34
I WASN’T SUREwhat I expected when I finally got back to Sunrise, but it definitely wasn’t Sam quietly making herself busy at the foot of my bed. She stood there, in all her tiny, steady, very pregnant glory, running her hand down the length of my sleeping bag, smoothing out the shimmery, wrinkled fabric.
She glanced up and acknowledged me without saying a word, despite me hovering nearby in dripping wet clothes.
“You don’t need to help me pack, you know,” I finally mumbled, not quite rising to the occasion. “It will take me like two seconds.”
“Oh, I know,” she said, the sleeping bag now tucked under her armpit. She shook out the bag it came in with a decisive thwack. “But I want to.”
“Where is everyone?” I asked, looking around the cabin as I toweled myself off.
“Cleaning up the dining hall.”
“I’ll go back and help after I pack,” I said, mentally calculating the time it would take me to drive home after I’d helped with cleanup.
“Don’t you have to get back to Boston?” she said, her voice deliberate and calm. But she wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I knew she was disappointed. “Seems like your boss needs you.”
“Oh, Sam. Fuck, I’m sorry. I know it’s shitty for me to leave early,” I said. “But this pitch is a huge deal for me.”
“Clara, you’re not shitty for leaving early,” she said firmly, offering up air quotes with her one free hand.
“I feel—” I started, but she cut me off.
“You’re shitty for plenty of other reasons, but not that.” She smiled, but her voice still didn’t sound right. “I know your job is important to you. And I know how much it means to you to fix things there. If you want to go do this pitch, you should.”
“I do,” I said, though I wasn’t quite sure that was the truth anymore. I yanked my duffel bag off the floor and began haphazardly grabbing stuff off the small shelves next to the bed. I didn’t have the energy to change out of my damp, food-stained clothes. I’d deal with them when I got back home to Boston, along with the rest of my life.
“Do you want to be my friend?” she asked pointedly, eyes fixed on me. “Because from what it sounds like, you only came back up here to make you feel better about yourself. That’s the part that feels shitty.”
“Sam,” I said, face crumbling. “Of course I want to be your friend. I want that more than anything.”
She followed me into the bathroom, that sleeping bag still in her arms, trailing behind her like a tail as she watched me struggle with the cap to my toothpaste.
“So why didn’t you tell us that you got your letter?” The hurt in her voice was palpable now. “Because I asked, Clara. And you clearly avoided answering.”
All I could do was shrug. I could feel myself shifting back into survival mode, gaze down, steady, focusing intently on making sure my sunscreen lid was locked, bag zipped up tight.
“Fine,” she said when I didn’t reply, and for the first time, she seemed truly exasperated with me, her patience finally dead-ending. “Here’s what I want from you, then. I want you to be honest, even when it’s awkward or uncomfortable, and to show up because you want to, not because you feel like you have to. You don’t have to prove anything to us—or yourself.”
I walked back and tossed my clear plastic bag of toiletries next to my pillow. At the foot of the bed, Sam’s forehead wrinkled in frustration as she tried to wrangle my sleeping bag into its pencil-sized carrying bag, a feat for any mortal human, much less one who was nine months pregnant.
“Do you want me to do that?” I asked, fretting once again.
“Clara.” Sam leveled a look at me that told me now was seriously not the time to mess with her. “Do you know how annoying it is to go from being a self-sufficient human to everyone suddenly treating you like you might break? I can roll up a fucking sleeping bag.”
I exhaled a short laugh as I folded my T-shirt. “You’re right, and I’m sorry.”
“I’m so excited to be a mom.” She sat down on the bed with an exhausted huff. “But it also feels like it’s eating away at everything else that I am. No one sees me as Sam, the Frisbee golf captain, or Sam, the librarian. My mom doesn’t see me as anything but some sort of helpless creature that needs constant tending.”
“I don’t think I knew you played Frisbee golf,” I said sheepishly, and she chuckled.
“I picked it up when Regan and I moved to Brooklyn, and Burlington has a huge community,” she said. “And I don’t mind that you don’t know. I just don’t want to only be Sam, the pregnant person. And then Sam, the mom.”
“You aren’t,” I said softly. “And you won’t be. Nothing could ever change who you are at your core.”
“Exactly.” Sam shot me a purposeful look as she knotted her curls on top of her head and then busied herself with my toiletries.
The intense feeling of misunderstanding—of myself, of my life, of the people in it—bubbled up from inside until I felt it spill out into the tips of my fingers. I tugged at the zipper of my bag so hard that it caught and snapped off in my hand, and suddenly I was crying again.
“Sam.” I dragged my now broken duffel bag off the bed, and it hit the floor with a loud thud. “My letter was literally a checklist of what I wanted my life to be. When I opened it and realized I couldn’t check off a single box?”
I let out a sour, sad laugh.
“Do you know how awful that felt? I’d let myself down, but, worse, I’d let all of you down. I’m not the Clara you knew anymore. I’m just… I don’t even know…” I ended on a sob that morphed into a hiccup and shook my head in shame.
“Oh, Clara,” Sam said, her face softening as she took a step closer to me.
“I hadn’t shown up for you guys like I wanted to. Like you deserve. And I hate that about myself.” I dragged the edge of my T-shirt up to my face and tried to wipe the tears away.
“Hey,” she said, scooting closer to me on the bed. “Don’t forget that I knew you then, and I know you now. And there’s no way that girl would be disappointed by who you are. And I’m certainly not disappointed.”
Sam’s gaze was kind now, but it did nothing to quell the well of sorrow that sat at the center of my body.
“The person I wanted myself to be, all adventurous and full of joy and shit? I didn’t become that. But then, the person I was trying to be instead—with my steady job and perfect relationship—I didn’t become that either.” I was rambling, emotions and words tangling together. “And how ridiculous was it to think I could accomplish everything in that stupid letter in one week, when I haven’t been able to in twenty years?”
“Not ridiculous at all,” she said matter-of-factly as she clutched my pillow in her lap. “You literally showed up here and got us all to do stuff we haven’t done in years. When was the last time any of us played Capture the Flag?”
I shrugged, not following where she was going with this.
“That’s what I always imagined you guys were doing when I wasn’t here,” I said. “I had literal FOMO about it.”
“We mostly just hung out on the beach and stared at our phones and got drunk,” she said. “Which is a lot of fun, I’m not gonna lie.”
“Well, I had FOMO about that too,” I clarified.
“My point is, like, why do we really want to come back here? Why did you finally come up, after all these years away?”
“To see you,” I said slowly, my breath calming in my chest. “And our friends.”
She nodded, pleased that I seemed to be getting it. “Why does this place, and all these games and traditions, even mean anything to us at all?”
“Because we do them with each other,” I said finally.
“When I say I want you to show up, that’s seriously all I want from you. To be with you. To be your friend,” she explained. “I’m not here with any other expectations than that. And maybe you don’t need to have any either.”
She looked down at her phone as I crammed my notebook back into my tote.
“I’ve got to help Nick with something down at the beach,” she said abruptly. “Meet us down there when you finish packing, okay?”
I tilted my head in question.
“Trust me,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it was on your list.”