Holiday Tides (Wilks Beach Holiday Novella)

14. Nick

fourteen

Nick

I t takes Ezra and me exactly twenty minutes to remove the old range and slide the new one in its place. In that time, Summer expresses her gratitude while being overly polite, just like she’d been in her afternoon texts. I thank Ezra for helping me and slide the kid a fifty-dollar bill during our handshake goodbye. His eyes turn to tea saucers before pedaling away on his beach cruiser.

“Everything okay?” I ask, leaning against the kitchen door jamb.

Summer startles, pausing in running her fingertips over the range like it’s a brand-new Maserati.

“Actually”—she sets her shoulders—“we need to talk about paying you for your work. Installing this and restarting my pilot light.”

I tilt my head with a shrug. “I’d have restarted anyone’s pilot light for free. It’s something you could’ve walked yourself through with a YouTube tutorial.” She opens her mouth, but I continue, “And tonight, I simply plugged the range in. If you’d like to award me a medal of honor for understanding how an electrical outlet works, feel free.”

No reaction. Nothing. Nada.

Summer’s lips remain in that firm line, her jaw tight, but not because I’ve annoyed her. She really expects me to take money for something that costs me nothing but a few minutes of time? That’s not going to happen. I know we’re supposed to be turning over a new leaf, but my next instinct is to tease her. If I can’t make her smile, I know for certain how to annoy her.

“Are you afraid that you look like a potato in that cream sweater?” I let the corner of my mouth slide up, hoping she’ll take the bait. “Because with your green slacks, it actually reads inverted leek.”

It’s the lowest of blows, going after her attire, but this swirling desperation to get a reaction from Summer keeps scratching at my neck. Besides, she looks beautiful—professional while simultaneously approachable. Technically, she’s overdressed for the casual dining atmosphere of Bayside Table.

“An inverted leek?” Her tone is dry, but at least she’s talking.

I lean my head to the side, as if assessing her upside down. “Or a stack of Legos.”

She scrubs her face with her palms. I’d wanted a reaction, but Summer suddenly looks so exhausted I have to clench my toes in my boots to keep from gathering her in my arms.

“Look. Nick, I—”

“Need to cancel.” I push off the wall. “It’s not a problem. I’m sure you’re exhausted after a long day.” After turning to see myself out, I rotate back. “Why don’t you let me know what you’d like from Bayside Table, and I’ll grab it for you so you don’t have to make dinner.”

Her face rises with a pained expression. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

My chest squeezes, but I maintain my casual posture, tucking my hands in my jeans pockets. “Why not? I’d do that for any friend.” I gesture toward the stairs. “Go get your Christmas pajamas on while I get you something to eat. You can send me with cash, and I’ll even knock and drop it on your doorstep just like a delivery service. Just tell me what you want.”

My heart feels like it’s punching my chin as I wait for her to speak.

Her shoulders lower half an inch. “I don’t carry cash.”

“Then you can send me the money. Just let me help you out.”

“You’ve already helped me out.” She points toward the range.

When I groan in frustration, her mouth finally loosens, a hint of a smile flirting at the corners. As her grin turns over to something devious, my breath hitches in my throat. Whatever Summer is about to ask of me, I know I’ll wholeheartedly comply. Somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, my male pride calls me a few names—chump, whipped, simp. But since pride has misled me in the past, I ignore it.

“I will agree to this if you tell me the honest story about why you never went to school. I need to know why you’re a completely different and freakishly kind human when you were a giant butthead throughout high school.”

My muscles tighten, thinking about a time in my life I don’t enjoy revisiting, but I set my lips in a teasing smirk. “I see how this goes. You were holding out for the better payment— information. I should have seen it coming. I’m sure you’re not even tired after taking care of sick kids all day. That was all smoke and mirrors to get me right where you want me.”

“You’ve got me all figured out.” Summer brushes past me and begins climbing the stairs. “Just let me change into something that isn’t covered in germs.”

“You’re coming with me?”

“If you think I don’t want my food hot out of the kitchen, you’ve lost your mind.”

Bayside Table is only two blocks north on Sand Bend Road—the only road that runs the length of the town. It’s a Wednesday in winter, so we’re seated in mere minutes, Summer joyously ordering she-crab soup, hot wings, a side Caesar salad, and a peppermint hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Wilks Beach’s sole restaurant nestles against Back Bay with large plate windows to capture the view. Since the sun set long ago, those windows reflect the cozy dining space. Electric table candles wreathed in plastic holly, piano holiday songs beneath the din of fellow diners, and a Christmas tree decorated with lights, tinsel, and Bayside Table gift cards all add to the comforting ambiance.

Our drinks arrive, and I nearly snort my spiced cider when Summer ungraciously bites the entire dollop of whipped cream off her hot cocoa.

“What?” The feigned innocence as she wipes the back of her hand across her lips finally does me in. “You’re not the only person who likes whipped cream.”

