Page 16 of Summer Skate

She introduces me to her friend, another influencer, who goes on and on about her new line of body mists.

“I just announced that I’m launching them, and I’ve been dying to show everyone!

” She takes out her phone. “I’ve been traveling in Europe.

We just got home. I’ve been obsessed and living in these.

Obviously, I’m in my golden era.” She laughs.

“Look at the bottle!” Charlotte oooohs and aaaahs.

“How cute is it? It has that cute little glitter, you see? Shells, oh my god, star fish , it’s all so delicious I honestly can’t stop spraying it.

This is what I’ve been, like, living in all summer long.

They are so delicious! I’ll definitely send you some! ”

I order a Painkiller, to kill my pain. Charlotte takes a picture of us all clinking glasses. We have to do it several times before she gets the shot.

“Tell me more about Italy,” I say, once the booze kicks in, pulling my barstool up close to her. “I’m sure you took some great pictures.”

She shows me some. I start to zone out and scan the restaurant. That’s when I see Jessica, sitting at a table. I feel a burst of new energy, good energy, and a sudden enthusiasm for these Italy photos I’m looking at. My responses to Charlotte become more animated.

I keep glancing up. Jessica is sharing a piece of cake with someone.

She looks natural in this environment. They are engrossed in conversation.

I am so immediately jealous of this woman sitting across from her that I want to lasso this friend of hers across the room while she’s sitting in her chair.

Charlotte gets dragged away by some famous DJ she knows from high school. Harps catches me looking across the room. “Hughes,” he says. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“I know.”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot.”

“I know. I know. Just get rid of the friend, okay?” I say to him. He pauses. We stare at each other.

He sighs. “Okay.”

We head over to the table. Jessica sees me. She is smiling. She is tipsy. Perfect. Harps leans down toward the friend: “God. You’re beautiful.”

I crack up.

“I’m married,” she replies, giving him an amused look.

“I can appreciate that. Let me buy you a drink,” he says.

She looks at Jessica.

“Go have a drink,” Jessica says. “It probably won’t end in divorce.”

Her friend gets up and Jessica is left sitting at the table with nothing but an empty wine glass and a tall goblet full of ice.

“Well, look who it is,” I say. “My neighbor.”

She puts her elbows down on the table and gives me a glaring look, like What do you want?

“Can I sit?” I ask, pulling out the chair.

“I don’t think I have much of a choice.”

“Good instincts,” I say. “What’s with all the ice?

” I take the glass and put it in front of me.

I examine her face, her cheeks slightly red from too much sun.

She is wearing a white tank top and jean shorts.

No makeup. No jewelry. Her legs are crossed under the table.

I can see beige sandals with straps that wrap around her ankles.

Just sitting across from her is turning me on.

She explains: “I don’t really like wine, so I ask for it over ice, but they don’t want to do it.” She rolls her eyes and flips her hand in the air so that her palm is up, motioning to the glass. “They give me a glass of ice so that I can do it myself.”

“Well, it’s like ordering steak and eating it with ketchup.”

“See. That I wouldn’t do.”

“That’s where you draw the line?”

She smiles. “That’s where I draw the line.”

She stares at me, looking like a wave of discomfort has hit her. But then I realize that it’s not discomfort. It’s fear.

I reach into her glass and remove two cubes of ice. I put one in my mouth and crunch down hard. I keep the other in my hand. I put my hands under the table. I reach to see how far away her crossed legs are. I graze one of her shoe straps with my fingertips.

Right there. Easy .

“How was your dinner?” I ask.

I hold the ice cube against her ankle, just above the straps, and run it up her calf slowly to the back of her knee. She sits there very still, her eyelids lowering slightly.

“I don’t know,” she says.

I feel like these are my legs, like I touch them all the time, like they belong to me. “You don’t know?” I ask. I don’t even know what I’m saying.

She shakes her head.

“Interesting.” I brush my thumb along the inside of her knee.

Once the ice melts, I press my hand against the back of her calf and hold it there. She inhales sharply. Then she exhales and the sound of her breathing is making me hard.

We drift into a place where we aren’t really talking. I put my hand on top of her knee. It is smooth, slightly bony. I feel around, extend my fingers, draw them back, each new part of her skin giving me another pang of hunger.

She looks around, then clasps her hands together as if she’s about to start a conversation. But she doesn’t say anything. I am feeling her calves up and down because the thighs feel too dangerous. Anything above the knee is going to put me over the edge.

“I’m not . . . unhappily married, you know,” she says. I couldn’t care less. Nothing exists beyond this table.

I lean in and say: “Can I ask you a question?”

She almost rolls her eyes, then stares at me, leans forward. I move one of my hands to the inside of her thigh. I expect her to flinch, to push me away, but she doesn’t. I get close to her ear, close enough that strands of her hair are in my eyes and nose: “Are you happy now?”

And then she sits back and grips the table with both hands and pushes it hard against my chest. The force of it is so hard that I have to work to keep my chair from falling backwards.

