Chapter 8
Summer, Fifteen Years Ago
My feet crunched on the driveway, the air heavy with dew and the lush smell of moss, fungi, and damp earth.
Sam had taken up running in the spring, and he was determined to convert me to his cause.
He mapped out an entire beginner’s program to start today, my first morning at the cottage.
I was instructed to eat a light breakfast no later than seven a.m. and meet him at the end of my driveway at eight a.m.
I stopped when I saw him.
He was stretching, his back turned to me with headphones in his ears, pulling one arm over his head and leaning to the side.
At fifteen, his body was almost foreign to me.
Somehow, he’d grown at least another six inches since I’d last seen him over the Christmas break.
I’d noticed it yesterday, when he and Charlie came to help us unload.
(“It’s officially an annual tradition,” I heard Charlie tell Dad.) But I didn’t have time to properly inspect Sam before both he and Charlie had to leave to get ready for their shifts at the Tavern.
Sam was working in the kitchen three nights a week this summer, and I was already dreading the time apart.
Now, his black running shirt lifted to expose a slice of tanned skin.
I watched, mesmerized, a flush creeping up my neck.
His hair was the same thick tangle and he still wore the friendship bracelet around his left wrist, but he must have been well over six feet tall now, his legs stretched almost endlessly past the hem of his shorts.
Almost as improbable as his height was that he was somehow thicker, too.
His shoulders, arms, and legs all carried more bulk, and his butt was .
. . well, it could no longer be mistaken for a Frisbee.
I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Jesus, Percy,” he said, spinning around and taking off his headphones.
“Good morning to you, too, stranger.” I wrapped my arms around his waist. “Six months is too long,” I said into his chest. He squeezed me tightly.
“You smell like summer,” he said, then put his hands on my arms and stepped back. His gaze traveled over my spandex-clad form. “You look like a runner.”
That was his doing. I had a drawer full of exercise gear based on the list of items he’d suggested.
I had put on shorts and a tank top as well as a sports bra, which Sam had embarrassingly included on his list, and one of the cotton thongs Delilah gave me before she left for her mother-daughter European vacation, which he had not included.
My hair, now well past my shoulders, was gathered into a thick ponytail high on my head.
“Fake it till you make it, right?”
He hummed and then turned serious and took me through a series of stretches. During my first squat, he stood behind me and put his hands on my hips. I almost tumbled backward with the shock of his grip.
When I was suitably limber, he ran his hand through his hair and went over the plan: “Okay, let’s start with the basics. The most important part of learning to run is . . .” He drifted off, waiting for me to fill in the blank.
“Good shoes?” I guessed, looking down at my new Nikes. He shook his head, disappointed.
“Didn’t you read the couch to 5K article I mailed you?” He’d clipped it from a running magazine, complete with some kind of complicated time and distance chart. I read it . . . once . . . ish.
“The most important part of learning to run is walking,” he said with his hands on his hips.
I smothered a giggle. This bossy thing was entirely new and sort of adorable and definitely funny.
“So we’ll spend the first week doing a 3K out and back, increasing the distance you spend running each day until you’re running the whole 3K by the end of the week.
You’ll take two rest days a week, and by the end of week two, you should be running a full 5K. ”
I barely understood a word he’d said, but five kilometers sounded pretty far. “How far do you usually go?”
“To town and back. It’s about 12K.” My jaw dropped. “I worked my way up to it. You will, too.”
“Nope. No way!” I cried. “There are too many hills!”
“Calm down. We’ll take it day by day.” He gestured down the road and started walking. “C’mon. We’ll walk for the first five minutes.” I looked at him dubiously, but picked up my pace to match his.
If my elementary school’s annual track-and-field day of hell hadn’t already made it obvious years ago, it was now: I was not a natural runner. Ten minutes in, I was brushing sweat off my face and trying to ignore the fire in my lungs and thighs.
“Three updates?” Sam asked without a hint of breathlessness.
I scowled. “No talking.”
He slowed his stride after that. At the halfway point, I took my top off, wiped my face with it, and tucked it into the back of my shorts. We walked the last leg of the route, my legs as shaky as a baby deer’s.
“I never knew you were such a sweater,” Sam said when I toweled off with my top again.
“I never knew you were such a masochist.” This running thing was not adorable anymore.
