Her Hottest Summer Yet

by Ally Blake

  Like knocking on a brick wall with a feather, it had been. Because he hadn’t wanted to see it. Preferring to focus on her futile resistance to his charms. How readily she’d made room for him in her life. The ease with which she’d fitted into his. And how, for the first time in a half-dozen years, he’d found a reason big enough to carve time away from his business.

  But tonight there was no hiding from the stark reality before him.

  The Avery who’d snuck under his skin, made herself right at home, who looked as if she were born in a bikini, was at her heart a social butterfly, a Park Avenue Princess. She glowed out there, under the bright lights and attention.

  While at his very essence he was a beach bum who’d had no plans beyond living off his father’s meagre life insurance until a kick in the pants had brought his life to the very crux of survival.

  Like a hard tug on the cord of an abandoned outboard motor, that resting survival instinct coughed and spluttered back to life, and Jonah took a step back, near tripping over a vintage rum barrel. One of his. Collector’s items; he’d seen them, wanted them, and just had to have. So he’d made them his.

  An offshoot of thriving so stridently. He’d become cocky. Proven by the fact that he’d seen Avery, wanted her, and hadn’t let anything stand in the way of having her. Not the fact that she was a tourist. Not the fact that she drove him around the bend. Not even when her ridiculous notion of Luke had given him the best possible out.

  All signs he’d ignored; when Avery and her kisses and sweet skin and nothing to do but him were gateway drugs back to the old days. When he’d taken pleasure for pleasure’s sake. When he’d had no responsibilities. When he’d had nobody left in his life to set him any boundaries. When things had felt simple, and easy, and free.

  As if she’d sensed him watching, whatever she’d been saying came to a halt. Her cheeks pinked as her eyes lit on his and sparkled. She lifted the beer in salute. And by the time someone stepped in between them, blocking her from view, Jonah’s lungs felt as if they were filling with water.

  Avoiding the rum barrel, Jonah turned and walked away. Stopping only when he found a place he could think straight. He found it amongst the girls from the Tea Tree Resort of Green Island. They clearly didn’t care that he didn’t join in their conversation, which was something about men in boots.

  Charming girls, he thought, their familiar accents earthing him. Charming like the cove. But the cove was too far away from the rest of the world to hold any but the most determined, the most dug in, forever. Avery would go back where she belonged and he’d be left rattling around in his big house. His big life. His full life.

  A life that had felt like more than enough.

  Until he’d gone looking for something he felt was missing that fateful morning, and found Avery.

  His survival instincts were roaring now, propelling him fast and hard in the right direction. The other stuff, the stuff he didn’t want to think about any more, he shut down piece by piece.

  It was a trick he’d learnt after his mother had left. A trick he’d utilised, every night after, waiting past dark for his father to come home, never entirely sure that he would. Until the night he’d not come home at all.

  In that state of numbed relief he’d remain. At least until the day Avery Shaw finally flew out of his life. And then, as before, he’d claw his way back out, using the restorative air of his home to bring him back to life again.

  * * *

  It was near three in the morning when Avery made it back to the Tiki Suite and floated inside, the gratification of success, a couple of late cocktails with an ebullient Claudia, and the wild blow of feelings for Jonah giving her wings.

  She wished he were there to help her work off her adrenalin, but he’d disappeared at some point around midnight. Once the girls from Green Island had imbibed enough cocktails to start following him around and calling him Captain Jack, she’d known he’d only last so long.

  Instead she decided to call her mother. It would be the afternoon before the other party. The flipside. Evil to Avery’s Good. Even as it made her tummy flutter, it would be heartless not to let her mother know she was thinking about her, hoping it went...not disastrously. So why not do so while she was full of beer and joy?

  Lying on her bed, moonlight pouring through the window, she pressed the phone to her ear.

  “Hey,” Avery said when her mother answered, her voice croaky from all the talking, talking, talking.

  “Darling,” her mother said, her voice so weary Avery quickly checked her phone to make sure she hadn’t got the time wrong. “What time is it there?”

  “Middle of the night. But that’s okay. I’m just home from a party Claude and I threw. A Tropicana reboot. And it was fabulous.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  Avery swallowed. “Are you all ready for yours?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your party?”

  “Oh. Didn’t I mention...? I cancelled it.”

  Didn’t she...? What? Wow! And no. But good, right? Maybe even a breakthrough! The very idea of which swam through Avery like a wave of hope, of possibility that maybe things were changing on both sides of the world—

  “Are you sitting down?” her mother asked, breaking into her reverie.

  “Um, sure,” Avery lied, lifting up onto her elbow at least.

  “I have some news I was hoping to save until your return, but I don’t want you to hear it on the grapevine, so... Darling, your father’s getting remarried.”

  Avery’s elbow shot out from under her.

  “Darling?”

  “I heard.” Avery dragged herself to sitting, leaning forward over her crossed legs, the back of a hand on her suddenly spiking-hot forehead. Her father...getting remarried? “Oh, Mom.”

