Page 22 of The Summer You Were Mine

Cris sat on the wooden beach chair balancing a plastic dish on his knees.

Not wanting to invite commentary on his lunch choices for today, he decided to grab something to eat down on the beach instead of up on the terrace.

He’d ordered what he thought was a basic arugula-topped bresaola with shavings of grana , but it showed up with a blob of pickled red onion in the middle of it all.

Despite his new enthusiasm for foods he hadn’t eaten in a while, onions were still a mortal enemy.

Since he was not about to dump them in the sand and bury them like a basset hound, he was picking around them with his plastic fork and knife while trying to politely roll and fold the slices of meat before taking bites.

At least it gave him something to do with his hands instead of checking his phone for messages or emails that contained only bad news.

Teena had texted him twice already to set up a time to update him on the situation.

He hadn’t responded yet, but he had to soon.

She would probably allow for one unreturned text, but more than that would put him on the top of her very long shit list.

In fact, he’d only pulled his phone out of his pocket on the way back from the marina to take a photo of the poster advertising the concert at the festival.

Maybe by then Ellie would feel like blowing off a little bit of steam and come with him to check it out.

Was it a risk to ask her on a Monday to go somewhere with him on Friday when she’d have three more days to decide she still hated him? There was only one way to find out.

“That looks—interesting.” Ellie dropped her tote down under the adjacent umbrella and laid her towel out over the back of the chair next to him. “Didn’t you used to hate onions?” she asked, settling in the seat.

“Did you come down here to ask me that?”

“No, I came down to relax and do nothing. I think.”

“Well, these are the sweet ones.”

Ellie laughed. “That sounds like something your mother would say when you used to pick them off pizza. Where is she, anyway?”

“Skype calls with some patients this morning. They are a little obsessed with her.”

“She’s pretty amazing at her job. Some of the wives of my podcast guests are devout disciples of her church of cosmetic injectables. The ones who have had the most work are the ones who look like they haven’t had any. I don’t know how she does it.”

“She likes to prove to people that they don’t need surgery. She is very patient.”

“Well, she’d have to be, in your house.” It was fine if she wanted to throw digs at him, as long as she wasn’t scowling like she had been earlier. “Your brothers are coming, right? Are they somewhere training or shooting?”

“They’re training until the last minute before the Paris games. I don’t know when the show starts shooting again.”

“I’m guessing you’re not thinking of being a special guest star on Double Shot at this point,” she said.

“That’s actually another slight issue in this indelicate slide into retirement. But you came down here to relax. We don’t have to get into it.”

“No, it’s good. It will be good practice to sound like we can have a spontaneous conversation,” she said. He checked her face again to see if she was being sarcastic. She wasn’t.

“Well, when they got the offer to do the show, the only way they would sign the contract is if the producers guaranteed a spot for me. The thing is—I love them, right? And I know this is their way of taking care of me, but being in the media spotlight is torture.”

“Well the show is… it seems like a lot. The only episode I ever watched was just two wet dudes sleeping their way through a trail of the most beautiful people on the planet and like, a lot of palm trees.”

“Yep. That pretty much explains it. I’m guessing you didn’t enjoy the episode.”

“The guy Leo was dating was so perfect, he looked CGI’d and yet he still got dumped because he said he preferred his steak well done when they went out to dinner. I lasted five minutes. The one thing I have in abundance in my life is athletes behaving badly. So no thanks.”

“Got it.” He swallowed. “Even so, I know it’s awful of me to turn it down. But, I can’t do it.”

“Did you tell your brothers you’re out of the deal?”

“Not formally.” He knew exactly how that sounded to her.

“Or not at all?” She arched an eyebrow over the top of her sunglasses.

“I have to find the right time.”

“It looks like you don’t have much of that.”

“I thought I was buying myself all the time in the world. I miscalculated,” he said.

“Well, maybe on this trip the right time will find you.”

“You might be right,” he said, swallowing before he screamed out the words stuck in his throat about apologies and forgiveness. “Hey, I wanted to say thank you for not saying too much to Greta. I’m not trying to hide anything, but I think I want to get a handle on this before—”

“You don’t have to thank me,” she interrupted. “I wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Well, thank you anyway,” he said, turning back to his plate. He pushed the onions off a slice of bresaola and debated eating it anyway. It probably reeked. He leaned in to check. She was still watching him; he was sure of it. He sniffed the slice.

