Every Summer After

Sue’s face is staring at me, hair pulled back, smile so wide it’s beckoned her dimples. There are fine lines fanning out from her eyes that didn’t used to be there, but even on the local paper’s smudged newsprint, you can see determination in the slight upward tilt of her chin and the hand that rests on her hip. She’s standing in front of the Tavern in the photo, which runs under the headline “Tribute to a Beloved Barry’s Bay Business Leader.”

I’ve become skilled at warding off the loneliness that threatened to pull me under in my early twenties. It’s a formula that involved throwing myself into work, no-strings sex, and overpriced cocktails with Chantal. It took years to perfect. But sitting in the motel room with Sue’s obituary in my hands and the lake sparkling in the distance, I can feel it in every part of my body—the twisting of my gut, the ache in my neck, the tightness in my chest.

I could talk to Chantal. She’s sent three more texts, asking me to call her, asking me when the funeral is, asking whether I want her to come. I should at least text her back. But Thanksgiving breakdown aside, I haven’t spoken to her about Sam too often. I tell myself I don’t have the energy to get into it right now, but it’s more that if I start talking about him, about how monumental it feels to be here, how scary, I may not be able to hold it together.

What I really need is a bottle of wine. My stomach gurgles. And maybe some food. I haven’t eaten anything except for the raisin-bran muffin from my emergency Tim Hortons stop. It’s a blistering late afternoon, so I throw on the lightest thing I’ve packed: a sleeveless poppy-colored cotton dress that hits above the knees. It has large buttons down the front and a belted waist. I fasten my gold sandals and head out the door.

It takes about twenty minutes to walk to the center of town. My bangs are stuck to my forehead by the time I get there, and I hold my hair in a dense pile on top of my head to cool my neck down. Other than a new café with a sandwich board advertising lattes and cappuccinos (neither of which you could get in town when I was a kid), the family businesses on the main street are pretty much the same. Somehow I’m not prepared for the wallop of seeing the butter-yellow building and the red sign painted with Polish folk art flowers. I stand in the middle of the sidewalk, staring. The Tavern is in darkness, the green patio umbrellas folded shut. This is probably the first time since the restaurant opened that it’s been closed on a Thursday evening in July. There’s a small sign taped to the front door, and without thinking, I move toward it.

It’s a short message, written with black marker: The Tavern is closed until August to mourn the loss of owner Sue Florek. We thank you for your support and understanding. I wonder who wrote it. Sam? Charlie? Butterflies swarm my stomach. I lean into the glass door with my hands cupped around my face and notice a light on inside. It’s coming from the windows that lead into the kitchen. Someone’s in there.

As if drawn by a magnetic force, I head around to the back of the building. The heavy steel door that leads into the kitchen is propped open a few inches. The butterflies become a flock of flapping gulls. I pull the door wider and step inside. And then I freeze.

At the dishwasher stands a tall, sandy-haired man, and although his back is turned to me, he is as unmistakable as my own reflection. He’s wearing sneakers, a blue T-shirt, and navy-and-white-striped board shorts. He’s still slim but there’s so much more of him. All golden-brown skin and broad shoulders and strong legs. He’s scrubbing something in the sink, a tea towel over one shoulder. I watch the muscles clench in his back as he lifts a platter into the washer rack. The sight of his large hands sends blood rushing to my ears so loudly it’s like waves are crashing inside my head. I remember when he knelt over me in his bedroom, running those fingers along my body like he had discovered a new planet.

His name slides softly from my lips.

“Sam?”

He turns, a look of confusion across his face. His eyes are the clear blue skies they always were, but so much else is different. The edges of his cheekbones and jaw are harder, and the skin underneath his eyes is tinged purple, as if sleep has eluded him for nights on end. His hair is shorter than he used to wear it, cropped close on the sides and only a little floppy on top, and his arms are thick and corded. He was beautiful at eighteen, but adult Sam is so devastating I could cry. I missed him becoming this. And the grief of that loss—of seeing Sam grow into a man—is a fist squeezing around my lungs.

