The Summer Remains (26 page)

“Oh, Cooper.”

I just stared at him for a while before finally snapping out of it, shaking my head, and reaching for my glass. “I’m think I’m gonna need some more of that Rosé.”

“What are you thinking?” he asked a little while later, after our appetizers. I’d managed to eat a few bites of raw tuna despite Dr. Steinberg’s orders, and I was proud of myself for breaking the rules.

“I don’t know. I-”

We heard giggling and both looked over at the next table. A group of teen boys celebrating a birthday quickly looked away, their faces pink like my favorite roses that grew in my yard. I’d noticed them gawking earlier while Cooper had transferred me from my wheelchair into my seat, but they’d kept quiet until now.

“Hold that thought, I have to go to the bathroom,” Cooper said absently as he got up and set his napkin on the table. “Be right back.”

He didn’t come right back.

Where is he?
I wondered after ten or fifteen minutes. At twenty-one minutes, a group of waiters appeared with a large cupcake adorned with long, fancy sparklers. Figuring it was something the hospital had set up, I smiled as big as I could.

“Happy engagement to you,” the waiters sang in the tune of the birthday song. “Happy engagement to you! Happy engagement dear Ashley, happy engagement to you!”

They all stared down at me, this little broken girl sitting at what might have been her last meal with the boy she loved, and I started crying. And that just made me even more upset, because I hated to be that chick who couldn’t control her emotions – but this level of humiliation was just
beyond
.

“I…I’m not engaged,” I said. “I’m not Ashley.”

Slowly they all exchanged horrified glances.

“Oh my God, we came to the wrong table,” one girl whispered, her mouth falling open. “This…this is the cancer girl from that hospital program.”

“
Esophogeal Intresia
!” I snapped, the girl’s words hitting me like a truck. “Get my life-threatening condition right if you’re going to mention it at all! Cancer is not the only malady in this world, you know!”

They all hung their heads, equal parts chastened and confused. The host looked down at his chart. “Oh my God – we were supposed to go to table eighty-four, not forty-eight.” He looked over at me as the others cringed. “We are so, so, so sorry. Oh, wow.”

“Oh,” another said, “we didn’t…we didn’t know…”

“We’ll comp your meal,” the host said quickly.

“It’s already been comped,” I told him.

“Then we’ll…we’ll make it up to you somehow. Oh, God. Sorry.
So
sorry.”

They all turned and crossed the room, and I watched as they waved the same exact sparklers and sang the same exact song for this blonde girl who clapped her hands to the beat and jumped up in her seat so everyone could see, her fiancé watching with a politely mortified smile. I wanted to escape this horror show, but I knew I couldn’t get to the wheelchair alone – Cooper had already parked it in a back hallway – and so I just sat there and sort of stared down at the table, alone as I ever was.

What a joke. What a fucking joke. As if I hadn’t been marginalized enough in the eyes of society with my scar and my stomach tube, why not add a wheelchair, a desperate wish for marriage, an embarrassed boyfriend, and a death sentence to the equation? And if I
did
die, I wouldn’t even get the chance to leave behind a little blonde-haired baby girl like Steinberg’s girlfriend had. There would be no last-minute miracles for me. My life was a joke and everyone knew it, and I would be totally forgotten the minute I left this place.

I didn’t even care if God was real or not anymore – I hated him just the same.

Finally Cooper returned with a muffled apology about his grandma calling him in the hallway and talking his ear off.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he sank into his seat. I couldn’t explain, so I just glared at my plate, which was empty because I couldn’t fucking eat. He looked over at the girl celebrating with her stupid engagement cupcake.

“Oh, no, I’m so sorry,” he said. “That’s really insensitive of her to celebrate in front of you like that.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, looking up. “She doesn’t even know who I am. She doesn’t know why we’re here tonight.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

I wanted to make Cooper hurt as much as I hurt, and so I told him what had happened, right down to every humiliating detail. I wanted to twist the knife and watch it cut him just like it had cut me. When I finished he just stared down at his feet, and instead of feeling vindicated, I just felt like a stupid asshole.

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry I left and abandoned you,” he said finally. “I…I hate when people look at us.”

“Oh, so now you finally admit you’re embarrassed?” I asked, anger winning out over goodness once again. “Why not do it a month ago and save yourself the trouble?”

He made this sound like he was sucking air in a vacuum. “Summer…
Summer
. I wasn’t embarrassed. I was angry that people were looking at us, so I left, because I didn’t want to fight someone and ruin your night. Because I
would
have fought them, trust me.”

This just made me cry harder. He reached over the table and wiped a tear from my face, and in an attempt to stop crying, I smiled a little.

“Don’t be sad,” he said. “Don’t. You’re going to be fine. See, you’re smiling, it can’t be that bad.”

“No,” I said through gritted teeth. If love was the ultimate kaleidoscope, one glorious entity capable of refracting itself out into the world in the form of a million different emotions, the current one I was feeling was absolute rage. “I’m smiling because I’m miserable and I kind of hate you right now,” I told him. “I may be dying, but I am still a woman.”

He took back his hand. “Oh.”

I looked over at the engaged couple again as they took selfie after selfie. They were our age, perhaps even younger, and I started thinking about how different the blonde’s path was from mine. What I wouldn’t give to be worrying about bridesmaid gowns and cake tastings and venue options and lighting schemes instead of broken throats and leaky stomachs and major surgeries. I rolled my eyes as I imagined the Facebook posts that were no doubt going to be uploaded later tonight. Stupid bitch.

