Falling for Summer (3 page)

I stare out at that lake, take a deep breath of the cool, humid air, and all of the fight and frustration leaves me just as quickly as it came.  I think it's finally hitting me, as I sit here in this rocking chair, that I'm staying at this cabin for an
entire week
with...absolutely no other plan to occupy myself with than to go back to a few places my little sister loved, visit her grave and...then what?  Mourn for her all over again? 

I sit for an hour, two, as the sun begins to descend toward the horizon.  My hands are open on my thighs, palms up, and I rock slowly, occasionally, but mostly I just...sit.  I'm overwhelmed with all of this time spreading before me.  I'm the CEO of a company.  I'm
built
for being overstimulated.  I've been conditioned to have my fingers in every pie, and now here I am with a week yawning before me, vacant, empty...

I'll probably go crazy
, I think with a sigh as I cross my arms, rocking back in the chair.

It seems like I'm one of the only people camping this week, which I suppose makes sense.  It's early in the summer, two weeks after Memorial Day, and Lake George never really got hopping until around the Fourth of July.  And I'm camping here during the week, rather than the weekend.  I'm grateful for the isolation.  I didn't really want a lot of company with my grief.

But it seems that I'm going to have company whether I want it or not.

As dusk descends, I hear booted feet on the gravel of the driveway, and I peer out from the porch and sigh again.  It's Summer, and she's carrying two six-packs.  She's not in her bikini anymore, instead wearing cutoff jean shorts and a dark blue tank top, her long black hair plaited into a shining braid over her shoulder.  She gazes at me disarmingly, a charming smile turning her mouth up at the corners.

“Hi,” she tells me, holding up the six-packs.  “How are you settling in?”

I shrug a little, flustered.  “I came here this week for some solitude,” I tell her then, which is absolutely bitchy, but I just wanted some privacy for my grief.

But Summer doesn't take the hint.

“Well, you'll get plenty of that here,” she tells me with a wink, her mouth turning up even more now, forming itself into a sly grin.  “I'm sure you remember that the lake doesn't really get busy until July.  Care for a drink?” she asks, brandishing the six-packs again. 

Okay.  I think she took the hint.  She knows what I meant.  But she's deliberately ignoring it. 

I could tell her to leave, but for some reason, as I gaze at her, the fight seems to drain out of me.  Maybe it's because of how tenacious she is.  How stubborn.  That's something I can understand, if not enjoy.  “Sure,” I tell her with a slight shrug, indicating the second rocking chair next to me.  “It's your place, after all,” I tell her with a raw, rueful smile.

Summer hops up onto the porch and leans against the railing, crossing her long, tan legs in front of her.  I'm annoyed at myself for following the line of her legs upward, but then I've always been a leg woman.  Not that that matters.  Summer is forward and much too...well, too much of everything. 

But still, I'm a ways from home, and it's not a sin to appreciate in the view.  And I do appreciate it.  Even if I don't exactly appreciate Summer herself.

I bite my lip, looking down at the porch floor for a long moment while Summer stares out at the lake.  She doesn't offer any small talk, and I'm certainly not offering, either, so the silence descends between us, thick with my glowering.

“Hey,” she finally says, curving her shoulders forward, “about earlier...  We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot or something.  I'm sorry if anything I said hurt your feelings.”

It's the type of apology you might make a preschooler give to another preschooler whose toys she stole.  But it seems like her heart is in the right place, and—anyway—she didn't exactly have to apologize.  I shrug a little, but I'm grateful for the effort, so I clear my throat.

“Thanks,” I tell her gruffly.   

“So, what do you do now?” Summer asks me, cracking one of the cans out of the six-pack and opening it, handing it over to me as the beer dribbles down the side of the can.  Our fingers touch, hers wet with beer, mine cold from the chill coming off of the lake, and I flick my gaze to her as I take the can from her—but she's not looking at me.  She licks her fingers when I take the beer, and then she opens one for herself.

