Rules of Summer

by Joanna Philbin

  “Maybe because you were head over heels for him last year?” Thayer said.

  Isabel looked down at her plate, momentarily furious. Yes, it was true, she had been into Aston last summer. Over the years he’d morphed from an overweight kid with buckteeth into a handsome lacrosse player with impeccable social connections. It also didn’t hurt that he dated a string of beautiful, skinny socialites-in-training, especially Victoria Drake, who was sort of his female equivalent: good-looking, well-bred, with a father who’d donated many millions to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. All the years Isabel had known Aston, he’d never come after her, and last summer, she’d finally become a little offended. One night, at a beach party, she’d approached him with an extra cup of beer and a collection of compliments. It hadn’t taken long. By the end of the night he’d left Victoria at the party to drive Isabel home. Two days later, they were officially dating.

  But his appeal wore off pretty quickly. She had concrete reasons for this—he wasn’t a good listener, he liked LMFAO, and he never stopped campaigning for her to lose her virginity to him, as if she were going to hand him that particular honor. But the main problem was that she’d dated him before. A hundred times, it seemed. He was just like all the other guys floating through the private-school scene. Cute, athletic, moneyed, boring. Nothing different, nothing unfamiliar, nothing she hadn’t seen before.

  She’d finally ended it at Madeleine Fuller’s party, on the front lawn. She’d explained that she would be leaving in a few weeks for California and that long distance never worked, and that she needed to let him go so he could be happy, blah blah blah.

  “But… but… we’re so good together,” he’d stammered. “Who cares about long distance if we love each other?”

  She’d looked him straight in the eye and said, “Who said I loved you?”

  It hadn’t been her finest moment, admittedly. But he didn’t seem to hold it against her. He’d e-mailed her a dozen times over the school year, sometimes just to say hi.

  “Look, you guys go to his party,” Isabel said. “Maybe I’ll meet you.”

  “How are you going to get there?” Thayer asked. “Did you suddenly take another driving test in the past week?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Seriously, when are you going to retake that test?” Darwin whined. “We can’t be schlepping you all over town this summer.”

  “Don’t worry. You won’t be. And things are over between me and Aston. For good. So it’s not like I’m gonna do him any favors if I go.” She looked over her shoulder at the strip of yellow sand and, beyond it, the inky, restless water. She suddenly needed to get away from this table. “I’m gonna go get in the water.”

  Thayer blinked. “That water?” she asked. “The ocean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s probably freezing.”

  “So what? It’s good for you.”

  Darwin and Thayer exchanged another knowing look. Yep, California has changed her, it seemed to say.

  “I’ll be right back,” Isabel said. She grabbed her towel from the back of her chair and turned onto the walkway of wooden planks that led to the sand.

  “Have fun!” Darwin yelled, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  The wind met her head-on as she walked to the water, whipping the ends of her hair up past her shoulders. Nobody was on the beach. The lifeguard chair was empty—it was a given that nobody would be going in the water this early in the season. From the top of the chair, a yellow flag flapped in the wind. Hazardous, but not Stay Out at All Costs red. Hazardous, she could handle. During the past year at school in Santa Barbara, she’d become a much better ocean swimmer.

  Beyond the sand, the waves swelled and broke with a thunderclap, followed by a sizzle of foam. She took a deep breath. There it was again, the sharp pain just under her lungs. Ever since she’d come back to the East Coast, it hurt to breathe, as if she were about to have a massive anxiety attack. It didn’t make any sense. This was the place where she’d met most of her friends, and where she’d spent all of her summers. She knew the Georgica. It was almost like her own house. But as the ocean breeze curled around her, sending goose bumps along her bare arms, she realized why she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stand this place anymore. She pulled her cotton tunic over her head. In her bikini, she felt the cold air threaten to change her mind. Then she ran toward the waves and jumped into the water.

