Step Summer Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Tanya Gallagher

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations within critical reviews and otherwise as permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  ISBN: 1-7339541-0-4

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7339541-0-5

  Cover design by Resplendent Media

  Visit:

  www.tanyagallagherbooks.com

  For my family

  Contents

  1. McKenna

  2. Blake

  3. McKenna

  4. Blake

  5. McKenna

  6. Blake

  7. McKenna

  8. Blake

  9. McKenna

  10. Blake

  11. McKenna

  12. Blake

  13. McKenna

  14. Blake

  15. McKenna

  16. Blake

  17. McKenna

  18. Blake

  19. McKenna

  20. Blake

  21. McKenna

  22. Blake

  23. McKenna

  24. Blake

  25. McKenna

  26. Blake

  27. McKenna

  28. Blake

  29. McKenna

  30. Blake

  31. McKenna

  32. Blake

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Books by Tanya Gallagher

  About the Author

  1

  McKenna

  June

  I’ve worked at the Putt-Putt Hut on Long Beach Island for enough summers of my life to have heard every mini golf joke in the book, which is why when a teenage guy strolls to the front desk with his arm draped around the neck of a pretty girl and makes a comment about scoring a hole in one, I have to hold in a groan. Not even something original.

  “Two tickets, please.” The guy keeps one hand on the girl while he fishes his wallet out of the front pocket of his board shorts with the other. Then he frees a twenty and drops it on the counter rather than place it in my outstretched palm.

  Asshole.

  I dart a glance over the guy’s shoulder at Brooke before I count out his change. My best friend shakes her head—she saw the snub, too—and I sigh.

  When I swing my eyes back to the kid, he cups a hand over the girl’s left boob and squeezes as if he isn’t standing around a bunch of strangers in broad daylight. I can’t help my wince.

  The Putt-Putt Hut runs a good business here on the island—family friendly enough that parents can bring their kids, but with enough hidden make-out spots by the water features to attract teenagers on dates. But this guy, with his un-ironic Kid Rock T-shirt, is a whole new level.

  I point to the rows of golf clubs in the far corner of the room. “Go pick a club that you like, and when you get back, I’ll give you some balls.”

  His grin stretches close to a leer. “Yeah, you will.”

  Seriously?

  The guy finally unwraps his skinny arm from the girl and strides across the room to inspect the clubs.

  I can’t decide if the girl in front of me, still standing awkwardly at the counter, looks uncomfortable or happy about things, so I err on the side of caution. Better safe than sorry. After all, there’s a Girl Code to uphold.

  “Hey,” I whisper to her when her date’s back is turned. “Are you okay? With him, I mean?”

  She wrinkles her nose and gives me a look like she smells something bad. “I’m fine,” she bites out and then hurries to his side.

  My chest floods with heat. I’ve gotten this all wrong.

  “Hey, baby.” The guys greets the girl with a kiss with a lot of tongue, then bends her over and places her hands on the golf club he’s selected.

  “Just grab the shaft nice and tight.” He pushes his hips against her ass. “Give it a nice, smooth stroke.”

  The girl’s giggle covers the sound of Brooke’s snort, but I’m looking at my friend, so I see her shoulders shake in silent laughter.

  After a solid five minutes of over-the-clothes groping, the couple strolls my way. Instead of letting them reach into the giant bucket of golf balls and pick their favorite colors like we normally let our customers do, I make the selection for them.

  “For you,” I say, holding out my hand and pasting on a customer’s-always-right face. “Bathrooms and ice cream are inside the main building. If your ball goes into the water, please come back to the front desk and let us know. Have a great game.”

  The guy’s face twists in confusion as he looks at the balls in my palm. “They’re the same color. How are we supposed to know whose is whose?”

  I open my eyes really wide and give him my most innocent face. “Oh, whoops. Both blue balls. Silly me.”

  I drop one into the bucket with a clink and pick out a different color, but I’m smiling now. Sometimes it’s the little things.

  The second the couple steps through the Hut’s doors and out onto the golf course, Brooke, who’s sitting on the counter across from the ice cream coolers swinging her legs, calls out, “Nice.”

  “What?” I say. “You saw them—your precious Putt-Putt Hut was one make-out session away from a Hazmat intervention.”

  Brooke’s family owns the PPH, meaning one day she’ll be running the place instead of her dad. Normally she’s the one with the long-term view of things, but today I’m happy to use her future as an excuse for acting immature.

  I glance out the window behind me at the Putt-Putt Hut’s two courses. Both of the pirate-themed routes end up at a final feature shaped like a treasure chest, but they weave separate paths through a combination of obstacles—an old boat designed like a pirate ship with the requisite eye-patch-wearing skeleton, a miniature lake with a great white shark statue halfway breeched out of the water. It’s actually a pretty cool place, but after the first fifty rounds, it’s lost a little of its magic.