Finding joy in the small things is something that Aldon taught me, but I’ve definitely laughed more in the days since Summer moved in across from my reno.

Summer gets halfway through her soup as I assiduously ignore my body’s reaction to her blissful food groans before she asks me to pay up on our agreement. “I’m ready for the butthead-transformation story.”

“Are you sure I’m not the same jerk you’ve always known?”

She shovels another large spoonful into her mouth, rolling her other hand to encourage me to get on with it.

I sigh, leaning against my chair and letting my eyes adjust to the darkness beyond our waterview table. A sliver of a moon casts a faint beam of moonlight over the still water.

“I didn’t go to school because I never wanted to become a doctor.”

Summer doesn’t spit-take exactly, but she makes a little strangled sound in her throat while swallowing her oversized bite with difficulty.

I make my voice annoyingly high, poorly impersonating her. “Then why did you compete with me academically for two years and steal the shadowing spot with Dr. Agrawal?”

My throat constricts at the memory of edging her out of that opportunity when my dad could have gotten me into any hospital with a simple email. But my father wanted me to win that shadowing spot. He always wanted me to be the best no matter what the cost to me.

“Me going to medical school was always my dad’s vision for my future, and I always felt like I had no choice in the matter. He was a doctor. I was to be a doctor. That was it.” Tension coils in my lungs, but I force myself to continue breathing. “Before I transferred to Baywater High, I kept having…episodes.”

A faint ringing in my ears overtakes “Angels We Have Heard on High,” and I close my eyes to ground myself. I haven’t had a panic attack since Aldon found me squatting in one of his renovation sites.

“After one very public incident during a final exam when I was medically evacuated from the classroom, my dad was so embarrassed he moved us to his vacation home in Wilks Beach for me to finish high school. He reasoned that I could get myself sorted out before I graduated. Instead of the intense competition at the private school I’d attended, I’d be a big fish in a small pond.”

A ghost of a smile lifts my lips. “But there was already a big fish there.”

Summer’s gaze darts to the dregs of her soup, finding it suddenly fascinating.

“Competing with you made dealing with the endless pressure my dad shoved on me tolerable.” Multiple memories overlap like a crocheted blanket. “I started sleeping better, actually looking forward to going to school. I never told you, never thanked you. I tried once, but we were…interrupted.”

A flush creeps up Summer’s neck. So she does remember graduation night. With the way she’s acted toward me so far, I thought she’d forgotten.

Fighting against the urge to run my knuckles over her heat-stained skin, I continue, “That summer, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hack it at Yale, that I’d only disappoint my father again and again. I had to do something else. I wanted something else. I just didn’t know what.”

My molars grind. Watching Aldon with his family and so many of the giving, loving families in Wilks Beach made what my father and step-mother did all those years ago seem more cruel by comparison. The truth is that I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d been emotionally orphaned long before they physically abandoned me.

“It came to a simple ultimatum—go to school and become a doctor, or be completely cut off. I figured he was bluffing, but…”

“He wasn’t.” Summer’s voice startles me from slowly shredding the paper wrapper to my napkin bundle.

Unable to meet her gaze, I continue ripping the blue wrapper into smaller and smaller pieces. “No. The plan had been for all of us to move to Connecticut in July. My Dad had already signed on with an exclusive practice there. They’d sold the house. When the movers cleared out our belongings, I just couldn’t do it. I knew what the rest of my life would be like if I went with them. They’d already chosen my career. Would they choose my wife too? The names of my future children?” My shoulders crawl toward my ears. “They left me behind with my Range Rover and the cash in my wallet and told me to reach out when ‘I got over myself.’”

I don’t realize how tense my forearms are until Summer settles one of her hands over mine. “I’m sorry, Nick.”

“Yeah.”

When I don’t look up, she adds her second hand, scooping mine up in hers so she can press her thumbs into the center of my palms. I should be embarrassed about the ragged sigh leaving my mouth, how my head bows as I close my eyes, but this is the only time I’ve told this story and been comforted.

When Aldon discovered me illegally occupying the far bedroom of one of his delayed renovations, he’d been pissed. And since I’d been a frightened teen who’d spent the last week surviving on dwindling cash after being overindulged and spoiled all my life, I’d lashed out at him.

Aldon could have kicked me out, but he didn’t. He let me stay until the reno started two weeks later, occasionally dropping by with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Other times, bunches of bananas or jugs of water would just appear in the kitchen. Then, when the job started, he put me to work. I had more experience with differential calculus than knowing the difference between a Phillips or a flat-head screwdriver, but Aldon didn’t seem to care. He taught me in his gruff way, then took me back to his house, set me up in his guest room, and said goodnight with a terse, “Don’t make me regret this.”

“Then Aldon took me in and taught me everything I know.”

I leave out how he became my real family, teaching me what that word meant as he taught me so many other things.

“Anyway, that should be enough emotional collateral to get me to do whatever you want.”

The joke falls flat, but before Summer can respond, another person joins us at the table.