A Summer Evening

by Caroline Moreton

THE SUN’S LONG ORANGE LIGHT fell in from the west and landed on the brown suede beanbag. It would take another hour for the sun to fully set behind the mountains, and even then the temperature would only drop slightly. That’s how it was in the desert in the summer. 

Andy and I were eating dinner at the kitchen counter. We had a table wedged in the corner by the coat closet, but there was only room for one of us to sit there so when we ate together we had to sit at the counter. His bed and that table were the only things he’d brought with him when he moved out of the bungalow he shared with those guys out on the Utah/Arizona border. He was in such a hurry to get out of there. 

He pushed himself away from the counter and walked over to the window. Air from the AC vent above him ruffled his brown hair slightly. I cleared the plates and left them in the sink. 

‘I’ll get to these later,’ I said. 

‘It’s so hot out there,’ he said. ‘And every year it just gets hotter.’ 

‘Is that true or does it just feel like that?’ 

Andy shrugged. ‘What do we do now?’ 

‘What did we used to do in the summer?’ 

‘We played a lot of tennis. But it’s too hot to do that here.’ He turned away from the window and fell into the beanbag. ‘We could play Lego Star Wars.’ 

‘We’ve been inside all day. I want to go do something outside.’ I took a seat on the worn out green chair in front of the TV. We didn’t have a couch. In all the time we lived in that apartment together, we never had a couch.

‘We could see a movie,’ he said. ‘That’s kind of outside because you have to go outside to get there.’ 

‘I already checked. No good movies out.’ 

‘I hate this time of year.’ 

‘We could go swimming,’ I said. 

‘The pool closes at eight.’ 

‘I thought it was ten.’ 

‘Plus everybody’s going to be at the pool and I don’t feel like socializing.’ 

I stood up and went to the sink. I rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher then I washed the frying pan. Andy had cooked dinner, so it was my job to do the dishes. Our parents thought that it would be a disaster if Andy and I lived together. We hadn’t lived together since I’d left for college eight years earlier. But we figured it out. 

I didn’t know anybody in St. George when I moved there from LA, and I couldn’t afford to live alone. And he was in a bad situation living with that guy who got too drunk and swung his gun around. We both needed a place to live. And now it was nine months later and we couldn’t figure out what to do on a hot summer evening. 

I finished washing dishes so I went to the window and looked out. The sky was pink and orange. A creek dissected a wide field, and alongside it ran a bike path. 

‘We can go on a bike ride,’ I suggested. 

‘Okay,’ he said. 

I’d gotten a new bike when I moved there, and I loved it with all my heart. I hadn’t owned a bike since I was a kid, when we lived in a neighborhood with sidewalks and we biked to a nearby park. When I was in middle school, we moved to one of those LA neighborhoods set high on a steep hill, so biking was no longer fun. 

We went down to the garage and rolled our bikes out. Our neighbor Jason walked past us. He had on khaki shorts and no shirt. His flip flops clacked against the soles of his feet. 

‘It’s a hot one today,’ he said. ‘Make sure you’re drinking a lot of water.’ 

‘Copy that,’ I said and gestured to the water bottles holstered on each of our bikes. 

After he walked away, Andy said, ‘Even from here, I can smell the weed.’ 

The sun dipped behind the mountains, but it had not completely set. Waves of heat rose from the asphalt. We biked out of our apartment complex and turned onto the bike path that ran between the creek and Mall Drive. Gnats hung in clumps and we had to swat them from our faces as we passed. We couldn’t speak until we were past the end of the creek because the frogs calling to each other would drown out our voices. 

‘Right or left?’ I asked. 

‘Right,’ Andy said. 

We crossed Mall Drive and followed the trail down a hill. Now we were riding alongside the Virgin River. Water ambled brown and slow through stiff green reeds. The blue dusk muted the colors. 

We came to a grassy pasture surrounded by a wooden fence. A few horses stood idly around the pasture. Small puddles of water reflected the bright orange sky. It had rained the day before, one of those sudden and intense storms that happened in the summer. I stopped and hopped off my bike. 

‘Look how gorgeous,’ I said. 

The air around there felt humid and cool. 

Andy pulled his bike next to mine. We stood looking at the horses. 

I took a sip of my water. ‘How could anybody ever leave this place?’ 

‘Look who’s changed her tune,’ Andy said. 

‘What do you mean?’ 

‘I thought you hated it here.’ 

‘I wasn’t used to it,’ I said. ‘I would’ve hated anywhere that wasn’t LA when I first moved.’ 

Andy nodded and looked at the pasture. One of the horses was walking slowly through the grass. It stopped at a puddle and looked into it. I wondered if it was looking at the reflection of the sky or at its own reflection. 

‘You ready to keep going?’ Andy asked. 

‘Yeah.’ 

We got back on our bikes and kept riding. We rode in silence for a long time. It was a pleasant, comfortable silence. It felt good to ride a bike, free. To feel the air rush against my face. We passed by a couple of teenage girls skimboarding in the river. One of them fell off her board and landed on her back in the water. She sprung up, laughing, and brushed her wet hair out of her face. I wondered what it would be like to be a teenager in a place like this. 