No
, I told myself.
No. Don’t think like that.
I was being ridiculous. This girl had no clue that I even existed. She was simply a girl in love, following along with a society that told her to throw herself out there and get validation in the form of a big white wedding. I needed to take my own advice from the day of my surgery news and chill the fuck out.

“Let’s just run,” Cooper said after a while, a stubborn glint in his eyes. “We can still do it. Let’s just get away from all these monsters.”

“And…and
what
?” I asked. “Skip the procedure? Die in my sleep? I need this surgery, if you haven’t heard.”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking. “I…I just want to take us away. We’ll escape them and we’ll get away from here and we’ll make our own little heaven, just you and me, maybe forever, if you want.”

“Oh, Cooper,” I said, the hard ball of anger in my chest cracking a little as tears pressed against my eyes. “Isn’t it beautiful to think we could?”

Soon the manager arrived with a hundred-dollar gift certificate that I might never get to use. I took it with a scowl and looked outside just as a single crow took flight and disappeared into the low clouds.

Our last stop was the pier.
Our
pier. I didn’t know why, and it’s not like I could swim, but since I was so used to all of Cooper’s crazy ideas by now, I didn’t say anything. Just like the first night, he tipped his head at the guard, who gave us a sad smile and opened the gate. He wheeled me a little too fast, and going over the bumps on the old weathered boards was a little painful, but I didn’t complain. All I could think of was the sea, and how it gave me life, and how good my prince looked in the moonlight here in the tail end of this dream.

When we made it out the end we turned around and just looked at the general gorgeousness of a shimmering Jacksonville Beach for a while.

“Are you okay now?” he finally asked. “I don’t want you to be mad.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Sorry for flipping out. That was just, like, beyond mortifying.” I took a breath. “I’m fine now. You know what I was thinking, actually?”

“What?”

“Last time we came here, I remember looking at the apartment buildings along the water and thinking, ‘Man, I would hate to have their cleaning bills every time a hurricane came by and flooded everything.’ But tonight I looked out and thought ‘Shit, I’d love to have one of those apartments, how beautiful.’ I think these last few months have made me less of a pessimist – is that possible?”

“I guess it is,” he laughed, brushing me off, but I knew the truth. Yes, I was still dragged down by the horrors that went on in the world, and yes, there would probably always be a part of my soul that was dark with the knowledge that this life was unfair. But loving Cooper had wiped so much of that away. Love could fix a lot, it seemed.

Cooper looked over at me. “I want you to cry now, Summer.”

“What?”

“I want you to cry.”

“I heard that, but what are you talking about?”

He sighed. “You can say whatever you want, but I know you’re tired. I see how the world treats people sometimes. You are so brave to act so unaffected by it, and not just show it and get it out there. But it’s there. The sadness. I know it’s there. I could see it back in the restaurant. And I want you to get it out.”

I tried to ignore him, but suddenly I started shivering all over. Oh my God, he was so right: I
was
sad, as much as I tried to be in denial about it. Every time someone looked away from me or treated me a little differently or asked me who had slashed my face – I was sliced open by every word, and I carried that sadness down to my bones. I had never let myself acknowledge it, though. Not until now. Not until the chaos of the last few days had cracked me open like this.

I took Cooper’s hand and cried tears of ancient misery into the sea.

Twenty minutes later. The wind in my ears and nothing else.

“God, it’s so bizarre being here again,” he finally said. “Tell me, what did you think of me, when we first met?”

I fidgeted a little, my nose still running. “Basically, I was just thinking,
Oh god oh God oh God this boy is thought-scatteringly hot oh God what do I do shit I’m gonna faint oh God
.”

“I’ll accept that reaction,” he smiled.

“…And what did you think of me?”

He paused. “I don’t know. I thought you seemed like a good, genuine person, and after a while I started feeling like I was…I don’t know. Sinking into something.”

“Good,” I smiled after a few moments. “I was pretty sure I was acting like a psycho and you were all freaked out or something.”

“Never,” he said. “I’ve loved you since the moment I met you, Summer. I know that now. I just wish the world would give us a million more. And I think it will.”

We didn’t say anything for a while. But eventually he cleared his throat again.

“You know, I’m happy with the way I spent this summer, and it breaks my heart to think you don’t believe me when I say that. But are
you
happy with it, though? Did you do everything you wanted to do?”

I wanted to believe him, I really did, but I wasn’t so sure. “I think so,” I said. “I mean, I met you, didn’t I?”

A nervous smile flickered on his face. “Beyond that, I mean. If you had, like, a bucket list or whatever, what would be on it? Hypothetically speaking?”

“Oh, God,” I said as I leaned back. “That’s so weird to think about. I don’t even know. I’ve always thought about adopting a baby. But like, later in life, obviously.”

“Really? Why?”

I took a breath. “Well, the prospects of me ever carrying a baby to term and everything aren’t great. But if I can’t make a life, I’d still like to save one.”

He was silent again for a while.

“But that’s not all,” I continued. “I’d probably want to do all the stuff I’d never been able to do because of my health problems, too. And to live actively.” He gave me a weird look. “Well,” I explained, “when people talk about people with disab – I mean, about people like me – they tend to speak passively, or put the problem in front of the person. They’ll say ‘the wheelchair girl’ instead of ‘the girl in the wheelchair,’ ‘the cleft palate boy’ instead of ‘the boy with the cleft palate,’ etcetera. And that just feeds into something I decided very early on – I never wanted to let my problems define me. I wanted to put them out there and then just forget about them. So many people let the circumstances of their lives drag them down – they let the world happen to them. But I wanted to happen to the world.”

“You happened,” Cooper said. “Trust me, you happened. What else do you want?”