She stands up, blows past me, and goes to the bar. I get up and stand there watching, so stunned that I can’t even move. What the fuck was that? At the bar, JT has ordered a tray of shots and is passing them around to a group of girls. Large girls. Tattooed girls. Not-from-around here girls.

I see Jessica approach the tray.

She removes a shot from the tray, downs it, scrunches her face up in disgust. She looks up at me and then turns away. Her friend joins her, points to some other people at the end of the bar. Jessica waves at them.

I go closer to the bar.

I watch as she downs another shot.

“Jess!” her friend yells, and then laughs. She looks at her friend and shrugs. Her friend slinks past the bodies huddled at the bar, ends up bumping into one of JT’s girls, spilling her drink.

“ Excuse me ,” the girl says to Jessica’s friend. “Girl, you are not hot enough to be standing so close to me.”

“Sorry!” Jessica’s friend cries out.

Jessica turns around. “ What did you just say ?” It’s unclear why she is suddenly yelling. “Because she spilled your drink, you’re insulting her looks ? It was an accident . Chill.”

But Jessica is the one that needs to chill. She is messing with the wrong crowd. These girls are twice her size. These girls will kill her, and the reason I know this is because I hear one of them say: “I’m gonna kill this bitch.”

The girl lifts a shot from the bar and pours it on Jessica’s sandals.

Jessica screeches and looks around for the nearest object, which is in the hands of the bartender—a lime that he is about to slice.

She grabs the lime and throws it at the girl.

They all duck and laugh. Jessica is reaching down, unraveling her sandals, about to take one off, presumably to throw it.

Still in disbelief, I push into the crowd and reach for Jessica and lift her up. I carry her down the stairs and out of the bar, as she kicks wildly at my knees with the one sandal that is still on her foot. The other one is in her hand and slung over my shoulder, dangling by its string.

I put her down on a bench.

“You’re starting bar fights now? Are you fucking nuts?”

“She was rude to my friend! How dare she insult her looks! My friends are all hot! All of them are hot!”

I start to laugh. She’s drunk. Her friend has followed us down the stairs and crouches down beside her.

“Jess.” She shakes her head. “What is going on?”

Jessica looks down. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You just threw a lime at a stranger.”

“Oh, will you guys relax ? I’m fine . Everything is fine . They dodged the lime. Let’s go party.” She gets back up and starts to climb the stairs.

“Jess!” her friend calls. “I’m going home.”

Jessica stops, looks at her friend and then at me.

“I can give her a ride,” I say to her friend.

“Are you sure?” she asks Jessica. “Jess, why don’t you just come with me? It’s late. We should go.” The friend is wary.

Jessica hesitates. “No way. I’m not going back to that empty house. Not yet,” she replies. “Text me when you get home, okay?” she says to her friend and then turns away.

Upstairs, the bar area has transformed into a dance party. Shots are being passed around. Girls are dancing on the tables. Jessica is ignoring me and goes over to the group of people she knows and sits down with them.

It’s a bunch of guys in white linen shirts, khaki pants rolled up.

Their wives are all dressed in white and pink dresses, with stacks of gold and diamond bangles on their arms. I decide that they must be telling stories about their families.

Jessica must be talking about her weekend with her family, how they came to visit her during her wild solo time in the Hamptons.

What would I have to add?

You’re on completely separate paths. Pursuing her is pointless. Worthless. Zero points .

I look at her from across the room and somehow manage a warm feeling about letting her go.

I have to get used to it. I’m sure it won’t be the last time we see each other out.

Tonight, she was meant to be with her older, sophisticated New York City friends, sipping cocktails.

And I was meant to do tequila shots at the bar with JT and an influencer who wants to move to Italy.

Charlotte is after me and honestly, I have to respect the hustle. She keeps asking me to dance. She doesn’t let me out of her sight, except once when somebody hands out sparklers and she and her friends take them down to the beach for a “barefoot dance party.”

I indulge her. She is cheerful and fun, and by fun I mean she is almost always jumping up and down with her hands in the air. So I dance. I take more photos. I need a break. I grab her by the shoulders.

“Do you want to just sit in the sand for a little bit?” I say. “Or smoke a joint?”

“Okay,” she says, slightly dejected. “Hey,” she whispers, touching my elbow and then moving her body in close to mine. “I have something you might be interested in.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

She rifles through her handbag and shows me two keys attached to shell-shaped silver coins. The coins read Sunset Beach. Room 301 .

“I got a room. Just in case I wanted to crash.”

My heart is pumping as I look down at Charlotte in her diamond choker and white polka-dotted top. You can see the outline of her breasts. She puts one key in my pocket.

I don’t exactly say yes, but once she decides to leave, I follow. JT and Harps see me walking behind her toward the door. They’re pissed. They know that this is big. They’ll have to work to catch up.

We walk down the stairs. As we cross the parking lot, Charlotte loops her arm into mine, pretending to be drunker than she is. Suddenly, she’s wasted, giddy.

I look back at the bar, up to the top floor, where a girl is standing with her hands on the railing, the wind whipping her hair as she stares back at me. It’s Jessica.