Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (14 page)

She had saved this one picture. She hadn’t been able to destroy it.

Summer had seen the picture an hour before, and Diana had easily read the look in her eyes, the interest. Summer had looked guilty, realizing somehow that this picture meant something to Diana.

Was that why Diana had shown it to her? Was that why she had spent the afternoon shopping with Summer, and hanging out with Summer? So that she could find a way to let Summer know how she still felt about Adam?

Diana put the picture back and hugged the album to her chest.

She had tried to bury those feelings. She had wanted to forget the sick mixture of love and contempt, desire and betrayal. But Adam had gone after Summer and stirred the feelings up again.

Diana got up, set the album aside, and walked down the hall, down the curving staircase to her mother’s wing of the house. Through the ludicrous
Gone with the Wind
bedroom with its canopied bed and frills. To the vast bathroom, with the oversize marble tub raised on a platform and surrounded by lush plants. Mallory had had herself photographed there in the tub, just her head and shoulders visible through discreet clouds of bubble bath. Printed in
Romantic Times
magazine, the photo was supposedly a portrait of the romance author dreaming up her newest hero.

Diana opened the medicine cabinet. The bottle was still there, on the middle shelf. Twenty-three pills. She spilled them into her palm and counted them again. Yes, twenty-three. More than enough.

She could do it tonight. The maid would find her in the morning. Her mother would have to rush home from her tour.

Where? At the bottom of the stairs, perhaps, dramatically sprawled there? On her mother’s bed? And the note—should she leave a note? A note telling the world what had happened that night, one year ago, at the estate of the famous and wealthy Merrick clan?

Not tonight, Diana decided. She was due to go to the center tomorrow. Lanessa would be expecting her. Lanessa, the helpless little girl who couldn’t even speak of what had been done to her.

Diana put the pills carefully back in the bottle, returned the bottle to the shelf, and closed the mirrored door.

Summer was in the bathtub, lying with her head back, eyes closed, and a magazine hanging from one limp hand, when she heard the knock at the door. Her first thought was that it must be Diver. But Diver didn’t knock. Diver just appeared.

Her second thought was that she wasn’t going to answer it. It had been a long, tiring, emotional day. The hot water felt good. The white mountain of bubbles smelled like vanilla and melon.

Again the knock came, loud but not aggressive.

Summer sighed, which sent a little flurry of bubbles flying. “I’m coming!” she yelled grumpily.

She climbed out, wrapped her terry-cloth robe around her, and padded on wrinkled bare feet to the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s Seth.”

Summer’s breath caught in her throat. She clutched the robe securely, cursing the fact that she’d lost the belt.

She opened the door. Seth was standing close, almost as if he’d had his nose pressed against the door. Summer was surprised by his nearness and clumsily backed away, waving her hand in a vague invitation to come inside.

Seth stepped past her. He looked at her, taking in the robe and the wet strands of her hair, and winced. “Oh, sorry. You were taking a shower, I guess.”

“A bath, actually,” Summer said.

“Be careful in there, by the way. The floor isn’t in great shape.”

“Is that what you came by to tell me?” Summer wasn’t in the mood to be hospitable. She felt at a disadvantage, wearing only a robe.

“I was hoping I could, you know…talk to you. About…stuff.” He swallowed hard, clearly unsure of what to say. “Is it okay if I sit down?”

“Seth, I’m kind of in the middle of taking a bath, and I’m tired, you know?”

Suddenly, as if he were being propelled by some outside force, Seth came toward her. He put his hands on her upper arms and drew her close.

“No!” Summer pushed him away with a hand on his chest.

Seth looked stricken. “I just wanted to…I thought…everything was so perfect the other day, in the airport.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Summer demanded.

“I just thought if we kissed again, that everything would be fine.”

Summer almost laughed. “That’s what you thought? Um, excuse me, but it isn’t that easy.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I guess not. I guess not. Look, the thing is, I keep thinking about you. And today when you came back and I was here, it was the same feeling, like I couldn’t forget you. Like you were all I could think about.”

“Seth, we don’t even know each other. All we did was kiss once.”

“We talked at the party,” he said.

“You told me I was losing control. That wasn’t exactly talking. And, oh, by the way, the conversation ended when Lianne showed up.”

“I couldn’t help that,” Seth said.

“It didn’t look to me like you were trying to help that.”

