Summer at Sea: The Summer Series Book 1 Read online

  “Joan!” interrupts Dad, shouting from...the basement? What could he possibly be doing in the basement?

  “Oy,” says Mom. “Let me go see what he wants.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, as soon as she’s gone. I smooth out my hair, which I threw into a who-cares-I’m-traveling-with-my-parents sort of ponytail this morning. It goes well with my travel sweats.

  “Eric sent me to pick you guys up,” says Graham, still surveying me.

  “What are you looking at?”

  He shrugs. “I like the outfit.”

  “Sorry I’m not wearing a mini-dress and stilettos.”

  “Why are you apologizing? I said I liked it.”

  “I assumed you were joking.”

  “Nope. It’d be a little strange if you had stilettos on right now, don’t you think? You’re traveling with your parents. No, I just meant that you look cute with the yoga pants and the —” he twirls his hand around the top of his head, referring to my ponytail.

  “Oh,” I say, a bit thrown. “Thanks.”

  I suppose that now is a good time to tell you that there was a short time, in my teen years, when I did actually think that Graham might be interested in me. He and Eric had gone off to college in Boston, and often times they would come home together for the weekend. That’s when Graham would do the strangest things.

  For example, one time he stood in the driveway shouting my name through a bullhorn until I came out of the house. When I finally came out, all he did was smile, say hi, and then walk inside to see my brother. Another time he wrapped my entire car in toilet paper. He wrapped it up so much that I had to cut my way in with scissors. Once I got in I found a note on the driver’s seat that said Hi.

  I knew that both of these occurrences could have been attributed to Graham being a lunatic. But there were other things. Like if I were sitting in my room doing my homework, he would knock on the door, sit down on my bed and just start talking. He’d talk about college, or living in the city, or the books he was being forced to read in English Lit. Usually it was just until Eric was ready to go wherever they were going, but still. Nobody had forced him to come in.

  One time, when we were having one of these little chats, he went so far as to offer to take me to my prom. It was kind of out of the blue, and I found it to be a bit of an insulting offer—I mean, I was perfectly capable of finding a date to the prom—but still. Nobody had forced him to make the offer. So when it was one week before the prom and I still hadn’t managed to scour up a date (completely beyond my control), I thought that maybe I would actually take him up on it.

  Okay, fine—I was excited to take him up on it. I’d lain awake in bed quite a few nights imagining what it would be like to spend prom night with him, all dressed up and in a limousine. It was so surreal and terrifying. Graham to me was a man, while I still felt like an awkward little girl—especially when I was in his presence. But I had the crazy idea knocking around my head that maybe the bullhorn and the toilet paper and the cozy little chats weren’t just Graham being goofy and silly. I had the crazy idea knocking around that maybe he actually liked me.

  Hey, it was a nice thought.

  By the time I had the guts to take him up on the offer, he’d started dating a twenty-five year old cocktail waitress. The worst part is that I didn’t know he’d started dating a twenty-five year old cocktail waitress until I called him on the phone and asked if the offer still stood. There was this horrifyingly awkward silence on the other end while he came up with the words to tell me that he’d started seeing someone. He said that since it was such a new relationship it might be weird if he took me to the prom. He apologized a lot, and I said no that’s okay a lot, until finally I hung up the phone, flopped face first into my pillow, and didn’t breathe for the next two hours. That’s when I realized he’d just been goofing around and teasing me, and all the stuff with the bullhorn and the toilet paper were simply because Graham is a raving lunatic.

  Lesson learned.

  In case you were wondering, I did find a date to the prom—my platonic friend Barry from marching band. It was a very pleasant evening.

  Anyway, now that Graham and my brother are business partners, he remains a constant in my life. We are graced by his presence on all of the major holidays, typically accompanied by his gorgeous girlfriend of the week. (Information that I provide solely so that you may form a more complete picture of the man that is standing in my living room and not because I take any interest in his love life. Like I said, lesson learned.)

  Neither one of us has ever brought up the prom incident. Thank God.

