Summer in a Bottle

Chapter 19

Opinion: Sometimes less is more, because more is left to the imagination.

—Delilah Dune, opinion writer

L yla waved at Travis, who was still sitting in his truck as she made her way to the front door of her parents’ home. Travis had wanted to walk Lyla to the door, but she’d insisted he stay put. If he’d walked her to the door, they might’ve ended up kissing. And if they ended up kissing, she might have invited him inside.

No, it’s better this way.

She let herself inside and soaked up the cool air-conditioning. Then she glanced around to see if anything had changed since the buyer had come. There was no indication that anyone had even been there. Not one single footprint. She headed toward the kitchen for a cool bottled water out of the fridge. The day had been draining, but also wonderful. Maybe she and Travis hadn’t checked off one of the items on the bucket list, but she’d swum in Memory Lake, and it had felt amazing. She’d addressed one fear, and now she felt like she could do anything. Almost, at least.

Twisting off the cap, she drank half the bottle in a single gulp. Then she set it on the counter next to the bucket list. Maybe she would jump off the Pirate’s Plank before this trip was over—not that she bought into the superstition that she’d get stuck with bad luck if she didn’t finish the list.

Lyla’s phone dinged. She picked up her phone and saw that she had an email from her editor. Everything inside her froze momentarily as fear and excitement warred. Instead of opening the message on her phone, she headed back to her bedroom and grabbed her laptop. On an inhalation and a prayer, she opened her MacBook and pulled up the email from Bob, reading the message quickly. When she was done, she exhaled loudly and started to laugh.

He loved it! He loved her opinion article so much that it was printing on Friday.

Lyla punched a fist into the air. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes!” She laid her laptop beside her on the air mattress and stood for a mini victory dance. She wasn’t fired. She had a job, at least for the time being. Grabbing her phone, she tapped out a text to the first person she wanted to share the good news with.

Lyla: My job is saved! My editor loved the article and I still have employment. Thanks to you.

Travis didn’t respond immediately, but she knew he was probably driving. She tapped out a text to Allison next.

Lyla: My editor loved the article! I don’t have to worry about being homeless or hungry anymore.

Allison didn’t text back either. Instead, Lyla’s phone started to ring.

Seeing the name that appeared on the screen, Lyla connected the call and held her phone to her ear. “Hey.”

“Hey, it’s me,” Allison said, as if Lyla didn’t have caller ID.

“Did you get my message?” Lyla asked.

“I did! And I think this calls for a celebration,” Allison squealed.

Lyla laughed. “We already celebrated prematurely last night, remember? I don’t think I can have a drink at least for another week. I still have a small headache.”

“I’m not talking about alcohol or the bar. Let’s go out for ice cream. My treat.”

Lyla considered the invitation for a moment. She and Travis hadn’t made plans for tonight, and she didn’t want to assume that they’d get back together this evening. And staying in this empty house didn’t sound like much fun at all. Allison was right. A celebration was in order. “Sure. When?”

Allison laughed. “Now, silly! There’s no time like the present.”

Opinion: There’s no time like the present, but the present is rarely enjoyed for worrying about the past and the future.

Well, she wasn’t so concerned over the future any longer. In fact, the future was suddenly looking brighter.

An hour later, Lyla wasn’t drunk on alcohol, but the sugar was definitely going to her head. That and the exhilaration from the day.

“So, what’s the article about?” Allison scraped the bottom of her ice cream bowl and spooned the now runny Mint Chocolate Chip into her mouth.

“Relationships, I guess. I’ve always been so serious about them, but my opinion has changed. You don’t have to be allin to be with someone. It doesn’t have to be forever. I was dating Joe for so long and look at us now.” Lyla licked her spoon clean. “No strings equals no mess. Or something like that.”

“No strings, huh? Is that what you’re doing with Travis?” Allison had a spot of chocolate on her lip that she seemed to sense. She poked her tongue around her lips until she got it.

“One kiss. Last night. We haven’t had time to figure out what we’re doing. And we don’t have time. So, yes, no strings,” she said, decidedly. “No strings, no mess.” That was her opinion and she was sticking to it. At least that was the plan.

Allison set her spoon down and sighed as if she’d just finished a Thanksgiving dinner. “Done.”

“Me too.” Lyla grabbed her purse hanging from the back of her chair and stood, noticing a sparkle of light right in front of her. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“The spark of light,” Lyla said. “A firefly.”

“Firefly? Inside the ice cream shop?” Allison started to laugh again. “What are you even talking about?”

Lyla turned to look at her friend and then somehow lost her balance. As she swung out her leg to catch herself, she kicked her big toe into the base of the table. “Ow!” she squealed, dropping her trash, her purse, and ultimately her butt on the floor.

“Oh! Are you okay?” Allison set her trash down on the table and looked down at Lyla who was clutching her foot.

