Kat started playing recreational tennis when she was seven, but didn’t get serious enough about it to play for the school district until eighth grade. She was so good, she made varsity as a freshman, which meant she stayed after school for practice every day of the week, except for—you guessed it.
Fridays were her free day, and it became a ritual for her to come home with me and sleep over. For a year and a half we walked home, and when she got her license and her parents bought her a brand-new Honda (which we lovingly named Betsy), she drove us to my house with the windows down and music blaring through the speakers. But even before cars, that very first time she walked in the door with me, my mom informed Kat that, as the guest of honor, she got to pick what was for dinner. Katimmediately requested something with beef, because her mom was trying out a pescetarian diet and hadn’t cooked anything but fish for two months.
That inaugural sloppy joes night was nothing but a pound of ground beef and a can of tomato sauce, but it didn’t take my mom long to start playing around with the recipe, until she achieved utter perfection. Jane Madden’s Crock-Pot sloppy joes became a weekly staple just as much as having that fourth person at the kitchen table was. We often got into good-natured arguments, and Kat and my dad would team up against my mom and me. It was on these nights that Kat felt like the sister I never had.
After dinner Kat and I always came up here, and at least during the school year, Kat would whine as I made us do our homework. Then we’d pull out my laptop and watch a few episodes of whatever new show was streaming, or lie on our backs across my bed with our phones hovering above our faces, giggling as we DMed each other reels and memes.
“I thought I’d pick up pizza on my way home,” my mom says now. “Is that okay? Or we could still have sloppy joes. I could stop for some Manwich on my way home—”
“No Manwich!” I practically shout. Then I amend my outburst with, “I mean, no, don’t do that. You’re totally right, it wouldn’t feel right without her. Pizza sounds great.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a few hours, then. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I eat a bowl of cereal and take Margarine for a walk on the beach. Ocean air and crashing waves always clear my head, no matter what’s going on in my life. This is one of the few places where I rarely listen to music, because I love the ocean’s natural melody.
I firmly believe that living by the sea has a special healing quality, and I use her as my own personal therapist on a regular basis.
Margarine and I usually meander down to Mr. Autry’s house, and if the widower is on his back porch, I stop and chat with him for a while. He’s always got fresh iced tea and keeps treats for Margarine in a jar near the back door, like the beach version of an iced coffee and Puppuccino from Starbucks. We don’t make it that far today, though, because Margarine seems to slow down well before that. I turn us around early and head back home.
I refill Margarine’s water when we get there and settle on the couch. I unlock my phone and scroll through Instagram for a few minutes, checking out what my classmates are doing this summer. When I come across a photo of Kat and two girls I don’t recognize, I swipe it up and away, then switch to my messages.
Me: Want to hit the beach with me?
Shelby: god yes, but I’m helping my grandparents clean out the garage and I work the dinner shift tonight
I type outNext time!, the exclamation point offering a cheerfulness I don’t feel, then lock my phone and stand up.
It’s only one thirty, and Mom won’t be home until sometime after six. Last night Dad mentioned an inventory check at the store today, so maybe he could use my help. There’s definitely nothingpitiful about a sixteen-year-old girl doing pro bono grocery store inventory on a sunny summer Friday, right?
I go upstairs for a quick shower, give a still-panting Margarine a kiss, and head out. I pull my bike out of the garage, a seafoam-green Chatham beach cruiser I adore. It’s every bike you’ve ever seen in a beach movie—wicker basket and all.
Soon I’m drifting into the Triton Grocers parking lot. My dad started working here as a bag boy when he was fifteen and worked his way up to store manager by the time he was in his mid-twenties. It’s the perfect job for a guy like him, who has lived in the area his entire life and has no interest in being anywhere else. Food is a special type of love language that brings everyone together and is a basic necessity, so he’s able to keep up with everyone in the community he adores. And while things pick up in the summer, it’s not one of those businesses that closes or slows way down in the offseason like my mom’s gallery. It’s consistent and secure, which is all our little family really needs.
I notice four shopping carts haphazardly discarded in the rack in the middle of the lot, and out of habit I walk out to grab them after locking up my bike. I push them into the row of available carts near the store entrance.
I glide in through the sliding doors and wave at Paula, my second-favorite cashier. Martin claimed the top spot last October when, after learning that the company who made my favorite chocolate chip snack cookies was being bought out and would no longer make them, he grabbed every box we had left on the shelf and hid them in the break room for me. I reach up to wind my hair intoa topknot as I make my way past the personal care and bread aisles and weave through produce toward the back offices. I slow when I see an unfamiliar tall figure in a navy-blue Triton vest standing next to the orange display. He methodically grabs fruit from the cardboard box on a wheeled cart next to his hip, and the movement angles his face toward me. I blink and drop my arms, my long hair falling back down over my shoulders.
The boy is Gregory McLoughlin, the stranger from the beach whose laugh I can’t seem to forget, and he’s staring right at me.
8PLAYLIST:criminally overlooked tracks
“WHAT ARE YOU DOINGhere?” I blurt out.
Gregory looks different under the fluorescent lights. He’s still lanky, and somehow looks taller standing there by himself, the way a lone tree seems bigger than one surrounded by its friends in a forest. I was right that night—his eyes are brown, and his short hair looks exactly the same. Read: disorganized and messy. But I catch a few things that weren’t as noticeable in the darkness of the party that night. A smattering of freckles dots his nose, and faint shadows arc beneath his eyes. A thin silver necklace circles his neck and tunnels beneath the gray T-shirt he’s wearing under his vest.
His grin is lazy, but something sparks in his gaze. He takes something white from one of his ears—an earbud—and tucks it into his pocket. “Well, after you ditched me at that going-away party, they did make me walk into the ocean. But I swamto Nova Scotia and turned around, so now I’m back. I think I passed the test.”
“It wasn’t a going-away party.”
He shrugs, tossing an orange between his hands. “Seemed like it.”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
