Every Summer After

I wake up in Sam’s bed with a pounding headache. There’s a faint bluish-pink light coming in the window. How long was I asleep for? I push the sheet back, hot. I’m still wearing his T-shirt and sweatpants, the knees covered in dirt. I lie there listening, but the house is quiet. On the nightstand are a glass of water and a bottle of Advil. Sam must have put them there.

After popping two pills and drinking all the water, I sit on the edge of his bed, my feet on the carpet, and my head in my hands, taking inventory of the wreckage I’ve caused. I bulldozed Sam with the truth at the worst possible moment. On the day of his mother’s funeral. I didn’t think about him; I only thought about getting the ugliness off my chest. And he knew. He knew, and he hadn’t wanted to talk about it, at least not then.

Sam has put my purse on the floor beside the bed. I dig around for my phone. Determined not to push anyone else out of my life, I call Chantal.

“P?” she says, groggy with sleep.

“I still love him,” I whisper. “I screwed everything up. And I love him. And I’m worried that even if I can get him to forgive me, I’m still not good enough for him.”

“You’re good enough,” Chantal says.

“But I’m such a mess. And he’s a doctor.”

“You’re good enough,” she says again.

“What if he doesn’t think so?”

“Then you come home, P. And I’ll tell you why he’s wrong.”

I close my eyes and let out a shaky breath.

“Okay. I can do that.”

“I know you can.”

When we hang up, I cross the dark hallway to the bathroom. I turn on the light and grimace at my reflection. Underneath the streaks of mascara, my skin is blotchy and my eyes bloodshot and puffy. I splash some cold water on my face and scrub at the black makeup stains until my cheeks are red and raw.

The smell of coffee hits my nose as I tiptoe down the stairs. There’s a light on in the kitchen. I take a deep breath before I have to face Sam again. But it’s not Sam. It’s Charlie. He’s at the table in the same spot where Sue used to sit. He has a mug in his hand, and he’s looking right at me like he was waiting for me.

“Good morning,” he says, lifting his coffee my way.

“You took my car,” I say, standing in the doorway.

“I took your car,” he replies, then takes a sip. “Sorry about that. I didn’t realize you would be needing to leave in such a hurry.” Clearly Sam has filled him in on a couple of details. “He’s down at the water,” he says before I ask.

I look in the direction of the lake and then back to Charlie. “He hates me.”

He gets up and walks over to me, smiling kindly as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

“You’re wrong,” he says. “I think his feelings for you are basically the exact opposite.” His eyes move over my face and his smile fades. “Do you hate me?” he asks quietly.

It takes me a moment to figure out why he would ask me that, but then I realize: Charlie’s the only other person who would have told Sam about what happened between us.

“Never,” I say, my voice cracking, and he pulls me into a tight hug. “I didn’t hate you then, either. After what happened. You were good to me that summer.”

“I had ulterior motives, but I didn’t ever plan to make a move,” he whispers. “Until that night.”

“That night was my fault,” I tell him. Charlie squeezes me and then lets go.

“Can I ask you something?” I say when we separate.

“Sure,” he rasps. “Ask me anything.”

“Did your mom know?” His face wilts a little, and I close my eyes, swallowing back the lump in my throat.

“If it makes you feel better, she was mostly mad at me.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I croak.

He nods, his eyes flickering like fireflies. “I tried to tell her how you seduced me with candy and hairy legs, but she wasn’t convinced.”

I huff out a laugh, and a little of the heaviness lifts.

“She told me to call you,” he says, serious again. I stop breathing. “Before she died. She said he’d need you after.”

I hug him again. “Thank you,” I whisper.

SAM IS SITTING at the edge of the dock, his feet in the water. The sun hasn’t risen above the hills yet, but its light casts a halo around the far shore that promises it will soon. My footsteps shake the wooden planks as I walk toward him, but he doesn’t turn around.

I sit beside him, putting two steaming cups of coffee down, then roll my pants up over my knees so I can dip my legs into the lake. I pass him one of the mugs, and we drink in silence. There aren’t any boats out yet, and the only sound is the distant, mournful call of a loon. I’m half-finished with my coffee—trying to figure out where to begin—when Sam starts talking.

“Charlie told me about the two of you over Christmas break when we came home from school,” he says, looking out over the calm water. I want to cut in and apologize, but I can tell he’s got more to say. And, at the very least, I owe him the chance to tell his side despite how afraid I am to hear it—to hear about what it was like for him to know what I’d done all this time, to hear him get to the part where he never wants to see me again.

