Page 2 of Another Last Call
The smile that had faded flickered back as I looked around. The whole place was old, dusty, and needed a lot of work to compete with the other cabins for sale on the lake. But I’d worked summers as a contractor while in university and intended on starting my own business doing just this, so renovating it was well within my skill set. Knowing Dad, that’s why he’d left it to me in his will instead of lumping it in with the rest of the stuff left to Mom.
Even my inheritance was a lesson about working for what you wanted.
Not that I minded. Dad refused to let me be the kind of spoiled brat who felt entitled to my parents’ money. And I respected it now.
I appreciated it now.
I understood now why it was so important to know how to work with my hands, just as much as it was important for me to go to business school and learn how to work with my head. That was how Dad had made his success, and it was how I was going to, too.
The cabin played into that. Mom had no desire to deal with it or keep it. She’d gone back to England, to her hometown so she could be with her parents while she figured out life as a woman widowed too soon. And I hadn’t been there in years. As much as it had been a part of my childhood, it was prime lakefront real estate in Marble Beach. Flipping it and selling it would earn me enough to invest in starting my business a few years ahead of when I thought I’d be able to.
Though… I mean, I would’ve rather had those few more years with Dad.
But that wasn’t an option. So instead, I was going to take the savings I’d intended to start my business with and invest them in fixing up the cabin. I’d spend the winter sprucing the place up, then sell it in the spring. That would get me back my investment plus a small fortune that should see me through the early days of getting my business up and running.
First things first, though.
Two
Caleb
Iwalkedthroughthecabin, opening all the windows and letting in light and fresh air as I cleaned the upstairs bedroom. The kitchen still had all the old pots and pans we used to use, and I added the groceries I’d brought to the refrigerator and pantry. Before it got dark, I jumped in my car and drove the five minutes into town to grab light bulbs from the grocery store. Once I was back, I took a chilled beer from the fridge and headed to the deck to watch the sun go down over the lake.
Every summer of my childhood was spent here. For two months, we’d live in the cabin. Dad turned one of the spare rooms into a makeshift office and spent some mornings working. Once a week or so, he’d drive back to the city and take care of things at the office. He’d worked hard to create a business that had a team of people to take care of all the other pedestrian things he usually had to do so he could live his summers in a small slice of paradise.
I’d spend the days swimming, riding bikes down the dirt roads, and playing with the kids who lived in town. Once a week or so, Dad and I would go fishing and we’d have a big fish fry on the patio overlooking the lake.
There were plenty of other “summer kids” who lived in Marble Beach for those two months, but I didn’t know any of them well. The summer kids lived in fancy lake houses, not cabins; places that had entertainment rooms and pools and big screen TVs. They had jet skis and dirt bikes that they complained weren’t nice enough, even though they usually had the latest models. And the few that did have bicycles got shiny brand new ones every single year, it seemed.
Dad owned a fishing boat. I had my bike, which got replaced a few times as I grew, but never just because Iwanteda new one. And he’d flat-out told me “no” when I asked for a dirt bike. So I spent most of my time with the kids who lived in town, since they didn’t have jet skis or dirt bikes either.
But things changed as I got older. I hit my teens, and suddenly bike rides were for kids. High school rolled around and I would complain about having to spend the entire summer at the cabin. Two months away from my friends—my home friends, at least—felt like torture.
“You have friends in Marble Beach,” Dad would remind me.
“It’s not thesame,” I would argue back.
And it wasn’t. I would’ve never known it at the time, but summers with my Marble Beach friends were better. At home, I would’ve sat around playing video games, maybe hanging out at the park or going to the movies or whatever. All the typical shit I did the rest of the year.
But in Marble Beach, I’d have lunch at The Sea Glass, the restaurant-slash-bar near the beach that my friend’s mom owned. I’d go hiking. Hang out in the gazebo at the beach with my friends during the day and start a bonfire by the lake at night, passing bottles stolen from someone’s parents’ liquor cabinet back and forth.
The last summer I spent in Marble Beach was the year I graduated from high school. Dad insisted I go to the cabin before starting university, so I had. But he knew it was the last year I’d be there, and so did I, and at the end of the summer, I told my Marble Beach friends I wouldn’t be back. There were tears and hugs and promises to keep in touch that no one intended to keep. A few nights before I was leaving to go back home, we’d had a final bonfire on the beach, where my friends surprised me with little parting gifts. They gave me things I cherished more than any jet ski or expensive dirt bike: framed photos and handmade jewelry and, in the case of one girl I’d known since we were kids, her virginity.
In fairness, she took mine too, so it wasn’t like I left her with nothing.
It had been unexpected. I didn’t even know she liked me like that. She was about a year younger than me, but when I’d come back that summer, she’d started looking… well. She had long, thick hair and these huge, expressive eyes. And even though I remembered her mom being kind of a hippie, before that summer, she had always dressed like a bit of a tomboy. That year, though, it was tight jeans and tank tops that showed off skinny arms and the hint of curves and just…
Just perfection in the eyes of a teenage boy, you know?
And she had the cutest nose, too. It was such a weird thing to think was cute, but hers was. A bit turned up at the end and spattered with freckles, with a slight scar on the bridge that she got when we were kids.
But she’d never given me any sign that she was into me. I liked her, of course, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind that… you know,thatwas an option. I didn’t live there all year round like she did, and it didn’t seem fair to be romantic with someone I knew I wouldn’t be around for.
But she didn’t mind, apparently.
It was just her and me sitting on the beach. The bonfire was down to coals and everyone else had gone home, but we’d been deep in conversation about God knows what and hadn’t left yet. I remember we were sitting in the sand, her guitar case beside us—she’d brought it along to play around the fire like she usually did but had long since abandoned it for our conversation—and she had her legs bent, hugging her knees to her chest as she looked out at the lake when the conversation between us lulled.
“When are you leaving?” she asked.