  The cold sent shock waves over her body. She swam toward a wave just before it broke, and then bobbed back up on the surface, feeling the sting of salt in her nose and mouth. She opened her eyes and, treading water, turned around. The club looked so small and insignificant already, the green-and-white-striped umbrellas like the ones stuck in fruity drinks. Somewhere back there, Thayer and Darwin were probably talking about her. Fine, she thought. Let them.

  She continued to tread water, thinking about what was ahead of her. The debutante ball where she’d come out to society. College, then internships with the Upper East Side’s best interior decorators. She’d date—and marry—someone just like Aston March. Then she’d have kids and maybe, if she were lucky, a career matching silk throw pillows to someone’s collection of Lilly Pulitzer dresses. Her life would be just like everyone else’s she knew. Nothing fun. Nothing unique. Not a life at all.

  She swam under another wave, moving her limbs through the cold water. When she broke the surface again, she was facing solid sand dunes. She twisted around, trying to find the club. And then she saw it, so far to her left that she could barely make it out. She’d already drifted at least a mile east.

  She began to do the crawl back toward the club, but a wave rolled underneath her, pulling her farther out. She powered her arms through the water, swimming straight toward the beach now. Another wave came, and this time crashed over her, and she could feel the current pulling her farther down the beach. This time when she resurfaced, she faced the horizon. And a wall of water growing taller by the moment. It was a wave. Coming right at her.

  She pivoted around, trying to make some headway toward the beach. The water pushed back, holding her in place. She looked over her shoulder. The wave was big, too big, and it looked like it was going to break right over her. And there was something on the wave. A guy lying on a surfboard, his arms paddling madly, cresting the top. He was about to stand up. He didn’t see her.

  Wave at him, she thought. Move your arms. Like a crazy person, she waved her arms over her head in the distress signal, or as close as she could get to it.

  He was almost on his feet. She saw his wet suit, the sheen of his black hair, and the panic on his face as he noticed her, too late to reverse course. And then at the last moment, she ducked under the surface, just as the wave curled, turning in on itself, and tumbled over her, pushing her down.

  This is it, she thought. I’m going to die. Right in front of the stupid Georgica Club.

  Holding her breath, she flailed her arms underwater, trying to paddle upward, when a hand grabbed her wrist and yanked her, hard, right up to the surface.

  Air. Sunlight. She opened her mouth and slammed her arm into something hard—the guy’s surfboard.

  “Get on the board!” she heard him yell. “Get on!”

  She was so weak she could barely move, but she managed to slide onto the board. The surface of it scraped against her bare stomach.

  “Hold on, here comes another wave,” he said. “Paddle! Paddle!”

  She forced her arms to paddle. He swam in front of her, one hand on the nose of the board, pulling her in.

  “Okay, we’re going to ride it in,” he said, positioning himself beside her and curling an arm around her waist. “Keep going! Okay, go!”

  She hung on to the sides of the board, he hung on to her, and as the wave broke underneath them, the board rose up from the water, lightly skimming the surface, like a flying carpet. A few moments later, they brushed up onto hard sand.

  She crawled off the board on her elbows, coughing up water. Salt stung the bac
k of her throat and her eyes.

  “You okay?” the guy asked, on his hands and knees beside her.

  She leaned down and coughed up more water.

  “Hey, good job out there,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine.”

  She turned onto her back and closed her eyes. When she opened them a few minutes later, he was leaning over her, blocking out the sun. Drops of water fell from the tips of his hair, which looked like it was long enough to fall over his eyes. Although his face was cast in shadow, she made out a cleft chin, then full lips, and then large, liquid brown eyes.

  “Hey,” he said. His palm slid underneath her shoulder and helped her up to a seated position. “Where’d you get in the water?”

  She pointed up the beach. “The club. The Geor… the Georgica.”

  “Okay. I’ll take you. But first, you might want to fix that.”

  She followed his gaze downward. Her bikini top had twisted around, completely exposing her. Mortified, she pulled it back around.

  He helped her up, and she took a few steps on rubbery legs. As they started walking, he slid his arm around her waist and held his board with his other arm.

