Chapter 16
Summer, Twelve Years Ago
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.”