By the time I finally heard from Sam, it was two weeks after he’d left for school, and I was furious. He was apologetic and full of how are yous and I love yous and I miss yous, but he was also off. He evaded my questions about the workshop, his dorm, and the other students, or gave one-word answers. Five minutes into the call, a knock sounded in the background and a girl’s voice asked if he would be ready to leave soon.
“Who was that?” I asked, the words tight.
“That was just Jo.”
“A girl Jo?”
“Yeah. She’s in the workshop,” he explained. “Most of us are on the same floor. We’re having a potluck, and, well, I should go.”
“Oh.” I could hear the blood rushing through my ears, hot and angry. “We haven’t even done three updates.”
“Listen, I’ll email you later. I finally got my internet working this week.”
“You got your email working this week? Like, earlier this week?”
“A couple days ago, yeah.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t write because there really wasn’t much to say. But I will, okay?”
True to his word, Sam did email, dashing off quick, unsatisfying notes, promising fuller updates in the future. He even sent a couple of texts. I relayed everything to Delilah—who promised to keep an eye on him when she got there and report back on any “skanky-ass losers” she saw him with—and to Charlie, who listened but didn’t offer much feedback.
“You need to start swimming again,” Charlie said as we pulled up to the restaurant one drizzly evening after I told him about Sam’s latest message. He would be switching to a two-person dorm room so Jordie and he could bunk together in September. “Like you did with Sam,” Charlie continued without a look in my direction. “Get out of that head of yours. We’ll start tomorrow. If you’re not at the dock by eight, I’ll come drag you there.” He hopped out of the truck, not waiting for a response, and swung open the back door to the kitchen, while I watched him with my mouth open.
The next morning, he was waiting for me on the dock, in sweats and a T-shirt, a mug of coffee in hand. I’d rarely seen Charlie awake so early in the morning.
“I didn’t know your species could function before noon,” I said as I walked up to him, noticing the pillow creases on his face as I got closer.
“Only for you, Pers,” he said, and it sort of sounded like he meant it. I was about to say thank you—because as much as swimming was a thing Sam and I did together, it was also my thing, and I had missed it—but Charlie nodded his head to the water, his message obvious. Get in.
We met every morning. Charlie rarely joined me in the water, and sat watching at the edge of the dock, sipping from his steaming mug. I quickly learned that he was basically nonfunctional until he’d gotten halfway through his first cup of coffee, but once it was drained, his eyes would spark up, fresh as spring grass. On the hottest mornings, he’d dive in and swim laps beside me.
After a week of mornings at the water, Charlie decided that I was going to swim across the lake again before the end of summer. “You need a goal. And I want to see you do it up close,” he’d said when we were heading up to the house from the lake. I thought back to the summer Charlie suggested that I take up swimming and offered to help me train, and agreed without argument.
Sometimes we’d have coffee and breakfast with Sue after the swim. At first she seemed uncomfortable with our friendship, looking between us with a slight frown. I’d mentioned it to Charlie once, but he’d brushed me off. “She’s just worried you’re going to figure out who the better brother is,” he said, and I’d rolled my eyes. But I wondered.
One thing Charlie was right about: I did get out of my head when I swam, but the vacation only lasted as long as I was in the water, focusing on my breath, moving forward. And by mid-August, I had picked up what some may describe as crazy-girlfriend behavior, calling Sam from the cottage landline when I got home from shifts, no matter how late and despite my parents’ limiting long-distance calls to twice a week. I would have used my own cell if the reception at the lake hadn’t been so shoddy. I knew Sam was waking up extra early to squeeze in a run before he had to be in the lab at eight, but I also knew he would be at home alone, in bed, and couldn’t avoid me.
But the calls didn’t make me feel any better. Sam was often distracted, asking me to repeat questions, and offered so little information about the workshop, seemed to not even be enjoying it, that I became bitter not just about his keeping it a secret from me in the first place but that he’d even gone at all.
