I sort of hope he settles down with someone. It would be nice for both of us to have ended up with real, stable partners. When I think of all the shattered pieces of his life, all shattered at once, I sort of understand why he walked away. Plus, I got Gracie out of this whole thing. He got nothing.
“You’re up early,” my mom says, joining me with Granny and three cups of coffee. She tilts her head toward the music. “Nice thing to wake up to.” It was the wrong thing to say. I feel the innuendo in my gut; she must see it on my face. “I just mean the music.” Granny stifles a laugh.
“I know. It’s just so disorienting. I feel like I’ve walked into an old photo album. How is it possible that he’s here and he’s exactly the same, doing all the same things?”
“He’s not exactly the same. Just because he’s wearing the same clothes and playing the same guitar doesn’t mean he hasn’t grown up,” my mom says.
“I guess.”
“And it really has been a long time. Maybe you two could be friends.”
“No chance,” says Granny.
I give her an eye-roll. “Of course we could be friends.”
“So what are we going to do about this singer he’s seeing?” Granny asks.
“Nothing. Because I’m getting married, remember?”
“That’s right,” says Granny, like I’ve jogged her memory. “That Jack is awfully handsome, might get on my nerves after a while.” My mom and I laugh because that’s just so Granny. She’s suspicious of shiny things.
Wyatt stops playing, and we look out at the water. “I adore Jack,” my mom says. Here we go. “But I think you should try to talk things through with Wyatt before you get married, put the whole thing behind you so he’s not some kind of fantasy lurking in your head. Jack is the sort of man I’ve dreamed of you marrying, but you don’t want to start a marriage with any doubts.”
“Did you?”
“No, not a single one. From our third date, I thought I’d die if I didn’t marry your dad.”
Granny leans in. “She was obsessed.”
“I was,” my mom says. “And that’s not always a healthy kind of love.”
“I say it’s the only kind,” says Granny.
My mom smiles at Granny. “Maybe,” she says. What she doesn’t say is that it’s dangerous and can completely destroy you. What she doesn’t say is that she would throw her body into a raging fire before ever seeing me hurt again.
“Never forget that I can see inside your head,” she says, and actually pokes my nose like I’m six. “There’s a little flicker there that I find mildly disturbing. For sure you should marry Jack, but clear the air with Wyatt first.”
“There’s no flicker.”
“Oh, there’s a flicker all right,” Granny laughs. I really can’t stand these two right now.
THEN
29
Sam
“Anybody want to swim down to the cove for sunset?” asked Sam. There were ten of them on the beach, including Travis and Michael.
“It’s too far,” said Travis. “I’m worn out already.”
“We’ll take breaks,” Sam said.
“Don’t believe her,” said Wyatt. “She doesn’t take breaks.”
Sam looked up at the sky. “We only have about twenty minutes. Who’s in?” Sam was on her feet and could already feel the pull of the ocean. She could feel the cool water on her skin and hear the muffled sound of her own strokes. Wyatt was the only one who stood up.
“All right, Sam, but we’re walking back. I swear you’re going to break me.”
Sam smiled and ran into the ocean. As she started to swim, she lost track of Wyatt. She didn’t know if he was ahead of her or behind her, but she knew he was there. She tried to push the recurring thought away—in a few weeks he would be back in Illinois for his senior year. She’d be back in the city with friends who could never appreciate how completely she’d been transformed. She’d take the ACT, she’d finish junior year. And it would be summer again. She could do this, she thought, arms cutting through the water. Wyatt had said forever.
When they got to the cove, Wyatt took her hand and led her up the shore. She shook out her hair and tied it in a knot on top of her head.
“Seriously, Sam, you’re going to kill me.” Wyatt was still catching his breath as they walked hand in hand toward the linden tree.
Sam surveyed her old collection of shells. Some were half covered in sand, and she dusted them off. The sun was setting and she could feel Wyatt watching her.