“No. Not okay.” Lyla breathed through the pain that splintered through her big toe. “Not okay at all.”

“What was that?” Allison asked.

“I think that was me . . .” Lyla breathed some more. How could a toe hurt this bad? “It was me breaking my big toe again.”

“Again?” Allison asked.

“Yes.” The pain seemed to dull as Lyla realized she had indeed broken this exact same toe before. During the summer after graduation. “Oh, wow. This is so much more than a coincidence,” she whispered under her breath. Maybe not finishing the list was bad luck after all. She’d thought that notion was silly. But maybe it wasn’t.

“What is more than a coincidence?” Allison asked.

Lyla picked herself off the ground and slid back into her chair. She waited for Allison to do the same. “Something weird has been going on this summer.” Her toe was throbbing, but she ignored it. Suddenly the most pressing thing on her mind was convincing someone else in her world that there was something magical and unexplainable happening. Travis hadn’t bought into Lyla’s claim that the summer was somehow repeating itself when she mentioned it to him the other night. But she hadn’t had much evidence. And after his reaction, she’d kind of convinced herself it wasn’t true. But breaking her toe just like she had that summer years ago was yet another one of those coincidences that seemed too coincidental. How many times did a person get struck by lightning in their lifetime? Never. Much less twice.

“The summer after our senior year,” Lyla told Allison, “Travis and I made a bucket list. Well, we always made bucket lists, but this was our last one, and we didn’t have time to finish it.”

“Okay-y-y.” Allison drew out the final syllable of the word, her tone suggesting she thought Lyla may have hit her head when she’d fallen. “I’m listening.”

Lyla took a breath, filling her lungs and hoping she made sense when she started to talk. “Travis and I always said that it would be bad luck if we didn’t finish our bucket list. But that last summer, there were still a few items we couldn’t check off. I created a time capsule in an old 7-Up bottle just like Ms. Davis told us all to do. I planned to bury and dig that bottle back up in twenty years.” Lyla laughed softly. “I put random things in that bottle. Yo-yos, rubber snakes.”

“Rubber snakes?” Allison’s brows lifted high on her forehead.

Lyla was surprised that Allison didn’t remember hearing about the childish pranks. She hadn’t attended the local church back then, though. Pastor Painter was usually responsible for letting everyone in town know what mischief his son had gotten into that week. “Travis and I were always joking and teasing. He loved to pull innocent pranks. One of which included a rubber snake. Anyway, I rolled the bucket list up and put it inside the bottle. Even though it wasn’t finished.” She shook her head. “I never believed Travis’s superstition that it was bad luck not to finish the list.” She took a moment to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. “When I came back to help my parents sell their home this summer, I remembered the time capsule I buried by the old cypress tree. I couldn’t just leave it in the ground for the next homeowner to find one day.”

Allison leaned over the table on her elbows. “Do you think the next homeowner would actually dig a hole in the exact spot that you left the time capsule?”

“I don’t know. I guess I also just wanted to dig up the time capsule and see what I put inside. Anyway, ever since opening that time capsule, something strange has been happening.”

“Strange how?”

“Do you remember when you walked up on me that day? I was lying on the back deck of my parents’ home after the storm?”

Allison nodded.

“I swear I had just been struck by lightning.”

“What?” Allison pushed her head forward. “Lyla, shouldn’t you have gone to the hospital?”

“Probably, but that’s not the point.” There was a far bigger point than nearly dying. “Later, I took my old bicycle out for a ride around town and it started to rain again.”

Allison furrowed her brows. “Doesn’t sound so strange to me.”

Lyla held up a hand. “That’s when I noticed that the exact same movie was playing at the old theater that had played that last summer with Travis. We watched it three times that July, but our bucket list said we needed to watch it four times.”

“Okay-y-y,” Allison said.

“Then there was a huge downpour. I was on my bike, and suddenly I got a flat tire,” Lyla explained, talking fast. “The exact same thing happened that summer. And just like that summer, a blue pickup truck pulled to the curb and saved the day—Travis’s blue pickup. That’s when I realized he was back in town.”

“Let me guess, Travis drove that pickup truck the first summer too?”

Lyla nodded quickly. “He put my bike in the back of the truck and brought me home that summer and this summer. So maybe those things could’ve happened coincidentally, but that’s when I started to notice that time was mirroring itself. I got a leak in the roof of my parents’ home. They had a leak that summer too. And then the pipes burst in the bathroom. That also happened that summer. I saw a comet in the sky with Travis and it was only the second time in my life I’ve ever seen one, the first time being that summer. And now this.” Lyla gestured down at her foot and the toe that was quickly swelling inside her sandal. “I broke my toe that summer too! This exact toe!”

Allison still looked skeptical. “I guess all of that is kind of weird. You think all of this is happening because you reopened the time capsule? Like you had bottled up that last summer in Echo Cove and now you’ve released it somehow?”

