What Happens in Summer

by Caridad Piñeiro

  Despite that, she still had to try to get her point across. “I know you’ve chosen a team, but I think I have a lot that I could contribute on this particular project.”

  “Do you now? Please go on,” he said, his gaze skewering her as if she were a butterfly pinned to a collector’s board.

  “I’ve worked on a number of VCZ’s past projects and am well aware of their concerns about possible acquisitions. I’m familiar with their due diligence requirements, and I believe I could be an asset with this particular third party, since I interned in a lab environment when I was doing my double major in college. It may provide an edge in some situations.”

  “And you believe Mr. Perez lacks your experience?” he said, deadpan.

  While she would like nothing better than to throw Perez under the bus, that was just not her style. She intended to prove herself the worthier candidate for partnership. It was up to Perez to do the same or fail on his own.

  “I’d rather discuss my experience, sir. VCZ is an important client, and I know that what you want is for them to be well represented.”

  “And you think you’re a better choice than Mr. Perez?” he pressed, but she refused to take the bait.

  “I am not questioning your choice, sir. All I’m asking for is a chance to prove—”

  “That you’re a worthy candidate for partnership. Isn’t that what we’re really discussing here?” he replied, anger growing in his voice.

  She was blowing it big time, because she’d underestimated the size of Goodwyn’s ego and that he’d view her request as a challenge. “I didn’t intend for this to be that discussion, and I apologize if that’s the way I came across. I understand that we’ll have that discussion when the time is right.”

  “Rather presumptuous of you, isn’t it? That we’ll ever have that discussion?”

  Damn it, she was crashing and burning. Worse yet, the sting of tears warned her not to let him get to her.

  “I had hoped we would,” she said, her voice choked as she fought back disappointment.

  “Getting emotional, Ms. Reyes? Displaying emotion in the legal world is never good. It’s a sign of weakness.”

  Displaying emotion like a woman, because women were weak, was what the dumb-ass was saying. And while she might be a woman, she was anything but weak. Stiffening her spine, she drew in a long inhale and slowly rose from her chair. “I’m sorry that you can’t see my worth to the firm. I hope the other partners will. As for the VCZ project, I am a good candidate to assist, but if that’s not your desire, I’ll abide by that choice. I am a team player after all.”

  Goodwyn surprised her by shooting out of his chair, his face growing a deeper shade of red by the second as he jabbed a finger at his chest and said, “It is my choice, because it’s my client and my firm. If you think the other partners will dare to challenge me, you’ve made a serious miscalculation.”

  She raised her chin a defiant inch and nodded. “Understood, Mr. Goodwyn. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”

  Pivoting on her high heel, she ignored his sputtered protest about her insolence and marched out of his office, head held high even though what she wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry. She would not cry. There was no crying in the legal world.

  But as she entered her office and closed the door behind her, the tears cascaded down her cheeks. She leaned against the door, the only place for privacy in her glass-walled prison, and let the tears come. When the flood finally abated, she dashed the evidence away. After a few deep breaths, she mustered enough control to be able to return to her desk and the work waiting there.

  Work was what she did. It was what would get her to what she wanted: a partnership and financial independence. But after the meeting just minutes earlier, she doubted whether that would be possible at Brewster, Goodwyn, and Smith. But she wasn’t a quitter. Partnerships weren’t generally announced until the end of the year, so she still had time to make her plan work.

  She had to, because she had no backup plan, and that was totally unlike her. In her brain, she heard challenging laughter and decided that maybe it was time she made one.

  Chapter 7

  On Monday morning, Jonathan patiently walked Dudley along the edges of the great lawn, waiting for him to do his thing. Over and over, the pup sniffed and explored, but nothing happened.

  Jonathan wasn’t normally one to live by the clock, but he had committed to a morning meeting, and between feeding Dudley and walking him, he was running late, but he also knew his pup couldn’t keep it in for the nearly two-hour drive back to the city.