She looked up. “What?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I was just thinking this would be a nice place to get married.”
Sam looked out on the beach in front of the tree. The sun was starting to set, just the beginning yellow-to-orange stage. “To who?” she asked, stepping toward him.
“I don’t know. I’ll find somebody.” He put his arms around her still-wet back and kissed her. Before she knew it their bathing suits were in the sand and they were wrapped up in each other right under that tree. She looked up at the dark green leaves and had two thoughts before she gave in to the bliss of Wyatt touching every part of her body: Summer is almost over and This is exactly where I’m going to get married.
30
Wyatt
Most nights, all the kids would meet on the beach as soon as it was dark. Sometimes they went to someone’s house, but in late August time was running out, and no one wanted to waste it being inside. When everyone was seated around the fire, Wyatt saw their faces at every age. They’d been little kids sneaking over to the older kids’ bonfire, they’d been thirteen, fourteen, and he’d been falling in love with Sam all along. He felt like he and Sam had always been on this stretch of sand, and he loved that they’d be there again at the same time next summer.
Wyatt wished he had his guitar, as the sound of everyone talking, mixed with the breeze coming off the ocean and the crackling of the fire, brought a tune into his mind. There was a sound to summer music, he thought. It sounded like warm air.
He wanted to be a person who could just pick up a guitar and play for people without worrying that it was no good. The stakes were pretty low with this crew, and with Sam sitting next to him, her legs draped over his, he felt more confident than he ever had. But his music was such a big, aching dream that he wasn’t ready to risk having an audience of more than one.
“I hate the end of summer,” Sam said to everyone.
“I don’t know how you two are going to survive without each other,” said Travis. Everyone kind of laughed, and Wyatt tried to keep the pain off his face. This was something they were trying not to talk about, how they were going to manage an entire nine months apart. They’d spend next summer at the beach, then he’d head out to LA. Sam would be a senior then and would apply to USC and UCLA. They never really covered more than the broad strokes of how that life was going to fall into place. Instead, they talked about what their view would look like, how strange the beach would look facing the wrong way.
“It’s going to suck,” said Sam, because the time apart was going to suck. He put his arm around her and pulled her in tight. Holding her close, he could feel the ache of not being able to touch her for so long. Everything had a flip side.
Sam unwrapped herself from his arms and stood up. “Anyone want to play Capture the Flag? Just one last time?”
31
Sam
It was almost Labor Day, and summer felt like the last inch of water draining from the bathtub. Wyatt met Sam at the library and took her out to lunch at the diner. “It’s payday, m’lady,” he said.
When they’d ordered turkey sandwiches and fries to share, Sam said, “So, I had the talk with my dad last night.”
Wyatt’s eyes went huge. “What do you mean ‘talk’?”
Sam smiled. “Like about you and me.”
“Oh my God, is he going to kill me? I’ll totally marry you right now if you want.”
Sam laughed. “No, he was really cute about it. He just came in and sat on my bed and was like, ‘Sammy, seems like you’re having a pretty big love affair this summer.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’?”
“Is he going to kill me or not?”
“No, it was nothing like that. He said he was happy for me. That there’s nothing more exciting in life than that pull toward another person. It was really nice. And it made me feel happy for my parents, that he feels that way.”
Wyatt’s whole body relaxed. “He’s so cool. Your whole family is so cool. Everything just right out in the open so there are no land mines to step on.”
“Is it any better with your parents?”
“It’s worse, I think. Michael’s wasted most of the time and they don’t say a word about it. They know for sure that I’m not going to college, but we don’t talk about what I am doing. It’s just this big, thick silence in the house.” Wyatt peeled the label off his bottle of Coke. “I wish my dad would be like, ‘Oh hey, son, I see you’re in love.’ Or even ‘Oh hey, I see you’re’ anything.”
Sam said, “Yeah, I guess we’re talkers.”
“It’s awesome,” he said. “Your family is the best.”
32
Wyatt