  As I watch, the couple disappears behind a set of ten-foot-tall fake swords, the guy’s hand on the girl’s ass.

  “Uh-huh.” Brooke says it slowly like she doesn’t believe me, and I draw my gaze back inside the Hut to where she’s twisting her brown her into a messy bun. “Blue balls?”

  “Come on, it was funny.” I shrug. “He’s like sixteen. Probably doesn’t even have hair on his balls.”

  She snorts out a laugh. “Okay, bitter old lady.”

  “I’m not even twenty,” I grumble. Like a bitter old lady.

  “You will be soon,” Brooke calls out in a sing-song voice. She stops swinging her legs and fixes me with a brown-eyed stare. “Just tell me you’re not jealous of the love lives of two teenagers. No straight As are worth it.”

  I step out from behind the ticket counter so I can avoid her look of pity. The couple left a mess by the golf club racks and my shift’s almost over, so I straighten the room as I say, “Once again, my sexless semester was not a result of my studies. I just happened to not be having sex, so I had more time to pull up my grades.”

  “Mmhmm.” Brooke jumps off the ice cream counter and opens the glass window of the cooler so she can reach inside. A whiff of ice cream hits my nose, and my mouth waters.

  “I don’t even know why you bothered with your grades,” Brooke continues. “Isn’t the whole point that you’re trying to get out of Pre-Med anyway?”

  I look up from the golf club in my ha
nd and meet her eyes, giving her a weak smile. “That’s the story I’m selling, anyway. Whether or not my parents get on board is the question.”

  Despite the air conditioning in the Hut, the warm, sticky day drags the earthy scent of the building’s blond, wooden floorboards through the room. It’s a safe smell, like home and every salty-sweet summer I spent here.

  Brooke points an ice cream scooper in my direction. “Oreo?”

  I nod. “Is there any question?”

  Her grin widens. “A solid choice. And since you so kindly provided this afternoon’s entertainment, you get a double scoop on the house.”

  I shove the golf club on the nearest rack and curtsey for her. Then I walk across the room and grab my cone.

  I take a lick, sighing as the sugar hits my bloodstream. As nice as Brooke’s being to me, I have a feeling the ice cream is part peace offering and part pity-food. She knows my life’s a cluster-fuck right now.

  I have exactly one summer to figure out what I’m doing with the rest of my life. No pressure. No big deal.

  * * *

  “Shift’s up,” Brooke calls, nodding her chin at the clock mounted on the wall behind the Putt-Putt Hut’s cash register.

  “Thus ends another magical day in paradise,” I tease. I finish the last bite of my ice cream cone, then lick the side of my hand, where a trail of melted ice cream has left my skin tacky and sweet.

  My best friend rolls her eyes at me. “You going to head home or are you going to hang around Bay Village?” she asks, referring to the shopping area that houses the PPH. “I heard the fudge shop’s giving a fifteen percent discount for Village employees today.”

  “Tempting, but I’m going to head out. After being around people all day, there’s nothing that sounds better than decompressing alone.”

  Brooke leans her elbows on the counter by the ice cream coolers. “You don’t get bored being by yourself all the time?”

  I walk across the room and reach over the counter to wrap her in a hug. “I’m not by myself all the time. I have you. And anyway, getting time to myself is one of the best parts of this summer. I don’t have to please anyone but myself.”

  She groans but squeezes me back. “Must be nice.”

  I flash her a grin so wide and genuine it feels almost cheesy. “It is.” After the last year, it feels like I can finally breathe.

  I gather my cell phone and keys and wave goodbye to Brooke. The second I push through the doors of the Putt-Putt Hut and leave the AC behind, humid air blankets my body. I swing my leg over my white bicycle, and on the fifteen-minute ride home, my palms feel hot against the handles, my fingertips thick and buzzing. Still, despite the warm, damp air, the smell of the ocean on my right and the bay on my left does something hopeful to my heart.

  Long Beach Island is only eighteen miles from end to end and half a mile across at its widest, meaning there’s no place on the island too far to bike to, or even walk if you’re so inclined. The barrier island bumps out of the ocean just high enough to fit twenty thousand year-round residents. The number swells to a hundred thousand in the summer months as tourists and vacationers swarm the streets and bring in traffic and outside cash.

  I’m one of the tourists, I guess, but I refuse to feel bad about it.

  I smell my grandparents’ beach house before I see it, a drifting scent of flowers riding the ocean breeze in my direction. The garden and all its riot of color and shapes makes me smile as I approach on Beach Avenue. Our family’s house sits on a corner lot, bordered by a garden on all sides. The plot has been in semi-disrepair since my grandmother went into her nursing home two summers ago, but even now, her roses climb the wooden fence and perfume the air.