“Bad?” Ellie asked.

“Awful,” he said, making a face. Ellie shook her head and shifted in the lounge chair, her back arched a bit from the awkward angle of the recline.

Cris needed something to focus on other than the glowing skin of her midsection.

A subject change would be great right about now.

“Did you see the signs for the concert?”

“What concert?”

“I guess there’s a band playing this Friday. Kind of made me remember the last time we went to one of those.”

“I don’t remember.” Ellie pulled the straw hat out of her bag and plopped it on her head.

“Come on, the Billow concert?”

Ellie sighed and readjusted her arms behind her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It was a long time ago, I know, but don’t you remember? Billow was huge that summer—there was the hit song from the Sprite commercial and they did a concert right here. We had to be fourteen at least.”

“I kind of remember the band from the Sprite commercial.”

“You have to remember the drummer. I’m pretty sure you almost brawled with three other girls trying to catch his drumsticks.” What was he saying? If he wanted to avoid annoying her, this was probably not the way to do it.

“Now that’s just fabrication. I would have never done that.” A muscle twitched in her cheek, but she didn’t open her eyes.

Maybe she was going to insist she didn’t remember, but Cris did.

He was so short back then that he had been able to slip through the crowd and score them a spot right in front of the stage.

They’d rocked out to the song that was all over the radio that summer, raising their hands up and singing along.

But then the lead singer introduced a new ballad and everything changed.

The crowd got quiet listening to the sad, romantic words and, instead of jumping all over, people were swaying.

Cris looked up at Ellie, trying to get her attention and say something snarky about how silly the song was, but even she was mesmerized.

He remembered her mouth, softly open, and her eyes shining.

He couldn’t stop looking at her, but then he followed her gaze to the drummer up on a platform behind the band.

He was biting his lower lip in concentration, his blond faux-hawk bopping to the beat.

Why did she have to look at that guy in that way?

He wasn’t so cool, was he? The drummer raised his right hand to twirl his stick before banging the toms in a big crescendo moment of the song, and Cris watched Ellie’s mouth drop full open.

He’d never seen her make that face before but now wondered how to get her to make it when she saw him.

A hot, prickling sensation grew up his neck and around his ears.

He couldn’t wait for the song to be over.

“You did. I watched you. At the end of the set, the whole band came to the front of the stage. The guitar player threw a pick and the drummer threw his sticks and you lost your mind,” he said, omitting the mention of his own first experience with rabid jealousy.

He tried a chuckle. She wasn’t laughing.

“It’s very interesting that you remember this moment and I do not. What do you think that tells you, Cris?” Ellie asked, adjusting her sunglasses.

“That you have a terrible memory.”

“And yet, I don’t. I remember things very well.

From our past.” She sunk a bit lower in the chair.

The sun was in her face now. She squinted into it and reached in her bag, pulling out a tube of sunblock.

She squeezed out a lentil-sized drop, rubbed it over her nose, and sat back in the chair.

She leaned forward again, pulled a water bottle out of her bag, took a sip, and sat back again.

“Are you nervous?” he asked. She’d changed a lot, but not so much that she’d stopped getting that vein in her temple when she was frustrated.

“No. Should I be?”

“Ellie, the last thing I want is for you to be nervous around me.” He rested his hand on the arm of her chair, the closest he would allow himself to get to her.

It still seemed impossible that he even had to say those words out loud, but here they were sitting next to each other like something close to strangers.

Why was it that the plan they made together was making him feel like they were even further apart?

“I don’t want to be nervous around you, Cris,” she said, letting out a breath. “I want this to be fun.” Her eyes glanced down at his hand, and he hoped that it wouldn’t burst into flames.

“You what?” he asked. Her voice had gotten so low on the last sentence he could barely hear it, but he knew it was something to hang on to. He wanted to make sure she heard it, too.

“I said I want this to be fun.” Still, there was that vein and her tense lips.

He wanted to lean in and kiss them open, drop all of this dancing around and get as inappropriate as possible.

And there it was again. Kissing Ellie was not the end goal of all of this, clearing his name was.

He couldn’t confuse the two. But what if he could have both?

He slid his hand off her chair and leaned back.

He didn’t have that kind of luck—not in this life or any other.

All he could hope for was not having to choose one over the other.

“Great.” He grinned. “We start tomorrow.”