Sunset Summer: Love on Summer Break Book 2, page 1
Sunset Summer
Copyright © 2021 by Stephanie J. Scott
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems. Without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover image © DepositPhotos – boggy22
Cover Design © Designed with Grace
Edits by MK Edits
ISBN 978-1-954952-02-7
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
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CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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Big Wild Summer: Love on Summer Break book 3 | CHAPTER ONE
Also by Stephanie J. Scott
Acknowledgements
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Get updates on book releases with Stephanie J. Scott’s author newsletter
CHAPTER ONE
FOLLOWING THE LEGACY of a popular sister wasn’t easy. In my case, following the legacy of Grace Hayes, the Grace Hayes, was like sifting through the wreckage of a wayward party barge.
And that right there proved how much I knew about popularity and parties—I’d just described a party as a barge. I barely knew anything about boats.
For my entire existence, I’d been known as Grace’s kid sister. The one with the weird name. Holliday, or Holli for short, which wasn’t so weird in my opinion. Even though some kids started a movement in third grade to call me Chris, short for Christmas. You know, because Holliday = holiday = Christmas. Thankfully, that faded by Easter and none of them thought to call me East. Or worse, Eggs.
Grace’s notoriety as a capital P Party Girl had spread over the years across town. The Catholic high school kids knew about Grace from the students who’d been sent there after being permanently suspended from our school, West Ginsburg High. Grace had often contributed to their suspension in the first place, sentencing them to finish school under God’s watch. Our sister school, East Ginsburg, knew about Grace because she’d dated a Whitman’s candy sampler of their football team, hockey team, and baseball team. She left her mark on all three sports seasons.
Even Grace graduating couldn’t stop her wreckage from capsizing my life. My summer plans now thoroughly shredded, I faced endless weeks in exile. All Grace’s fault.
See, there was this party.
“Holli, wake up,” Grandma’s voice jolted me awake from the front seat of my grandparents’ minivan. In place of the van’s comatose digital clock, a wristwatch affixed to the dash blinked eleven-twenty a.m. “We’re almost home.”
Home. Their home, in Deer Cove. Home to my grandparents and no one else I knew. A tiny beach town along Lake Michigan and a ninety-minute drive from Ginsburg where I lived. Ginsburg, where every plan I’d made for this summer lived.
Out the van window, a laundromat slumped next to a bait and tackle shop. Even the exit to Deer Cove was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it afterthought.
I leaned back against the headrest, my mind drifting back to where I’d resisted the whole ride. To my sister. My last glimpse of Grace as I’d loaded into the van, she’d given me an indifferent nod. Grace with her arm angled into a sling and bandages covering the stitches above her eye. She’d come out of the accident banged up but not beaten down. In fact, she may have had another party lined up that very night. Not that my parents knew.
And stupid me, I still felt bad for her.
Even though she was the very reason for my lockdown with the grans while she remained free back home. Funny, I’d heard firstborn kids were supposed to get the harsher rules and punishments. But she wasn’t the one being sent away for summer.
Grandpop turned after the retro Sunset Inn sign on the corner of their property. Grandma considered the sign’s cartoonish cursive back in style: the top of the “S” like it was drawn around an egg and the bottom curled under like a cat’s tail.
Truth? The sign looked old. Worn. Tired. Like this town.
But my grandparents owned the inn and were proud of it.
We rolled to a stop and I heaved open the van door. I wasn’t ready to give up on my summer. Once things cooled down, it should be easy enough to convince my grandparents to let me go home. I just needed to play this right.
I was good at playing the good girl. Intentionally doing bad things risked me breaking into hives. Seriously, that happened more than once. I wouldn’t wish full body hives on anyone. Even Grace.
Well, maybe Grace. After her arm healed and the stitches came out. Then it was hives ahoy!
Grandpop grabbed for my suitcase, but the weight yanked his arm down. He made an exaggerated face. “Lead boots back in season?”
“Ha-ha,” I spoke the laugh. Still, I felt bad he had to carry my baggage. Both literal and figurative. “I’ve got it.” I took the bag and tipped it to the roller wheels.
“Take everything to the sewing room.” Grandma nodded toward the other side of a low fence from Sunset Inn’s rental cabins. Their pale blue house reflected wide open sky, but the siding was tinged gray with grime. Curtains in the front windows hung half drawn. Paired with the worn front door, the house scowled.
Inside, I found the room where Grace and I always slept. Bolts of fabric and department store sacks with knitting yarn crowded around the lumpy pull-out couch. I opened the door to the small closet. Neatly labeled boxes took up one side from floor to ceiling. Sewing supplies in plastic bins and a pegboard on the back wall covered the rest. No clothes bar or hangers.
This was so not going to work.