  He sucked it up, and after another fifteen minutes of Dudley darting around, the little dog finally relieved himself. As Jonathan scooped it up, he grimaced at the smell.

  “Dude, what did you eat?” he kidded. Besides one of my fave pairs of flip-flops, he thought.

  Dudley looked up at him and seemed almost upset by his comment.

  “Just kidding, man,” he said and petted the pup’s head, earning a grin and lick of his hand, easing his concern that Dudley was somehow upset.

  He wondered if this uncertainty and worry was what new parents felt—without the shoe eating of course.

  It’s called being responsible, the annoying voice in his head that sounded too much like his father said, but Jonathan ignored it.

  He disposed of the poop bag in the garbage can and walked Dudley around to the driveway where the Jeep was parked. He quickly harnessed Dudley into the passenger seat. The pup grinned and leaned out the open window, tongue lolling, already eagerly anticipating the ride.

  Jonathan smiled and sped off for the return to Manhattan and the meeting with his partners. Reluctantly leaving, but also filled with a sense of relief. He hadn’t wanted to abandon Sea Kiss quite so soon, and yet the place that had brought him such peace in the past seemed empty at times.

  Dudley’s presence and Owen’s had abated that hole in his heart to some degree over the last few days. But there was a growing sense of restlessness inside him when he was in Sea Kiss. Maybe it was the memories that the family mansion brought. Memories of the time spent there with their mother before she’d just up and left, never to return.

  He forced away that negativity as he sat in his office after he arrived in the city, closed his eyes, and brought back a happier picture of him, Maggie, and Owen playing on the beach. Racing through the wash of the ocean before returning to salvage a sand castle being threatened by the waves. The picture morphed, and suddenly, it was him and Connie, chasing each other at the water’s edge. Falling into the surf and coming up wrapped around each other, laughing. Kissing. He smiled and held on to that happy tableau and added one of Dudley playfully chasing a tennis ball into the ocean.

  “Daydreaming?” said his partner Andy as he walked into Jonathan’s office where Dudley was tucked into a new doggie bed behind Jonathan’s desk.

  At Andy’s entrance, Dudley’s ears perked up, and the pup got to his feet and let out a little bark as if saying hello. He trotted right over to Andy and began to sniff his shoes.

  “Yep,” Jonathan said with no trace of guilt, because Andy wasn’t normally judgmental. It was one of the reasons why they worked so well together.

  “And who’s this guy?” Andy said as Dudley rolled over for a belly rub and whimpered in bliss as Andy complied.

  “My new sidekick. His name is Dudley,” Jonathan said and smiled.

  “So besides picking up this chick magnet, any luck on finding a location for the new building?” Andy asked as he stood and then plopped into a chair before Jonathan’s desk.

  Jonathan ignored the comment about Dudley as the dog settled back into his bed. He leaned forward and yanked his smartphone from his back pocket. “My brother gave me the name of a local real estate agent, and they sent me some possible properties this morning. I’ll send you and Roscoe the email so we can discuss them la
ter.”

  “And then you’ll go back down and take a look at them?” Andy asked.

  “I’m stoked about finding a place,” he admitted without hesitation.

  “I’m truly sensing something different here. I know you said you were serious about this, and I kind of think you truly are,” his partner said, but with no hint of censure. They knew each other too well for that, and besides, Andy and Roscoe knew that it was his ideas and drive that put bread on the table. Not that he’d ever use that to get his way.

  “It’s time to get a little more settled, and I’m a surfer dude at heart. Sea Kiss is home to me,” he said, finally admitting out loud what had been in his heart for a long time.

  His partner shook his head from side to side and ran a hand through the ginger-colored springs of his curly hair. “All I can say is that I’m looking forward to some time on the Jersey Shore.”

  Jonathan chuckled. “Believe me, dude, you’re going to love it.”

  “I guess we’ll have to figure out how this is going to work. There are some folks who’ll want to join you down in Sea Kiss, like me. But some may want to stay in the city, like Roscoe.”

