“It’s okay, we’ll only be there a few hours.”
Ryan ticked off the things he needed to show me on his fingers. “We’ve got to go to Spud McGee’s. They make these french fries—but it’s a whole potato that they cut into a long spiral, and then they serve it on a stick. And Hot Diggity—stupid name, I know, but they’ve got the best hot dogs. I practically lived on them this summer. And there’s a smoothie place, where, if the right person’s behind the counter, they’ll pour some vodka in your cup as they take it off the blender. We’ll skip the coaster, the thing rattles like a mofo, but maybe the Ferris wheel and definitely a funnel cake.”
“You ate like that all summer?” I laughed and tugged the hem of his shirt free from his seat belt so I could slip my fingers under and onto his hard abs. “Where do you put it?”
He grinned and came to a stop at a traffic light, leaning over to press his lips to the shoulder of my sweatshirt. Well, it was one of his sweatshirts, but I was wearing it. “I can’t wait to show you everything. I really wished you were here this summer.”
And for the last few streets of the beachside town, I thought this was a good idea, one of the best I’d had in a while. After a week of causing nothing but fights, I was making someone happy. Making Ryan happy—hopefully as happy as he made me.
The center of town had some traffic, but not much. The farther we got from the main street, and the closer to the boardwalk and sand, the more the cars dwindled. Ryan pulled into a parking lot with a ten-dollar bill in his hand, but the attendant’s booth stood empty. He idled there, his window half-lowered.
“Park anyway,” I told him. “We can leave the money under a wiper blade in case anyone comes—they’re not going to tow you.”
I should’ve told him to turn around. There was unease growing in my stomach. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe it was a horrible one.
Ryan looked disoriented the moment he stepped out of his car—he surveyed the empty lot, and the empty lot next door, with a look of confusion.
On our walk to the beach we passed Spud McGee’s. It was shuttered. Hot Diggity had a sign taped to the window: SEE YOU IN THE SPRING.
When our shoes touched the sand, his grip on my hand tightened. He looked up and down the beach, taking in the choppy water, the same dull gray as school trash cans, and the vacant sand. I could see the pier from here. The roller coaster and Ferris wheel that glowed so brightly in his stories were unlit and unmoving. The track of the coaster stripped bare of its cars and stark against the mottled gray of the cloudy sky.
I pulled him forward a few steps, leaning into him and out of the wind. It was cutting through my clothes and raising goose bumps, which rasped against the fabric of my jeans.
The wind ruffled the ocean’s surface too. Making it look like it was being prodded with a million paint brushes—nothing like the smooth, easy, blue-green waves from the photos I’d seen of Ryan, Chris, and the girls spread out on crowded sun-drenched sand.
“This is it.” Ryan finally spoke, pulling me to stand in front of him as he did so. Wrapping his arms around me and rubbing his hands up and down my arms. I was grateful, not just for the warmth, but because I didn’t want to have to see the lost expression on his face. “But it doesn’t look anything like it did. I guess I just thought … I don’t know what I was thinking. I know half the staff weren’t local and it’s hardly beach weather. Even the guard stands are gone. I guess they pull them in for the winter. I can’t even tell where mine was anymore.”
The wind turned wet. Spitting a fine mist of spray that made my lips taste salty and the flyaway strands of my wig frizz.
I felt cold. Colder than the temperature really warranted. Even this, even this good thing I’d tried to do, was just more ruin.
I couldn’t reclaim my summer any more than I could prevent my future. All I’d done today was taint the memory of a place Ryan loved.
“Let’s just go home,” he said.
My teeth were chattering too hard to agree, so I just nodded and slipped my hand in his.