It Was The Hottest Day of the Year

It was the hottest day of the year...

A day so hot that everyone wanted to be inside—inside a freezer, ideally. The kind of heat that made air conditioners groan like wounded beasts and dogs stretch themselves flat on cool tiles, tongues lolling. The kind of day when your sweat evaporated before it could finish falling off your body, like the sun was too impatient to wait for gravity to do its thing.

It was so hot that you could cook breakfast on the hood of your car and make lunch on the sidewalk. Eggs, bacon, maybe some blistered tomatoes. The asphalt shimmered with mirage and madness. Even the breeze, when it came, felt like someone opening an oven.

At precisely 10:43 a.m., Eleanor Church stepped outside her little blue duplex on Juniper Street and immediately rethought her life choices. Her black T-shirt was already sticking to her back, her dark curls springing up frizzier than usual in the humidity. She muttered under her breath and scurried to her beat-up Honda Civic as if she could outpace the sun.

She couldn't.

Inside the car, the seatbelt buckle was a branding iron. The steering wheel was the surface of Mercury. Eleanor hissed and flapped her hands like a cartoon character as she turned the key, wincing when the car gave one half-hearted whine and went silent again.

"No, no, no—" she tried again. Nothing.

She smacked the steering wheel, then immediately regretted touching it.

"Okay. Cool. Fantastic."

She dug out her phone. No bars. Of course. The heat had knocked out a cell tower the night before, and they were still waiting on a repair. The neighborhood had started calling it "The Great Digital Blackout."

Eleanor threw her hands in the air, cursed like a sailor under her breath, and slammed the car door. Her errands could wait.

She made it halfway back to the porch when she heard the first pop.

At first, she thought it was a balloon or a firecracker, but then came another—pop-pop-pop—and then a sound like someone shaking a bag of popcorn kernels. It was coming from across the street.

"Are those… beans?" a voice called out.

Eleanor turned. Her neighbor, Jesse Galveston, was standing barefoot on his porch, squinting into the sun, a bandana tied around his forehead like he was about to go hiking through a jungle. His shirt was off. Eleanor tried not to stare.

"Jesse, are those beans popping on the pavement?" she asked, shading her eyes.

"Yeah!" he laughed. "Somebody dropped a bag of dried pinto beans last night and forgot to clean it up. They’re cooking, Eleanor. Cooking on the sidewalk."

She blinked. "That's horrifying. And kind of amazing."

"That’s summer for you." He nodded toward the porch next to his. "Even non-vampires are turning to ash. Joel put a pan of cookie dough on his car’s hood an hour ago. They're almost ready."

Eleanor sighed. “Do we even want to know what the temperature is?”

“No,” Jesse said simply. “But we’ve decided to beat it the only way we can.”

Eleanor raised a brow.

“Come hang out in the Galvestons' garage,” Jesse said with a grin. “We’ve got fans, music, watermelon, and all the cold drinks we could scrounge.”

She hesitated. “Is it an official event?”

Jesse shrugged. “Well, we did name it.”

“What’s it called?”

“Operation Melt Prevention.”

Eleanor snorted. “Fine. You win. I’m in.”

—

The Galveston garage was a miracle of ingenuity. Fans had been daisy-chained from extension cords run through the cracked-open kitchen window. A string of Christmas lights blinked lazily overhead, and someone—probably Joel—had rigged up an inflatable kiddie pool half-filled with cold water and bags of ice.

Natalia was there already, lounging in a folding chair with her feet in the pool. She wore big sunglasses and a floppy hat and held a plastic cup full of lemonade.

“Welcome to the only safe place left on Earth,” she intoned, waving regally. “Even for vampires.”

Eleanor grinned. “You know, I almost believed you.”

Connor, sitting cross-legged on a beanbag near the fan, raised his hand. “Thermometer hit 115. That’s official. The pavement is hotter.”

“Jaysus,” Eleanor muttered.

“No, he left hours ago,” Jesse said. “Said it was too hot even for miracles.”

Joel ambled in from outside, shirt soaked through with sweat, triumphantly holding a tray of chocolate chip cookies. “They are perfect. Slightly crisp edges. Gooey centers.”