  “You seemed so happy when we Skyped last week, so content, I couldn’t... But you had to know some time, so there it is. Phillip’s getting married,” her mother said again, and this time Avery heard more than just the words. She heard the deep quiet, the gentle sorrow, the fresh heartbreak. Oh, Mom. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. Aren’t I always?”

  Avery could have begged to differ, but she let that one lie. Saying no to her mother was a lesson she had to learn, but that was not the time.

  “Maybe this is a good thing...” Avery offered up, feeling sixteen all over again as she squeezed her eyes shut tight. “Maybe now you can move on.”

  “Sweet girl,” said Caroline, making no promises.

  And for the first time since their family fell apart, Avery kind of understood. There was a fine line between love and...not hate so much as exasperation. Avery knew how that felt. Jonah had taken her there these past weeks, right to the tipping point and back again, with his stubbornness, self-assuredness, neutrality. How long it had taken for him to even admit he liked her?

  It was a scary thing, the tipping. But the reward so was worth it. Every time she saw in his eyes and felt in his touch that what was happening between them was so much bigger than “like.”

  Maybe that was why her mother had hung on as long as she could. Not out of some kind of predisposition to hysteria, but because when it had been good it had been beyond compare.

  Avery bit her lip to stop the emotion welling up inside her.

  “Darling,” said her mother, into the silence, “just this one last thing. Something to tuck away for one day. When you find the one it’s not all hearts and flowers—it’s two separate people trying to fit into one another’s lives. Which can feel nearly impossible at times. But no matter how hard it might be to live with them, it’s far harder to live without them.”

  One day? Avery thought. Wondering if across the miles her mother had a single clue that her one day was this day. So much philosophy from her mother to take in at three in the morning, Avery
pressed her fingers to her eyes.

  “Now, just forget about it. Go back to enjoying your holiday. Is it sunny there?”

  Avery looked at the moonlight shaving swathes into the darkness. “Sunny like no place on earth.”

  “Cover up. Hats and sunscreen. Don’t ruin that gorgeous skin of yours. You’re only young once. Blink and it’s gone.”

  That was when the tears came. Big fat ones that left a big wet patch on her party dress.

  “Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you too, baby girl.”

  Avery hung up her phone and held it in her lap. Shoulders hunched, she looked out at the moonlit sky. The same moon that would rise over New York the next night.

  She imagined herself standing outside JFK airport, icy wind slapping her coat against her legs, the sharp scent of the island making her nostrils flare, the sound of a million cabs fighting for space.

  Shaking her head she replaced the view with the angel in Central Park, with the stairs of the New York Public Library, with her favourite discount shoe shop deep in the canyons of the financial district. The colour of Broadway. Her favourite cocktail bar in the Flatiron. Laughing with her friends, sharing stories about people they all knew, had known all their lives.

  She blinked and suddenly saw Jonah’s face, his eyes crinkling, white teeth flashing in his brown face, his dark curls glistening with ocean water, sun pouring over his skin. She closed her eyes on a ragged sigh and felt his hand on her waist, sliding over her ribs, scraping the edge of her breast. She opened her mouth to his taste. His heat. His desire.

  And his difference. Everyone took Avery at face value. Happy go lucky. Always with the smiling. With Jonah she’d never been anything but herself. Good, bad. Delighted, irate. Whatever that was at any given moment.

  And her heart clenched with such a beat of loneliness, a foreshadowing of what she’d be—who she’d be—without him in her life.

  Because she’d soon find out.

  Her mother might be putting on a brave face, but, for all the drama of the past decade, this would be the hardest thing she’d gone through. And Avery had to be there. Not to do cartwheels and tell her everything was going to be okay. But to give her mother a hug. And let her know she was loved. Just the way she was.

  Not because it would keep the peace, but because it felt like the right thing to do.

  She opened her eyes, and lay slowly back on her bed, wrapping her arms about her stomach.

  It was time for Avery to go home.

  * * *

  Late the next morning, Avery hung up from her dad.

  He’d sounded...if not over the moon about his upcoming nuptials, about as close to as Phillip Maxwell Shaw ever got when not talking about the Dow Jones or the Yankees batting line-up.

  She’d also discovered that he knew. He knew her mother still pined for him, had known for the past ten years that her feelings hadn’t flagged, which was probably why he hadn’t put out a cease and desist order the times she’d gone past the edge of reason.

  Avery sank her face into her hands, letting the darkness behind her eyelids cool her thoughts.

  Maybe the life lesson she’d been meant to learn from them wasn’t that love was a perfect storm of emotional vertigo teetering on the precipice of destruction. Maybe it was just to be honest about it. Because if her mother and father had just had a candid conversation in the past ten years they could have saved themselves a hell of a lot of trouble. And her.

  Her phone beeped. She breathed in a lungful of air, eyes refocusing.

  You up for a swim? I can practically guarantee your survival.

  Jonah.

  Seeing his name was like an electric shock, shooting her from nonplussed to high alert. She’d wondered if the barrage of news, and the bright light of day, might dim her feelings. But if anything they’d taken on a new sharpness. A new veracity.