Sam’s gaze moves across my face and then drops down my body. I can see the flint of recognition that sparks when his eyes make their way back up to mine. Sam always kept a snug-fitting seal on his feelings, but I spent six years figuring out how to pry it off. I devoted hours to studying the subtle movement of emotions across his features. They were like rain that traveled from the far shore and across the water, unassuming until it was right there, pelting the cottage windows. I memorized his shimmers of mischief, the distant thunder of his jealousy, and the whitecaps of his ecstasy. I knew Sam Florek.

His eyes lock on to mine. Their hold is as unrelenting as ever. His lips are pinched into a flat line, and his chest expands in slow, steady breaths.

I take a hesitant step forward as if I’m approaching a wild horse. His eyebrows shoot up, and he shakes his head once like he’s been startled from a dream. I halt.

We stand staring at each other silently, and then he takes three giant strides toward me and wraps his arms around me so tight it’s like his large body is a cocoon around mine. He smells like sun and soap and something new that I don’t recognize. When he speaks, his voice is a deep rasp that I want to drown in.

“You came home.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

I came home.

SAM PULLS BACK from me, his hands on my shoulders. His eyes ping around my face in disbelief.

I give him a small smile.

“Hi,” I say.

The lopsided grin that curves his mouth is a drug I’ve never kicked. The faint crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the stubble on his face are new and so . . . sexy. Sam is sexy. So many times I’ve wondered about what he’d be like all grown up, but the reality of thirty-year-old Sam is so much more solid and dangerous than what I could have imagined.

“Hi, Percy.” My name passes from his lips and straight to my bloodstream, a sudden injection of desire and shame and a thousand memories. And just as quickly, I remember why I’m here.

“Sam, I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice cracking. I’m so raw with grief and regret that I can’t stop the tears that roll down my cheeks. And then Sam is holding me again, whispering, “Shhh,” into my hair while he moves one hand up and down my back.

“It’s okay, Percy,” he whispers, and when I peer up at him, his forehead is wrinkled in concern.

“I should be comforting you,” I say, wiping my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about that.” His voice is soft as he pats my back and then takes a step back, running his hand through his hair. The familiar gesture tugs a frayed string inside me. “She was sick for years. We had a long time to come to terms with it.”

“I can’t imagine any amount of time being long enough. She was so young.”

“Fifty-two.”

I inhale sharply, because that’s even younger than I had guessed. And I can imagine how this must gnaw at Sam. His dad was young, too.

“I hope it’s okay that I came,” I say. “I wasn’t sure you’d want me here.”

“Yeah, of course.” He says it as if it hasn’t been more than a decade since we spoke. As if he doesn’t hate me. He turns back to the dishwasher, emptying a tray of side plates and stacking them on the counter. “How did you know?” He glances at me and squints when I don’t immediately reply. “Ah.”

He’s already figured out the answer, but I tell him anyway. “Charlie called me.”

His face darkens. “Of course he did,” he says flatly.

There are serving dishes and chafing trays lined up on the counters—the kind of equipment needed to cater a big function. I move beside him at the dishwashing station and begin putting some dusty serving utensils in a rack to run through the washer. It’s the same machine from when I worked here. I’ve run it so many times I could do it with my eyes closed.

“So what’s all this for?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the sink. But I don’t get a response. I can tell from the quiet that Sam has stopped emptying dishes. I take a deep breath, in one, two, three, four and out one, two, three, four, before looking over my shoulder. He’s leaning against the counter, arms crossed, watching me.

“What are you doing?” he asks, voice rough. I turn to face him straight on, taking another deep breath, and from some deep forgotten place, I find Percy, the girl I used to be.

I lift my chin and give him an incredulous look, putting a hand on my hip. My hand is soaking wet, but I ignore that as well as the swooping in my stomach.

“I’m helping you out, genius.” The water seeps through my dress, but I don’t budge. I don’t look away. A muscle in his jaw twitches and his frown loosens just enough that I know I’ve stuck a knife under his sealer lid. A smile threatens to ruin my poker face, and I bite my lip to hold it back. His eyes flash to my mouth.

