Summer at Sunset: (The Summer Series Book 2) Read online

  I nod back. I think the stress might finally be starting to get to me.

  And on that note, Tyler Maxwell asks the crowd to please gather around for our first dance.

  39

  “Did you feel something?” I whisper to Graham.

  We’re slow dancing to our wedding song with all of our guests gathered around in a big circle. Also gathered around is an uninvited horde of gawking retirees (after the cake/zombie incident, I’ve started referring to them in my mind as the horde). After three members of the horde started trying to line-dance to “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” Tanya and Babette started shooing them off the dance floor.

  “Like what?” he asks.

  “Like...I hate to say it...a vibration.”

  “Wow,” says Graham. “I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”

  “What?”

  “You turning into your mother. I have to say I’m a little disappointed that it happened right before the wedding night.”

  I gently swat him on the back of the neck.

  “Stop it. You’re telling me you didn’t feel anything?” He doesn’t respond. “You did! You felt it too!”

  He shrugs. “I might have. Maybe it’s a sandworm.”

  “A Dune themed wedding would have been so cool,” I say, dreamily. “We could have ridden a sandworm off into the sunset. I could have been Chani, and you could have been Graham Muad’Dib.”

  “You are so lame,” says Graham, pulling me close and kissing the top of my head.

  “Stuck with me now,” I mumble into his shoulder.

  After our wedding song ends, Tyler starts up his rendition of “Blurred Lines,” which sets off quite a bit of shrieking from Sarah, Amber, Tanya, and the horde. Before long, I’m caught in the middle of a massive, pulsating, throng of young and old, and somebody’s shoved a Rusty Twizzler into my hand. I raise the cup over my head, like I’m at spring break in South Padre Island. It’s either that or risk spilling Rusty Twizzler all over myself.

  “Ah!”

  I take that back. Just spilled some on my head.

  Then Tyler segues from “Blurred Lines” into “Sexy Back,” and suddenly there’s Dad, twerking. He’s been proudly working on his twerk ever since the cruise—so, for about two years now—but I haven’t noticed much improvement. He’s bent down to the ground with his tuxedo clad butt up in the air.

  VIP...Drinks on me...

  “Whoooo!”

  And here come Janice and Francine. Poor Dad. He just wants to twerk for the sake of twerking. He doesn’t do it for the women.

  You see what you're twerking with...Look at those hips...

  Janice smacks Dad on the butt, then pulls her long blonde hair extensions out to the sides as she shakes her hips. My word.

  “Yee haw!” says Francine. Her short black hair is gelled and spiked for the occasion, and she’s put on a slash of hot pink lipstick. She parks herself on the other side of Dad, so close that if he stands up he’s going to bang his head right into her—

  “Hello, Dolly!”

  I turn around to see who’s addressing me so oddly, only to find that it’s Roger, and he wasn’t talking to me at all. He’s heading straight for Mom, who’s been uncomfortably observing everything from the edge of the dance floor. I pull Graham a little closer to where Mom’s standing, so we can hear what they’re saying.

  “You look lovely tonight, Joan,” says Roger, taking one of her hands and kissing it. Ew.

  “Thank you,” says Mom. “And you, as well.”

  I narrow my eyes. Bullshit. Roger’s wearing a bright orange polo shirt with gold chains around his neck, and I distinctly recall Mom saying—on several occasions—that men who wear gold chains are assholes.

  “Your husband is making quite a splash,” he says, motioning to Dad who’s now been flanked on his two remaining sides by Nadine and Lorraine.

  “Oy, please,” says Mom. “He just likes to think he can do that dance. That, what do you call it? Twerping?”

  “Are you sure about that?” says Roger. “You know, if you were my woman, I would never twerp with another.”

  “Huh?”

  Roger sidles closer to Mom and puts an arm around her shoulders.

  “This might be our last chance, Joanie. What do you say you and I make your husband jealous with a little horizontal Tango?”

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  Did I hear him correctly? I look up at Graham, who confirms by facial expression alone, that I did.

  “I don’t know that dance,” says Mom. “But maybe we could Foxtrot?”

  By the expression on Roger’s face, I can tell that he’s trying to figure out if Foxtrot is code for something kinky.

