It was still a bit cloudy by the time they reconvened on the front porch, but the sun was trying hard and the air was sweet with honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass and the suggestion of the sea. Blue chucked Maya the car keys, climbed into the passenger seat, spotted a book on the floor. She picked it up.
“Hannah’s,” Maya said. “She forgot it.”
“I’ll mail it to her,” Blue said. She opened the book—self-help, of course—to a random page and scanned it. Hannah had underlined a quote: “Our consciousness would be broken up into as many fragments as we had lived seconds but for the binding and unifying force of memory.”
She snapped the book shut. She didn’t want to be made of memory. Didn’t want Hannah or any of them to be made of it either. If only a person could cherry-pick—turn their mind into an Instagram page made up of only the highlights. She wondered if that’s what Maya’s inner life looked like.
It was a short drive to their preferred beach, and they reached Ditch Plains just as the clouds disappeared. The swarm of cars in the parking lot meant there was a decent swell. Every half-assed surfer came out for a wave over two feet, turned a paddle-out into a contact sport. Blue couldn’t help but think of Jack, of the morning after their first kiss when she’d watched him etch graceful zigzags in the surf with his board.
Now Maya slipped into a questionable parking spot that may or may not get their tires stuck in the sand and they piled out.
It had been a long time since Blue had been to the beach. The sun was sharp and white above the cliffs, the ocean tipping and shuffling to the shore, and people were scattered on towels beneath lollipop-colored umbrellas, surfboards lined up like fence posts against the dunes, the smells of coconut oil and salt water and sunshine baked into the air.
“It looks exactly the same!” Maya said as they stopped at the threshold of sand, taking it in.
To Blue, Ditch Plains seemed more crowded, a little hipper, no longer a place for old-school surf bums but for wealthy city moms with sand strollers, expensive SUVs in the parking lot, models preening in tiny bikinis. Wealth had taken over, had chipped away a little bit of its soul. Or maybe it was just time that did that, altered the chemistry of things, took away pieces and added others. Still she understood what Maya meant. The bones of the place were the same. It still felt lazy, a beach that had no interest in competing with the more elegant beaches of the Hamptons—a B-personality beach. And maybe there was comfort in that, in the way that some changes rarely went all the way to the bones.
“Let’s sit by the lifeguards,” Maya said.
Blue shot her a look.
“What? For safety reasons, I mean.”
Blue plopped down where they stood and Maya sighed and joined her.
A toddler ran past, kicking sand as he waved his small green shovel back and forth.
“Why do people have children?” Maya asked. “So much work. So much drool.”
Blue didn’t know either. Sometimes she wondered if wanting to be a mother required actually having had a mother.
Renee sat down next to them, wrapped her arms around her knees. “I bet you guys’ll want them eventually.”
It was always so annoying when people said that. Like somehow they knew you better than you knew yourself. Blue never wanted kids. She’d screw them up rightly.
“Who was it that used to say they wanted to adopt high schoolers?” Renee asked. “Hannah?”
“Blue,” Maya said. “But only so she’d have someone to pick up her dry cleaning.”
“Ha!” Renee said. She turned to Blue. “Does Jack want kids?”
Blue tensed. With all the drama that went down last night, she had completely forgotten about her lie.
“Jack?” Maya said. “How would Blue know something like that?”
Shit.
Blue jumped to her feet. “Not everyone wants kids, you know. And it’s kind of sexist to assume Maya and I don’t know how we feel about it.” To Maya she said, “I’m going down to the water.” She marched down to the shore, making a show of it, hoping her feminist outburst would distract Maya from pursuing her question. Stupid Renee. Why did she always have to remember everything? If Renee mentioned it to Maya, she’d need an out. She couldn’t very well fake going on a date, could she?
If it came to that, she could say she was sick. That it was just so disappointing, but she couldn’t possibly go out on a date with a stomach flu. She’d have to fake vomiting, but whatever, she was an old pro at that from all the times she tried to get out of going to school. Renee had inadvertently set the whole story up. She was good for something after all.
How sad though. That she had to cover one lie with another. How pathetic.
She stepped into the water, let the shock of it jolt her out of her self-pity. It had been a while since the Atlantic had rolled cold and welcoming over her feet. The tide was rising, gathering higher and higher around her ankles. The fortepiano of waves crashing and retreating sounded like cars swishing through rain. This was where she’d first met Jack.
She closed her eyes, breathed in the salt air. For a moment she imagined him coming up behind her, turning to see in his face that same expression—the look of a man who found her attractive. And oh, that look. It could hold you like a parent, make you feel as wanted as a newborn. She’d never known it before she met him, how aligned those pathways were in the brain. She knew only that whatever she’d experienced was a thing she’d been missing her whole life without knowing it. For years after, she’d forgotten what it felt like, her heart in hibernation until she’d nearly convinced herself that love didn’t matter, not really. But she could see now that it did. That it always had.
If only she knew how to get it. If only she were capable.
She pushed away the thought, went back to the towels. Maya lowered her sunglasses, eyed her warily, then returned to her gossip magazine. Blue relaxed. Clearly Renee hadn’t mentioned anything about her having a date. Otherwise Maya would be harassing her for details. She went to grab a water from the cooler and, finding none, glanced up at Maya. “Wine coolers and beer? Really?”
“I picked them up on the way back from the train station. You’re welcome.”
“It’s barely eleven.”
“And...?”
Blue sighed. “I’m gonna get some water at the Ditch Witch.”
“Ooh, I want a treat,” Maya said, jumping up.
“I’ll come too,” Renee said.
Oh yay, Blue thought with an inward eye roll.
The food truck was a staple of Ditch Plains Beach. When Blue was younger, she believed that running the Ditch Witch would be the ideal job. Days spent overlooking the bucking sea, the air sweet with suntan lotion and hot dogs, happy wet-haired kids shoving their parents’ crumpled dollars over the counter, hungry surfers stopping to chat her up about some tropical storm that would bring waves their way.