Everyone applauded.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Joel said, setting the tray on a cooler, “on this day, civilization has fallen—but dessert has risen.”

“Long live cookie diplomacy,” Natalia said solemnly.

Jesse handed Eleanor a cold can of soda, and she nearly cried when it touched her hand. She popped the tab and took a long sip, letting the coolness spread through her body like salvation.

“So,” she said, “what’s on the docket for Operation Melt Prevention?”

Connor pointed to the whiteboard hanging off the side of the fridge.

OPERATION MELT PREVENTION — AUGUST 2ND

Cold drinks (✓)

Feet in pool (✓)

Popsicle exchange at 1:00 p.m.

Sprinkler run at 2:00 p.m.

Movie marathon: Waterworld, Frozen, The Day After Tomorrow, Finding Nemo

Board games in the garage (pending sweat levels)

Mandatory hydration breaks every 30 mins.

“We take hydration very seriously,” Joel added.

“Good,” Eleanor said. “Because I’m already sweating in places I didn’t know could sweat.”

“We’ve got aloe vera and frozen grapes in the cooler,” Jesse said proudly.

“This is the best party I’ve ever accidentally joined,” she said.

Just then, Katrina arrived, her hair tucked up in a bun and a Super Soaker slung over one shoulder. “I brought reinforcements.”

The room cheered.

—

By 2:00 p.m., the group had expanded. The Galveston twins had dragged out every folding chair and beach towel they owned. A rotation had begun between the kiddie pool, the front yard sprinkler, and the blessed shadow of the garage.

Pierre, who always looked like he belonged in a movie about the French Resistance, showed up with three boxes of popsicles from the corner store.

“I had to fight two kids and a raccoon for these,” he said dramatically. “The beast lives in the alley behind Carmichael’s Deli. He’s seen things.”

“He’s part of the heat apocalypse now,” Natalia said. “Raccoons adapt faster than humans.”

By the time the movie marathon began, half the group had settled into post-water-fight exhaustion, towels wrapped around their shoulders, cups of ice held to the back of their necks. The garage smelled like sunscreen, melted candy, and slightly damp friends.

Eleanor found herself sitting next to Jesse, knees barely brushing. She was too tired to move, and too content to care.

"You know," she said quietly, watching Anna sing about building snowmen, “this is actually kind of great.”

He smiled. “Yeah. There’s something about shared misery that makes people get creative.”

“I needed this. Just… a reminder that good days can still sneak up on you, even in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave.”

Jesse turned toward her. “They sneak up on you. But they don’t come out of nowhere.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, someone’s got to start the fan chain. Bring out the cookies. Invite the neighbors.”

She smirked. “So you’re saying you’re the reason today’s been tolerable?”

“I’m saying it’s a group effort,” he said. “But I’ll take partial credit.”

She laughed and bumped her shoulder against his.

—

By the time the sun began to sink, the worst of the heat clinging to the edges of the sky like tar, everyone was sprawled out like survivors of a shipwreck.

Somewhere, Joel had pulled out his guitar. He strummed lazily while Pierre hummed along, and Katrina braided Natalia’s hair, their legs still dangling in the kiddie pool.

Connor dozed with a popsicle stick hanging from his mouth.

“I think we need to make this a tradition,” Eleanor said, gazing at the string lights blinking in the dusk.

Jesse, sitting beside her, nodded. “Every hottest day of the year.”

“Same place?”

“Same place. Maybe next year we’ll add a snow cone machine.”

“You dream big.”

He looked at her, something soft and serious in his eyes. “Only when the weather calls for it.”

A hush fell over the garage as the guitar slowed. Eleanor leaned her head on Jesse’s shoulder, her skin still damp from the last sprinkler run, and let herself breathe.

Yes, it had been the hottest day of the year.

But somehow, in spite of the boiling sidewalks and air that made your lungs want to mutiny, it had also been the kind of day that reminded you what friendship was for.

Not just laughter or popsicles or even shared suffering—

But presence.

Togetherness.

And, occasionally, cookie diplomacy.