Chapter 14
Fall, Thirteen Years Ago
“Don’t be one of those girls,” Delilah said, waving a french fry in my face. I had just mentioned the idea of quitting the swim team. Practice was during the week but races were mostly on weekends, and I had big plans to spend every weekend in Barry’s Bay with Sam.
“What girls?” I asked, my mouth half-full with a bite of tuna sandwich, as a cute red-haired boy sat down across from Delilah, holding out his hand.
“Seriously?” she asked, pointing another fry in his direction, before he could get a word out.
“I’m new here,” he stammered and pulled his hand away. “I thought I’d say hi.”
Delilah gave me a look that said, Can you even imagine? and glared at him.
“What, you think because we’re both gingers we should get together and have little carrot-topped brats together? Not gonna happen.” She shooed at him. “Buh-bye.”
He looked at me to check whether she was serious or not.
“She looks a lot sweeter than she is.” I shrugged.
After he left, Delilah turned back to me.
“As I was saying, you don’t want to be one of those girls who has nothing interesting to say because all she thinks about is her boyfriend, and all she does is darn his socks or whatever.
Those girls are boring. Don’t get boring on me, Persephone Fraser. I’ll be required to break up with you.”
I laughed, and she narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t joking.
“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “I won’t quit. But Sam’s not my boyfriend. We haven’t, you know, put a label on it yet. It’s new.”
“It’s not new. It’s, like, one hundred years old,” she said with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter whether you label it or not, you two are together,” she said, watching me. “And stop smiling so much. You’re making me nauseous.”
ON THE WEEKENDS when I didn’t have swimming, I would pack the car on Thursday nights and drive north straight from school on Friday afternoon.
This did not sit well with Mom and Dad at first, but I won them over with the I’m going to be eighteen soon and What’s the point of having a cottage if we don’t use it?
arguments and assured them I would study while I was gone.
What I didn’t tell them was that I was also planning to shove my tongue down Sam’s throat as soon as I got him alone. They found out anyway.
The day after Sam had put his hands over every square inch of my body in August, Sue had spotted a hickey on his neck.
True to Sam’s unwavering brand of honesty, he told her precisely who’d given it to him.
Sue called my mom just before my first solo trip to the cottage to make sure she and Dad were aware of what was going on.
Mom never said anything to me about it, but, according to Sam, Sue told Mom that Sam and I had started a “physical relationship” and then put him on the phone with my mother so he could promise her he’d treat me with respect and care.
My parents never talked to me about sex, and it blew my mind that this conversation took place. But when I unpacked my weekend bag, there was a box of condoms inside with a Post-it note stuck to it, the words Just in case written in Mom’s handwriting.
Sam worked Fridays, and I usually drove right to the Tavern to wait until he finished for the night.
He was cooking with Julien in the kitchen since Charlie was away at school.
If the restaurant was still busy by the time I got there, I’d tie on an apron and bus tables or help out Glen, the pimple-faced boy who’d replaced Sam at the dishwasher.
If it was quiet, I’d take my homework to the bar and study until Julien let Sam go.
Sam insisted on showering after his shift, so we always went back to his place.
On the drive, we filled each other in on our weeks—the swim practices, bio exams, Delilah dramas—and then we raced upstairs.
We had approximately thirty minutes after Sam’s shower to feel each other up before Sue got home after closing.
We kept the light off, a frantic clash of tongues and teeth and hands, and when Sue’s headlights shone through Sam’s bedroom window, we’d pull our tops back on and run downstairs to the kitchen, throwing the plates of food Julien had sent home with us in the microwave.
We’d eat at the kitchen table, sneaking glances and nudging each other’s feet under the table while Sue fixed her own dinner.
“You two are as subtle as elephants,” she told us once.
By late September, the leaves were changing and the water was already too cold for swimming, so we created a new morning routine.
It involved me sleeping late until Sam knocked on the back door after his run.
He’d make weak lattes while I fixed bagels or cereal and we’d eat at the counter talking about the story I was working on or Finn’s new girlfriend, whom neither Sam nor Jordie could stand, or university applications, which were due in January.
