Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (98 page)

“Hey.” I said. My eyes lingered on her
slim body for too long before I finally turned back around to take my shot. I
felt her step even closer to me. Our arms were practically touching. I could
actually feel the heat from her body. I looked over at her as I stood up
straight. She’s a little taller than Summer, and her eyes are blue and not
green, but the similarities are still striking enough that in a dark room…

“I don’t usually proposition men in bars,”
she said.

I smirked. “I haven’t heard any
propositions,” I told her, “Does this mean you just haven’t got to it yet?”

She raked her blue eyes from my head to my
feet and brought them back up to my face, leaving a trail of heat in their
wake. “Yeah,” she said with much more confidence than Summer would ever have.
Surprisingly, seeing it in a girl that I thought looked so much like Summer was
kind of a turn-off for me.

I looked at her for a long moment and then
I turned back towards the pool table and racked the balls again. As I took my
next shot, I said, “And, how often does that mood strike you?”

She laughed in that husky voice and said,
“Does that matter to you? It’s not like I’m proposing marriage here.”

She had a point, I had thought that
myself. But I would be just using her because she looked like Summer and that
wasn’t only mean, it was kind of sick, too. I finally said, “I don’t think I’m
in the mood tonight, darlin’, but thanks anyways.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“You’re missing out,” she tossed over her shoulder as she walked away. I was
still looking at her when Lance and Kobe walked in off the street. I saw Lance
checking out her backside before he raised an eyebrow in my direction. I
ignored him. He’s probably never going to approve of the way I feel about
Summer, and I really don’t care. Kobe was, of course, oblivious. Lance stopped
at the bar, and Kobe came over to where I was racking my next shot.

“Hey, dude, how long you been here?” I
gave Kobe our standard handshake.

“Not long, we finished the shoot up early,
so I just came straight up from the beach.”

Lance came over with two beers and handed
one to Kobe. “Thanks, man. Hey, that girl at the bar, she looks kinda like
Summer,” he said, oblivious to everything except what I wanted him to be. Lance
looked at me again. I ignored him and took my shot. After I’d knocked the balls
where I wanted them, I asked Kobe,

“Where’s Phoebe tonight?”

“It’s Bennie’s birthday. She’s having a
party for him at the house.”

“So why aren’t you there?”

“Bennie doesn’t like me.”

I laughed. “Does Bennie really like
anyone?”

“He likes my girl,” Kobe said, “And
yours.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back towards
the table. I heard Lance chuckle as he told Kobe, “We’re not supposed to talk
about her, didn’t he tell you?”

“He told me,” Kobe said with a laugh. “But
he’s not my fucking boss.”

“You two girls want to play some pool or
not?” I asked them.

“I’d rather keep giving you shit,” Lance
said. “Or I could go over there to the bar and see if I could scrape up some of
your leftovers.”

I glanced back over at the girl. She was
talking to the bartender and from the side and in the dim light, she looked so
much like Summer that it gave me a chill. “Leave her alone,” I told him.

“Why is that? Would it be too much like I
was fucking your girl?” He laughed and so did Kobe as they high-fived each
other. The fuckers were having way too much fun at my expense.

“Alright, if nobody wants to shoot some
pool, maybe it’s time to say goodnight.”

“Aw, come on, don’t be a pussy,” Lance
said. “We’re just having fun.”

“At my expense.”

He pulled two striped balls out of one
pocket and sat them up on the felt table. Kobe took a sip of his beer. He at
least had the decency to look a little sorry for giving me a ration of shit.
“Yeah,” Lance said as he gathered the rest of the pool balls and racked them.
“But you want to know something funny?”

“Will you keep it to yourself if I say
no?”

He laughed and chalked the stick he’d
grabbed off the wall. “Nope. See, I was thinking that as much as you want to
deny you’re still hung up on Summer, you’re awfully sensitive about her.”

“Can we please talk about something else?
If I admit to you that I’m still fucking hung up on her will you let it go?
What the fuck is it with you lately, anyways? You were the first one to tell me
to leave her alone to begin with.” Kobe still had his face in his beer. Lance
leaned over and broke, sending one of the striped balls into the corner pocket.
He stood back up and said,

“Admitting it is the first step.”

“I’m serious, man. Why the fuck are you
suddenly so interested in my feelings for Summer?”

“When I went to Oregon and found her in
that little diner, she asked me the same thing, sort of.”

“Maybe you could share the answer with
me.”

“After she left, I was actually relieved
at first. I never thought she was any good for you. Since we were kids, I just
always assumed you and I would fuck our way through early adulthood and when it
was finally time to settle down, we’d both marry someone from our circle and
we’d hang out and raise our kids together. That surfing school you’ve always
talked about opening, I pictured us working there together.”

“You’d leave your father’s company?”

He shrugged. “My dad is not like yours.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve always envied you
that.”

“He would be disappointed if I left, but
it wouldn’t break our relationship. I guess I like my job okay, but compared to
getting paid to surf all day every day
–
no fucking comparison. But anyways, I
digress…”

“You also need to take another shot,” Kobe
said.

Lance picked up his beer instead and took
a long drink. He handed the stick to Kobe and said, “Take it for me. Our friend
needs to hear this.” Turning back towards me, he said, “When Summer came along
and you were so infatuated with her, I was jealous.”

“Jealous? Are you telling me you’re in
love with me?”

“Fuck you. I’m telling you that I was
jealous that you had someone in your bed that you weren’t only fucking, but you
were actually falling in love with. You were talking about chucking all the
dreams you’ve had for so long and taking that job with your father. You had
that look in your eye that men get when they’ve decided to settle for less than
they ever wanted in order to get the girl they didn’t want to live without, and
you were still happy.” He paused as if waiting for me to say something.