“You were always a shit dishwasher,” I say, and he bursts out laughing, the rich bellow bouncing off the kitchen’s steel surfaces. It is the most magnificent sound. I want to record it so I can listen to it later, again and again. I don’t know the last time I’ve smiled this widely.

His blue eyes sparkle when they find mine, then drift down to the wet spot my hand has left on my hip. He swallows. His neck is the same golden brown as his arms. I want to stick my nose at the curve where it meets his shoulder and inhale a hit of him.

“I see your trash talk hasn’t improved,” he says with affection, and I feel like I’ve won a marathon. He motions to the dishes on the counter and sighs. “Mom wanted to have everyone here for a party after she passed. The idea of people standing around with crustless egg salad sandwiches in the church basement after her funeral horrified her. She wants us to eat and drink and have fun. She was very specific.” He says it with love, but he sounds tired. “She even made the pierogies and cabbage rolls she wanted served months ago, when she was still well enough, and put them in the freezer.”

My eyes and throat burn, but I stay strong this time. “That sounds like your mom. Organized and thoughtful and . . .”

“Always stuffing people full of carbs?”

“I was going to say, ‘feeding the people she loves,’ ” I reply. Sam smiles, but it’s a sad one.

We stand there in the quiet, surveying the tidy array of equipment and plates. Sam pulls the tea towel off his shoulder and sets it down on the counter, giving me a long look as if he’s deciding something.

He points to the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

WE’RE EATING ICE cream and sitting on the same bench we used to as kids—not far from the center of town on the north shore. I can see the motel across the bay in the distance. The sun has dipped low in the sky, and there’s a breeze coming off the water. We haven’t spoken much, which is okay with me because sitting beside Sam feels unreal. His long legs are spread out beside mine, and I’m fixated on the size of his knees and his leg hair. Sam grew out of his stringy phase after he hit puberty, but he is so thoroughly a man now.

“Percy?” Sam asks, breaking my focus.

“Yeah?” I turn toward him.

“You might want to eat that a little faster.” He points to the pink and blue trail of ice cream dripping down my hand.

“Shit!” I try to catch it with a napkin, but a blob lands on my chest. I dab at it, but it only seems to make matters worse. Sam watches from the corner of his eye with a smirk.

“I can’t believe you still eat cotton candy. How old are you?” he teases.

I motion to his waffle cone with two massive scoops of Moose Tracks, the same flavor he used to order as a kid. “You’re one to talk.”

“Vanilla, caramel, peanut butter cups? Moose Tracks is classic,” he scoffs.

“No way. Cotton candy is the best. You just never learned to appreciate it.”

Sam raises one brow in an expression of absolute trouble, then leans over and runs his tongue flat over my scoop of ice cream, biting off a hunk from the top. I let out an involuntary gasp, my mouth hanging open as I stare at his teeth marks.

I remember the first time Sam did that when we were fifteen. The glimpse of his tongue shocked me speechless then, too.

I don’t look up until he elbows me in the side.

“That always freaked you out,” he chuckles in a soft baritone.

“Menace.” I smile, ignoring the pressure building in my lower belly.

“I’ll give you a taste of mine to be fair.” He tilts his cone to me. This is new. I wipe away the beads of sweat forming above my lip. Sam notices, giving me a crooked grin as though he can read every dirty thought that’s running through my mind. “I promise it’s good,” he says, and his voice is as dark and smooth as coffee. I’m not used to this Sam—one who seems fully aware of his effect on me.

I can tell he doesn’t think I’ll do it, but that just spurs me on. I take a quick taste of his cone.

“You’re right,” I say, shrugging. “It’s pretty good.” His eyes flash to my mouth, and then he clears his throat.

We sit in awkward silence for a minute.

“So how have you been, Percy?” he asks, and I hold my hands up helplessly.