Delilah, Sam, and Jordie all had their hearts set on Queen’s in Kingston—the university had a beautiful, historic campus and was considered one of the top schools in the country.
Delilah wanted in for poli-sci, Sam for premed, and Jordie for business (Queen’s was renowned for all three programs).
Sam was still gunning for a scholarship; as hard as Sue worked, there wasn’t enough to put a dent in the hefty tuition and residence fees.
Unless my grades took a sudden nosedive, I would be heading to the University of Toronto, as per my parents’ dream, fueled partly by their allegiance to the school and partly because half of my tuition would be covered by their faculty discount.
I was applying to the English program and wanted to take as many creative writing courses as possible if I got in.
U of T was a great school, but needless to say, I would have preferred if Sam and I were planning to go to university together.
Toronto was almost three hours away from Kingston by car, two and a half if I drove fast and traffic was good.
A small, parasitic worm of worry was burrowing inside my brain—telling me that this wouldn’t last once Sam went away to school.
My parents came up for Thanksgiving, and our families spent the holiday meal together, with the addition of Julien, whom Sue had finally persuaded to join us.
With Charlie back for the long weekend, there were seven of us around the Floreks’ dining room table, and between Charlie and Julien, Sam and I were subjected to relentless jokes about our relationship.
Not that we minded. We held hands under the table and laughed at my parents’ initial shock over Julien’s sharp tongue and Charlie’s innuendos about teen pregnancy.
We were all together again at Christmas, but my parents returned to the city for New Year’s while I stayed and worked at the Tavern. At midnight, Sam dragged me downstairs to the walk-in refrigerator and kissed me against the boxes of citrus.
“I’m so in love with you,” he said when we pulled apart, his breaths escaping in cold puffs of air.
“Swear on it?” I whispered, and he smiled and kissed the inside of my wrist over the top of my bracelet.
With my parents’ blessing, Sue agreed to let me stay the night at their place, and after we all showered and changed into our pj’s, she popped a bottle of prosecco, poured herself a fishbowl-sized glass, and headed to her room, leaving Sam and me with the rest. We put something in the DVD player, then cuddled up under a blanket on the basement couch.
I waited ten minutes to make sure Sue wasn’t going to check on us and then crawled onto his lap, my knees on either side of his thighs.
I was wired from work and my insides fizzed with his I love you and also with prosecco.
I pulled his T-shirt over his head and then kissed my way up his chest, his neck, and then to his mouth, where our tongues found each other.
He began to unbutton my pink flannel top, his fingers shaking with excitement, and then stopped when he saw there was nothing underneath.
He looked up at me, his pupils swallowing the blues into a midnight ocean.
With the exception of what had happened in his room in August, we hadn’t gone further than making out with shirts off, bra on. I opened the remaining buttons.
“I’m so in love with you, too,” I whispered and shrugged out of the shirt. His eyes dropped to my chest and he grew harder beneath me.
“You’re perfect,” he rasped when his eyes found mine again, and I smiled brightly then moved against him. His hands grabbed my waist, then roamed over my breasts, and he groaned.
I leaned close to his ear so our skin was pressed together, and said softly, “I want to show you how much I love you.” I moved my hand between us and put my fingers around the shape of him. He bit down on his lip and waited, his chest moving with his deep inhalations.
“Okay,” he breathed, and we both worked his pants off his legs.
“I’m not going to last long,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly.
He moved his hand across my breast, pinching the stiff pink peak.
“I could come like this just looking at your hard nipples.” My eyes flashed to his.
I’d never heard him talk like that, and it sent a hot current through me.
I pulled at the waistband of his boxers and then shifted so he could slide them all the way off, watching wide-eyed.
I put my hand around him, tentative and unsure. I had no idea what I was doing.
“Show me how,” I said, and he wrapped his hand over mine.
SAM, JORDIE, AND Delilah all got acceptance letters to Queen’s that spring, and I was thrilled for them and especially for Sam, who won one of a handful of academic scholarships that would cover the bulk of his tuition.
My acceptance to U of T was met with great fanfare from my parents and Sam, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was standing on the ground while everyone else boarded a rocket ship.