“You gave up our summer together for this. You could at least pretend to be getting something out of it,” I’d snapped at him one night when he was particularly monosyllabic.
“Percy,” he’d sighed. He sounded exhausted, worn down by me or the program or both.
“I’m not asking for much,” I told him. “Just a modicum of enthusiasm.”
“A modicum? Are you sleeping with your thesaurus again?” It was his attempt at lightening the mood, but it didn’t improve mine. And so I’d asked the question that had been gnawing at me from the moment he told me he’d be leaving for school early.
“Did you apply to this thing so you could get away from me?”
The other end of the line was silent, but I could hear my heart pumping in my ears, my temples throbbing with its angry supply of blood.
“Of course not,” he replied eventually, quietly. “Is that what you really think?”
“You barely say anything when we talk, and you seem to hate it there. Plus, the whole Surprise, I’m leaving in three weeks! thing doesn’t exactly instill confidence in our relationship.”
“When are you going to get over that?” He said it with a harshness I’d never heard from him before.
“Probably as long as you spent keeping it a secret from me,” I shot back.
I could hear Sam take a deep breath. “I didn’t come here to leave you,” he said, calmer now. “I came to start building something for myself. A future. I’m just adjusting. It’s all new.”
We didn’t stay on the phone much longer after that. It was past midnight. I lay awake most of the night, worried that what Sam was building for himself wouldn’t have room for me in it.
I GREW IRRITABLE with everyone around me. I was short with Sam on the phone and sometimes I avoided replying to Delilah’s texts, annoyed with her excitement about going away to school. It seemed unfair that she and Sam would be sharing the same campus. My parents didn’t seem to notice my sulking. I often walked into the cottage to find them speaking in hushed tones over stacks of paperwork.
“We’re not going to be able to make it all work,” I heard Dad say to Mom on one of these occasions, but I was too wrapped up in my own teen angst to concern myself with their grown-up problems.
The only intermissions from my anxiety were the mornings with Charlie in the water. I hadn’t bothered telling my parents that I was going to swim across the lake again. Mom and Dad had gone back to the city early—something involving the house, I hadn’t paid much attention—and wouldn’t be here for the last ten days of summer. On the day of the swim, I met Charlie on the dock like any other morning, gave him a nod, dove in, and took off. I didn’t even wait for him to get in the boat, but soon enough I could see the oar hitting the water beside me.
That long, steady swim across the lake was a reprieve from everything that had been nagging at me, and when I’d made it to the beach, my limbs burned in a way that felt pleasant, that felt alive.
“Thought you’d forgotten how to do that,” Charlie called over to me as he pulled the boat up onto the shore next to me. He was wearing a bathing suit and a sweat-soaked T-shirt.
“Swim?” I asked, confused. “We’ve been training every day for almost a month.”
Charlie sat down beside me. “Smile,” he said, nudging me with his shoulder.
I reached up and felt my cheek. “It felt good,” I said. “To move . . . To escape.”
He nodded. “Who doesn’t need to escape from Sam every now and then?” He wiggled his eyebrows as if to say, Am I right? Or am I right?
“You’re always so hard on him,” I said, still grinning into the sun and catching my breath. I was almost giddy from the endorphin rush. I wasn’t looking for a response, and he didn’t give me one. Instead, I asked, “So did it meet your expectations?”
He tilted his head.
“You said you wanted to watch the swim up close. Was it everything you dreamed of?”
“Absolutely.” He threw in a dimpled smile for emphasis. “Although in my dreams you were wearing that little yellow bikini you used to strut around in.” It was the kind of classic Charlie line that I’d once shrugged off, but today it hit me like jet fuel. I wanted to bask in it. I wanted to play.
“I didn’t strut!” I cried. “I have never strutted in my life.”
“Oh, you strutted,” Charlie said with a perfectly straight expression.
“You’re one to talk. I am fairly certain your photo is under the word ‘flirt’ in the dictionary.”
He laughed. “A dictionary definition joke? You can do better than that, Pers.”