“I'm the CEO of an online advertising company,” I tell her with a slight shrug.  She glances at me with wide eyes, surprised, and I'm secretly (well, not so secretly) pleased by her reaction.  I have to work with people all day long, every day, who know what I do and the weight it carries, but for some reason, I'm happy that Summer's impressed.

But she isn't.  Not...exactly.

“Wow.  Good for you,” she tells me, taking a sip of beer.  She tosses her braid over her shoulders and gives a little shrug, a noncommittal sort of shrug.  “It's not what I thought you'd end up doing, but that's pretty exciting.  CEO.  Wow.  It must have taken a lot of work to get there.”

Again, my hackles rise.  How could she
possibly
think she knows me?  “Really?” I ask her, my voice sharp.  “What did you think I'd be doing?”

Summer glances at me with a disarming smile, her teeth bright in the encroaching darkness.  “I thought you were going to be a writer,” she tells me, with another shrug.  She glances away from me, lifting the beer to her lips.  Her neck curves gently in the darkness, and my eyes, unbidden, are drawn to it. 

My mouth is dry as I clear my throat.  “How did you know I wrote?” I ask her then. 

She glances at me sidelong in the twilight, setting the can down on the floor of the porch beside her feet.  “It's all your sister talked about,” says Summer, her mouth lifted into a sweet curve of a smile. 

Her words feel like a punch to the gut.  As if someone used all of their strength and curled their fist into my belly.  I hiss out a breath, and then I lift the can with a shaking hand to my mouth, swallowing the cold beer as quickly as I can.  I drink down the entire contents of the can as Summer breaks another can off of the six pack, opening it and handing it to me without another word.

Finally, one beer in me, another started, I manage to croak, “What did my sister say about it?”

Summer takes a meditative sip of her beer and uncrosses her legs, stretching overhead.  “Tiffany was really in awe of you, you know,” she tells me with a sidelong glance.  “She was obsessed with the story you wrote for her, told me all about it.  We made our Barbies play out a few scenes from it, even.”

I'm mesmerized, as much as talking about all of this makes my heart ache profusely.  I straighten a little.  I have to ask, so I do: “Which story?” I murmur.

Summer laughs a little, shaking her head.  “The one about the unicorn,” she tells me.

I laugh then, too, because I have to.  God, it's been such a long time since I thought about that story...

I wrote Tiffany the ridiculously titled “The Unicorn Princess” (it was a product of the eighties as much as I was) for her tenth birthday and gave it to her about six months before she drowned.  I'd written the “book” on a word processor and printed it out, sewing the punched holes in the pages together with string.  I presented it to my sister rolled up and tied with ribbon in a shoe box I'd covered in glue and glitter. 

Tiffany had opened the shoe box with glowing, happy eyes and then spent an hour or so carefully reading the printed words until she was done.  Then she demanded more of the story, because—like most of the stories that I'd written for Tiffany—I'd ended this one on a cliffhanger, when the unicorn princess had just realized that one of her unicorn friends was
also
in line for the unicorn throne.  Why unicorn politics was so exciting to a ten-year-old girl, I'll never know.  It was probably because, again, it was the eighties, and love of unicorns was one of the most important things that came out of that decade, besides the music and the big hair. 

“Wow,” I tell Summer then, clearing my throat, which is suddenly too tight with emotion.  I hide my discomfort by taking another very long sip of my beer, tilting my head back so that my gaze moves upward, to the surrounding trees and the first star of the night that's peeking out from between the branches far above.  “I haven't thought about that story in a very long time,” I finally say, tilting my gaze back to earth.  Back to Summer.

It's getting very dark, and I can just make out Summer's outline, the curve of her thighs and hips, the swell of her breasts under her tank top, the lovely flow of her shoulders and neck.  The first few fireflies of the season are beginning to wink on and off in the campground behind her, giving her form a strange, soft sort of glow.  Summer lifts her own can of beer to her mouth, tilting her head back, and I follow the curve of her neck again with my eyes, that graceful curve that leads down to her collarbone and to her toned arms—and then I stiffen in my chair.