  “Well, I don’t know that dance,” he says, apparently deciding that it is. But maybe you could teach it to me...privately. My golf cart is just over—”

  “Excuse me,” says an unfamiliar voice.

  Graham and I turn around. It’s Dad, fresh out of his twerk. He’s very sweaty and red-faced, and pretty much exactly how you would expect a late sixties-ish man to look after twerking. But his voice seems different. Commanding. All that blood rushing to his head must have caused a similar phenomenon to when he rode Space Mountain. He’s determined. He’s pumped up. He sounds like he’s shoved his head inside a Darth Vader helmet.

  “Excuse me,” he says again, taking a few steps closer to Roger until he’s standing directly in front of him. “Take your hands off of my wife.”

  Roger takes a step away from Mom and holds his hands up in front of him. “Take it easy, Rich! I was just trying to have a good time.” With one hand he reaches into the inside pocket of his suit coat. I clutch Graham’s arm. First a knife fight, and now a gun? I relax as Roger instead pulls out the bottle of red Gatorade. He untwists the cap, takes a sip, and then holds it out toward Dad. A peace offering. Dad’s eyes bulge.

  “That thing landed me in the hospital!” says Dad. “I’ve had it up to here with your good times!” He wrenches the Gatorade bottle out of Roger’s hand and shakes it out all over the ground, splashing a liberal amount onto my white shoes. “Now I want you to get away from my wife, get away from my daughter’s wedding, and don’t show your face around here again until my wife and I are back home!”

  With a few heavy buffalo snorts from his nostrils, Dad grabs Mom by the hand and leads her back to the safety of their table. Mom is blushing fiercely and looking very much the giddy schoolgirl.

  Roger turns to Graham. “Tell your father I’ll be happy to join him again for golf once those snowflakes are gone. Come on, Diane. Let’s get out of here.”

  Roger’s date, Diane, had been standing next to us the entire time he was hitting on Mom.

  “You’re still going to leave with him?” I ask, perplexed.

  She shrugs. “I’m paid for ‘til seven.”

  ***

  The next couple of hours fly by, and before I’m quite ready for it all to be over, Tyler Maxwell is announcing that it’s time for the bride to toss the bouquet. I grab my bouquet from the table and climb the steps onto the bandstand.

  “All the single ladies!” says Tyler. “Come on up front!”

  Almost the entire female component of the horde starts converging on the bandstand, elbowing each other out of the way. That’s when I feel it again—vibrations under my feet. I glance at Tyler and can see it on his face that he felt it too. What is that? He continues anyway.

  “Alright, Summer. Into position. On three. One...two...three!”

  I toss the bouquet backwards over my head and spin around fast so as not to miss anything. Francine jumps into the air and grabs for it first, but is quickly tackled by Janice. After Janice has her pinned, Nadine starts prying it out of Francine’s fingers. Nadine holds the bouquet triumphantly into the air, only to be side-tackled by Gloria. Gloria hangs onto it for a mere three seconds, after which she’s taken down by a woman in knee-highs rolled down to the ankle. After that, it’s nothing
but a blurry pig pile of white hair, flowered tops, and broken hips. I hold my breath as the pile writhes and twists and the occasional arm or leg shoots out from beneath. Then I see Lorraine crawling out the back. She’s got it. She’s got the bouquet! She staggers to her feet and holds it up over her head, and then...

  Something’s wrong.

  Lorraine stumbles. In fact, everybody is stumbling. I stumble right into Tyler Maxwell, who catches me and pulls me away from the edge of the bandstand. It’s the vibrations. They’re increasing rapidly. I look out at the crowd and watch, frozen, as an invisible hand seems to draw a large, jagged circle around the pile of women. Then, the edges of the circle begin to crumble inward, and the pile drops down about a foot. The women are screaming and trying to stand up, but they’re unable to gain the footing needed to pull themselves out of the enormous—

  “SINKHOLE!” screams Tyler into his microphone.

  Florida doesn’t have earthquakes. Florida has sinkholes.

  My wedding is sinking.

  I look desperately through the crowd for Graham, and spot him sprinting toward the bandstand. He runs up the steps and grabs me by the hand. I’m still hanging onto Tyler, so I drag him along with me. Boy, did Squirrelly Dan and The Nuts luck out tonight.

