read and her hope of someday writing one herself. And New York was where she’d chase that dream.
“I still can’t believe you’re both leaving,” Colleen said. “I barely remember summers here without you.”
They were a threesome because of Hunter. She’d invited Shelby to her parents’ beach house the summer after their freshman year. Shelby had jumped at the chance, on the condition that she could find a job. So, Hunter introduced her to Colleen, whose parents owned the town bookstore. That had been the start of their Provincetown summers. And this was the end.
“Just stay,” Colleen said, knowing it was impossible. She was the only one who could call Provincetown home, working full-time at Land’s End Books. For Shelby and Hunter, the shores of Provincetown could only give so much. And for a time, it had been more than enough. But as she’d learned growing up, there was no sense getting too attached to any one place. The time always came to say goodbye.
From somewhere down the beach, an old Cyndi Lauper song played, something about time after time. Someone was always listening to 1980s music in Provincetown.
“Okay, let’s not make this sad,” Hunter said, wiping her eyes. “Look up: a crescent moon. A crescent moon represents the cycles of life: birth, death, and rebirth. New beginnings. It’s the perfect time to manifest our intentions.”
“I know your intentions. To leave,” Colleen said dryly.
“Come on—hold hands,” Hunter said. Shelby accepted her outstretched hand on one side, and clasped Colleen’s on the other.
They faced the sea.
“We have to promise to be back together here next summer.” Hunter nudged Shelby. “You have to say it, too.”
“I promise to be back here next summer,” Shelby and Colleen said.
Shelby said it, but she didn’t believe it. If there was one thing she’d learned growing up, it was that goodbye was an ending, not a beginning. That was part of why she loved books so much—they were friends she could take with her wherever she went. And before next summer, she’d write her own novel. She promised herself right there—the crescent moon as her witness—that she wouldn’t come back to Provincetown until she’d made that happen.
She wanted books to be more than just the friends she could take with her. She wanted them to be her life. Even if that meant leaving her actual friends behind.
Two
Three YearsLater
New YorkCity
May
There was no party like a book party. The Brooklyn bar was packed with Shelby’s grad school friends celebrating the publication of her novel.
“What’s that saying about putting in ten thousand hours?” one of them said, standing on a chair and raising a glass. “I think Shelby turned that into a hundred thousand. To you, Shelby. You show us all how it’s done. So...cheers!”
The group toasted. A group that did not include her boyfriend, Noah. She looked around for him. Union Hall seemed made for a publishing event. It felt like the library of an old estate, with wood-paneled walls, bookshelves filled with leather-bound copies, an old-fashioned standing globe, and worn leather couches. The only telltale signs they were in Park Slope and not Old Westbury were the tin ceilings and the view of bustling Union Avenue out the wide windows. That, and the live music.
