Page 30 of Songs of Summer

Something about her reminded him of a young Beatrix Silver. He knew that there was a girl walking the earth who possibly looked like Bea, who also possibly looked like him. Which this one didn’t, he thought, until he looked in her eyes and saw his own. She had the drop-dead gorgeous violet-blue eyes that he and many in his family were known for.

Chase hadn’t known that he had fathered a child until afew years ago, when a friend told him about a book calledOn Fire Islandwith a character fitting his description. Plus, the local author barely disguised his name, calling him Logan Chase instead of Chase Logan.

He was made to look like a real chump in the book, but truth be told, it was an accurate description of him in his twenties. He wasn’t proud of what went down that summer thirty years ago. He knew it wasn’t cool that he’d been sleeping with Bea and her sister, but he never imagined the chain reaction it would set off.

Thinking about it now, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had fathered a child or two. He’d been a real jackass when he was younger about using condoms, and he’d suffered unwelcome repercussions from that choice on more than one occasion. It was the reason he steered clear of those ancestry kits—he had nightmares that a mob of millennials would show up at his doorstep chanting, “Papa, can I borrow the car?” or in his case, his bike, now that he lived on the island full-time.

Over the course of a few summers, from the age of about sixteen to twenty-five, the Manhattan girls couldn’t get enough of the handsome lifeguard with the killer abs and shy smile. The funny thing about it was that he wasn’t shy at all. It was just that half of the time he had no idea what these sophisticated city kids who summered on Fire Island were talking about. He kept his mouth shut out of fear of embarrassing himself.

From the lifeguard stand on the beach, he could see them, lying on their blankets reading, or at least holding a book. And not just that one book that was assigned for summer homework; they seemed to like reading.

They were all educated at private or selective public highschools, and they would make jokes and remark on things Chase had no clue about. They watched foreign films, and frequented museums and Broadway shows. The only time Chase had been to the Theater District was when a cousin took him to the city to see a peep show. The topless woman on the other side of the glass had spun around a few times and shimmied at the end. Not quite a crowd-raising finale, but memorable all the same.

But Beatrix Silver was different. Beatrix listened to what he had to say and didn’t turn every conversation they had into some intellectual debate. She laughed at his jokes and didn’t act as if she were slumming, like the other girls Chase had bedded over those prime summers of his youth. Thoughbeddedwas a misnomer—since his MO was to bring them down to the beach with a blanket and a bottle of five-dollar Boone’s Farm wine. It wasn’t until years later, when one of those women returned and ordered a drink from him, recalling their pairing from her perspective, that he realized he was the one who was often being used.

“Look at the hot lifeguard I screwed on the beach this summer!” echoed proudly through prep school halls each September, the sexual equivalent of boasting about winning a blue ribbon at the Hampton Classic.

If he were being honest with himself, he knew it had been different with Bea than with the others. Bea had cared for him, and he didn’t know what to do with that at the time. It may have been the reason that, when the opportunity arose, he’d slept with her sister. It wasn’t a hard thing to do. Sleeping with Veronica Silver was a common notch on many a lifeguard’s belt. It was both easy, and the easy way out.

Bea was heading back to her fancy liberal arts school toread big books and philosophize about the state of humanity, as Chase imagined. She had already snagged his best lifeguard sweatshirt and mentioned him visiting during something called the Fall Harvest Festival. She’d talked on and on about the football game and hayride and hard cider and some harvest moon dance he would need to bring a sports jacket for. He didn’t have a sports jacket. Chase liked Bea but knew that, without his surfboard and the lifeguard status, he wouldn’t survive such things—let alone a lifetime of them. He needed to break it off. He wasn’t much of a communicator, so he slept with her sister instead of having the tough talk.

Now, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he watched the young woman at the bar cock her head to the side like a puppy, which came rushing back to him as an expression of Bea’s that summer. Not to mention the freckled olive skin and dark curls. Between those and her eyes, it felt like a sure thing, though he wished he had hard proof.

Track 16

Indiana Jones: The Main Theme

Matt

Usually, the feelingof giving a pretty girl a ride home on the back of his bike with her hands wrapped around his waist made Matt feel valiant. Tonight, he felt like Indiana Jones, returning home with the Holy Grail.

He had single-handedly found Bea’s long-lost daughter, Shep’s granddaughter, and in some sick twist of fate, prevented her father, the infamous lifeguard who came between the Silver sisters thirty years before, from possibly making a move on her.

He stopped in front of the baseball field and climbed off the bike to fill Maggie in. He wanted to get in and out of his house unnoticed by his mother, the consummate interrogator, and Jake, whose own house was filled to the brim with visiting wedding guests. He still wasn’t used to passing the burly ferry captain in the halls of his home. He wondered if he ever would be. It didn’t much matter. Renee and Jake were set to make Jake’s home their full-time digs after the wedding, leaving Matt to officially take ownership of this home thathe’d grown up spending summers in. He’d only recently begun questioning how he’d fill it.

“I’ll lock up my bike on the side. Follow in my footsteps as close as possible, so we get in and out unnoticed,” he instructed Maggie.

The moonlight caught the mischievous twinkle in her eye—like they were going on a raid at sleepaway camp. He felt bad, as if he had hinted at an adventure, when in truth she was probably going to be really freaked out by what he was about to show her.

“The second step from the top squeaks like a mouse on steroids, so be sure to skip that one,” he added before entering.

They made it into the house silently, aside from the creak of the screen door. Maggie paused at the entrance to his bedroom, flashing back to parental warnings of bad men promising puppies and candy, no doubt. Matt recognized her trepidation and whispered:

“I know this is weird, but don’t worry. My mother is in the next room, so you can always scream.”

She laughed, and he put his finger to his lips, reminding her to be quiet. She followed him in through his bedroom door and he shut it behind them.

“Sit,” he said, directing her to the one chair in the room.

He pulled a book off his shelf and held it up for her to see.

On Fire Island.

“You’ve never read this, right?”

“No,” she uttered, obviously confused.

“My neighbor across the street wrote this book about the summer after his wife passed away.”

---