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but yeah, I kind of do believe that’s what’s happening.” Pain suddenly shot through Lyla’s toe. The excitement over another coincidence had temporarily blocked the pain, but her toe was beginning to throb in pain, almost as much as it had the first time she’d broken it.

Allison returned her attention to Lyla’s injury. “We need to get you to the doctor.”

“No.” The last thing Lyla wanted was to spend the evening in an urgent care. “It’s okay. I’ll just ice it and buddy tape it to my second toe. It’ll be fine. I do need to go home, though.”

Allison looked at Lyla’s foot as if it were something slightly grotesque. “Can you walk?”

Lyla wobbled her head back and forth, weighing her answer. “Of course, I can. It’s just going to hurt.”

“I don’t think I can carry you. Should I call Travis?” A teasing grin spread across Allison’s face.

“No. I’ll hobble to the parking lot.”

“Great. I’ll drive. This was not what I was intending when I said we should come out and celebrate this afternoon.” Allison grabbed Lyla’s purse and slid it on her shoulder before disposing of their trash and opening the door to the ice cream store so that Lyla could go through first. They navigated slowly through the parking lot until they reached Allison’s car. When they were both inside, Allison cranked the engine and then looked across the center console. “If you’re right, and things are really repeating, what do you think it means?”

“Means?” Lyla asked.

“Well, I believe things happen for a reason. Everything—the good, the bad. Even the most insignificant thing. I believe there’s meaning behind all of it. So if your summer is repeating itself, what’s the reason?”

Lyla shifted around, trying to get the pressure off her toe as she thought. “Maybe it means we need to finish that bucket list. I wouldn’t consider that I’ve been having bad luck ever since that summer, but maybe my luck could’ve been better.” Lyla’s mind raced. “Travis always put the things I was afraid of on the list, just to mess with me, but also because he believed in me. I was so confident when I was younger, and I have Travis to thank for that.”

Allison reached out and squeezed Lyla’s forearm. “Friends make us better, but make sure you give yourself credit too. I’ve always thought you were brave.”

Lyla hadn’t felt so brave these past few days. “What if this is why things are so bizarre this summer? I didn’t finish the list, and now bad-luck events from that summer are repeating. I mean, I got struck by lightning. Twice! Then a flat tire, the house having issues, and now I’ve broken my toe.” Fresh pain sprang up through her foot as she looked down.

“How many things are left on the bucket list?”

Lyla thought about it. “I think there are only three things left to do. One is mine and one is his. The last one is watching a movie for the fourth time. I guess I could do that on my own.”

“Not on your own.” Allison gave her shoulder a gentle shove. “With me. I’ll watch it with you. It’ll be fun. We can even invite Bernie if you want.”

Lyla actually did want to. “I’m fairly certain Bernie would turn me down.”

“Maybe, but not if I’m the one asking.” Allison gave her steering wheel an energetic tap. “Girls’ movie night with popcorn. Yay!”

“Yay . . .” Lyla said, with only half of Allison’s enthusiasm. How had she gotten here, planning a movie night with the most unsuspecting friends? She wasn’t sure, but it felt right.

The smell of buttery popcorn filled Allison’s tiny living room. Lyla sat on one side of Allison and Bernie sat on the other. Allison was their physical buffer, although Lyla could tell that Bernie wasn’t as opposed to being around her as she used to be. Bernie was melting, as Eric had called it.

“I’m so sorry we couldn’t find Sleepless in Seattle ,” Allison said regretfully. “I wanted to help you check off an item on your bucket list.”

“It’s okay.” Lyla turned her attention to the large plasma screen TV on the wall that was currently playing You’ve Got Mail . “I mean, it does have Tom Hanks in it.”

“And Meg Ryan too,” Allison added. “That has to count halfway for checking off the list, right?”

Lyla knew that a half-check didn’t count. When she and Travis used to check off their lists, there were no short-cuts or exceptions. The item to be checked was watching Sleepless in Seattle four times. You’ve Got Mail didn’t count. “Sure,” she said instead.

“I’ve never seen Sleepless in Seattle before,” Bernadette confessed, popping a piece of popcorn into her mouth.

Both Allison and Lyla looked at her.

“You’re kidding,” Lyla said.

“I’ve seen that movie at least six times,” Allison told her. “I don’t know why, but my daughter, Ashley Grace, loved this movie. She liked that little girl who booked the plane ticket for the boy. The one who used all the abbreviations.” Allison giggled quietly to herself before stopping abruptly and looking sheepish.

Lyla reached for her hand and squeezed. “You can talk about them as much as you want.”

Bernadette grabbed Allison’s other hand. “Of course you can.”