  “You were saying that Eric sent you to pick us up?” I ask. “What happened to the limo?”

  “Limo?” Graham glances at our pile of suitcases, his eyes focusing on The Duffle, and then looks nervously back at me. “Didn’t you know that he was sending me to pick you up?”

  I look at him dumbly and walk over to the living room window to look outside. There is a yellow Camaro parked at the curb—a yellow Camaro with about six inches of trunk space. Graham shrugs helplessly as a small trace of amusement passes across his face. He would find this funny.

  Of course Eric didn’t book us a limo. One teensy little expense that would have made this vacation less of a living nightmare for me, and he decides to cheap out and send Graham in his little shoebox car. I’m about to screech all of this at Graham, when I snap my mouth shut. It’s not his fault. I should just handle this matter like a mature adult.

  “Mom! Dad!” I shriek in the direction of the basement stairs. “You’re going to have to unpack a whole lot of your crap!” I motion to Graham to come further into the house and close the door behind him. This could take a while.

  “What are you talking about?” Mom asks. She’s emerged from the basement carrying a roll of toilet paper and is unzipping one of the suitcases.

  “You can’t bring toilet paper!” I cry. “This is a cruise ship. They will have toilet paper!”

  Dad comes upstairs behind her, carrying a hammer. “There’s no toilet paper on the ship?” He looks desperately at Mom before heading towards the bathroom.

  “THERE WILL BE TOILET PAPER ON THE SHIP!” I shout. I am heading for a full-on meltdown, when the soothing shade of Blue Dye #1 sidles up beside me.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Hartwell,” says Graham, “there is absolutely nothing to worry about. Eric sent me over to drive you into Boston. That’s all.”

  “Because Eric was too cheap to book us a limo,” I chime in. Mom should know that her perfect son isn’t always so perfect.

  “How fabulous!” says Mom, clasping her hands in front of her chest.

  I should have known that any crisis resulting in additional time spent with Graham would seem fabulous to her.

  “It’s not that fabulous,” I say, walking to the living room window and pulling back the curtains. “Graham’s car is a little on the small side.” Mom’s face melts into panic-stricken horror as she pushes past me to see for herself.

  “I’m having a nervous breakdown,” she declares. She slumps back into an armchair, the toilet paper falling from her fingertips and unraveling across the floor. Dad is just kind of frozen in place, overwhelmed by the news, and stuck between revisiting the bathroom and joining my mother in her nervous breakdown.

  The trouble is that Mom and Dad, under my advisement, dropped their only car off yesterday for repairs. I thought that they wouldn’t need it for the week. Not that either Mom or Dad would have been able to drive us into Boston with the pressure of the upcoming cruise bouncing around in their heads. We may as well drive ourselves straight off the Zakim Bridge.

  “What if we take my car?” I suggest.

  “What do you know about driving into Boston?” asks Mom.

  “What’s the big deal about driving into Boston?”

  “Oy, please,” says Mom, dismissing me with a wave of her hand.

  Oy please is Mom’s way of saying You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. It’s a
very versatile phrase, as it can be used at the grocery store to acknowledge an increase in the price of canned corn, or after being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. If aliens suddenly invaded Earth and were systematically blasting apart all of the houses on our street, Mom would look out the front door, say Oy please and then go back inside.

  “What do you mean ‘Oy, please’? I’ve had my license for ten years now.” I glance over at Graham, embarrassed, but he’s once again staring quizzically at The Duffle and doesn’t seem to hear.

  “Listen to her, Richard!” says Mom. “Driving into Boston!”

  “Okay, forget it. What if Graham drives my car?” I hate myself for conceding that I don’t have the wherewithal to drive into the city. I mean, it’s their fault that I wasn’t allowed to drive on a highway until I was twenty-two, not mine.

  “No,” says Mom. “We don’t do that kind of thing.”

  “Okay, how about you drive my car?”

  “We’re not driving your car. It’s unreliable.”