Eventually the trail passed through a park, so Andy and I turned off the trail and rode in circles around the parking lot. We passed a pickleball court, and he said, ‘We should come back and play pickleball some evening when it’s cooler.’ 

We got back onto the trail and rode back toward our apartment building. We made little comments here and there, but for the most part we kept going in silence. We passed by the pasture, and the horses were still standing around, then we reached Mall Drive, where there was a grocery store. I stopped where the bike path bordered the grocery store’s parking lot. 

‘Wanna make smoothies tonight?’ I asked. 

‘What kind of smoothies?’ 

‘Guava smoothies, like old times.’ 

When we were younger, our family went to Hawaii every year, but we stopped at some point and I never knew why. Andy, our older brother Ethan, and I used to run down to the bar and order guava smoothies first thing in the morning, right before and after lunch, then again right before dinner. Andy and I privately recognized the loss of these guava smoothies as the single greatest loss our family had ever experienced. 

‘We don’t know the recipe,’ Andy said. 

‘We can figure it out.’ 

Andy looked down the bike path toward home. 

‘Come on,’ I added. ‘It’s too hot to do anything else.’ 

The sun had completely set, but it was still hot. Heat seeped up off the pavement beneath our bikes. 

‘Okay,’ he said finally.

We walked our bikes over to a bike rack in front of the store and locked them together. A wall of air conditioning hit us the moment we stepped inside. 

‘Wow that feels good,’ Andy said. 

I picked up a basket. ‘We’ll need guava juice, that’s the one thing we know for sure. And I remember there being some white liquid like melted vanilla ice cream or something.’ 

‘No, they definitely had a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream. Was it coconut cream?’ 

‘Ooh, that could be. I feel like there was coconut. Was it coconut cream or coconut milk do you think?’

‘Let’s just get both.’ 

We walked around the store picking up the ingredients, going slowly to prolong our time before stepping back out into the heat. After we checked out, I hung the plastic bag on the handle of my bike and we rode home. 

‘If we actually figure out this recipe, I’m going to be so happy,’ Andy said when we turned into the Stonebrook Apartments driveway.

We pulled the bikes into the garage. Jason passed by again, this time without acknowledging us. He was either talking or singing quietly to himself. Andy and I looked at each other and laughed. 

Our apartment was cold and refreshing. I unloaded the groceries while Andy went over to the window to close the blinds. 

‘Leave them open,’ I said. ‘I like seeing the lights on the hill.’ 

Andy came over to the counter and set up the blender. We put the ingredients in. First we tried guava juice, coconut milk, and vanilla ice cream. I poured the mixture into two cups. 

‘It’s fine,’ Andy said, ‘but it’s not what I remember.’ 

I remade it but added coconut cream instead of coconut milk.

‘Closer,’ he said. 

‘Maybe more guava juice?’ I suggested. 

He nodded. I added more guava juice. 

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘This is really close. I feel like maybe it needs a little more vanilla ice cream, though.’ 

I laughed. ‘Here goes nothing.’   

I blended in more vanilla ice cream and poured us each a glass. ‘We’re running low on guava juice, so I really hope this is it.’ 

Andy took a sip. ‘Oh my God.’ He laughed. 

‘This is it!’ I said. ‘We did it!’ 

Andy laughed more and drank more. ‘It’s like I’m back in Hawaii.’ 

‘We brought the beach to the desert.’ 

‘You want to drink it on the patio?’ 

We took our glasses and sat in our little wooden chairs at our little wooden table and looked out over Mall Drive. The lights of the houses on the hills blinked in the darkness. A red ‘Ace Hardware’ sign glowed red down the street. The hot air filled my lungs. 

‘This is the perfect drink for a night like this,’ Andy said. 

‘Should we add some rum to it?’ I asked. 

Andy thought for a second. Then he said, ‘No, let’s not spoil it.’ 

We sipped our smoothies in silence while we looked out into the darkness. Some bugs flew across our patio. They hit the patio light with little clinks. 

‘Do you want to play backgammon?’ he asked. 

‘Sure.’ 

He went inside to get the backgammon board then he brought it outside. An owl called from the darkness. 

‘White or black?’ he asked. 

‘Black,’ I said. 

‘Okay that means I go first.’ 

Below us someone swore loudly but at nobody in particular. The sentences reached us in fragments. We peered over our railing to look. Jason was walking on the path that ran along the creek. He yelled at nobody in particular, at the ground. 

‘What’s his problem?’ Andy asked. 

‘Must be the heat,’ I said. ‘It gets to your head.’ 

oOo

Caroline Moreton was born and raised in Los Angeles. She’s a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at Goldsmiths College at the University of London. Her stories have been published in JMWW, the Timber Ghost Press anthology ‘This Isn’t the Place,’ and The Muleskinner Journal, where it was nominated for 2025 Best Small Fictions. She lives in London. You can find her at CarolineMoreton.com or on Threads @CarolineMoreton.