Allison’s eyes grew shiny. She seemed to fight her tears momentarily, visibly trying to ward them off. “If you both are holding my hand, how am I going to eat popcorn?”

Bernadette used her opposite hand to reach into the bucket, grab a piece, and bring it to Allison’s lips. Lyla did the same, followed by Bernadette again. Soon they were all laughing with a few tears gracing their cheeks as well.

“Shh-shh, this is the best part,” Allison finally said.

They watched the screen where Tom Hanks was walking up to meet the woman he’d been emailing back and forth with, only to realize she was his arch-enemy.

“It’s so unfair,” Allison whispered.

Lyla wasn’t sure if she was talking about the circumstances in the movie or about her own circumstances. Either way, Lyla held onto her hand. She hadn’t had friends like this in her old town. She hadn’t even had friends like this when she was growing up. She and Travis were more jokesters than the type of friends who watched movies and cried together.

Opinion: Everyone should have a friend or two to cry with.

Bob would veto that idea immediately, but Lyla thought it was one of her most profound. There was so much power in friendship, a real friendship.

Allison laid her head on Lyla’s shoulder and sighed. “Who would have thought that us three would be hanging out one day?”

“Not me,” Bernie said, catching Lyla’s eye.

“Why not though?” Lyla asked. “We were never all that different?” Especially Lyla and Bernie. They’d both been in journalism. They’d both enjoyed writing.

“Because. In high school, there are groups. Allison was in the popular group. I was in the outcast group,” Bernadette said. “It’s okay. I own it.”

Lyla was afraid to ask what group she was in.

“You were one of those special types,” Bernadette supplied without needing to be asked. “You bounced from group to group, pretending to fit in with them all when, in reality, you were judging everyone and refusing to lower yourself into settling for any one group. You thought you were better.”

Lyla’s mouth fell open. “What?”

“Bernadette, that’s kind of mean and it’s not true,” Allison said, defending Lyla.

“It is true. That’s why she couldn’t wait to leave town. Why she rarely came back except to visit her parents. If you read her column, you’d know,” Bernadette told Allison. “She looked down on us small-town lifers.”

Lyla couldn’t speak. It was hard to breathe. Small-town lifers. An opinion article that she wrote a long time ago came to mind.

Opinion: The path to success is linear. Small-town lifers go in circles.

Bernadette was right. Some of her articles were so judgmental. They weren’t her views though. They were the views of an alter ego she’d created named Delilah. She didn’t believe what she wrote.

Allison slowly pulled her hand away from Lyla’s.

“Those columns weren’t personal,” Lyla said quietly. “It’s just my job.”

Bernadette nodded. “Glad you’re so successful at it.”

They all turned to continue watching the movie, but Lyla could hardly focus. There was a reason she’d been so unhappy in her life lately. She wasn’t proud of her work. She didn’t enjoy writing for the opinion column and copywriting bored her. She didn’t have these satisfying relationships in her life to make any of the success she’d found worthwhile.

Thirty minutes had passed, at least, before Lyla leaned forward and grabbed the remote, pushing the PAUSE button. “I’m sorry. Truly sorry for any of the hurtful words I put out into the universe. They weren’t meant to be personal to you. They were more geared to myself, telling myself why I needed to keep pressing forward on this road that was making me miserable. The road to misery is straight,” Lyla said, her voice shaking. “The circle isn’t for small-town lifers. It’s for those who want to return to their roots. Find themselves. Find their joy.”

Lyla was practically shaking.

“Wow,” Allison said. “You’ve always been so wonderful with words.” She leaned forward and wrapped Lyla in a warm hug. Lyla closed her eyes so that she didn’t have to look at Bernadette. Something told her that Bernadette was going to need more time to process that apology. Pulling back, Allison grinned at Lyla. “I’ve always liked circles myself. You should print that opinion. I like it a lot.”

“My editor, Bob, would hate it though,” Lyla said, without thinking.

Bernadette glanced over. “Whose opinion column is it anyway? I thought it was yours.”

“It’s complicated,” Lyla muttered, but it really wasn’t. Whatever success she’d made for herself didn’t feel like it belonged to her at all. She wasn’t the author of most of those opinions; she’d just penned them for somebody else.

August 20

Dear Diary,

Okay, an eighteen-year-old should not have any regrets by this point in life. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. But I do have regrets. I wish I had more friends. Travis is equal to a hundred friends. He’s the best. I wish I had a few girlfriends, though. Not the romantic kind of girlfriends. The kind you have sleepovers with and paint each other’s nails. I would have wanted to be friends with Bernie, but she hates me now because of the whole sloppy joe nickname that some of the mean kids came up with. I saw Bernie’s senior yearbook. Half the entries addressed her as Brownie.

Maybe I don’t deserve friends because of the sloppy joe thing. Maybe I’ll make friends in college. Opinion: It’s never too late for sleepovers.

Lyla