  We run across the common, grabbing Mom and Dad along the way, and head for the safety of the sidewalk across the street. Then Graham, Eric, and John run back toward the bandstand to help the others. The women in the pig pile have sunken even deeper into the hole. I watch from a distance as Graham, Eric, John, and several others, lean over the crumbling edges of the sinkhole, and start pulling them to safety. In the nick of time, Graham pulls Nadine out, and hustles her across the street.

  With a sound like thunder and suction cups, the hole in the ground widens, and the bandstand collapses into it. A few seconds later, the sinkhole swallows up all of our folding tables and chairs. It swallows up the cake table, the LED candles, the Happy Birthday confetti, and every last McDonald’s French fry.

  All of it.

  Gone.

  40

  My wedding guests are screaming. The horde is screaming. The sound of sirens is growing closer. God, am I sick of the sound of sirens. Our entire wedding party huddles together on the sidewalk as police, fire, and assorted emergency vehicles arrive on the scene and begin cordoning off the town common. After about thirty minutes, some of the stupider members of the horde start inching their way back toward the hole, cameras in the air.

  “We’re sure that everybody got out, right?” asks Babette.

  “Of course,” says Graham. “Lorraine, Gloria, Edna, Margo, Nadine—”

  “What about Francine and Janice?”

  “I...I don’t know,” says Graham. “I didn’t see them. Somebody else must have pulled them out. Eric? Dad?”

  Eric shakes his head. “I didn’t see them.”

  “Dad?”

  “I’m not sure,” says John, struggling to remember. “I pulled out so many. I lost track!”

  “The last time I saw them they were trying to catch the bouquet,” I say. “Francine was the first to get it. Then Janice shoved her. Then...oh.”

  “Oh what?” asks Babette.

  “Well,” I swallow hard. “If Francine was the first to catch the bouquet, and then Janice fell on top of her—” I act the scene out with my hands. “That means they would have been...at the very bottom of the pile.”

  In other words, ground zero.

  Babette’s eyes widen. “You don’t mean...” She clamps a hand over her mouth.

  “No!” I say. “Those two are tough! They probably crawled out and took off before you guys even got there.”

  “How deep do you think that thing is?” asks Eric.

  “Could be fifty feet by now,” says John. “Nobody’s coming out of that thing alive.”

  I feel dizzy. I may not have had any love for Francine and Janice, but I certainly never wished a sinkhole to swallow them up. At least not seriously wished it.

  “It was only three or four feet when we pulled everybody out,” says Graham, adamantly. “We worked fast. Nobody got left behind. We checked. We checked, didn’t we?” He looks desperately at Eric.

  “Of course we did,” says Eric. “The ground hadn’t even caved in yet, it had just sunk a little. There was nowhere they could have gone. Don’t worry, man. They’re here somewhere.”

  “There! There they are!” shouts Babette, pointing across the common. “I see them! Oh, thank God!”

  We all look to where Babette’s pointing. Far away, I see two women from behind—one with short black hair, and one with long blonde hair—heading down the street toward a residential area. Relief washes over me. Everybody got out. Everyone is safe. I close my eyes and put my head in my hands, shivering a bit. Is this what shock feels like? I thought I knew what shock felt like ever since Mom and Dad showed up as chaperones to my prom. Yet, this feels different.

  “Summer, Graham,” says John. I raise my head at the sound of his voice. “I have a feeling the police are going to want to clear the area soon. Why don’t you two head on back to the house? The rest of us won’t be far behind.”

  The words every woman dreams of hearing on her wedding day—the police are going to want to clear the area.

  “Okay,” I say. “Yeah, I think I’d like to get out of here. I don’t feel very well.” Selfish tears are starting to sting my eyes. Duke’s Landing just fell into a sinkhole, and I’m getting teary-eyed because this wasn’t the send-off I’d been hoping for. Tanya, sensing my impending breakdown, pulls me into a hug.

  “It was a beautiful wedding,” she says. “No matter how it ended. We’ve got the pictures to prove it.”

  “Actually,” says Eric, “I think I saw the camera go down the hole.”