“What was I supposed to do? Shove her away and make a big scene in front of everyone? We may be broken up, but we were together for a long time and I’m not going to be mean suddenly. I don’t
hate
her.”

“Look, forget it. This is silly, this whole thing. We kissed, so what? You don’t even know me.”

He started to say something, then stopped himself. “Okay, maybe you’re right. That doesn’t change how I feel about you, though. Ever since that day in the airport…It’s like, like something I can’t explain, Summer. But there’s just this feeling in my head that you’re the one.”

“What one?”

He shrugged and looked miserable. “I don’t know. Fate or something. Like you and I belong together.”

Summer swallowed hard. “Did you use this same line on Lianne?”

“No,” he said. “I never felt this way about her.”

“Yeah, right,” Summer said weakly.

Silence fell between them.

“Sorry. I’m putting too much pressure on you, aren’t I?”

“A little,” Summer said. “I mean, look, you seem very nice, and we had this one kiss—”

“Two kisses,” he interrupted.

“Even if it was ten, that doesn’t mean we’re anything special to each other,” Summer said.

“So if that doesn’t mean anything,” Seth asked, “what does?”

“I don’t know,” Summer said softly. She felt worn out. Dead beat. She had the feeling she was winning an argument she didn’t really want to win.

Again silence fell.

“All I want is a chance. I see you going with Adam and think I’ll never even get a chance. And this is important to me.” He hesitated again, then forged ahead in a flurry of words. “I know you think I’m nuts or just feeding you some line, but this feeling I have is so incredibly powerful and so real…I can’t believe you don’t feel it too. I can’t believe the…that the walls aren’t vibrating with it, that the…that the air around us doesn’t just catch fire.”

The air may not have caught fire, but a prickly blush began to crawl up Summer’s neck. For a moment she
did
feel it—a feeling like gravity, like magnetism, a strange craving drawing her to him. The distance between them seemed to warp and shrink.

Summer made a noise like a whimper. It was a whimper, but she tried to disguise it with a cough.

“Summer, all I want is a chance. I’m not saying
don’t
go out with Adam. I’d like to be able to say that,” he added with a rueful half-smile, “but I know I don’t have the right. Just don’t shut me out, okay?”

“What does that mean?” Summer asked.

“It means give me a chance. You said we don’t know each other, so let me get to know you better.”

“Uh-huh, okay,” Summer said. This at least was safer ground.

“Okay? Really?” he said. He looked awfully sweet when he smiled that way. “Look, we’ll do something that isn’t like a real date, okay?”

Summer almost laughed. “Maybe we could go pick out some tile together.”

“Perfect! When?”

“I have to work tomorrow, and I told Marquez I’d hit the beach with her for a while. How about tomorrow evening? I’m free till around eight.”

“Excellent. Excellent. What happens at eight? Oh. Adam, huh?” He digested the import of that. “That’s okay. Come to my house, all right? My house is nearer the beach.”

“Your house, after the beach. Now can I go back to my bath?”

“Sure. Only step lightly around that part of the floor where the linoleum is all cracked, okay?”

Summer put her hand over her heart. “I promise.”

He seemed unable to stop grinning. “I’ll just leave, then.”

“Goodnight.”

He started toward the door, practically dancing over to it.

“Just one thing,” Summer said. “You’re telling me the truth about you and Lianne, aren’t you? It’s really, really important.”

He held up three fingers close together. “Scout’s honor.”

She laughed. “You weren’t really a Boy Scout?”

“Absolutely.”

Summer heard him whistling as he walked away down the planks of the pier.

Summer fell asleep early. She was unbelievably tired. Tired of laughing and arguing with Marquez and Diana. Tired of turning Seth and Adam and Diver over and over in her mind. It had been a very, very long day, full of new experiences.

The room still reeked a little of paint fumes from the work Seth had done earlier. She’d opened all the windows, but the smell was still there, trapped in the house.

She lay there in the dark, on the new, soft bed with pillows that smelled of fabric softener, not mildew, and listened to the water slapping the pilings outside.

Sometime in the night, rain began to fall loudly on the roof, dripping from the eaves outside the window.

Summer woke when hands reached under her sheet and gently lifted her up. There were lots of hands, and as she looked around her she saw Diver and Seth and Adam. They were raising her from the bed and carrying her between them as if she were paralyzed and they were taking her to the hospital, or perhaps like she was a sacrifice and they were carrying her to the altar.