  He nodded. “It’s totally up to each person what they want to do. Whatever positions are changed by the move, we’ll hire to fill the vacancies. It’s time to expand in any case, now that we’re adding the AI company to the mix. Maybe we can even meld the two workforces. Offer more work from home for some of the programming people.”

  Andy smiled and nodded. “It sounds like a plan, Jon. We can discuss it more at this morning’s meeting.”

  Without waiting for his reply, Andy strolled out of Jonathan’s office, leaving him to firm up his plans for all that was happening in his life.

  Plans, he thought with some chagrin. Some people might say that his life so far had been one big, unscripted joy ride, and yet he knew that even chaos had order. It was just that some people couldn’t see past the apparent randomness.

  Like Connie hadn’t been able to see it so many years earlier. He drove that thought away, because it was useless to think about her. She was in the past, and while the future might throw them together again, he held out no hope that she could see his determination and understand it as well.

  * * *

  The plans in Connie’s life were like soap bubbles lately, floating haphazardly along the wind until the most delicate of touches made them burst. She had barely formulated a campaign for what she would do about Goodwyn and her seemingly diminishing partnership chances when Maggie had popped yet another bubble by announcing that she was going to marry Owen Pierce barely a couple of days after skipping out on their weekend plans. Only it wasn’t your everyday “we love you, we want to be together” kind of marriage plan. It was more like a loan agreement, with lots of crossed t’s and dotted i’s involving Maggie’s lawyer.

  Connie recognized the logic of a prenuptial agreement, but despite that, she worried that there was something inherently wrong and problematic about starting a marriage based on a business deal. Marriage was supposed to be about love and respect, and the romantic Connie who rarely emerged feared that Maggie was headed for heartache. But there was little she could do as she sat in Maggie’s Sea Kiss home a week after the announcement and the signing of the prenup. Maggie stood in front of a cheval mirror and modeled the wedding dress that had been her great-grandmother’s and that Maggie’s mom had worn over thirty years earlier to get married.

  “You look just like your mother on her wedding day,” said Mrs. Patrick, who was not only the mansion’s housekeeper, but also like a grandmother to Maggie. The older woman covered her mouth with her hand, tears glimmering in her eyes.

  Maggie looked into the mirror, and her gaze skipped to Tracy, their other best friend who had driven in from Princeton to help with all the wedding prep, and then to Emma and finally to Connie. “What do you think?” Maggie asked.

  “Perfect,” they all said in unison.

  “Perfect,” Maggie repeated, and Mrs. Patrick shooed her out of the kitchen and into her private quarters so she could pin the dress in order to make some minor alterations to the vintage wedding gown.

  As Maggie walked away, Connie peered at Emma and noted she had the same forced happy face that Connie had plastered on that morning for the wedding planning meeting with new fiancé Owen and best man Jonathan, as well Emma’s partner, Carlo. Worse, pressure was building in Connie’s head and threatening to release the emotions she had managed to dam up so far. Sucking in a deep breath, she blurted out in a choked whisper, “She looked so happy and so beautiful.”

  Emma nodded and swiped at a tear as it escaped. “She did, and it’s all going to work out.”

  Tracy wrapped an arm around Emma’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “She’s going to be just fine.”

  Tracy’s platitude overloaded Connie’s dam and opened the first crack. The words spilled from Connie in a rush. “Says the woman who’s only been married for a few months and is already in marriage counseling.”

  Tracy’s lips thinned into a knife-sharp slash. “I’ll forgive your bitchiness because I can only guess at what you’re feeling right now. You and Maggie have always been like this,” she said, held up her hand, and crossed two fingers. “Maggie’s a smart woman, and while this all might seem a bit rushed—”

  “That’s an understatement. Engaged in just a few weeks. Wedding in less than a month,” Emma said.

  “She’ll be fine,” Tracy insisted.