  “How come you let me drive it then?”

  Mom is about to defy all logic in order to answer my question, when Graham interrupts us.

  “Have you got any bungee cords, Mr. Hartwell?” he asks. “Because I think that we can manage to make everything fit. You’ve just got to think outside the box. Or in this case, outside the Camaro.” He winks at Mom who recovers from her nervous breakdown long enough to beam back at him.

  Yeah, great joke. Bungee cords? This should all go swimmingly. The request propels Dad into motion and he heads back down to the basement. I grab my suitcase and head out the door, ignoring my mother’s frantic pleas to let Graham carry it lest I strain myself.

  Graham follows me out carrying The Duffle with one hand, which I didn’t even know was possible.

  “You’re going to strain yourself,” I say.

  Graham laughs and jiggles The Duffle. “What’s in here anyway? A couple dozen severed heads?”

  “Four million dollars cash. Dad’s got a meth lab in the basement.”

  “I knew it.”

  Graham pops open the trunk and I see that it is already half-filled to capacity with his lone suitcase. He puts The Duffle on the ground and heaves my suitcase in next to his. Full.

  “This one might have to go up top,” says Graham, nodding toward The Duffle.

  Of course it does. The one time I get to ride in a cool car, there’s going to be a duffle bag full of my parents’ underwear strapped to the roof.

  3

  “I’m sorry you got stuck dealing with this,” I mumble, more to myself than to Graham.

  “With what?”

  “Um, this.” I motion toward The Duffle, and then toward the house. I thought it was obvious.

  “I love your parents,” says Graham. “They’re cute.”

  “Cute, right. I suppose that’s one way to describe them.”

  “How come you haven’t moved out yet?” Graham asks, as if it were just the simplest thing in the world to do. As if it wouldn’t go completely against The Prophecy.

  Let me explain.

  We live in a college town. By living at home and going to college close by, Mom and Dad saved a ton of money on room and board and never had to worry about me drinking or partying too much because I was always right here.

  Always.

  Right.

  Here.

  It made financial sense. I couldn’t argue with my parents in that regard. And it alleviated their anxiety—well, some of their anxiety. The only thing that will alleviate all of their anxiety is a visit from the Grim Reaper. But I digress. Had I lived in the dorms, I would have had to deal with frantic phone calls from my mother and nightly video chats to make sure I wasn’t lying about having eaten enough. Most of the time I convinced myself that it was worth it.

  Most of the time.

  Then there were the other times when I felt so smothered that it was all I could do not to run screaming from the house. But did I? No. Even after graduating from college, I stayed put. Five years later, I continue to stay put. The tiny seed of regret that was planted the moment I agreed to go to school close to home was growing into a blistering resentment. No, I take that back. It has already grown into a blistering resentment. I feel trapped, and I have nobody to blame but my parents.

  You thought I was going to say that I have nobody to blame but myself, right?

  Wrong.

  My brother Eric went away to college with no argument from our parents, and he never looked back. I, on the other hand, was made to feel as if I were personally digging my parents’ graves if I made the choice to move out. There were so many guilt-driven reasons to stay and so many self-centered reasons to leave, what was I to do?

  It was during one of these moments of extreme frustration that my mother chose to say—and I always imagine that she said it in a booming clairvoyant voice while wearing lots of jangly jewelry— “You’ll live here until you get married!”

  Fuck.

  That’s what I call The Prophecy—Mom’s antiquated idea that girls should live at home until they’re married. And after all these years, I’ve come to believe that it’s my destiny. I honestly don’t see another way out. As much as my parents drive me crazy, I don’t want to be the one who pushes them over the edge—and I feel like packing my things and moving out on my own would do just that. So here I stay—the good daughter—biding my time and biting my tongue until I find a husband to whisk me away into the world of the sane.

  I like to blame my situation on the Universe and the idea of everything happening for a reason. Like perhaps the love of my life is scheduled to get a flat tire in front of my parents’ house a week from Tuesday, and had I been living in an apartment downtown we never would have met. It appears that the Universe and my mother are similar influences on the trajectory of my life.

