The Summer Remains (11 page)

I smiled, bit my lip, and then drifted into a fog of
Battle Bride
-related anxiety.

It’s been four minutes,
he said four minutes later, apparently.
Four minutes is an ETERNITY in texting time. Yes or no?

I told myself to chill. First, I was lying to him, and our whole relationship – or whatever this was – was based on that lie, no matter how much fun I was having. And the second reason was a slightly more classic one: I wanted to impress him by coming off as impossibly busy and nonchalant. Because I really liked him. This could be something, really
something
, and I didn’t want him to think I was some Debbie Desperado who crazily waited by my phone all day for him to text me and invite me out. His next text came soon after:

I had a bad day and I really need to hangout with someone. Please?!?!?

“So I’ve been thinking about things we can do this summer,” Shelly said while passing out supplies. She was still mad at me from this morning, when she’d caught me watching
Maury
in the Florida room. “I will
not
have the Devil’s work under my roof!” she’d said while wrestling the remote from me. “If you want to watch this trash, you can go find your own house!”

“But Shelly,” I’d said with wide eyes, “without reality shows, how else am I supposed to be reminded that there are people out there who are worse-off than me? I may have a broken throat and a leaky stomach, but at least I’m not twerking on a soundstage somewhere in Connecticut because I’ve just discovered my child’s actual paternal lineage!”

She gave me a funny look, but only for a second. “Twerk somewhere else,” she finally said while marching into the kitchen, the safe sounds of Kathie Lee Gifford now flowing from the flat screen. “This is a Methodist home.”

“So,” she said, back in the present, “what about an Amelia Island weekend? You love all those antique shops. Or maybe Universal Studios? I hear they have some new rides, and the drive isn’t too long. You can stay with your dad, and I’ll get a hotel.”

I motioned at Chase, who was still oblivious as to Operation 80/20, and did a throat-cutting motion. “Those are nice offers, but you do remember what I said about wanting to be
normal
, right?”

“That is normal. How is wanting to spend time with my only daughter not normal?”

Cooper texted yet again, and I started to get nervous.

“Look, Shelly, that sounds great, but let’s continue this another time,” I said as I got up, which took more effort than usual for some reason.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out with…?”

I picked at my shirt. “With a friend.”

“Does this friend happen to possess a Y chromosome?”

“Yes, Shelly, he is a guy.”

“I
knew
it! Your skin is all pink and blushy and your eyes aren’t focusing on anything. Who is he? What’s going on? Is it that boy from the other day, the one you said was a friend?”

I tried to scoff, but no sound would come out.

“You’re crazy,” I finally said. “The only thing I’m falling in love with is Funfetti cake. I’ll be home later. See ya.”

“But I never said the word
love
,” she said darkly, and I froze. Before she could turn it into too much of a drama, though, I turned back and smiled.

“Oops. Brain fart. Gotta go. Bye!”

“So, what was on our agenda tonight?” Cooper asked after dinner, which consisted of steak for him and a tube of milk discreetly pumped into my stomach during a trip to the bathroom for me. The restaurant Cooper had chosen, Salt Life, was quiet and deserted, so thankfully nobody had walked in on me.

“
Our
agenda?”

“You and me,” he said, like our hanging out was a foregone conclusion. “Us.”

“Oh,” I blushed, “I, um, I didn’t have any-”

“God,” he said quietly.

“God, what?”

“God, it just feels good to see your face, after today.”

“
Oh
.” And then: “What was your bad day about, anyway? You never did tell me.”

“Just stuff with my mom, I don’t know,” he sighed. “She gets depressed sometimes, and it gets hard.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” He just stared at me. “That color looks so good on you, by the way.”

“Thanks, weirdo,” I said. “And tonight?” I chewed on my lower lip and gave myself a chance to turn him down and save him from me and my dubious fate. I failed.

“Well, I was gonna watch this hideous Netflix romance, but I don’t have anyone to sufficiently mock it with. Care to join?”

“Hmm,” he said. “
How
hideous?”

“Pretty hideous. I’ve seen it before. The couple meets after the girl trips on a puppy and helplessly falls into his arms. Drama ensues.”

“How
much
drama?”

“I remember seeing tears fifteen minutes into the movie.”

“Hmm,” he repeated. “Any horrible clichés yet, besides what you just said?”

“The main character is a bright young writer named Lola who works at a fashion magazine called
Flaunt
and wants to expand her horizons and get serious about her career.”

“Yep,” he nodded, “only dogs and celebrity babies are named Lola, and writers haven’t been paid to write in a decade. I would know. Sounds bad enough. I’ll follow you home – you’re worth the drive. Hopefully this movie won’t kill me with its cheesiness, because this night has already been amazing.”

I felt my face slacken with horror.

“What is it?”

“No-nothing,” I stammered, trying to recover myself. “Just please don’t joke about death with me, okay?”

“You got it,” he said a little suspiciously, as he got his box of leftovers and headed to his car. I let him follow me home in the humid night, the word
unclimbable
ringing in my head in an endlessly hellish chorus all the while.

