Every Summer After

“I slept with Charlie,” I say to Sam, barely registering that he’s just told me he loves me.

He’s silent.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him, tears already streaming down my face. I say it over and over. And still he says nothing. We’re facing each other on the floor. He’s looking over my shoulder, his eyes dull and unfocused, his fingers frozen on my arm.

“Sam?” He doesn’t move. “It was a mistake,” I tell him, my voice shaking. “A huge mistake. I loved you more than anything, and then you left. And then you wrote that letter, and I thought you were done with me. I know that’s no excuse.” The words spill out in a sopping mess. “And that’s why . . . why I broke us. I loved you, Sam. I did. So much. But I wasn’t good enough for you. I’m still not . . .” I trail off because Sam is opening and closing his mouth, like he’s trying to say something, but nothing comes out.

“I’d do anything to take it back, to make it better,” I say. “Tell me what to do.” He looks at me, blinking in shutter-fast bursts. He shakes his head.

“Sam, please say something, anything,” I plead, my throat dry. His eyes narrow and his cheeks darken. His jaw is moving back and forth, like he’s grinding his teeth.

“How was it?” he asks in a voice so low I think I must have misheard him.

“What?”

“You fucked Charlie. I asked you how it was.” It’s venomous and so unlike Sam that I flinch. I lie completely still, a prickly feeling spreading across my chest and down my arms like his words really were toxic. I’ve imagined what it would be like to tell Sam, what his reaction would be—hurt or anger or maybe indifference now that so much time has passed—but I didn’t ever think he’d be cruel.

He’s staring at me intensely, and I’m suddenly aware of how naked I am. I need to get out of here. I thought I could handle this, but I was wrong.

I sit up, covering myself with one arm while I reach for my clothes with the other, my hair falling around my face. I dress as quickly as possible, facing the bookshelf, trembling and numb, and then rush to the door.

“I can’t believe you,” Sam says from behind me, and I pause. “You’re just going to leave.” I wipe my tears away roughly. When I turn, Sam’s standing completely naked, his arms folded across his chest, his feet planted wide apart. I want to respond, but my thoughts have congealed.

He shakes his head once. “You’re running away just like before.” Every word is sharp and acrid. Six poison darts. “I left for school, but you left and never came back.”

I stammer, searching for something solid among the mush, but I’m confused by the subtle change in topic. The only thing that seems to be working is my heart—and it’s in overdrive. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips.

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me,” I finally manage. “We sold the cottage . . . there was nothing to come back to.” His eyes flash with hurt.

“I was here to come back to. Every holiday. Every summer. I was here.”

“But you hated me. I wrote to you. You never wrote or called back.”

He puts his hands on his head, and I shut up. He sucks in air through his nose, and then he explodes.

“How did you expect me to react?” he yells, the tendons in his neck bulging. I can only look at him, my mouth open. “You slept with my brother!” He roars the final word, and I cringe.

Something in my brain isn’t working right, because I can’t process what he’s just said. The time lines are all mixed up. I slept with Charlie. I broke up with Sam. We never spoke again. My chest is tight. I rub my face and try to focus again. I slept with Charlie, but that’s not why Sam didn’t speak to me. He stopped speaking to me because I turned down his proposal. And then the pieces start clicking together, and I have to gasp for air. My head feels like it might float off my neck. Tiny spots race across my vision like ants, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I need to get out of here now.

I spin on my heels, fling the door open, and bolt down the hallway, then the stairs, to the entrance. Sam is calling my name, and I can hear him following behind me. I grab my purse from the hook by the door and run outside, down the porch steps, and then stop suddenly.

My car is gone. Where the hell is my car? I turn around wildly, as if I’m in a parking lot and maybe I’ve just got the wrong row. But there’s nothing. Just grass and trees and Sam, standing naked in the doorway. I could swear I drove here after the funeral, but now I’m not so sure. What is happening? There’s a loud wheezing noise coming from my mouth. I must be dreaming, I think. This is all a dream.

I charge up the gravel to the road. Sam is yelling and swearing, but I keep going, the sharp pebbles digging into my feet. It’s like my body has turned on autopilot while my lungs struggle to find oxygen, because without thinking, I head toward my cottage. I don’t stop when I come to the top of the long driveway.

This is just a bad dream.

All I want is to curl up in my bed and sleep until it’s tomorrow. I’ll wake up, have breakfast with my parents, and Sam will be there a little while later, sweaty from his run, to take me swimming. And everything will be back to the way it should be. Me and Sam and the lake.

When the cottage comes into view, I almost don’t recognize it. An entirely new section juts out from the back, and the pines have been cleared from around the building. There’s a firepit that never used to be there and a red minivan parked beside the door. It’s not my cottage, and this isn’t a dream. Somehow I stumble back to the road but my legs buckle at the top of the driveway and I drop onto the ground, gulping for air, closing my eyes against the sting of tears.

I don’t hear Sam approaching. I don’t notice him at all until his sneakers are right in front of me.

“Two panic attacks in one day is a little excessive, don’t you think?” he says, but there’s no bite to his words. I can’t reply. I can’t even shake my head. I can only keep trying to breathe. He squats down in front of me.

“You need to slow down your breaths,” he says. But I can’t. It feels like I’m running a marathon at a sprinter’s pace. He sighs. “C’mon, Percy. We can do it together.” His hands come around my face so his thumbs are on my cheeks and his fingers are in my hair.

“Look at me,” he says, and tilts my face up to his. He starts breathing slowly, counting the breaths, like he did earlier, his forehead creased. It takes me a minute to focus, but eventually I can breathe a little easier, then a bit slower, and my heart follows not long after.

“Better now?” he asks. But it’s not better, not even close, because now that the fog has started to clear, I remember what stirred this tornado of anxiety in the first place.

“No,” I croak. I look at him, my chin trembling, his hands still around my face, and force myself to say the words. “You already knew.”

He swallows and presses his lips together. “Yeah,” he rasps. “I knew.”

I close my eyes and collapse into a heap on the dirt, silent sobs shaking my body. I hear him say something, but all I can focus on is how long he’s known and how deeply he must have hated me all that time.

First I feel his hands on my back and his arms coming around me, and then everything goes black.