“Agreed,” I said, laughing now, too. “Did you know you were my first kiss?” The question tumbled out of me—not intended to carry any weight, but Charlie’s dimples disappeared.
“Truth or dare?” he asked. I’d sometimes wondered if he’d forgotten. He clearly hadn’t.
“Truth or dare.”
“Huh,” he said, looking out at the water. I don’t know what reaction I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. He stood up suddenly. “Well, I’m hot as balls. I’m going for a dip.”
“Figures the one time you decide to wear a shirt is the only time you really shouldn’t have,” I quipped as he stood up and yanked it over his head. I usually tried to keep my focus squarely on Charlie’s face when he was shirtless. It was too much—the expanse of skin and muscle—but here it all was, deeply tanned and coated in sweat. He caught me staring before I could scrape my eyes away, and flexed his bicep.
“Show-off,” I muttered.
I lay back in the sand, eyes closed to the sun while Charlie swam. I’d almost dozed off when he sat beside me again.
“You still writing?” he asked. We hadn’t really talked about writing before.
“Umm . . . not much,” I said. I hadn’t felt particularly creative this summer. Not at all, was the truth.
“They’re good, your stories.”
I sat up at this. “You read them? When?”
“I read them. I was looking for something in Sam’s desk the other day and found a stack of them. Read them all. They’re good. You’re good.”
I was looking over at him, but he was staring out over the water.
“You’re serious? You liked them?” Sam and Delilah were always so effusive, but they had to like them. Charlie wasn’t in the habit of doling out compliments that didn’t involve body parts.
“Yeah. They’re a bit weird, but that’s the point, right? They’re different, in a good way.” He looked over at me. His eyes were a pale celery in the sun, bright against his browned skin. But there was no hint of teasing in them. “Might help with the escaping, to write something new,” he said.
I hummed a noncommittal sound in response, suddenly fully aware of all the ways Charlie had been trying to help me get out of my funk this summer. Even though I had been a troll. And if it hadn’t been obvious to me then, it would have been later that evening.
We had pulled up to the back of the Tavern, my legs too wobbly for the walk from the town dock to the restaurant, and Charlie turned off the engine and turned to face me. “So I’ve got an idea, and I think it might cheer you up a bit.” He gave me a hesitant smile.
“I already told you three-ways are a hard limit for me,” I told him with a straight face, and he chuckled.
“Whenever you get sick of my brother, let me know, Pers,” he said, still laughing. I went still. I’d never spent so much time with Charlie. And the thing was, I enjoyed it. A lot. Some of the time I even forgot how mad I was at Sam and how much I missed him. Charlie didn’t have a girl hanging off him that summer, and he was a surprisingly good listener. He bulldozed over my bad moods, either ignoring them completely or calling me out. “Being a bitch doesn’t suit you,” he told me the last time I snapped at him after receiving another painfully short email from Sam. Now the air in the truck was as thick as caramel sauce.
“The drive-in,” Charlie blurted, blinking. “That’s the idea. They’re playing one of those cheesy old horror movies you like, and I thought it might be a good distraction. Your parents are in the city this week, right? I figured you might be a bit lonely.”
“I didn’t know there was a drive-in in Barry’s Bay,” I said.
“There’s not. It’s about an hour from here. Used to go all the time in high school.” He paused. “So what do you think? It’s playing Sunday, and we’re not working.” It felt dangerous in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Horror movies were mine and Sam’s thing, but Sam wasn’t here. And I was. And so was Charlie.
“I’m in,” I said, hopping out of the truck. “It’s exactly what I need.”
I GOT SAM’S email on Saturday. I had trudged up from the lake after a hectic shift, my skin still sticky despite the cool wind on the boat trip home. Practically every order was for pierogies, and we’d run out halfway through the night. Julien had been foul, and the tourists weren’t too happy about it, either.