When I didn’t he continued, “I was jealous
of that. I’ve never had that. I’ve never felt so much for someone that I was
willing to give up everything else I wanted for them. I acted like an ass. I
bullied that poor girl. I treated my best friend like shit, and then she went
away and you were miserable and I was happy. The fact that your misery would
make me happy bothered me, but you left for Bali not long after that, and I
didn’t have to deal with it right off the bat.”

“And then I came back.”

“Yes, you did, and you were still a
miserable son of a bitch. You were fucking everything with two legs, you were
making money hand over fist, you were winning surf competitions, and you were
still fucking miserable. When you left again for Istanbul, I tried to forget
about it again, like I did when you were in Bali, but it ate away at me. This
fucking growing up bullshit is for the birds. I finally couldn’t stand the
constant guilt I felt for the way I treated her and you, so I tricked Phoebe
into telling me where she was. I went there and threatened her so she’d come to
you. And then…the two of you fucked it up.”

In spite of myself, I chuckled. He was
right. He’d gone through a lot of trouble and it had taken Summer and I less
than ten minutes to establish we were both still hurting and neither of us were
going to do anything about it. “So what do you think should have happened?”

“You want my advice?”

“I have a feeling I’m going to get it,
whether I want it or not.”

“You should go get her, bring her back
here, open that surf school, and hire my pretty ass.”

I laughed. “It just so happens that I’ve
already talked to my mother’s real estate agent. She’s making an offer on the
old creamery building down by the docks.”

“Well, alright, my advice wins.”

“How do you figure? I’d already done that
before you gave me your valuable advice.”

“Because you were still on the fence about
going to get Summer. But now you’re not.”

“I’m not?”

“Nope, you’re practically on a plane to
Oregon.”

“New York.” Kobe had been silent up until
then. We both turned to look at him. He went ahead and took his shot while we
waited. When he stood up and saw us looking at him he said, “What?”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Man, you have got
to stop smoking that shit. What the hell do you mean by New York?”

“Oh! Summer’s in New York. She went to
meet with that lawyer. Phoebe said she’s going through their old house this
week and packing and selling things. I guess they just sealed it up and left
it. She won’t be back in Oregon until Sunday.”

Lance looked at me. “Today is Wednesday.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious, man. A long weekend in New
York might be just what the doctor ordered for both you and the love of your
life.”

Four hours later, I was on a plane. I had
no idea what I would say or do when I got there, but I knew Lance was right.
Summer was the one thing missing in my life and I wouldn’t ever be happy if I
didn’t at least try to get her back.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

SUMMER

I stood outside the house with the beach
and the ocean at my back and looked up at it from the end of the walkway. It
looked so much smaller to me now than it used to. It had definitely seen better
days. Grandpa wasn’t ever really one for worrying about what things looked
like. It was the same original blue it had been painted back in the seventies
when he’d first bought it. It was peeling in places in big chunks and the
smooth white primer paint underneath it was showing through. At least a fourth
of the brown shingles on the roof were missing and the white window frames were
cracked and peeling. The grass was nearly as tall as me in places and was mixed
with weeds that twisted and choked it in places and left big empty patches of
sand. The big shade tree where I used to swing still stood. I walked through
the little broken gate and pushed through the deep grass until I got to it. The
swing was still attached where Grandpa had hung it. He’d made it out of old
rope and a piece of one of his old surfboard that he’d sawed in half. I reached
up and touched the rope with tears in my eyes. I had been just about six years
old when he hung it there. I remember thinking he was the coolest guy ever. He
could surf, he could make swings, and sometimes, he would tell me wild stories
that were probably wildly inappropriate for a little girl, but I loved them. I
thought of him as bigger than life, and I’d been so alone and scared when he
died, I never really grieved that loss. I wiped the tears away and headed for
the house.

The porch that I used to sit on early in
the morning wrapped up in a blanket while I watched Grandpa surf was tilting to
one side. The first step up to it was cracked and rotted. I stepped over it and
onto the next one. Once I was standing up on the porch, I turned to look out at
the ocean. I could feel the cool breeze and taste the salty air, and I could
almost see him out there “conquering the ocean,” as he used to put it. I
wondered for not the first time how different my life would have been if he had
lived.

I used the key the lawyer gave me to let
myself inside. He told me that no one had been here in years. Grandpa left
everything to me and because of that, there had been a lot of confusion about
what to do with his assets. I slid the key into the lock that was rusted from
years of exposure to the wet, salty air. It took some doing, but I finally got
the door open. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, my nose and eyes were
assaulted by the thick, dusty air. It was hard to breathe. A sliver of light
was coming through the dirty curtain on the west side of the house and I could
see particles of dust dancing in the air. I advanced further in and looked
around. Someone had covered the furniture with dust covers, but long enough ago
that they themselves were coated with dust. It lay over every surface in a
pristine layer unsullied by foot or fingerprints anywhere.

I felt overwhelmed. I had no idea where to
begin. I trudged through the dust and made my way to Grandpa’s room. I stood
there on the threshold and as the tears rolled down my cheeks, a smile crossed
my face. One entire wall of the bedroom was covered by the surfboards he’d
stacked there years ago. Each time he retired one, he’d leave it there. The
only one he ever used for anything else had been the one that made my swing out
front. They used to fascinate me. We didn’t have pictures or decorations on the
walls like other families. So when I tired of looking at the plain white of the
rest of the house, I’d go into Grandpa’s room and stare at the colorful boards.
I walked over now and ran my hand across a yellow and orange one. I remember
this one used to remind me of the sun and when it was too cold or raining or
snowing outside, I’d pretend it was the sun and I’d sit next to it and have a
little picnic on the floor of his bedroom. When Grandpa was home, he’d
sometimes join me and as usual, regale me with stories of his youth.