She's wearing a ring on her left hand.

“So,” I say, breathing out, anxious to change the topic, stop talking about the story, about my sister.  Anxious to take the conversation to safe, mundane ground.  “You and your husband run this place?  It must be so nice to own a campground.”  I'm resorting to the sort of chitchat that I use in board meetings with people I have nothing to say to, with whom I share nothing in common.

But I seem to have more in common with Summer than I thought...

“No,” she says with a sad sort of smile.  Summer has turned to look out at the lake, at the last bit of light from the setting sun.  The sky is a riot of dark purples, with a golden glow along the line of the horizon.  “I actually just broke up with my girlfriend a few weeks ago.”  She glances down at her hand and then back at me.  She saw me looking at the ring.  “This is my great-grandmother's ring,” she says then, a bit formally, her voice catching as she touches the ring with her thumb, like you might smooth a finger over a worry stone. 

“I'm sorry,” I say, which covers the breaking up with the girlfriend and the great-grandmother, who is presumably no longer alive, but my heart is somersaulting inside of my chest, my blood starting to beat much more quickly through my veins.  Summer is gay?  Bisexual?  Woman-interested?

This changes things.  Doesn't it?  We've had a bit of a rough start, it's true...but maybe that's because of how unhappy I am that I'm here.  That, immediately, a piece of my past, of Tiffany's past, confronted me by the lake.  I didn't expect Summer when I planned for this week, but now she's here in front of me.  Unplanned, but solid and real.

The rocky start we got off to is because of me, I know.  Because of my inner turmoil, my unresolved grief.  I take a deep breath.

“How about you?” asks Summer then, her voice back to its assured, warm inflection.  “Are you married?”  She glances up through her eyelashes, and even in the dark, I can see her warm brown eyes flashing.  “Are you involved?” she asks, tilting her head to the side, a little like an inquisitive bird.

I lift the beer to my lips, but I pause for a long moment, watching her.

Her shoulders are curled toward me as she leans forward.  Her legs are crossed, taut, well-toned, and my eyes are drawn to every line and curve of her, yes, but there seems to be something crackling between us in this moment.

Does she suspect who I am? 
What
I am?  That I'm gay, too?

Does she remember what happened that night, long ago?  Twenty years ago now?  No—she couldn't possibly remember.  She was ten years old.  It was a night that's irremovable from your memory, true, the night when her best friend died...  But there was too much going on.  Surely she doesn't remember anything about me.

Still, I feel a shift between us.  Like a secret, shared.

I never could have predicted that Summer would like women.  Honestly, I don't remember much about her, other than the fact that she and my sister were close.  It was a long time ago, all of this. 

But some things are important enough to remember.

“No,” I finally tell her, then down the rest of my beer.  That
no
covers everything, doesn't it?  When that single word comes between us, the tension seems to dissolve into the air as Summer nods once, twice, setting her now-empty beer can on the porch railing beside her. 

“Well,” she says, pushing off from the railing and standing easily.  She stretches overhead, rolling her head on her shoulders and then placing her hands on her hips.  “It's late...  You probably need your rest,” she says, matter-of-factly.

That's it?  It had seemed like she wanted to say so much more a moment ago, like we were starting to have an intimate, deep conversation, but now, just like that, our interaction is over.  I don't know why I wish she'd stay, but I do—so much.  Yes, I wish she'd stay.  The admission that she's attracted to women is something I could have never expected.  She's single, I'm single...

I'm horrified as I stand, as I reach out between us and extend my hand.  I can't believe I'm thinking these thoughts.  Not now.  Not during this week, the twentieth anniversary of my sister's death.  I am highly aware that there's no room for anything but sadness.  I know that. 

But as Summer reaches out, too, and clasps my hand, we don't shake.  Instead, we stand together, our hands pressed tight, her warm fingers tingling against my skin as we touch.  A shiver runs through me so sharply that my shoulders actually shake for a heartbeat.  Her warmth, the softness of her skin, the way that she's holding my gaze in the dark...  It's sensual, but there's something more...