The cottage was completely empty. I showered and fixed myself a plate of cheese and crackers while I booted up my laptop to check my email. This was my usual post-work, pre-call-with-Sam ritual. What was unusual was the unread message from him waiting in my inbox, sent a couple of hours earlier. Subject line: I’ve been thinking. Sam’s emails usually came in the morning, before his seminar, or in the afternoon, right afterward. One- or two-sentence updates, and they never had subject lines. My limbs went numb with dread as I opened it and saw the paragraphs of text.
Percy,
The last six weeks have been hard. Harder than I thought. I’m still not used to this room or the bed. The school is huge. And the people are smart. The kind of smart that makes me realize how growing up in a small town gave me a false sense of my own intelligence. I look around during a lecture or a lab and everyone seems to be nodding along and following instructions without need for clarification. I feel so behind. How did I even get accepted into this workshop in the first place? Is this what all of school will be like?
I know I spent our last bit of time together studying, but it wasn’t enough. I should have worked harder. I need to work harder now if I want to succeed here.
And I miss you so much. I can’t concentrate sometimes because I’m thinking about you and what you might be doing. When we talk, I can hear your disappointment in me—for not telling you about the workshop and for how unhappy I seem here. I don’t want it all to have been a waste. I will work harder. I will succeed here. I have to.
And that’s why I think we need to establish some boundaries. I love hearing your voice on the other end of the phone, but I hang up and feel nothing but loneliness. Soon you’ll be starting school too, and you’ll see what I mean. We owe it to ourselves and each other to immerse ourselves—you in your writing and me in the lab.
What I’m proposing is a break from constant communication. Right now, I’m thinking a phone call every week. We can make it the same time—like a date. Otherwise, you’ll be all I think about. Otherwise, I won’t be able to do this thing that I’ve wanted for so long, I won’t be the person I want to be. For you, but also for me. Just a little space—to build a big future.
What do you think? Let’s talk about it tomorrow—I was thinking Sunday could be our day.
Sam
I read the whole thing three times, my cheeks wet with tears, a wad of crackers lodged in my throat. Sam wanted space. From us. From me. Because talking to me made him feel lonely. I was a distraction. I was holding him back from his future.
Sam was kidding himself if he thought I’d wait till tomorrow to talk about this. To fight about this. This was not how you treated your best friend, and it was absolutely not how you treated your girlfriend.
His phone rang three, four, five times until he picked up. Except it wasn’t Sam who yelled hello over the music and laughter in the background. It was a girl.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“This is Jo. Who is this?” Was this why Sam didn’t want me calling? He wanted to have other girls over?
“Is Sam there?”
“Sam’s busy at the moment. We’re cheering him up. Can I take a message?” Her words slopped together.
“No. This is Percy. Put him on.”
“Percy.” She giggled. “We’ve heard so . . .” Suddenly she was gone, the music went quiet, and there was muffled laughter before a door closed. Then silence until Sam spoke.
“Percy?” From the one word, I could tell Sam was drunk. So much for needing space to work harder.
“So was this whole email bullshit? You just want more time to get drunk with other girls?” I was yelling.
“No, no, no. Percy, look, I’m really wasted. Jo brought over raspberry vodka. Let’s talk. Tomorrow okay? Right now, I think I’m gonna . . .” The line went dead, and I curled up on the couch and cried till I passed out.
CHARLIE PICKED ME up a bit before eight the next evening. By that time, I was all out of tears. I had sobbed through a long conversation with Delilah and then again when Sam sent a short apology for hanging up on me to puke. He wrote that he wanted to talk tonight. I didn’t reply.
I didn’t think it would be possible to laugh, but the mountain of snacks Charlie had assembled on the front seat was truly insane.
“There are burgers, dogs, and fries there if you want something more substantial,” he said as I eyed the packages of chips and candy.
“Yeah this probably won’t be enough,” I joked. And it felt nice. Light. “I usually go through at least four party-sized bags of chips a night, and there’s only three in here, so . . .”
“Smart-ass,” he said, glancing my way as he headed down the long driveway. “I didn’t know what flavor you like. I was covering my bases.”
