Summer Girl

Summer Girl - Chapter 1

Chapter ONE

He, for sure, thought I was just one of those girls. A girl he would flirt with on the beach over his summer vacation. And that was okay - I'd seen it happen a million times before. But I wasn't one of those girls, even if I wanted to be.

  I'd met his Dad, unknowing, the week before I saw him for the first time. His dad had flirted with me too, which also wasn't unexpected. I was a waitress at the Beach Hut, the only sit-down restaurant in Siesta Key Beach. His dad was young - too young to have a teenager it seemed - but was with other young men, at the restaurant. I only found out the connection to him a couple of days later.

   I grew up at the beach, though I was born in the city, two hours away. I was three years old when my parents were killed in an car accident; my brother was nine. We were shipped off to Siesta Beach, where our Aunt and Uncle lived with their two kids.

   Aunt Cora was a teacher, in the past. She quit teaching when her second, Clara, was born, and she decided to home school the kids. The only school near Siesta was forty-five minutes away and they decided homeschooling would be better. For me, I didn't know any different. But my brother, Aaron, struggled. Not only had he lost his parents, his house, his friends, his school - now he was being home-schooled by a lady he barely knew.

  He rebelled often and gave Aunt Cora and Uncle Tom a hard time, for years. He ran away, more than once. And as soon as he turned eighteen - I was twelve - he fled back to the city, Tampa, where his roots were.

   My roots where at the beach house. It was huge and only twenty steps from the water. I shared a room with Clara for years, until Aaron was gone, then we separated. She was two years older than me, but we grew up like sisters. She was my best friend, but I wasn't exactly hers. I was okay with that. I had to be.

   The first time I saw him, I was in awe. I didn't know his name, but he was exactly what I thought about when I heard "beach boy". He was tanned, blond and had a tattoo on his arm. He was tall and muscular but still had an immature look to him. And he was definitely on vacation.

   Clara had had many boys who fell for her, on their summer vacations. She once told me she only dated "beach boys" - those boys who came to Siesta for a month or two, to spend their summer in the sun, on the beach. It was easy. There was always a known end, when they went back to where they were from. I had watched her break hearts summer after summer, or have her heart broken. I'd follow her and her friends to the water, wondering if it would ever be my turn to experience these things.

   I was seventeen, my eighteenth birthday approaching that summer. Now I was the only kid still living in the beach house with Cora and Tom. My brother was long gone and very rarely called me, Sam - twenty-two - was an hour away, at college, and Clara had just left a few months ago, to live with her friends in the city. I missed Clara the most. I missed having a friend.

   It was mid June. The summer was just beginning, though it was already hot, like always in Florida. My only sort-of friend was Cay, a co-worker at the Burger Hut, who I had known for six months. She was a year older than me and had only lived in Siesta Beach since early that year. All she told me was that her family lived in Orlando, but she had to be closer to the water. I was awkward, even just getting to know her. I didn't know how to make friends. My social skills were horrible.

   "He's checking you out," Cay told me, that very first time I saw him, nodding towards a group of guys, not far down the beach.

   We were sun bathing away our day off. He and two other guys were tossing a frisbee around. I  had already been staring at him, too.