I checked my phone for texts as a distraction. My heart dropped. One lone bar of coverage hanging on with a half-hearted flicker. Maybe it was better this way. The post-party damage had already been done.
See, there was this party and...sigh.
I’d called my best friend Tala in a panic yesterday as I packed, telling her the news I’d have to delay the movie theater job we’d applied for together until I figured this all out. And I had to ask. “Are people talking? About the party?”
“Like, rumors?” She made a low-key comment in Tagalog, something she did if she needed a couple of extra seconds to regroup. And because she knew I couldn’t understand. “There are always rumors.”
“About my sister?” About me?
I’d avoided all my online profiles. I’d only texted Tala to say we’d had an accident, but I was okay.
“People always talk about Grace.”
They did. And now after this disastrous party, I’d be talked about too. And not in a way I wanted.
Tala knew everything about me. More than my sister did these days. Back in second grade when we met, we’d bonded over ballet (which I wanted to be good at but never was) and our shared obsession with this book series The Trash Can Alley Kids’ Mystery Club. She was Team Tin-Can Annie, and I was Team Sammy T. Sleuth. Tala always got me. She always saw what I couldn’t see in myself.
Grandma appeared in the sewing room doorway. She stood shorter than me with soft brown hair threaded with silver. Freckles and sunspots dotted her white skin from years living steps away from Lake Michigan, the selling point to Sunset Inn. One block from the beach.
“Hey, does the attic still have the daybed?” I peered into the hall to the narrow door at the end leading to the partially finished third floor.
Grandma made an mmhmm sound. “It’s messy. We can take a look.”
Her version of messy varied greatly from my personal definition of a mess. I followed her up the steep stairs to the old attic playroom.
Grandma crossed the room and hefted open a window. “We’ll need to air this out. And clean up this clutter.”
Sure enough, “messy” and “clutter” to Grandma consisted of two neat stacks of boxes on one end of the room and an old bookcase with some books knocked over on the shelves.
On the other side of the room, my aunt’s old dollhouse stood angled in a corner. A daybed and dresser sat in the middle of the room.
The walls sloped to mirror the roof with two windows Grace and I called look outs. We used to imagine the room as our castle.
“I’ll take it,” I said, trying to sound like an eager buyer. This was definitely not as terminal as the sewing room.
“Let me fetch a box fan from the shed.” Grandma looked at me. “I
m glad you’re here with us, Holliday. Now wash up and come eat lunch.”
Up early this morning and over an hour drive later, it was only lunchtime. On day one.
Downstairs in the kitchen, a grilled cheese sandwich and soup waited for me. The comfort food settled my nerves.
Grandma pointed to a note on the table in the eat-in kitchen. A schedule. “Here are your cleaning shifts.”
Just like that, I was now an employee at Sunset Inn. “No interview? That’s nepotism for you.”
Grandma did not crack a smile at me cracking wise. Then again, I wasn’t exactly here on vacation.
I looked over the schedule. This was steady part-time work. Unpaid part-time work. Definitely not like making popcorn at the movie theater sharing a shift with my best friend.
Grandma’s ancient cell phone startled awake with a weirdly hyper ring. She answered, talked for a minute, and clicked off the call. “That was the community center. You can enroll today and start your service hours tomorrow.”
My skin prickled with heat. “But we just got here. I haven’t even had my new employee orientation at the inn.”
She still didn’t smile at my clearly brilliant wit. “You’ve been here enough times you know the drill at the inn. If you get an early start on those service hours, you can show the judge you’re responsible.”
She didn’t know it yet, but I wasn’t planning on sticking around long enough to enroll anywhere. Tala and the movie theater expected me. The cross-country team expected me. The team I’d just been named co-captain of as an incoming junior.
“I really don’t think—”
“Holli.” Grandma’s voice came sharp. “This isn’t your time or place to think anything. We agreed you’d come here and do your community service hours. End of discussion.”
I hadn’t agreed to anything. I’d been told.
The conversation with my parents rewound in my head. I recalled a lot of yelling and demanding. No actual contract to negotiate. I’d never seen them so mad, and Grace once stayed out all night and came home with a lip ring.
I ate my grilled cheese in silence.
The silence last ten seconds.
“This is very serious, Holli.” Grandma rested her elbows on the table and looked me over.
It was mildly terrifying.
“Your sister’s blood alcohol level was far above the legal limit. And for a seventeen-year-old, that limit is zero.”
Obviously, I knew this, but when Grandma began a lecture, best to wait it out.
“The only thing worse than my oldest granddaughter failing a breathalyzer was discovering my second oldest granddaughter had been the one driving her intoxicated sister. On a learner’s license.”
