The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(40)

I stare at him. The life he’s describing is plucked straight from a children’s cartoon, the kind where coconuts fall from the sky when you’re hungry and bananas rain down by the barrel. Kids in some third-world village aren’t going to want to take fucking business classes or learn how to play

“Jingle Bells” on a guitar.

“Danny…I’m not sure I want to teach. I think I want to perform. Like, create my own stuff.”

“You know how many people want that and fail?” he asks. “There are lots of ways you can perform without moving to LA, but the odds of you going there and it all working out are probably worse than your odds of winning the lottery.”

I don’t argue with him because he’s right. But I also know Luke would say that if I want to play the lottery, I should fucking play the lottery, because it’s my life, not Danny’s.

“I JUST SEATED YOU,” says Stacy. “He asked for your section.”

My head jerks toward the tables in the corner, to where Luke is sitting by himself, his hair still damp from a morning in the water.

He’s studying the menu, and something about the sight of him there, so big and alone, does a weird thing to my heart. It’s a tiny pinch of emptiness, but I sense an abyss somewhere beyond it, somewhere I don’t want to look.

I’d assume he was in my section by accident if I hadn’t been told otherwise.

His gaze lands on me as I approach, in that way it always does, as if I’m something deadly he can’t allow out of his sight. Not a single muscle in his face moves otherwise. No smile, no hint of anything. Just those eyes of his, always watching.

“Hey,” I say, swallowing my nerves. I lean my hip against the table, the only hint that he isn’t a regular customer. I want to thank him for taking up for me the other night, and I want to apologize for what I said in response. It’s just all locked up in my throat.

He looks back at the menu. “What’s good?”

This is so weird. Why are you here, Luke? Why are you in my section when you mostly seem to wish I was elsewhere? I don’t voice my questions, mostly because there’s some strange part of me that doesn’t want him to leave. That wants the next twenty or thirty minutes to just gaze at him, big shoulders hunched over as he wolfs down a solitary meal.

“All of it if you like meat and potatoes,” I reply. “None of it if you hope to live past fifty.” I give him a nervous grin.

He doesn’t offer one back, but instead continues to stare at the menu. “The number four, please.”

“Coffee?”

He shakes his head. “Water’s fine.”

I suspect he’d like coffee and is trying to save money. I suspect he’d like a whole extra meal. He was in the water for hours this morning. If he was my friend, I could ask him. But he’s not my friend and he’s made that clear.

I take his menu and put in his order. Every time I glance over, he’s watching me, and he looks so hungry and alone that I finally can’t stand it. I swipe him a Danish and bring it over with coffee and juice.

“I didn’t order this,” he says.

“You look hungry,” I reply, already scurrying away. “It’s on the house.”

He says nothing as I refill his coffee, his juice, and deliver his meal. He just watches me and doesn’t say a word until I drop the bill on his table.

He pulls out his wallet. “Don’t listen to Donna. You don’t want to fucking teach.”

He rises from the booth without another word and walks away to pay at the register before his big frame edges through the door like GI Joe in a miniature dollhouse.

The restaurant feels emptier without him in it. I reach down to grab his plate. He’s left a tip under it equal to the size of his bill. I put it in my other pocket, away from the rest of my money, as if it’s



special.

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN easy enough to casually bring up Luke’s visit to Danny— Luke got seated in my section this morning. It would have been easy enough for Luke to bring it up too— Stopped by your girlfriend’s place of employment, this morning. The food there sucks.

Yet neither of us do.

By the end of the week, I’m wondering if I read too much into it. I pull that twenty he left out of my dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights and stare at it as if I might find a hidden message in its folds.

Maybe the question I should be asking isn’t if I read too much into it. It’s why I read too much into it, and what was I hoping it meant? Better yet, I should be thinking about what he actually said: Ignore Donna. It’s just…she makes it so hard. Her love, her investment in me, is like a warm coat you continue to wear indoors on a winter day. I can’t bring myself to shrug it off, even when I know I’ll just wind up colder in the long run. And every time I think about shrugging it off, she leans over and zips me up with her most loving smile.

“I’ve got some good news for you, Juliet,” she says over dinner. “I spoke to Miss Engelman. She teaches at an elementary school down in Santa Cruz. She said she can set up an internship for you there next year, assisting the music teacher.”

She beams at me as if she’s given me a gift, which makes me feel like I’ve missed something important. “An internship? Is it…paid?”

She frowns. “Well, no, it’s not paid. But if you’re living here, you don’t really need the job, do you? And Miss Engelman said there are actually scholarships for school employees. Once you’ve been there for a while you might be able to get them to cover some of your classes.”