  Tanya shoots him a dirty look.

  “Too soon?” Eric pats me on the back. “I was kidding, Sum. The pictures are fine. You can post them all over Facebook tomorrow and nobody will ever know that it was anything other than perfect.”

  “Yeah,” I snort. “Until they turn on the news.”

  “Your wedding made the news!” says Tanya, shaking her fists in the air. “Yay!”

  “Oh, but wait,” I say. “Graham and I don’t even have a car to leave in. Or a golf cart.” There was supposed to be a limo picking us up tonight, but the orange barriers that the police are hauling into the road say otherwise.

  “Not true,” says Mom, stepping forward. She and Dad, believe it or not, have been complete rocks throughout all of this. They’ve been fetching bottled water from Starbucks, and even bought some blankets from the Sunset Havens gift shop to drape around people’s shoulders—like the police do at the end of Lifetime movies. Like I said before, when something actually serious happens in life, they’re fine. Tell them two inches of snow are coming? Forget it.

  “We have a little surprise for you,” says Dad. “We made it ourselves. Come on.”

  Mom and Dad direct us down the sidewalk and over to a parking lot by the public restrooms. Parked in one of the spaces, is a golf cart decorated for a wedding. Two banners are strung across the back, spelling out the words Just Married on burlap triangles. The rest of the cart is wrapped in streamers and bows and there are bunches of flowers everywhere. It’s beautiful.

  “We’re on Twitter and Pinterest,” says Dad, proudly.

  I wrap my arms around the both of them, squeezing them tightly.

  “Thank you,” I say. “If I haven’t told you before, I’m glad that you’re my parents.”

  “You don’t have to thank us,” says Mom, wiping a tear from her eye. “Just enjoy it. Go on home. Babette and I will deal with all of this.” She motions carelessly to the geological disaster unfolding behind us.

  “We will.” I give Mom another hug.

  “And make us some grandchildren,” she whispers into my ear.

  “Mom!” I laugh. “Geez. Give it some time.”

  Graham and I get into the golf cart and wave goodb
ye to our guests—many of them covered in dirt and debris. We pull away from the curb to the sound of sirens, horns, and Elvis Presley, trickling perpetually down from the PA system. Mom and Dad wave happily back, ecstatic that their only daughter has been married off at last. It’s a pretty antiquated idea. But, then again, so are they.

  It’s funny to think that I wanted my wedding down here in Florida because I thought planning one with my mother would be the worst thing in the world. Then my entire wedding literally fell into a hole.

  So is life.

  And so ends another beautiful day at Sunset Havens.

  The End

  ⌘

  We’re about halfway back to the Blenderman house, when we catch up to Francine and Janice walking down the sidewalk. Graham slows the golf cart down as we pass, and then comes to a stop along the curb. I turn around in my seat to speak to them, to ask how they managed to get out of the sinkhole without anybody seeing, why they didn’t—

  It’s not them.

  I’m looking into the face of a short man with dyed, jet black hair, and Roger’s paid escort, Diane—Diane with the blonde hair extensions that she probably buys at the same mall kiosk as Janice. My mouth is suddenly quite dry.

  “I’m...I’m sorry,” I say. “We...I...we thought you were somebody else.”

  “That’s quite alright,” says Diane. “Summer, isn’t it?”

  I notice now that she and this man aren’t dressed anything like Janice and Francine. I mean, the guy is wearing a pair of black cargo shorts and his legs are hairy. But, from a distance, we couldn’t see...we only saw the backs of their heads and we thought...

  Oh, man.

  “Summer, yeah. That’s me,” I mumble. “I, um, I thought you had left a long time ago, with Roger?”

  “It’s seven fifteen, honey. Roger’s time was up. I met Jerry here across the street at the Gator Bar. We’re going back to his place.”

  Jerry pops the collar of his blue polo shirt and gives me a wink.

  “Besides,” continues Diane, “Roger had this big idea of sneaking back over to your reception, hiding under the bandstand, and surprising all the women who came up to catch the bouquet.” She laughs. “I wanted to be far away when that happened. Roger can be a little grabby, if you know what I mean.” She gives me a wink. “Jerry and I did hear a lot of sirens after we left the bar. Everything alright over there?”