Staring at Lee’s side of the room and the carnage that had erupted around his dresser, I said, “That sounds like more than a day’s work.”
His mouth twitched. “Here’s hoping. Hey, check these out.” He held up the thing in his hands—a teeny-tiny pair of swim shorts. “Age six to seven.”
“Holy crap. When was the last time you cleared your shit out?”
“Me?” he scoffed. “I bet you five bucks you’ve got a training bra in your dresser.”
“I’m gonna take that bet, because there is no way I’ve left stuff here that’s that old.”
He grabbed a towel from the pile, holding it up as I got to my feet. “And look! Remember this one?” The towel was covered in a giant picture of Mater from Cars. “We got it for Brad that year, but then I puked on it after I bet Noah I could eat more ice cream than him.”
I laughed, remembering. “Didn’t he eat, like, eight ice creams?”
“Nine,” Lee corrected me. “Believe me, that memory is seared into my brain forever.”
I laughed again, peeling myself away from Lee’s stuff to go through my dresser. I opened the top drawer. A few T-shirts, a bikini I left here last year, a bottle of sunscreen, some tangled headphones, and a whole lot of sand.
I started going through the T-shirts. Most of them were old graphic tees—one was a hand-me-down from Noah that I’d definitely stolen from Lee at some point. Holding it up in front of me, it was still a little on the big side. I folded it back up and placed it carefully on my bed, starting the “keep” pile.
The second drawer was more T-shirts, some shorts, a sundress I didn’t even remember but was definitely too small for me now. I found a snorkel and put it on to pull a face at Lee—and found him wearing the teeny-tiny swim shorts on his head and the Mater towel tied around his neck like a cape, sending me into a fit of giggles.
All of my drawers were half empty. I found a book, some earrings, old rope bracelets and anklets. A few odd playing cards and a Ping-Pong ball, which really baffled me because I didn’t remember us ever having Ping-Pong here. A couple of towels I’d used for the last few years that, now that I was looking at them with a critical eye, were scratchy and starting to become threadbare. They smelled like summer: like sea salt and sand and lemonade.
I clung to them for a minute before adding them to the trash bag in the middle of the room.
When I finished sorting out the bottom drawer, I bent down to make sure I’d gotten everything and ran my hand around inside. Sand and bits of fluff brushed against my fingers, and then, right at the back, caught on the drawer, a piece of fabric.
Oh my God, I thought suddenly, that was why this drawer always jammed when I tried to open and close it—which, in turn, was why I’d just found so much crap in it that I’d never bothered to clean out before.
My fingers scrabbled at the fabric and I knelt down to tug on it, grunting as I felt it finally break free, and fell backward into my donation pile. (Which consisted of one dress and a pair of shorts that had never fitted me right but I’d always thought were cute.)
“Ha!” Lee crowed as I straightened back up to look at the offending garment. “I told you, Miss High-and-Mighty! ‘I don’t have anything old in my dresser’!”
I threw the now-broken training bra at him, knocking the swim shorts off his head. “That so doesn’t count.”
“Uh, yeah it does. Five bucks, Shelly.”
I poked my tongue out at him—and then took a second to assess his progress. I didn’t think I’d done too bad. The keep pile was pretty small—most of the stuff I’d gone through had only been good for the trash, but it hadn’t taken me very long.
Lee, however, didn’t seem to have made any progress.
“Is that all your trash pile?” I asked, although I had a sneaking suspicion I already knew the answer.
“None of this is trash, Shelly. You take that back.”
“Those sweatpants have holes in them, Lee.”
He held them up, examining them more closely. “They’re artfully distressed. It’s fashion. Something you wouldn’t understand.”
I rolled my eyes. “Lee, come on. I know this isn’t fun, and the whole cleanup thing sucks, especially because of why we’ve gotta do it, but it’s just some old clothes.”
“They hold memories, Elle.”
“Oh yeah? What memories does that pink polo shirt hold for you that makes it so hard to get rid of?”
“That time my mom trusted me to do the laundry and I messed up royally.”
I shook my head. “Well, pick up the pace, okay? I don’t wanna have to go through more of our stuff by myself. And if your mom comes here to find out what’s taking so long, she’s gonna put all of that in the trash.”
Grumbling, Lee tugged the towel-cape from around his neck and bunched it angrily into a ball before shoving it into the already-pretty-full trash bag. I took a second to go get another one. Judging by the amount of stuff Lee had been hoarding in his dresser, we were going to need it.
In the kitchen, June and Rachel were sitting, drinking tea, laughing about something.
“Found this in the back of the cupboard,” June told me, tapping her mug. “Lavender and orange. You want some?”
That would explain the funky smell hanging around here, I thought, and tried hard not to wrinkle my nose.
“Er, no thanks. Just came for another one of these.” I waved the black trash bag I’d just torn off the roll, and my eyes fell on a plastic box and a roll of Bubble Wrap. “Are you packing up everything today?”
“Oh, no. I doubt we’ll even really make a dent in it today, sweetie. We just thought it’d be a good idea to get started as soon as possible. Besides, we can’t pack up the kitchen yet—not if we’re going to be back and forth here all summer while we sort everything out and get this place ready to sell.”
“Right.”
It wasn’t much consolation, but it was something, I guessed.
I slunk back to the bedroom before I got roped into a conversation about how much work the beach house needed. It didn’t need any kind of work.
I mean, sure, every other summer Lee and I would paint the porch, just for it to peel off again a while later. And yeah, okay, maybe this place was always full of sand, and the bushes and scrub outside by our path to the beach were always overgrown, and maybe the kitchen window leaked when it rained sometimes….
But it didn’t need anything. This place was just perfect the way it was. It was ours.