that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

2.

chapter | 02
❝ Lost in the light, and I don't know what night it is. ❞

▼▼▼

FOR CENTURIES, poets and fishermen alike have written about the loneliness of the sea. Yet on this particular Solstice, all the gods conspired to thrust me into social interaction.

My right hand was smudged with the ink of my unfinished poem. I rubbed it against my thigh, but the blackness stuck. 

I wondered if the boat was really Percy's, like he'd said, or if it belonged to his parents.

I rubbed harder—no luck. Behind me, the Pacific stretched and yawned, deceptively placid. My footsteps quickened.

I drank in the salty air and marched along the grassy dunes toward Flounder Point, the very end of Amatheia Cove, where Candy's place stood sentry at the top of the hill with an equally impressive neighbor: the Jackson house.

The Jacksons lived at the Cove only in the summers, but they'd owned both properties for generations. Candy had been leasing hers from the family for about twenty years—first from Percy's grandfather, and now from his father.

Ahead a wooden staircase stretched up the dunes to the houses, and from the top, you could look back along the shore, see the ocean and the whole town. I'd walked it every night after my writing sessions in the Vega, but the sight still stole my breath.

Now I took the stairs slowly, my hand on the rough banister as the twin homes rose before me like glittering spires. Like most houses in the Cove, these had dark-gray shingle siding, shimmery windows trimmed in white, expansive second-floor decks with endless ocean views. This morning, just before sunrise, Katie and I had stretched out in chairs on Candy's deck, shivering under blankets as he listened for the mournful calls of the whales.

"Ahoy! Look what the tide dragged in." Katie was already halfway down the deck stairs when she called out to me. "I've been looking everywhere for you," she said. In preparation for tonight's feast, she'd strung tiny white lights along the railings. The house sparkled behind her. "You okay?"

I waved. It was both an acknowledgement and a non-answer.

Her legs launched her off the stairs into the grassy dune next to me. She was a little out of breath, but not from exertion. Katie was just perpetually excited. "Status update. Kinzie went off with Percy the instant they all got into town. Okay, he's totally hotter, like that's even possible, but still. I've been telling her about you for weeks!" A gust of wind tossed Katie's chestnut curls into chaos, and as she plucked them from her mouth, I looked back toward the Vega, about a half mile behind me.

Percy.

Totally hotter.

Kinzie.

Even possible.

I thought about telling Katie that I'd already met them, but met wasn't the right word. My insides churned again, thinking about the poems I'd scribbled all over the boat, the stuff I'd left on board, set up as if it were mine. The story required more words than my lips had energy for, and from the bounce in Katie's step, I knew she was eager to get back inside.

As I followed her, she ran through the attendee list, prepping me on the lives of our party guests. The Jackson family. Kinzie, Katie's best friend, whose parents were big on the political scene, summered at the Cove like the Jacksons. Mayor Stoll, whose son, Travis, had the power to turn Katie's cheeks a deep crimson. Travis couldn't make the party tonight, but he worked at the Black Pearl Café near the marina, and in my short time here, Katie and I had made dozens of reconnaissance-style coffee runs.