~

I snuck him into my bedroom through the back porch to keep from dealing with my mother. The movie was just awful; a total hate-watch. Actually, you know when you hate something so much that you watch it just to make fun of it, but it’s so frustrating it just ends up making you even madder than before? It was one of those. It starred Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl or whoever, and it started out with the spunky blonde heroine tripping over a leaf or a book or something and falling directly into the arms of a scruffy male lead with a name like Josh Trent or Trent Josh or Trosh Jent or whatever. After some affable banter and maybe a few coffee dates with the female lead’s adorably zany best friend named Zoe or Roxy tagging along as third wheel, they fell in love. Eventually they hit some road block, but just some cutesy problem that could be wrapped up in a bow, not a real-life issue like a demanding career or families that didn’t mesh well or, you know, an incurable medical condition or something. It ended with the couple coming to their senses and quitting their jobs and running towards each other on the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset, Josh Trent giving up literally everything to chase down the object of his love.

“Why do all these endings have to be
happy
?” Cooper asked as the credits – which were of course pink – started to roll. “Why do all the movies end with the couple running off into the sunset? That’s so boring. Where are the sad stories? That’s why I like Saviour, you know. Life isn’t neat, it’s dirty. I like to be reminded that fucked up stuff exists. It gives me…feelings. Doesn’t feeling stuff, even if it’s bad, make you remember that you’re…I don’t know,
alive
?”

“Agreed,” I said, trying to roll away from him in a way that was not awkward. “You have no idea how much I agree, actually. Let’s make a pact: no more rom-coms ever again. If there is a cupcake, a puppy, or a pastel-colored balloon on the cover, we are not watching it.”

“Deal.”

I got up to turn on the light. “And the worst thing was that they were calling each other ‘soul mates’ – that idea is just
so
not realistic.”

He gave me a weird look. “Wait, I didn’t say I was
that
cynical. You don’t believe in love?”

“I believe in love,” I said as I returned to the bed. “I just don’t believe in soul mates.”

He blinked a few times.

“Okay, well, I do believe people can find the ‘love of their lives,’ or whatever, but I don’t think that’s the same thing as a soul mate, and I don’t think that ‘thing,’ whatever it is, has to last for both of their lives.”

“Why not?”

I took a breath. “Because rarely do those people end up together. I’ve watched my mother suffer for years because of my dad. She’s still in love with him and everyone knows it. But are they together? Nope.”

“How do you know she feels that way?”

I felt my eyes track away from him. “Because when he’s on his way up from Orlando to visit me and my brother, she gets a glass of sweet tea and just sits by the window in the living room, watching for him, all day. Waiting for him to come back. It really is the saddest thing.”

A long silence filled up the space between us. “God,” he finally said. “That’s depressing. No matter what happens with us, let’s never be like that, okay?”

“Okay,” I smiled. “And sorry, I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer. My reason for not believing in soul mates is more about numbers and odds than anything – as usual.”

“Explain?”

“Okay, so, like, I look at life as a game of circumstance, right? A play at odds. There are seven billion people on Earth, I think. How many of those seven billion people do you think one human encounters in a day?”

“Hmm. If I stay in bed all day watching Netflix, zero. If I go surfing or fishing, a couple dozen. If I go to the bars, maybe a few hundred.”

“Yeah. And what about in a year?”

“Tens of thousands, maybe. Perhaps a hundred thousand.”

“And a lifetime?”

“Um. Maybe a few million or so?”

“Exactly,” I said. “And so the amount of people in the world – seven billion – divided by the amount of those people you will actually
see
in the world during your lifetime – a few million – is, like, so infinitesimal a number that I don’t even want to figure it out. So the whole ‘soul mate’ concept, the idea that there is one person out there who is ‘made for us’ and ‘meant to cross paths with us’ or whatever is ludicrous enough on its own, but the chance that we would actually
meet
that person, even if they existed? The chance that we’d share a class with them or move down the street from them or pass them on the sidewalk and spark some instant connection with them, out of so many other billions of people out there to meet? Those odds are laughable, and all those people watching romantic comedies and posting Facebook statuses about their One True Love need to eat shit.”

For one long moment he just stared at me, studying me. Finally he leaned forward and smirked, looking thought-rearrangingly gorgeous. “Here’s a number for you,” he said. “One.”

“What’s that?” I asked, and he smirked even harder.

“The number of times I need to look into your eyes to know everything you just said was bullshit.”

I gasped, totally gasped.

“But I don’t know, I kinda just think you’re too cynical for your own good,” he said soon, talking himself back from the Edge of Awkward Profundity a little. “And that’s coming from someone who listens to Saviour. From what I can tell, sometimes it’s like you mask cynicism as logic and use it as a weapon.”

“
I have to
,” I whispered as some strange sadness bubbled up from some chasm deep within me.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. What if I
had
to turn cynical to protect myself? What if I had to turn all my edges in on myself and fold myself up to nothing just to defend myself from a world that seemed to have it out for me?”

He said nothing for a long while.

“You know, the world is more beautiful than that,” he finally murmured. “I don’t know what happened to you to make you like this, but I swear, goodness exists. You just have to find it.” He blinked at me and shook his head. “And who knows – maybe the soul mate concept doesn’t have to be some be-all, end-all thing like it is in the movies. Maybe the whole world is made of love, and we’re just supposed to bump into love and feed off love and contribute to love and then break off and drift somewhere else and start all over again. I mean, I fall in love with things all the time – I love books and music and beer and the sea. Maybe there are all sorts of things and people for me to fall in love with along the way, and if I do, that doesn’t mean they have to be my One and Only – maybe they’re just one wave in a sea of love.”

I saw the opportunity and jumped for it, like the crazy person I was. “…And what are your thoughts on marriage?”