She wasn’t wrong. I’d been the nearly sixteen-year-old (just a few more weeks) who’d done her good girl best by driving her drunk sister home from a party the cops busted. Scratch that—attempted to drive her drunk sister home.
I’d crashed the car. My perfect daughter record tarnished.
And I’d hurt Grace. I’d physically hurt her. As much as she infuriated me, she was still my sister. Before she was a mess, she was my hero.
“I raised a better son who raised better girls than what the two of you have been up to lately,” Grandma went on. “Well, it stops here. This summer, you clean up your act, Holli. It might be too late for Grace, but it’s not too late for you.”
Class now dismissed, Grandma rose from the table and headed out the side door and across the lot to the Sunset Inn front office.
I welcomed the alone time. I took care of washing my bowl and plate. I sat back at the table. The silence of the old house echoed louder than her ring tone. The silence served as its own jail sentence.
See, there was this party. I hadn’t even wanted to be there, but I went because my sister asked me to. I didn’t do well at parties—I tended to stick to the walls—so I followed Grace’s lead. Her last request as an outgoing senior.
No party was worth what happened to get here.
AFTER AN AFTERNOON sorting through the attic and a self-guided tour of Sunset Inn’s cleaning supplies and laundry facilities—both existed in a single, sweltering room connected to the front office—I completed my own orientation and worked my first shift.
Basically, I did what Grandma told me, then took a shower to clean up before dinner.
I was tempted to sulk in the attic, but I liked food too much. Also, my grandparents required me to be seated at the table for dinner. No standing over the sink eating crackers or eating leftovers on the couch.
Following the rules got me closer to going back home.
Maybe I just needed to use my good girl skills to my advantage. I hadn’t become the family’s reliable daughter by staying quiet. Nope. I excelled at being proactive.
“So, I have a lot going on with the team,” I said to my grandparents. “Maybe I can help out this week and then we can look at service hours back in Ginsburg?”
Grandpop didn’t blink. “You’ll stay here until you see the judge.”
I cringed at the word judge. The hearing was scheduled weeks from now. Since I’d violated the terms of my learner’s permit by driving without a legal adult in the car, I wouldn’t be allowed a license until I attended a court hearing. And no guarantees after that either.
That’s what the service hours were for. The lawyer my parents talked to the day after the accident said to start early before the sentencing.
I would be sentenced. And not in a grammarly way.
I could still skew this my direction. “I have people depending on me. My team, for one, and the job I was hired for.”
“What job?” Grandma asked. “Who hired you?”
Almost hired. “The movie theater.”
Grandpop sat back. “Good thing we took you when we did. The theater by us is a Lord of the Flies situation. I think the general manager is younger than the socks I’m wearing.”
“People my age have to work somewhere,” I countered.
Grandma pointed at me with her fork. “We discussed this as a family. You’re here for the summer.”
Away from Grace. The unsaid part.
“But it’s not fair.” The declaration burst out before I could stop myself. “Grace doesn’t have to be here and she was the one who was drinking. I didn’t drink. I was responsible.”
“Crashing cars is responsible now?” Grandpop made a show of looking at Grandma. “Well, I’ll be. I guess we old-timers are out of touch.”
Obviously, that wasn’t what I meant.
“That Grace.” Grandma shook her head with a look of sadness. “Trouble with the law. Trouble with boys. Bad grades. She hasn’t enrolled anywhere for college. If you’re not careful, Holli, you’ll end up just like your sister.”
If every meal included a lecture, I should get AP credit for this summer.
After dinner, Grandpop left to man the front desk. When they didn’t have their part-timer on the clock, the two of them checked in guests and cleaned the rooms. Basically, they did everything to run a small motel.
I looked at my phone again and sent a few texts to Tala. When she didn’t respond, I had to assume she was working.
More texts waited unanswered on my phone. The ones I’d ignored the past two days.
What happened at the party?
What happened to Grace?
Is Grace OK? I heard she DIED.
Was your sister arrested?
My teammates only wanted to hear about Grace. I couldn’t bring myself to respond. Besides Tala, the only person I’d talked to was Coach. My parents insisted on watching me while I’d called her. Then Dad took the phone to explain why I wouldn’t be fulfilling my co-captain’s duties.
All of that didn’t exactly make me eager to dish gossip about a busted party and how my sister somehow became even more legendary because of it. While I was stuck here. Alone.
The night stretched in front of me all endless and stupid. After watching a terrible game show, I shut the TV off and grabbed a zip-up sweatshirt and my earbuds.
I had my hand on the front door’s knob when Grandma called out from the sewing room. “You going somewhere, Holli?”
How had she known? I wasn’t in her sight lines. “I thought I’d walk to the shore,” I called back. “Maybe run a little. If that’s okay.”
“All right. Be back by sunset.”