  Connie didn’t share Tracy’s certainty, and as she glanced at Emma, it was obvious her other friend felt the same.

  Mustering her reserve, Connie tried to shore up the dam keeping her emotions in check and managed to somehow last through dinner that night and the wine they shared afterward out on the patio beneath a starlit sky on the warm summer night. After one glass, Tracy excused herself to drive home, since she and her new husband had early morning plans for the next day. As she hugged Tracy goodbye, Connie whispered, “I’m sorry for what I said before. I know you’re really trying hard to make things work.”

  “Thank you. If you need to talk, you know I’m here for you,” Tracy said.

  Emma, Maggie, and Connie lingered on the patio for a little longer, but Emma was next to go, since she had to get going on the wedding plans the next day. While she would normally have stayed over, this night, she was going back to her Sea Kiss cottage so she could get an early start in the morning.

  Which left Connie and Maggie, her best friend in the whole world, sitting out on the lawn. Maggie, her best fuckin’ friend forever. A woman whom she thought she’d understood. Because her friend had a lot to lose besides her heart, she couldn’t ignore the worry in her gut about what Maggie planned to do. Leaning close, she twined her fingers with Maggie’s and whispered, “Are you sure about this, Mags?”

  Her friend smiled almost indulgently. “I am, but I know you have lots of doubts.”

  “I do, and I hope you know it’s only because I love you and want you to be happy.”

  Maggie offered a sympathetic squeeze of Connie’s hand. “Owen’s a good guy. I trust him. I care for him, and he makes me happy. I’ve been afraid to admit it to myself for a while, but I haven’t been happy in a long time.”

  “Until Owen,” Connie chimed in.

  “Until Owen,” Maggie repeated, but then quickly added, “Just like you haven’t been happy since Jon said goodbye that summer. After he left, you set a course as straight as a ruler, and you haven’t detoured once, but sometimes, you have to. Sometimes, your happiness lies along a different path.”

  In the almost infinite moment that followed her words, the truth in them broke open the dam, and the feelings swirling inside Connie cascaded free. Somehow, she managed to choke out, “I love you, Maggie, and I hope it all works out for you. But what I want is way different from what you think I want.”

  Maggie sque
ezed her hand again and said, “No matter what, I’ll be here for you.”

  She’d never doubted Maggie’s word or her resolve, but she’d seen too many women drift away when the demands of marriage had left them with little time for old friends. A wave of emotion swept over her as she thought about losing Maggie, and she reined herself in to keep control.

  “I have to get some air. See you in the morning,” she forced past the knot in her throat and hugged Maggie hard.

  “Good night, Connie,” Maggie said and held her for a moment longer, as if to say Believe in me.

  But a second later, Connie was charging across the great lawn and toward the boardwalk leading to the beach, her body silently shaking as she held herself together. As she reached the sand, she glanced around and was thankful that despite the breathtaking late-summer night, there were few people out. Only one lone couple several houses down, strolling hand in hand toward the jetty and the end of Sea Kiss.

  She found a spot along the edge of the dunes that provided a bit of privacy, plopped down, and finally freed her tears. The force of them created a whirlpool of emotions that threatened to suck her under and drown her with their weight. She tucked her head against her knees as huge, shuddering sobs wracked her body, almost violent in their intensity. She let them come, hoping to wash away all the doubts and fears that were plaguing her.

  Little by little, the sobs became intermittent hiccups and sniffles. Connie dashed away the remnants of her crying jag, swiping at the tears wetting her cheeks. As she did so, she heard a rustle in the dune grasses above her, and suddenly, a curly-haired ball of cream and white crashed through the grasses and virtually landed in her lap.

  The dog squirmed and spun around to face her. The pup gazed at her with a look that seemed knowing in a gamin face. With a doggie grin, it laid its paws on her chest and licked her face, dragging a watery chuckle from her. The dog yipped what she assumed was a greeting and settled into her lap as if that was where he was supposed to be.