Summer's Kiss (The Boys of Ocean Beach 1)

Completely.

“Mom?” I yell, hoping this is just some case of you can’t use the sink and the shower at the same time. “Mom!”

I drop the bar to the floor with a thud before pushing the soapy hair out of my face and stick my head out of the shower. Nothing. The camper is quiet. I do hear talking outside. After grabbing a towel, I run over to look out a window. Two people stand over my water hookup. “Hell no,” I mutter, and wrap my hair in a towel and my body in my mother’s soft cotton robe and storm outside.

“What did you do?” I ask, running up to them. They’re an odd pair. An older woman and younger man. She stands over him in a terry cloth dress while he unhooks the pipe I watched Jimmy attach two hours ago. Shampoo suds drip down the back of my neck and I wipe them with my towel.

“You stole my water!” the woman shouted. She’s older, in her seventies at least, and her finger is in my face. Over her shoulder is a newly parked camper. She must have just pulled in.

“No I didn’t! We just hooked up where they told us.”

“Young lady, I’ve had this lot every summer since 1984. I know which hook-up is mine.” She pointed to my now-unattached pipe. “That one is mine. Yours is the other one.”

“Does it even matter?” I glance at the man, who so far has said nothing. I’d like to say he’s following the conversation but he’s staring at my chest. I look down and see my robe has slipped. “Nice,” I say. I cinch the belt.

“Dorothy is right,” he says. “You’re hooked to the wrong spot, but it’s no big deal. Let me reattach.”

“No big deal? You could have knocked first or something.”

He looks at me with a pair of amused, familiar, turquoise blue eyes.

Oh no.

“I knocked. No one answered.”

“I was in the shower.”

His eyes travel up and down my body, landing on the towel in my hair. “I noticed.”

He’s wearing an orange cap. My eyes search his arm and spot the tattoo. It’s the serial killer from this morning! Did he follow us here? It seems unlikely, since he knows Dorothy’s name.

Great. Now he knows where I live. I glace around for the other guy but don’t see him.

“Well, are you going to fix it?” I ask, wrapping my arms around my waist.

“It’s not really my job.”

I try to determine if he’s joking or not. The amused look is gone, replaced with a challenging smirk. I don’t know who this jerk is, but I can feel the shampoo caking in my hair and dripping down my legs. “What? You helped her.” I point to the retreating form of the old woman, who, now that she has water, no longer cares about the two of us.

“I’ve known Dorothy since I was six. She makes me biscuits and homemade jam. No way I’m pissing her off.” He leans against the side of my camper and I notice that, beneath the smug expression and scruffy beard, he’s all sharp bone structure. Not girly. Masculine with a lean jaw and those obnoxious, pretty eyes. He’s not just a potential serial killer. He’s a handsome jerk, too.

“So you’re blackmailing me for baked goods to fix my water?”

“Something like that.”

“Something like what?”

He crouches on the ground and attaches what I assume is the water service underneath my camper. It only takes him a minute, and when he stands up he brushes off his hands. “I’ll let you know,” he says with a cheesy wink, and once again I watch him leave while I stand alone by my trailer.

* * *

Sleeping in the camper proves more comfortable than I hoped. Or maybe I’m just exhausted, because I don’t wake up until mid-morning. From my bed I can see my mother is in what we call “The Zone.” She spent last night setting up her work station. This includes a laptop, several notebooks, three pencils, a pen, and a couple of other current objects she likes to have around. An electronic owl with a moving head peeks at me from its perch on the counter. I’m not surprised she’s already working. It took us three days to travel here, which is enough time for her to get antsy to begin writing. I plan a quick exit from the camper.

Behind the curtain in my “room” I wrangle myself into a bathing suit. It’s a two-piece, kind of. I mean, technically it’s a two-piece, but I’ve never been that comfortable parading around half naked, so the edges of the top and bottom of this one almost touch. I tug a cover-up over the swimsuit and head out the door with a container of yogurt and a fast, “bye,” to my occupied mother.

Two new beach chairs, with the price tags still on from the Jiffy Mart, lean against the camper. I take one and grab my beach bag and set off in the direction of the shore.

Ocean Beach Family Campground is located on the edge of the Inter Coastal Waterway, which is kind of like a salt water river between the mainland and the outer islands. Ocean Beach is directly across from us, a mere swim away, where quaint cottages intermix with massive waterfront homes. I stare at the waterway and the boats cruising in front of the campground beach and pretend for a moment there are not a hundred trailers behind me, including the one with a plastic bald eagle mounted on its ‘porch’.