His voice is husky, like he hasn’t spoken yet this morning. “I was in rough shape after we broke up. I didn’t understand what had gone wrong and why you would shut down like that. Even if you weren’t ready for marriage or to even talk about getting married, breaking up didn’t make sense to me. I felt like maybe I had experienced our entire relationship completely differently from how you had. I felt like I was going crazy.”

He pauses and looks at me from the corner of his eye. I can feel the shame tighten its grip on my throat and my heart beating harder, but instead of fighting it, I accept that this is going to be uncomfortable and focus instead on Sam and what he needs to say.

“I think Charlie thought if I knew what had really happened, it might somehow make it better, explain why you pushed me away.” He shakes his head like he still can’t believe it. “He told me that you did still love me, that you had immediately regretted it and completely freaked out.”

“I had a panic attack,” I whisper.

“Yeah, I kind of figured that part out at the wake,” he says, looking at me straight on. He’s so much calmer than he was yesterday, but his voice sounds hollow.

“I did regret it,” I tell him, hesitating before putting my hand on his thigh. He doesn’t move away or tense up under my touch, so I keep it there. “It’s the biggest regret of my life. I wish it hadn’t happened, but it did, and I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” he says, looking back at the lake, his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry I lost it yesterday. I thought I had moved past it years ago, but hearing you say the words, it felt like hearing it for the first time all over again.”

I take his hand in mine and shake it. “Hey,” I say so he looks at me, and when he does, I squeeze his hand tighter and look him in the eye. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. Me, on the other hand . . .”

He smiles sadly and runs his hand through his hair.

“The thing is, Percy, I do.” I can feel my face scrunch in confusion. He brings one leg on the dock, twisting so he can face me. I take my feet out of the water and tuck them under me so I can do the same.

“You always thought I was perfect.”

“Sam, you were perfect,” I reply, stating the obvious.

“I wasn’t!” he says, adamant. “I was obsessed with getting out of here, and then when I went away to school, I was so terrified I was going to mess it up, that I had only seemed smart because I’d grown up in such a small town. It felt like any day they’d figure out I was a fraud. I was paralyzed with fear. I was homesick, too. I missed you like crazy. I didn’t want you to know how bad it was, to think less of me, so I didn’t call.”

“You were eighteen, and it was totally normal to feel that way. I was too immature to realize that.”

He shakes his head. “I was always jealous of Charlie. I think you knew that. He barely studied in high school and would just kill every test. Girls loved him. Everything seemed to happen so easily for him. And then you did, too.” My stomach feels like it just dropped forty stories.

“I felt like my future exploded when you said you couldn’t marry me,” he goes on. “But I thought one day you would change your mind. I thought we both needed a bit of time. But then . . . I didn’t take it well, hearing about you and Charlie.” He rubs his face. “I was angry. With you. With Charlie. And with myself. The way I felt about you was always so clear to me—even when we were young I knew you and I were meant for each other. Two halves of a whole. I loved you so much that the word ‘love’ didn’t seem big enough for how I felt. But I realize now that you didn’t know that. You wouldn’t have turned to Charlie if you knew that. And for that I’m sorry.” He reaches toward me, pulling my bottom lip out from under my teeth with his thumb. I hadn’t realized I’d been biting it.

I start to reply, to tell him he doesn’t need to apologize, that I’m the one who should be explaining herself, but he stops me.

“When I went back to school after Christmas, I just wanted to forget you and us and everything that happened,” he says. “I wanted to get you out of my system, but I think I also wanted to hurt you the way you hurt me. I studied like crazy, but I also drank a lot. I’d go to these big house parties—there was always a keg, and there were always girls.” He pauses. The muscles in my stomach seize at the mention of the other girls. He squints, as if he’s asking my permission to continue, and I take a deep breath and wait.

“I can’t remember most of them, but I know there were a lot. Jordie tried to keep an eye on me. He was worried I was going to catch something or screw around with some psychopath’s girlfriend, but I was relentless. It didn’t make a difference, though. All I could think about every day was you,” he says, his voice scratchy. “Even when I was with other girls, trying to erase you from my mind, you were still there. I’d wake up, sometimes I didn’t even know where I was, so full of shame and missing you so much. But I’d just do it all over again, trying to forget. And then one night at some party in a frat house basement, I saw Delilah.” My breath hitches at her name, and I rub my chest as though I can soothe the ache beneath my breastbone.

