Summer Girl

Summer Girl - Chapter 1

Chapter ONE          

He, for sure, thought I was just one of those girls. A girl he would flirt with on the beach over his summer vacation. And that was okay - I'd seen it happen a million times before. But I wasn't one of those girls, even if I wanted to be.

I'd met his Dad, unknowing, the week before I saw him for the first time. His dad had flirted with me too, which also wasn't unexpected. I was a waitress at the Beach Hut, the only sit-down restaurant in Siesta Key Beach. His dad was young - too young to have a teenager it seemed - but was with other young men, at the restaurant. I only found out the connection to him a couple of days later.

I grew up at the beach, though I was born in the city, two hours away. I was three years old when my parents were killed in an car accident; my brother was nine. We were shipped off to Siesta Beach, where our Aunt and Uncle lived with their two kids.

Aunt Cora was a teacher, in the past. She quit teaching when her second, Clara, was born, and she decided to home school the kids. The only school near Siesta was forty-five minutes away and they decided homeschooling would be better. For me, I didn't know any different. But my brother, Aaron, struggled. Not only had he lost his parents, his house, his friends, his school - now he was being home-schooled by a lady he barely knew.

He rebelled often and gave Aunt Cora and Uncle Tom a hard time, for years. He ran away, more than once. And as soon as he turned eighteen - I was twelve - he fled back to the city, Tampa, where his roots were.

My roots were at the beach house. It was huge and only twenty steps from the water. I shared a room with Clara for years, until Aaron was gone, then we separated. She was two years older than me, but we grew up like sisters. She was my best friend, but I wasn't exactly hers. I was okay with that. I had to be.

The first time I saw him, I was in awe. I didn't know his name, but he was exactly what I thought about when I heard "beach boy". He was tanned, blond and had a tattoo on his arm. He was tall and muscular but still had an immature look to him. And he was definitely on vacation.

Clara had had many boys who fell for her, on their summer vacations. She once told me she only dated "beach boys" - those boys who came to Siesta for a month or two, to spend their summer in the sun, on the beach. It was easy. There was always a known end, when they went back to where they were from. I had watched her break hearts summer after summer, or have her heart broken. I'd follow her and her friends to the water, wondering if it would ever be my turn to experience these things. 

I was seventeen, my eighteenth birthday approaching that summer. Now I was the only kid still living in the beach house with Cora and Tom. My brother was long gone and very rarely called me, Sam - twenty-two - was an hour away, at college, and Clara had just left a few months ago, to live with her friends in the city. I missed Clara the most. I missed having a friend.

It was mid June. The summer was just beginning, though it was already hot, like always in Florida. My only sort-of friend was Cay, a co-worker at the Burger Hut, who I had known for six months. She was a year older than me and had only lived in Siesta Beach since early that year. All she told me was that her family lived in Orlando, but she had to be closer to the water. I was awkward, even just getting to know her. I didn't know how to make friends. My social skills were horrible.

"He's checking you out," Cay told me, that very first time I saw him, nodding towards a group of guys, not far down the beach.

We were sun bathing away our day off. He and two other guys were tossing a frisbee around. I had already been staring at him, too.

"Yeah, right," I replied, rolling my eyes.

"I bet you ten bucks he comes over to talk to you," she went on. She was serious.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "That will never happen."

And it didn't. Not right away. I'll go into those details later.

So, he thought I was just one of those girls. I let him think that, too. It was easier that way.  I had learned a lot from watching Clara, growing up on the beach. Clara, though, was beautiful. Guys were always talking to her, asking her out. She was fourteen when she went on her first real date. I still thought boys were gross. She was sixteen when she had sex for the first time, and I only heard about it because she was telling her friend, on the phone, when she didn't know I was listening. I knew it was easier to let a guy think you were just a fling.

I didn't really think people fell in love like this, though. Aunt Cora told me that my parents met in college and were friends for a year before they started dating. Her and Tom were set up on a blind date, but it didn't go well. They met randomly a few months later and went out again, then fell in love.

I was interested in love, and relationships, but I had no experience, even at almost eighteen years old. I'd only heard about it, or watched it in movies. Although I didn't watch much TV. There was only one small TV in the beach house, and Aunt Cora told us watching TV would rot our brains. Still, I imagined what it would be like to fall in love.

Living in the beach house now, with just Cora and Tom, was intimidating. All the attention was on me, all the time. Growing up, Aaron got most of the attention - for bad behaviour. Clara and Sam were good, and I was the baby. Now, there were no other distractions. Cora focused on me, too much. I knew they loved me, but I think they might have resented me, too. A bit. I knew they wanted to travel. Id heard them discuss it. Their own kids were grown up and gone, but they still had me.

"How's the Burger Hut?" Tom asked me, while we ate dinner one mid-June evening.

He was almost fifty, a year or two away, but he acted young. He surfed and fished. He was an interior decorator by trade, but his business was booming and he had people who worked for him - it didn't seem like he did much working nowadays. Cora didn't work either, she hadn't as long as I had lived with them. I had "graduated" high school that past May, so she was officially done home schooling, too.

"It's okay," I replied. All of their eyes were on me.

"The Petersons are good people," Tom told me, like I didn't know this.

Hank Peterson owned the Burger Hut. His wife, Sally, worked there when I was younger. Their kids both worked there more recently. Their son was Clara's age, their daughter a year older.

"So, Izzie, we wanted to talk to you about this summer," Cora began, suddenly serious.

"Okay..." I spun my fork around in my macaroni salad.

"Your birthday is in a few weeks," she went on.

"Yep."

"You'll be eighteen."

"Uh, huh."

"We booked tickets to fly to Spain, for a month. We are leaving just after your birthday," Tom interrupted. Cora sighed.

"Okay," I said, looking at my plate.

"If you're okay with it. Do you think you'll be okay? You've never been alone. I asked Clara to come stay with you, maybe for a week -"

"I'll be fine," I said, looking up at her. "I'll be working, mostly."

"You are such a good kid, Izzie," Cora smiled.

She was basically my mother. I didn't remember my parents. I had lived in this beach house my whole life. But as much as we tried, we weren't connected the same way that Cora and Clara were. I always envied that.

"I will call, often. And the Jetta will be here. And I'll leave cash-"

"Cora, she said she'll be fine," Tom told her.

I smiled at Cora, trying to reassure her.

I knew I would be fine. I could take care of myself for a month. I knew Clara would come and stay for a while, probably with friends. I was almost an actual adult, even though I felt like a kid, sometimes. But knowing that Cora and Tom would be gone and I could do really anything I wanted was a bit scary, too. But I wouldn't tell them that. I would tell them to go, have a great time, and not to worry about me. And then I would just try to figure out what to do, and how to be alone.