  I take a deep breath as I drop my bike on the gravel in the side yard and mount the stairs to the kitchen. Like most beach houses, the main floor and all the important facilities—kitchen, living room, bathroom—sit on the second or third stories. The less damage caused when the ocean or the bay inevitably spill over the land. We walk a fine balance between acknowledging the power of nature, here, and building houses anyway.

  I get my key into the door and twist before I realize my house is unlocked and there are voices coming from inside. A single drip of ice plunges down my back.

  “Hello?” I call.

  The voices stop, and as I pull open the doors—first the screen, then the solid, oak door—two sets of eyes swing toward me.

  “Hi, McKenna,” says my stepfather Jim from his spot at my kitchen table.

  The jangling in my chest eases slightly. This was part of the deal—in exchange for not outright dropping out of college, I get to stay here this summer and figure out what I’m doing with my life. My parents are trying to buy me a little time to consider my options, and if they want to bribe me with a summer of beach access and minimal responsibilities, I’m not going to say no. But since it’s a family house, part of the bargain is that when someone else wants to swing by, I need to gracefully accept the company.

  My mother rises from her chair and wraps me in a hug. “Hey, baby.”

  I breathe in her shampoo and perfume, the light scent of coconut oil. She feels like a bird in my hands, her Pilates-toned body small and light in my grip.

  She turns back to her chair, and I peer at Jim, who’s handsome in a silver-fox kind of way. Not a bad guy, if my mom was going to remarry.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I ask.

  Before Jim can answer, a car door slams outside, and not from down the street, but from right in front of our house. The other side of the house, the one I couldn’t see on my approach.

  My whole body tingles with nerves, and I feel rooted in place. My grandmother’s at her nursing home with a broken hip, and the footsteps shaking the wooden stairs as they climb are too heavy and too solid to be hers. Which means—

  Him.

  When Blake Reynolds walks into the room through the sliding glass door on the far side of the kitchen, my life turns into a kaleidoscope like it does every time I’m in the same room with him. There’s a fractured sort of feeling, fragments of emotion crushing out of me, and color and shape all around us—the piercing hazel of his eyes, the dark stubble clinging to his jaw, a flash of tattoos peeking out from under the sleeves his white T-shirt. And underneath that, the thumping sound of my traitorous heart, pulsing in time: want-ing, want-ing, want-ing.

  “Hey, McKenna,” my stepbrother says, his voice rumbling and deep and almost apologetic.

  I flick my eyes to his face because I’m greedy, and then I look away as guilt flushes hot from my chest to my cheeks.

  “Blake,” I whisper.

  Oh, damn.

  2

  Blake

  June

  McKenna looks at me like she’d rather be in a room with a pod of killer whales than me. Like I’m dangerous and dark. No doubt she’s heard all sorts of stories about me from our parents, little rumors whispered here and there that are probably ninety percent true. The last few years have not been my finest.

  “What’s going on?” McKenna’s wide blue eyes dart between our parents. She stays frozen in the threshold, and the shout of children arguing over which radio station to choose drifts in through the screen door behind her.

  I’m still standing across the room from McKenna like a misplaced chess piece, and from here I’ve got a whole view of the kitchen and its worn but cheerful beachside decor, at all the players in this game. I stare at the back of my dad’s head and frown. Your move.

  My dad smooths a palm over the kitchen table like holding onto something is going to make him feel better about what he’s about to tell her.

  “I know we discussed you having the house to yourself this summer while you get ready for the upcoming school year.” He clears his throat, and the back of his neck turns slightly red. “But some circumstances have changed for Blake at home, and he needs a place to stay.”

  “Here?” she whispers. She licks her lips and looks at her hands instead of me, so I look
at her hands, too. She’s wearing chipped nail polish, seashell pink against her skin, and her blond hair makes her look that much more tan. I can’t help myself from dropping my eyes past her cut-off jean shorts to her smooth, toned legs.

  “Yes,” my dad says. “Here.”

  Jodi pulls out the chair next to her at the kitchen table. She pats the seat—for McKenna or me, I’m not sure—and says, “You want to sit down?”

  McKenna nods uncertainly, moves on stiff legs and sits gingerly like she thinks the whole world is going to tilt and leave her reeling if she moves too fast. I’m a step ahead of her though. My world’s already upside down.

  When she’s perched next to her mom, the resemblance between them becomes even more clear. Jodi had McKenna young—only a year or two older than McKenna is now—and with their pale, blond hair, blue eyes, and sloped cheekbones, they look like sisters. It’s not surprising my dad fell for Jodi back when she was his secretary at work, their almost eighteen-year age difference be damned. The Maycomb women are the kind of pretty that makes you want to keep looking. But while Jodi’s sitting calmly in her chair, McKenna bounces her foot like there are wires under her skin. She chews the side of her thumb while she waits for an explanation. I have to tear my eyes away from her lips.