Delaney James was wearing Chanel the night her husband told her he didn't love her anymore.
In an instant, her picture-perfect Manhattan life-complete with a brownstone on the Upper East Side, a blossoming career as a fashion journalist, and a devas...
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The bonfire at Dawson's Beach has been a South Grove tradition since before I was born, the kind of thing that feels less like an event and more like a rhythm the town slips into without thinking. I wasn't allowed to go until I turned sixteen, so when I was younger, Adelaide would sneak into my room after, still smelling like smoke and salt, and spill everything she'd seen – who hooked up, which couple imploded in front of everyone, who ended up naked in the ocean before the tided turned. Brooks Connolly, our friend Cash's older brother, had a fake ID and always supplied the kegs, so by midnight the night had a predictable looseness to it, the kind that blurred edges and lowered inhibitions until the whole beach felt like it was tipping slightly off its axis.
Even now, standing at the edge of it again, I can feel that same pull, familiar and distant all at once.
The fire burns wide and bright against the dark stretch of shoreline, sparks lifting into the night like they're trying to outrun the ocean air. Music hums low through a speaker somewhere near the driftwood pile, bass vibrating faintly under the sand. The smell hits me first – charred wood, sunscreen, beer, the faint, clean bite of saltwater – and for a moment it's enough to make my heart race, the weight of memory arriving all at once instead of in pieces.
It looks exactly the same. That's what unnerves me.
A pack of teenage boys toss a football down the beach, their laughter carrying over the crash of the waves. Cash is sprawled out on a towel near the fire, a curvy blonde I don't recognize straddling his lap, her tongue down his throat and fingers tangled in the front of his shirt like she's already claimed him for the night. Mitchell and Wyatt are locked into a competitive game of cornhole with a couple of guys I vaguely recognize, the easy, familiar trash talk rolling between them like no time has passed at all.
A group of girls in bikini tops and cutoffs dance barefoot in the sand, red Solo cups lifted, their movements loose and unselfconscious in a way that feels both enviable and exhausting to watch.
Their eyes shift as we walk by.
Of course they do.
Greyson doesn't seem to notice, or maybe he does and just doesn't give it anything. Either way, it only makes me more aware of myself – of the way I'm standing, the way I'm holding my shoulders, the fact that I don't know where to put my hands. I hover half a step behind him without meaning to, like some part of me is still wired to follow his lead here, to let him move through this place the way he always did – like it belonged to him.
I used to love this party.
Summers when Adelaide was home from college, she, Jo, and I would spend hours out here, dancing in the sand until our legs ached, the music bleeding into the sound of the waves until it all felt like one thing. Greyson would dominate game after game of whiffle ball, grinning like it was the easiest thing in the world, like winning was just another part of who he was. Later, we'd strip down to our swimsuits and run straight into the ocean, the water cool against our sunburned skin, our laughter carrying out past the breakers. We'd come back dripping and breathless, roast marshmallows until they burned, light sparklers that fizzed and died too quickly in the night air.