  “So what were you doing out there?” he asked.

  “Swimming,” she said.

  “Did it look like a good day to go swimming?”

  “Well, what were you doing out there?” she countered. “This beach isn’t for surfing.”

  “So you have something against surfers.”

  “No. I surf.”

  “You do?” he asked, giving her a sidelong glance.

  “I’ve surfed Rincon,” she said. “In Santa Barbara. You’ve heard of it, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” he said, smiling. “Surfer girl knows her spots.”

  A gust of wind made her shiver.

  “You cold?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  He stopped walking and stuck his board in the sand. Without a word, he unzipped the back of his wet suit and pulled it down to his waist, exposing his chest and muscled stomach.

  “Come here,” he said, opening his arms.

  She stepped forward into his arms, and suddenly his hands were rubbing her shoulders, her arms, and her back in rapid strokes, sending heat all over her body. Her goose bumps disappeared.

  This is crazy, she thought. You don’t even know this person. And he’s practically feeling you up. But standing there with her face pressed into the salty skin of his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his hands on her, she didn’t want him to stop.

  “There,” he said, stepping back. His eyes were still concerned. “Better?”

  “Yeah.” She couldn’t look at him. “Thanks.”

  She heard him zip the wet suit back up.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, his arm still wrapped around her shoulders, and her arm wrapped around his waist. Just for support, she told herself. But after their embrace, it felt more intimate than that. She could still feel the friction of his hands on her skin. How many girls? she thought. How many girls are in love with this guy?

  At the lifeguard chair, she stopped. “Well, this is me,” she said. “And look at this.” She pointed to the empty chair. “Nice to see that the Georgica’s on top of things.”

  “Then I wouldn’t have met you,” he said, looking right into her eyes. “You gonna be okay getting back from here?”

  She looked over at the green-and-white-striped umbrellas on the patio. It was tempting to have him walk her back, if only to see Thayer’s and Darwin’s faces. But she decided that they didn’t even deserve the sight of this guy. “Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks.”

  “No problem,” he said. He took a step backward. “Hey, what’s your name, surfer girl?”

  “Isabel,” she said. “Isabel Rule. Why?”

  “Just asking,” he said. “It might come in handy.”

  He grinned in a way that made her remember his hands on her, rubbing her skin, and then he turned around and walked away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rory stood over the Rules’ butcher-block kitchen table, an unopened bottle of wine tucked under her arm like a weapon.

  “When you pour, don’t stand too far away,” Fee advised, pulling Rory a bit closer to the table. “You need to be close. Otherwise the wine’ll plop into the glass and you’re liable to get drops on the table.”

  “Got it,” Rory said, miming the act with the bottle. “Pour close to the glass.”

  “But not too close,” Fee cautioned. “Then you might slip and crack the glass.” Fee moved the crystal wineglass a few inches away from the place setting that she’d arranged on the table for practice. “I know, it’s confusing. And no pressure, but that’s a three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine.”

  Rory put the bottle down on the table. “So now you tell me,” she said.

  Ten feet away Eduardo, the chef, pirouetted between the eight-burner stove and the marble-topped kitchen island. He was a small man with a scruff of black hair and surprisingly muscular arms, and he worked with fierce concentration as he chopped, sprinkled, and diced. He wore the same forest-green polo and khaki pants as Fee, along with a stained apron that seemed to have followed him from cooking school. Looking around, Rory could see that the Rules had spared no expense with their kitchen. Four Cornish hens roasted on a spit in a glass chamber, rotisserie-style, while three miniature pizzas bubbled in the wood-burning pizza oven.

  “If you don’t want to do this,” Fee said softly, “just tell me. We can try to find someone else. This wasn’t supposed to even be something you would—”

  “No, it’s fine,” she fibbed. “It’ll be great.” She smiled, and Fee seemed to buy it, though she did give Rory a sympathetic look as she put away the silverware.