“I’ve always wondered what happens to all those girls you date,” I said, holding up a box of Oreos. “Now I know. You fatten them up and eat them for dinner.”
He shot me a mischievous grin. “Well, one of those things is true,” he said in a low drawl. I rolled my eyes and looked out the window so he couldn’t see the blush spreading from my chest to my neck.
“You scare easily,” he said after a minute had gone by.
“I don’t scare easily. You like to provoke people unnecessarily,” I told him, turning back to study his profile. He was frowning. “What? Am I wrong?” I barked, and he laughed.
“No, you’re not wrong. Maybe ‘scare’ is the wrong word, but it’s easy to get you worked up.” He looked over at me. “I like it.” I could feel the flush move down through my body. He turned back to the road wearing a big enough smile that a hint of a dimple appeared on his cheek. I had a strong urge to run my finger over it.
“You like to make me mad?” I asked, trying to sound indignant, but also trying to flirt. He glanced over again before answering.
“Sort of. I like how your neck gets red, like you’re hot all over. Your mouth gets all twisty, and your eyes look dark and kind of wild. It’s pretty sexy,” he said, his eyes on the empty stretch of highway. “And I like that you stand up to me. Your insults can be pretty savage, Pers.” I was shocked. Not by the sexy part—that was just Charlie being Charlie, at least I thought so—but by the fact that he’d so obviously been paying attention to me. Spending time with him had been the only thing keeping me halfway sane, but I was getting the impression that he’d started paying attention before he’d taken pity on me this summer. At least I thought it had been pity. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“When it comes to insults, you deserve only the best, Charles Florek,” I replied, trying to sound easy.
“Couldn’t agree with you more,” he said. And then added after a beat, “So what’s with these puffy eyes of yours?”
I looked out the window again. “Guess the cucumber slices didn’t work,” I mumbled.
“You look like you’ve been swimming with your eyes open in a chlorinated pool. What’s he done now?” he asked.
I sputtered a bit, not sure how to get the words out quickly enough that I wouldn’t start to cry again. “He, umm.” I cleared my throat. “He says I’m distracting him and wants to take a break.” I looked over to Charlie, who was watching the road, his jaw tight. “He needs more space. From me. So he can study and be important one day.”
“He broke up with you?” The words were quiet, but there was so much anger behind them.
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice cracking. “I don’t think that’s what it was, but he only wants to talk to me once a week. And when I called last night, there were people in his room, and this girl he’s been hanging out with. He was drunk.” A muscle twitched in Charlie’s jaw.
“Let’s not talk about it,” I whispered, even though we had both been silent for seconds. Then I added with more certainty, “I want to have fun tonight. There’s one week left of summer and one of the best horror movies of all time ahead of us.”
Charlie looked over at me with a pained expression.
“Please?” I asked.
He looked back out the windshield. “I can do fun.”
The movie was Rosemary’s Baby, one of my favorites from the sixties, and not exactly the cheesy slasher film Charlie had expected. As the credits rolled, he stared at the screen, mouth hanging open.
“That was some messed-up shit,” he murmured and turned slowly to me. “You like this stuff?”
“I looove it,” I cooed. We had gone through a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips, a bunch of gummy worms and licorice and two slushies from the concession stand. I was amped from the sugar. It was the most fun I’d had all summer, which was shocking since I’d spent most of the day in the fetal position.
“You’re one disturbing girl, Pers,” he said, shaking his head.
“And that’s saying something coming from you.” I grinned, and when he grinned back, my eyes dropped to his dimples before noticing that his were on my mouth. I cleared my throat, and he quickly looked at the clock on the dash.
“We better get you back,” he said, starting the truck.
We spent the drive home talking, first about his economics program at Western and the rich kids he was sharing a house with in the fall, and then about how I felt like everyone was moving on to bigger and better things while I stayed in Toronto, following the path my parents laid for me. He didn’t try to make me feel better or tell me I was overreacting. He just listened. There weren’t more than a few seconds of dead air the entire hour drive back. We were cracking up over a story about his first school dance when he pulled up to the cottage. His dad had taught him the “proper” way to dance beforehand, which ended up with Charlie two-stepping a thoroughly freaked-out Meredith Shanahan across the gymnasium floor.