Each of them had a tarot card hanging on a string around his neck. Summer focused and she could see the cards, but for some reason couldn’t connect them to the faces. At a distance stood a fourth guy, face in shadow, laughing and dressed all in white.

Summer wasn’t scared, not quite. She felt giddy and sick, like she might throw up. They held her by her arms and legs, and one held her head supported in his hands and bent low to her—for a kiss? No, because they had carried her right back to her bed and now could no longer be seen.

Instead there was Marquez, her body painted in serpentine scrawls of color, dancing all alone.

And in her bed Summer was being drawn by the music, disturbing music that was all shifting tunes and melodies that never seemed to coalesce.

Then the room was silent and Diana was there, a faraway figure dressed like an angel. Summer got out of her bed and tried to go to her, but Diana kept receding, growing smaller and farther away.

A face, very near her own. Adam? Seth? A little of both. And Diver.

A kiss, the most fleeting contact, not on her lips, but on her forehead. Something wet.

Diver, barely visible in moonlight, at the side of her bed, holding the framed photograph of Summer’s parents. Looking thoughtfully at them, sad, it seemed to Summer, faraway and sad.

At some point, Summer realized, she had slipped over the line to consciousness, but when exactly she couldn’t say.

She only knew that the sounds she heard now were the sounds of reality. The drip of water from the eaves. The sound of her own breathing.

“Hi,” she said.

“Oh,” Diver said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He replaced the framed photograph on the stand beside Summer’s bed. “It’s raining, so I came in.”

“Good,” Summer said.

“New bed, huh?”

“They left the old one. Anytime you want to use it…”

He shook his head. “Only when it’s raining.”

“I know. I would disturb your
wa,
right?”

He smiled.

“This is the second time I’ve gotten up from a dream and seen you. Sometimes I’m not sure you’re real. Maybe you’re part of a dream,” she said softly.

He shrugged. “Could be.”

“What time is it?” Summer asked.

“The sun is just ready to come up.”

“I’ve been having some very strange dreams.”

“This place is full of paint fumes. They’re not good for you, you know. You should come outside, get some oxygen. That will clear out your brain.”

Summer nestled down under her sheet. “Too sleepy.”

He reached out a hand, and without thinking, she took it. She had never touched him before. He felt real.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re polluted.”

He pulled her from the bed and drew her to the door. Outside the world was gray, with shapes barely distinct. Frank refolded a wing and snuggled his neck back against his feathers. The air was almost cool and very wet. Summer’s baby-tee clung to her clammily.

Diver ascended the ladder that ran up the side of the house to the flat part of the roof, just over her own bedroom.

“Is this where you sleep?” she asked when she had joined him.

He nodded. “Here, sit. This way, toward the east.”

Summer obeyed and folded up her knees, wrapping her arms around them. The baby-tee and boxers were thin and insubstantial, but the warmth of her bed still clung to her.

A faint, reddish glow could be seen on the horizon. The stars were retreating into the west. The water of the bay, so vividly green in the daylight, was black still. Here and there a light blinked from the homes across the bay. One of those lights was in the Merrick estate. Perhaps Adam, awake in his room.

Adam in his room, in a huge mansion. Seth, somewhere to the north, in his grandfather’s modest house. And Diver, so close beside her.

Images from the dream surfaced in Summer’s consciousness. Unsettling images that carried unfamiliar emotions in their wake.

Summer shifted uneasily. “My
wa
is disturbed, and I don’t even know what it is,” she said.

“Just watch,” Diver said. “Soon.”

“Do you have a name? A
real
name?”

Diver put a finger to his lips. “Here he comes.”

The horizon had grown rapidly brighter, violet and red and yellow. Scattered clouds were etched in orange. Then…

“Oh!” Summer pressed her hand over her heart. It had been so sudden. A brilliant, blinding arc of fire peeking over the edge of the world.

Diver smiled.

Down below on the railing, Frank turned his head, facing the rising sun.

And now the sky overhead seemed to ignite, to burst into flames, an impossible, overwhelming display. Colors beyond description. Colors that memory could never recall. The sky was everywhere. The sky had become the entire universe. And the two of them were the smallest, least significant specks, floating upward toward magnificence.