  The low-level panic Rory had been feeling all afternoon was getting harder to hide. It had started while she finished unpacking, and by the time Fee had brought her into the kitchen and served her a grilled cheese with a side of frilly greens, she’d barely been able to eat a bite. Later, as Bianca gave her a tour of the lower floors of the house, her anxiety had only increased. Each room had a title—the screening room, the breakfast room, the mudroom—and each was more elegantly put together than the one before. The Rules liked long white couches with rattan frames and thick, soft-looking cushions, chairs stuffed with needlepoint throw pillows, and coffee tables made out of knotty pieces of driftwood. They also liked art—expensive-looking, modern paintings in vivid colors—and other eye-catching pieces. As they walked from room to room, Bianca would point out one of the more exquisite items on display, and combine it with a little piece of trivia. “You’ll notice the Francis Bacon painting on the wall—Mrs. Rule got that at auction in London,” or “You’ll see the Bösendorfer piano in the corner—Mr. Rule loves to play Chopin.” Outside on the spacious flagstone patio, as they stood next to a narrow lap pool built right beside the larger, rectangular pool, Bianca said, “This is for Connor, their youngest son. He’s on the swim team at USC.” And downstairs in the rec room, which boasted a pool table, a Ping-Pong table, a Wurlitzer jukebox, and a generous stack of board games, Bianca said, “The Rules love to play table tennis, especially before dinner.”

  Whenever they passed by a framed photograph on the wall or on one of the end tables, Rory caught a glimpse of one or two of the Rules, or sometimes the entire family together. They were definitely attractive, with hair that varied in blond shades from corn silk to caramel and tan, glowing complexions. But Isabel was the beauty of the family. She stood out in every picture, as much for her large, light blue eyes as for her refusal to smile.

  When Rory returned to her room, her mind reeling from all the data from the tour, she grabbed one of her notebooks and jotted down as much as she could remember.

  Sloane—tennis

  Mr. Rule—Chopin

  Mrs. Rule—Francis Bacon, art

  Connor—swimming

  Gregory—Harvard

  The only one of the Rules whom Bianca hadn’t mentio
ned, curiously, was Isabel. But perhaps the less she heard about Isabel Rule, Rory thought, the better.

  “Let’s go over the rest,” Fee said, leaning against one of the kitchen’s stainless steel counters. “What side do you serve from?”

  “The left if I’m serving from a platter or taking around the bread basket. The right if the food is already plated.”

  “Good. And tonight we’re doing platters, right, Eduardo?” Fee asked.

  Eduardo stood bent over a knob of peeled ginger, mincing it with superhuman speed. “Hmm-hmm,” he murmured, totally engrossed.

  “Yes, we’re doing platters,” Bianca announced as she breezed into the kitchen. “But the gazpacho is coming out first.”

  Rory was starting to notice that Bianca had a knack for joining conversations that began before she entered a room. She’d changed into a black shift dress and a string of tiny pearls, and looked so elegant that Rory wondered if she was going to be joining the Rules for dinner. “Is it ready, Eduardo?” she asked, crossing her arms. “The gazpacho?”

  “Yes,” Eduardo said, finally looking up from the stove. “It’s chilled.”

  “Good. Then it seems we’re on schedule.” Bianca turned to Rory and appraised her outfit. “My, we’re bright tonight,” she said.

  Rory looked down at her white ruffled top with see-through gauzy sleeves. “Should I change?” she asked with a sinking feeling.

  “It’s fine,” Bianca said with a tight smile. “So, everyone serves themselves from the platters except for the dinner rolls,” she explained, lifting off the lid of a saucepan, “which you’ll place on the bread plates, and then you’ll also bring around the teriyaki sauce for the chicken and ladle it onto the plates. Understood?”

  Rory nodded.

  She replaced the lid. “I think that might need a bit more saffron,” Bianca said to Eduardo.

  Eduardo grabbed a pinch of red herbs from a small glass jar and dashed over to the saucepan.

  “I think we’ve got it covered,” Fee said. “Rory’s going to do an excellent job.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Bianca said.