“You wanna come in?” I asked, still laughing. “I think there are a few of Dad’s beers in the fridge.”
“Sure,” Charlie said, cutting the engine and walking me to the door. “If you play your cards right, I might ask you to dance.”
“I only tango,” I said over my shoulder as I turned the key in the lock.
“I knew it would never work between us,” he said in my ear, scattering goose bumps down my arm.
We kicked off our shoes and Charlie took in the small, open space. “I haven’t been in here in ages,” he said. “I like that your parents have kept it as a real cottage. Well, other than that,” he said, pointing to the espresso machine that took up way too much of the kitchen counter. I walked to the other side of the room and flicked on the floodlight that shone up into the towering red pines.
“It’s my favorite place in the world,” I said, watching the swaying boughs for a moment. When I turned around, Charlie was studying me with a strange expression on his face.
“I should probably get home,” he said hoarsely, pointing over his shoulder.
I tilted my head. “You literally just got here.” I moved by him to open the fridge. “And I promised you a beer.” I passed him a bottle.
He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m not really in the habit of drinking alone.” I rolled my eyes and pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my hand so I could twist off the cap. I took a long drink, then handed him the bottle.
“Better?” I asked. He took a sip, eyeing me warily.
“You really made an effort tonight, huh?” he said, gesturing to my outfit, a pair of ripped jean shorts and a gray sweatshirt. I’d thrown my hair up into a ponytail. It was only then I registered that he was wearing nice dark jeans and a new-looking polo shirt.
“Left my ball gown in Toronto,” I replied.
He smirked, his eyes dropping to my legs. “My dates don’t wear ball gowns, Pers,” he said, his gaze returning to mine. “But usually they wear clean clothes.” I looked down and, yep, there was an orangey stain on the leg of my shorts. “You know, as a sign of a basic level of hygiene,” he added. I could feel myself heating, and his smile split open.
“Told you,” he said, his voice deep and low. He put his bottle down and took a step toward me. “Red neck. Twisted-up mouth. And your eyes are even darker than usual.” We stood like that, neither of us breathing, for several long seconds.
“It’s sexy as hell,” he rasped. “You’re so fucking sexy I can’t stand it.”
I blinked once and then threw myself at him, slinging my arms around his neck and bringing his mouth down to mine. I wanted to be wanted so badly. He met me just as eagerly, grabbing my waist and pulling me against his hard body. He held my hips against him with one hand and wrapped the other around my ponytail, pulling my head back and then sucking on the exposed flesh of my neck. When I moaned, he cupped my butt and lifted me off the floor, guiding my legs around his waist, parting my lips with his tongue and backing me up so I was sitting on the counter. He spread my legs wide and stepped between them, trailing a hand up my calf.
“I didn’t shave,” I whispered between kisses, and he laughed into my mouth, sending vibrations through me. He crouched down, holding my ankle, then ran his tongue from my shin up over my knee to the edge of my shorts, eyes on mine the entire time.
“I really don’t care,” he growled, then stood and captured my face between his hands. “You could go a month without shaving, and I’d still want you.” I squeezed my legs around him and kissed him hard, then bit down on his lip, making him groan. The sound was catnip to my ego.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said, then pushed him away so I could jump down, and led him up to my bedroom.
His hands were on me as soon as we passed through the doorway. I walked backward until my knees hit the bed, and reached for his shirt at the same time he reached for mine. We took them off in a tangle of arms and then he unhooked my bra in seconds, throwing it onto the floor. My hands flew to the buttons of his jeans, desperate to feel him against me, to erase all the sad parts, to feel wanted. He watched me take them off, then unzipped my shorts, sliding them over my hips so they hit the ground. We stood in front of each other, breathing heavily, and then I pushed my underwear down my legs and moved closer to him, brushing my fingers over his shoulders. I didn’t realize they were shaking until Charlie put his hands on top of mine.