  And the thought of going home, of saying goodbye, of never seeing him again, made her hurt. But she was going home. It was what happened after that that remained a big gloomy blur.

  Her palms felt slick as she answered.

  Meet you on the beach in ten.

  She couldn’t feel her feet as she made her way through the halls, through Reception, and outside.

  She found Jonah leaning against his sleek black car, his naked torso gleaming in the shadows, his surfboard leaning beside him, Hull making circles in the grass beneath a palm tree before he sat with a hurumph.

  Jonah looked up, took in her short white shorts, slinky black wraparound top, her strappy sandals. Her lack of a towel.

  He pushed away from the car, his mouth kicking into a half-smile even as his eyes remained strangely flat. “I get that you’re a city girl, but earrings?”

  He looked so gorgeous. Her heart slammed against her ribs and she perched on his bumper to catch her breath.

  Jonah joined her. Close enough to catch his scent, his warmth, far enough not to touch. As if he knew she was leaving. And how much she didn’t want to.

  She turned to find him looking back towards the Tropicana. “Jonah, I’ve booked my flight home.”

  Air filled his chest, his nostrils flaring, a frown darting across his brow before he looked down at his bare toes. Then finally, finally he looked her way, his grey eyes unreadable. His mouth so grim she could have been mistaken for thinking it had never learned to smile at all. “When?”

  “Early this morning.”

  “No, when do you leave?”

  “Oh.” Her cheeks pinked. She felt so raw, so terrified by his reaction or lack thereof.

  “Three days.”

  He breathed out. Nodded once. As if it was no surprise. And yet a world-weariness settled over him, adding a grey tinge to the golden halo that made him always seem more than a mere mortal. She could only hope that it was because he felt some fraction of what she felt for him. One way or the other, she’d soon find out.

  “I’d like to come back. Soon.” Deep breath. Be honest. “I’d like to come back to see you.”

  He didn’t comment. Didn’t even blink. A muscle ticcing once in his jaw as he looked across the road.

  “Or maybe you’d like to come visit me.”

  She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter either way. When really her heart was now desperately trying to take its leave of the space behind her ribs and jump into his hands and say, Do with me as you please, because I’m all yours!

  “I can show you around Manhattan. I think you’d love the park. And Liberty Island is a pretty special place. I promise not to drag you around Saks.’

  As the words spilled out of her mouth she even began to see how it might work. How a long-distance relationship was actually...not impossible. They both had the means.

  They both just had to want it enough.

  Her want was palpable, running about inside her with such speed she had to hug herself so it didn’t escape. All that aching hope was what finally woke Pollyanna. She gave a yawning stretch, stood to attention, brushed the dust from her hands, about to say, Right, let’s get this thing done! But before she could open her mouth, Jonah came to.

  “Avery,” he said, his voice ocean-deep. “This has been fun. But we both knew it was only going to last until it was time for you to go.”

  Avery uncurled her spine and sat up straight, all the better to breathe. “That was the plan, sure. But plans can change. I’m saying...I’d like the plan to change.”

  There, Avery thought, breathing out hard.

  Jonah shot her a glance, so fleeting it brushed past her eyes and away, but long enough she caught the heat, the ache, the want. Then said, “Not going to happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have a job here, Avery. One that’s been getting short shrift of late. I have ties here. Because I have responsibili
ties I’m not about to turn my back on. Because this is where I want to be.”

  Avery flinched as his voice rose. “I know that. I’m not asking you to move. Or give up anything. Or change who you are. Just to spend some time. With me.”

  The look he shot her told her he didn’t believe her for a second. Been there, done that, lived to regret every second.

  “Jonah—”

  “Avery. Just stop,” he said, exasperation ravaging the edges of his voice.

  She shifted on the bumper bar till her knees bumped his, the scoot of heat nothing in the quagmire of frustration and fear riding her roughshod. “This,” she said, “from the man who came over huffy when he thought I had intimated he might be parochial! The cove is wonderful. I give it that. But I’ve travelled. I’ve seen a hundred places equally gorgeous. So why are you really hiding out at the end of the earth?”

  His expression was cool, his voice cooler, as he said, “I’m not hiding, Avery. I’m home.”

  She snorted. Real ladylike.

  But at least it seemed to snap him from his shell. “I’ve tried it out there, Avery. It’s not for me.”

  The urge to scoff again was gone before it ever took hold once she realised—by out there he didn’t mean Sydney. He meant love.

  He’d put his heart out there, and had it sent spinning right on back. She wanted to tell him she wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t leave him like his mother. Wouldn’t pretend to feel something as his ex had. Wouldn’t let him flounder while she got on with her life like his dad had done.

  But by the stern set of his jaw she realised he wouldn’t believe her.

  No snorting then. Just a sudden constriction in her chest as she saw the raw honesty in Jonah’s clear grey eyes. The determination. The conviction that this was no different. She was no different.

  God, how she wanted to hit him! To thump his big chest till he got it. That for them summer could go on forever. They...both...just...had...to...want...it.