“That writers’ workshop really improved your vocabulary.” I could hear the smirk in his voice. I hit him across the chest.
The Floreks’ drive came before ours, and I turned down it. “I need to jump in the lake, like, right now,” I said, cutting around the house and heading down the hill to the water with Sam beside me, a lopsided grin on his face.
“I don’t know what you find so funny,” I huffed.
“I’m not laughing.” He raised his hands.
I took off my shoes and socks as soon as we reached the dock, then peeled my shorts down and tossed them aside.
“Geez!” Sam cried from behind me. I spun around.
“What?” I snapped just as I realized I was wearing a pink thong and that Sam was staring at my extremely bare ass. I was too hot and pissy to care.
“Problem?” I asked, and his eyes flashed to mine, then down to my bum, and then up to my face again.
He muttered a fuck under his breath and looked skyward.
He was holding both hands over his crotch.
My eyebrows shot up. Not knowing what to do, I ran down the dock and cannonballed into the water, swimming under the surface for as long as I could.
“You coming in?” I hollered back to him when I came up for air, a cocky grin plastered on my face. “The water might cool you off.”
“I’m going to need you to face the other direction before I do that,” he called back, still shielding himself.
“And if I don’t?” I swam closer.
“C’mon, Percy. Do me a favor.” He looked truly pained, which served him right for subjecting me to his workout routine. But inside I was ecstatic. I paddled out to give him space while he jumped in. We were about six feet apart, treading water, and staring at each other.
“I’m sorry,” he said, moving a bit closer. “It’s just my body’s reaction.”
Body’s reaction?
“Got it,” I said, more than a little deflated. “Half-naked chick equals erection. Basic biology.”
After our swim, Sam turned away when I climbed onto the dock. I lay on my back, letting the sun dry me off, my hands forming a cushion behind my head. Sam spread out beside me in the same position, his shorts sopping wet.
I slanted my head toward him, and said, “I think I should keep a bathing suit here for next time.”
I LEFT ONE of my bikinis at the Floreks’, along with an extra towel, so I could jump into the lake as soon as we returned from the torture Sam called running.
He swore I would grow to love it, but by the end of our second week, the only thing I had grown was a sprinkling of freckles across my nose and chest.
We had just got back from a sluggish 5K, and I had grabbed my suit off the line, waved to Sue, who was weeding the garden, and popped inside to the bathroom to change while Sam did the same in his room.
I tugged off my sweaty gear and tied on the string bikini Mom had finally okayed, yellow with white daisies, then headed to the kitchen to wait for Sam.
I was gulping down a glass of water at the sink when someone cleared their throat behind me.
“Good morning, sunshine!” Charlie was leaning against the doorway wearing sweatpants and no shirt, his standard uniform. Not that I minded. Charlie was ripped for a seventeen-year-old.
“It’s not even nine a.m.,” I panted, still out of breath. “What are you doing up?”
“Good question,” Sam said, coming into the kitchen. He took the glass from my hands and refilled it. While Sam drank, Charlie looked me up and down without shame, lingering on my chest. When his gaze reached my face again, his brows drew together over his green eyes.
“You look like a tomato, Pers,” he said, then turned to Sam. “Why do you keep forcing your cardio on her? Bad hearts run in our family, not hers.” Sam pushed his hair back.
“I’m not forcing her. Am I, Percy?” He looked at me for backup, and I cringed.
“No . . . technically, you’re not forcing me . . .” I drifted off when Sam’s expression crumpled.
“But you don’t like it,” Charlie finished, eyes narrowed at me.
“I like how it feels afterward, when it’s over,” I said, trying to find something positive to say. Charlie grabbed an apple from the fruit basket on the kitchen table and took a big bite.
“You should try swimming, Pers,” he said, his mouth full.
“We swim every day,” Sam said in the monotone he reserved for when his brother annoyed him.
“No, like real distance swimming. Across the lake,” Charlie clarified. Sam looked over at me, and I tried not to look too excited. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d stared at the far shore and wondered whether I could ever make it across. It sounded awesome.
“That sounds interesting,” I said.
“I can help you train if you want,” Charlie offered. But before I could respond, Sam cut in: “No, we’re good.”
Charlie looked me over again, slowly. “You’ll need a different bathing suit.”