“Are you sure?” he asked gently. In reply, I pulled him down onto the bed on top of me.
I MUST HAVE fallen asleep immediately after because when I woke, pink morning sky glowed through the windows. Still groggy, I felt breathing on my shoulder before I realized there was a thigh thrown over me. The box of condoms my mom had given me last year sat open on the nightstand.
“Good morning,” a gravelly voice rasped in my ear. It sounded so much like Sam. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping it was a bad dream. He shifted his weight over me and kissed my forehead, nose, then my lips, until I opened my eyes and stared up into a pair of green eyes.
The wrong eyes.
The wrong brother.
I inhaled raggedly, seeking oxygen, feeling my pulse, fast and uncomfortable, all over my body.
“Pers, what’s wrong?” Charlie moved off me and helped me into a seated position. “Are you going to be sick?”
I shook my head, looked at him wild-eyed, and gasped, “I can’t breathe.”
I MOVED THROUGH the final days of summer in a fog of self-loathing, trying to figure out why I’d done what I’d done and how I could possibly tell Sam about my betrayal.
After the panic attack subsided, I kicked Charlie out of the cottage, but he’d come back in the afternoon to check on me. I yelled and screamed at him through hot tears, telling him it was a huge mistake, telling him I hated him, telling him I hated me. When I started hyperventilating, he held me tightly until I’d calmed down, whispering how sorry he was, how he didn’t mean to hurt me. He apologized once I had, looking pained and flattened, and left me alone feeling even worse for having hurt him as well.
Charlie apologized again when he picked me up for my last shift at the Tavern a day later, and I nodded, but that was the last we spoke of what had happened between us.
When I returned to the city, my parents immediately broke the news that they would be putting the cottage up for sale in the fall. I should have seen it coming, paid more attention to the way my parents had been sniping at each other about money. I burst into tears when they explained how our Toronto home needed renovations and, besides, I could always stay with the Floreks. It felt like punishment for what I’d done.
Sam and I had only exchanged emails since the night with Charlie, but he called me as soon as he read my message with the news, saying he was sad but was sure I could spend the next summer at their house.
“I know how upset you must be,” he said. “You won’t have to say goodbye alone. We can pack your things together over Thanksgiving and move a bunch of it to my place. The Creature from the Black Lagoon poster can go in my room.”
Neither of us mentioned his email. And I said nothing of what had happened with Charlie.
What I needed was to talk to Delilah, but she had already shipped out to Kingston. I wanted to confide in her, I wanted her to give me a plan for how to make everything better, but I couldn’t do that via text, and I didn’t want to do it on the phone, to hear her voice but not see her reaction.
I don’t remember much about those first weeks of school. Only that Sam began to write longer emails between our scheduled Sunday calls. Now that Jordie and he were rooming together and he was getting used to the campus and the city, he was feeling more settled. Also, while his workshop wasn’t graded, he had received a glowing review from the supervising professor and an offer to work part-time on his research project. He hadn’t yet bumped into Delilah, but he was keeping his eyes open for a head of red hair.
He explained how lonely he’d been when he first got to school, how he kept his notes short so as not to worry me. He apologized for the drunken state he’d been in when I called him, and told me that when he thought of building a future, it was always a future with me in it. He also apologized for not making that clear. He told me I was his best friend. He told me he missed me. He told me he loved me.
Sam’s classes ended early on Fridays and he wanted to take the train to Toronto to see me on weekends, but I pushed him off, telling him my professor had asked for a twenty-thousand-word short story to be completed in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t a lie, but I also finished the assignment well ahead of time without letting Sam know. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was humming with nervous anticipation. I still hadn’t told Delilah what had happened, but I had talked myself into telling Sam the truth. I would do anything I could to make it right between us, but I couldn’t lie to him.