Sam waits until I meet his eyes again.

“You don’t need to tell me this part,” I say. “This part I’m pretty sure I know.”

“Delilah told you?”

I nod.

“I thought she would. She was a good friend to you.” I wince, remembering how terribly I’d treated her. I’d been mad and then when I got over my anger, I was too ashamed to apologize.

“I was out-of-my-mind drunk, Percy. And I made a pass at her. She told me off and stormed out of there. I think I puked all over myself, like, two minutes later.”

Exactly what Delilah had told me.

He lets out a bitter laugh. “I stopped sleeping around after that. I just ate, went to class, and studied. I was kind of a robot, but after a while I stopped being so angry with you and Charlie—and myself.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I hate that I did that to you.” I watch the ripples radiating from where a fish has jumped. We’re both quiet. “I deserved it,” I say after a little while, turning back to him. “The other girls. You hitting on Delilah. You yelling at me yesterday. For what I did to you, I deserved it all.”

Sam leans forward like he didn’t hear me correctly. “Deserved it?” he repeats, his eyes ferocious. “What are you talking about? You didn’t deserve it, Percy. Just like I didn’t deserve what happened with Charlie. Betrayals don’t cancel each other out. They just hurt more.” He takes my hands and rubs them with his thumbs. “I thought about telling you,” he says. “I should have told you. I got all the emails you sent, and I even tried writing back, but I blamed you for a long time. And I thought maybe you’d keep writing if you still cared about me, but eventually you stopped.”

His head is bent, and he’s looking at me through his lashes. “When I found that video store with the horror section in fourth year, I almost reached out to you. But it felt too late by then. I figured you would have moved on.” I shake my head forcefully. Of everything he’s just told me, this is what hurts the most.

“I didn’t move on,” I croak. I squeeze his fingers, and we stare at each other for several long seconds. And then they come to me—three words from yesterday, echoing in my head in tentative bursts of happiness.

I love you.

Sam has known about Charlie and me for years, for the entire time I’ve been back. He broke up with his girlfriend despite what I’d done.

I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped.

The words didn’t break through my panic before, but now they stick to my ribs like molasses.

“I still haven’t,” I whisper. He’s perfectly still, but his eyes dance frantically across my face, his head tilted slightly, like what I’ve said doesn’t make sense. Now that it’s getting lighter, I can see how red his eyes are. He can’t have slept much last night.

“I thought I’d never see you again.” My voice hitches, and I swallow. “I would have given anything to sit on this dock with you, to hear your voice, to touch you.” I run my fingers over the stubble on his cheek, and he puts his hand over mine, holding it there. “I fell in love with you when I was thirteen, and I never stopped. You’re it for me.” Sam closes his eyes for three long seconds, and when he opens them, they are glittering pools under a starry sky.

“Swear on it?” he asks. And before I can answer, he puts his hands on my cheeks and brings his lips to mine, tender and forgiving and thoroughly Sam. He takes them away all too soon, and rests his forehead against mine.

“You can forgive me?” I whisper.

“I forgave you years ago, Percy.”

He looks at me for a long time, not speaking, our eyes locked.

“I have something for you,” he says. He shifts and reaches for something in his pocket. I look down when I feel him fiddling with something at my hand.

It’s not as bright as it once was, the orange and pink have faded and the white has turned gray, and it’s too big for me. But there it is, after all these years, Sam’s friendship bracelet tied around my wrist.

“I told you I’d give you something if you swam across the lake. I figured you earned a consolation prize,” he says, tugging on the band.

“Friends again?” I ask, feeling the smile spreading across my cheeks.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Can we have sleepovers as friends?”

“I seem to remember sleepovers being part of the deal,” I say, and then add, “I don’t want to mess this up again, Sam.”

“I think messing it up is part of the deal,” he replies, giving my waist a little squeeze. “But I think we might be better at cleaning it up the next time.”

“I want that,” I tell him.

“Good,” he says. “Because I want that, too.”

He pulls me onto his lap, and I run my hands through his hair. We kiss until the sun has risen high above the hill, wrapping us in a blanket of bright morning heat. When we eventually part, we’re both wearing big, dorky grins.

“So what do we do now?” Sam says in a gravelly voice, running his finger over the freckles on my nose.

I’m supposed to check out of the motel later this morning, and I have no idea what will happen after that. But right now? I know exactly what we’re going to do.

I pull his shirt off over his head and run my hands down his shoulders and smile.

“I think we should go for a swim.”