“I see your trash talk hasn’t improved,” he says with affection, and I feel like I’ve won a marathon. He motions to the dishes on the counter and sighs. “Mom wanted to have everyone here for a party after she passed. The idea of people standing around with crustless egg salad sandwiches in the church basement after her funeral horrified her. She wants us to eat and drink and have fun. She was very specific.” He says it with love, but he sounds tired. “She even made the pierogies and cabbage rolls she wanted served months ago, when she was still well enough, and put them in the freezer.”
My eyes and throat burn, but I stay strong this time. “That sounds like your mom. Organized and thoughtful and . . .”
“Always stuffing people full of carbs?”
“I was going to say, ‘feeding the people she loves,’?” I reply. Sam smiles, but it’s a sad one.
We stand there in the quiet, surveying the tidy array of equipment and plates. Sam pulls the tea towel off his shoulder and sets it down on the counter, giving me a long look as if he’s deciding something.
He points to the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
WE’RE EATING ICE cream and sitting on the same bench we used to as kids—not far from the center of town on the north shore. I can see the motel across the bay in the distance. The sun has dipped low in the sky, and there’s a breeze coming off the water. We haven’t spoken much, which is okay with me because sitting beside Sam feels unreal. His long legs are spread out beside mine, and I’m fixated on the size of his knees and his leg hair. Sam grew out of his stringy phase after he hit puberty, but he is so thoroughly a man now.
“Percy?” Sam asks, breaking my focus.
“Yeah?” I turn toward him.
“You might want to eat that a little faster.” He points to the pink and blue trail of ice cream dripping down my hand.
“Shit!” I try to catch it with a napkin, but a blob lands on my chest. I dab at it, but it only seems to make matters worse. Sam watches from the corner of his eye with a smirk.
“I can’t believe you still eat cotton candy. How old are you?” he teases.
I motion to his waffle cone with two massive scoops of Moose Tracks, the same flavor he used to order as a kid. “You’re one to talk.”
“Vanilla, caramel, peanut butter cups? Moose Tracks is classic,” he scoffs.
“No way. Cotton candy is the best. You just never learned to appreciate it.”
Sam raises one brow in an expression of absolute trouble, then leans over and runs his tongue flat over my scoop of ice cream, biting off a hunk from the top. I let out an involuntary gasp, my mouth hanging open as I stare at his teeth marks.
I remember the first time Sam did that when we were fifteen. The glimpse of his tongue shocked me speechless then, too.
I don’t look up until he elbows me in the side.
“That always freaked you out,” he chuckles in a soft baritone.
“Menace.” I smile, ignoring the pressure building in my lower belly.
“I’ll give you a taste of mine to be fair.” He tilts his cone to me. This is new. I wipe away the beads of sweat forming above my lip. Sam notices, giving me a crooked grin as though he can read every dirty thought that’s running through my mind. “I promise it’s good,” he says, and his voice is as dark and smooth as coffee. I’m not used to this Sam—one who seems fully aware of his effect on me.
I can tell he doesn’t think I’ll do it, but that just spurs me on. I take a quick taste of his cone.
“You’re right,” I say, shrugging. “It’s pretty good.” His eyes flash to my mouth, and then he clears his throat.
We sit in awkward silence for a minute.
“So how have you been, Percy?” he asks, and I hold my hands up helplessly.
“I’m not sure where to start,” I laugh, nervous. How do you even begin after so much time has passed?
“How about three updates?” He nudges me, his eyes glinting.
It was a game we used to play. We went for long stretches apart, and whenever we’d see each other again, we’d tell each other our three biggest pieces of news in rapid fire. I have a new draft of my story for you to read. I’m training for the four-hundred-meter freestyle. I got a B on my algebra exam. I laugh again, but my throat has gone dry.
“Umm . . .” I squint out at the water. It’s been more than a decade, but has that much really happened?
“I still live in Toronto,” I start, taking a bite of ice cream to delay. “Mom and Dad are well—they’re traveling around Europe. And I’m a journalist, an editor, actually—I work at Shelter, the design magazine.”
“A journalist, huh?” he says with a smile. “That’s great, Percy. I’m happy for you. I’m glad you’re writing.”
I don’t correct him. My work involves little writing, mostly headlines and the odd article. Being an editor is all about telling other people what to write.
“And what about you?” I ask, returning my focus to the water in front of us—the sight of Sam sitting beside me is too jarring. I’d looked him up on social media years earlier, his profile picture was a shot of the lake, but never took the step of adding him as a friend.
“One, I’m a doctor now.”
“Wow. That’s . . . that’s incredible, Sam,” I say. “Not that I’m surprised.”
“Predictable, right? And, two, I specialized in cardiology. Another shocker.” He’s not bragging at all. If anything, he sounds a bit embarrassed.
“Exactly where you wanted to be.”
I’m happy for him—it’s what he was always working toward. But somehow it also hurts that his life continued without me as planned. I made my way through my first year of university in a fog, struggling through my creative writing classes, not able to focus on much of anything, let alone character development. Eventually a professor suggested I give journalism a shot. The rules of reporting and story structure made sense to me, gave me an outlet that didn’t feel so personal, so connected to Sam. I abandoned my dream of being an author, but I eventually set new goals. There’s speculation that when it’s time for a new editor in chief at Shelter, I’ll be at the top of the list. I created a different path for myself, one that I love, but it stings that Sam managed to follow his original one.
“And three,” he says, “I’m living here. In Barry’s Bay.” I jerk my head back, and he laughs softly. Sam was as determined to leave Barry’s Bay as he was to become a doctor. I assumed after he left for school he’d never move back.
From the moment we were together-together, I dreamed of what our life would be like when we finally lived in the same place. I imagined moving to wherever he was doing his residency after my undergrad. I would write fiction and wait tables until our incomes were steady. We’d come back to Barry’s Bay whenever we could, splitting our time between the country and the city.
“I stayed in Kingston for my residency,” he explains, as if reading my mind. Sam attended med school at Queen’s University in Kingston, one of the top schools in the whole country. Kingston was nowhere near as large as Toronto, but it sat on Lake Ontario. Sam was meant to be near water. “But I’ve been here for the last year to help Mom. She was sick for a year before that. We were hopeful at first . . .” He looks out over the water.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and we sit quietly for a few minutes, finishing our cones and watching someone fish off the town dock.
“After a while, it didn’t seem like things were going to get any better,” he says, picking up from where he left off. “I had been driving back and forth between here and Kingston, but I wanted to come home. You know, go to the treatments and all the appointments. Help out around the house and at the restaurant. It was too much for her even when she was healthy. The Tavern was always meant to be her and Dad.”
The thought of Sam being here for the past year, living in that house down on Bare Rock Lane, without me knowing, without me being here to help, feels monumentally wrong. I put my hand over his briefly and squeeze before returning it to my lap. He tracks its movement.
“What about your work?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“I’ve been working at the hospital here. A few shifts a week.” He sounds tired again.