I drove up Friday, not even stopping to pee, so I could make it to the cottage by the time Sue got back to Barry’s Bay with Sam. My parents had already moved most of our knickknacks out of the cottage and weren’t coming back for the holiday. They left my room for me to take care of. The Realtor would be there the following week to stage the place and start the showings.
I had emailed Sam that I had something important to talk to him about as soon as he got home. That’s funny, I have something I want to talk to you about too, he wrote.
I kept myself busy waiting for him, my stomach in knots and my hands shaking as I untacked the Creature from the Black Lagoon poster from over my bed. I cleared out my desk, flipping through the clothbound notebook Sam had given me, and running my fingers over his slanted inscription on the inside cover, For your next brilliant story, before packing it in a box. I set the wooden box with my initials carved on its lid on top. I knew without having to peek inside that it still contained the embroidery floss I made our bracelets with.
He has to forgive me, I thought to myself, over and over, willing it to be true.
I was just getting started on the nightstand when I heard the back door open. I flew down the stairs and threw myself into Sam’s arms, knocking him backward and against the door, his laugh reverberating through me, our arms tight around each other. He felt bigger than I remembered. He felt solid. And real.
“I missed you, too,” he said into my hair, and I breathed him in, wanting to climb inside his ribs and snuggle up beneath them.
We kissed and hugged, me through tears, and then he led me over to the middle of the room and leaned his forehead against mine.
“Three updates?” I whispered, and his eyes crinkled with a smile.
“One, I love you,” he replied. “Two, I can’t stand the idea of leaving again, of you not coming back to this cottage, without you knowing how much I love you.” He took a shaky breath, then knelt on one knee, taking my hands in his. Three”—he looked up at me, his blue eyes serious and wide and hopeful and scared—“I want you to marry me.”
My heart exploded in a burst of happiness, molten pleasure seeping into my bloodstream. And just as fast, I remembered what I’d done and who I’d done it with, and the color drained from my face.
Sam rushed to go on. “Not today. Or this year. Not until you’re thirty, if that’s what you want. But marry me.” He reached into the pocket of his jeans and held out a gold ring with a circle of small diamonds surrounding a center stone. It was beautiful, and it made me feel violently ill.
“My mom gave me this. It was her mom’s ring,” he said. “You’re my best friend, Percy. Please be my family.”
I stood in silent shock for five long seconds, my mind racing. How could I tell him about Charlie now? When he was down on one knee, holding his grandmother’s ring? But how could I accept without telling him? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Not when he thought I was good enough to marry. There was only one option.
I knelt down in front of him, hating myself for what I was about to do. What I had to do.
“Sam,” I said, closing his hand over the ring and biting back tears. “I can’t.” He blinked, then opened his mouth and closed it again, then opened it, but still nothing came out.
“We’re too young. You know that,” I whispered. It was a lie. I wanted to say yes to him and screw you to anyone who questioned us. I wanted Sam forever.
“I know I said that before, but I was wrong,” he replied. “Not many people meet the person they’re meant to be with when they’re thirteen. But we did. You know we did. I want you now. And I want you forever. I think about it all the time. I think about traveling. And getting jobs. And having a family. And you’re always there with me. You have to be there with me,” he said, his voice cracking and his eyes moving over my face for a sign that I’d changed my mind.
“You might not always feel that way, Sam,” I said. “You’ve pushed me away before. You kept the course from me, and then I spent most of the summer wondering why I barely heard from you. And then that email . . . I can’t trust that you’ll love me forever when I don’t even know if you’ll love me next month.” The words tasted like bile, and he jerked his head back like I’d hit him. “I think we should take a break for a while,” I said softly enough that he wouldn’t be able to hear the agony in my voice.
“You don’t really want that, do you?” He croaked out the words, his eyes glassy. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.
“Just for a while,” I repeated, holding back tears.
He studied my face like he was missing something. “Swear on it.” He said it as though he was issuing a challenge, as if he didn’t quite believe me.
I hesitated, and then I wrapped my index finger around his bracelet and tugged.
“I swear.”