  “It just makes more sense to live here and save money until I get married,” I say, flinching at the sound of my mother’s words being parroted out of my mouth.

  “Are you engaged?” asks Graham. I do not appreciate the look of confusion on his face.

  “You know I’m not engaged.”

  “Are you seeing somebody?”

  “Not at the moment.” I avoid eye contact.

  “Horny?”

  “No!” I laugh. “I don’t remember this being any of your business, Blenderman.”

  “It just sounds like you might be living here for a while.” He slams the trunk shut and leans against the car, arms folded across his chest. He looks me slowly up and down again.

  “I’ve done the calculations, thank you. And why do you keep looking at me like that?” I turn away and stare at the speed limit sign across the street. “It’s disturbing.”

  Graham laughs. “That’s exactly why I keep looking at you like that.”

  I continue to avoid eye contact and busy myself with plucking cat hair off of my yoga pants.

  “Maybe you should learn some stress reduction techniques, if you know what I mean.”

  “Excuse me?” I look up, eyebrows raised.

  “Meditation.” He gives me a wink.

  “Right. Meditation.” I air quote the word. “And who’s going to teach me these techniques? Let me guess.” I look him critically up and down, attempting to make him as uncomfortable as he’s been making me. But all I succeed in doing is noticing that he’s gotten himself a rather nice tan.

  “I’m just saying that you’re an adult, and if you’re not happy, you should do something about it,” says Graham, seemingly unfazed by my perusal of his body. In fact, he seems rather pleased with himself. “You don’t have to wait around for a man to rescue you. You do know what year it is, right?”

  “It’s not that simple,” I say.

  This is humiliating. I mull over his words as we stand in silence waiting for Dad to appear with the bungee cords. I am an adult. I imagine—and only for a mere millisecond—that it is only our two suitcases that need to be loaded up. Perhaps we are off to Bermuda on o
ur honeymoon. Mom and Dad, relaxing from having just planned our lavish wedding, are staying home, on a planet far, far, away. I stifle a laugh at the thought of Graham and I on our honeymoon. I would be hiding behind a newspaper while he organized a Zumba class on the beach.

  It just sounds like you might be living here for a while. His words have really struck a nerve. As you can imagine, things are getting a bit desperate for me in the man department. I’m not admitting to being some sort of basement dwelling psychopath that fantasizes about marrying every man she comes into contact with in order to escape from her parents’ house. It’s not like I’m going to drug Graham, put on a flea market wedding dress, and have my cat perform the nuptials in order to fulfill The Prophecy. It’s just that the thought of freedom from my parents has really started to take up a lot of my time.

  On any given day, the following guidelines are generally in place:

  1) If I come home after midnight, Mom and Dad freak out.

  2) If I come home smelling like alcohol, Mom and Dad attempt to admit me to rehab.

  I committed these offenses a handful of times with a few girls from school. But after walking into the house and experiencing Mom’s histrionics, it just wasn’t worth keeping up. I also couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for her, sitting up all night worrying about me. Imagining me kidnapped or dead in a ditch. After a while, my two girlfriends ended up in serious relationships and didn’t want to go out to the bars much anyway. So it all kind of worked out.

  Sort of.

  Online dating is out of the question because Mom has established that I should never, ever, go out with anybody from the Internet—as if the Internet is its own planet inhabited by murderers and rapists. And even if I did manage to go out on a blind date, Mom would probably have Dad follow us to the restaurant and sit a few tables away, hiding behind a menu like Hercule Poirot. And when I say “probably” I mean that she has suggested it in the not so distant past.

  Basically, if I don’t meet a guy at the school where I work, it’s just never going to happen. I’m a middle school librarian, and since my adolescent students are out of the question, that leaves two male teachers—one of which is retiring next year, the other of which is dating our gym teacher, Mr. Wilbur. The Prophecy could quite possibly remain unfulfilled indefinitely.