“I’m not sure where to start,” I laugh, nervous. How do you even begin after so much time has passed?

“How about three updates?” He nudges me, his eyes glinting.

It was a game we used to play. We went for long stretches apart, and whenever we’d see each other again, we’d tell each other our three biggest pieces of news in rapid fire. I have a new draft of my story for you to read. I’m training for the four-hundred-meter freestyle. I got a B on my algebra exam. I laugh again, but my throat has gone dry.

“Umm . . .” I squint out at the water. It’s been more than a decade, but has that much really happened?

“I still live in Toronto,” I start, taking a bite of ice cream to delay. “Mom and Dad are well—they’re traveling around Europe. And I’m a journalist, an editor, actually—I work at Shelter, the design magazine.”

“A journalist, huh?” he says with a smile. “That’s great, Percy. I’m happy for you. I’m glad you’re writing.”

I don’t correct him. My work involves little writing, mostly headlines and the odd article. Being an editor is all about telling other people what to write.

“And what about you?” I ask, returning my focus to the water in front of us—the sight of Sam sitting beside me is too jarring. I’d looked him up on social media years earlier, his profile picture was a shot of the lake, but never took the step of adding him as a friend.

“One, I’m a doctor now.”

“Wow. That’s . . . that’s incredible, Sam,” I say. “Not that I’m surprised.”

“Predictable, right? And, two, I specialized in cardiology. Another shocker.” He’s not bragging at all. If anything, he sounds a bit embarrassed.

“Exactly where you wanted to be.”

I’m happy for him—it’s what he was always working toward. But somehow it also hurts that his life continued without me as planned. I made my way through my first year of university in a fog, struggling through my creative writing classes, not able to focus on much of anything, let alone character development. Eventually a professor suggested I give journalism a shot. The rules of reporting and story structure made sense to me, gave me an outlet that didn’t feel so personal, so connected to Sam. I abandoned my dream of being an author, but I eventually set new goals. There’s speculation that when it’s time for a new editor in chief at Shelter, I’ll be at the top of the list. I created a different path for myself, one that I love, but it stings that Sam managed to follow his original one.

“And three,” he says, “I’m living here. In Barry’s Bay.” I jerk my head back, and he laughs softly. Sam was as determined to leave Barry’s Bay as he was to become a doctor. I assumed after he left for school he’d never move back.

From the moment we were together-together, I dreamed of what our life would be like when we finally lived in the same place. I imagined moving to wherever he was doing his residency after my undergrad. I would write fiction and wait tables until our incomes were steady. We’d come back to Barry’s Bay whenever we could, splitting our time between the country and the city.

“I stayed in Kingston for my residency,” he explains, as if reading my mind. Sam attended med school at Queen’s University in Kingston, one of the top schools in the whole country. Kingston was nowhere near as large as Toronto, but it sat on Lake Ontario. Sam was meant to be near water. “But I’ve been here for the last year to help Mom. She was sick for a year before that. We were hopeful at first . . .” He looks out over the water.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and we sit quietly for a few minutes, finishing our cones and watching someone fish off the town dock.

“After a while, it didn’t seem like things were going to get any better,” he says, picking up from where he left off. “I had been driving back and forth between here and Kingston, but I wanted to come home. You know, go to the treatments and all the appointments. Help out around the house and at the restaurant. It was too much for her even when she was healthy. The Tavern was always meant to be her and Dad.”

The thought of Sam being here for the past year, living in that house down on Bare Rock Lane, without me knowing, without me being here to help, feels monumentally wrong. I put my hand over his briefly and squeeze before returning it to my lap. He tracks its movement.

“What about your work?” I ask, my voice hoarse.

“I’ve been working at the hospital here. A few shifts a week.” He sounds tired again.

“Your mom must have really appreciated you coming back,” I say, trying to sound upbeat instead of how bruised I feel. “She knew you didn’t want to stay here.”

“It’s not so bad,” Sam says, sounding like he means it, and for the second time this evening my jaw drops. “I’m serious,” he promises with a small grin. “I know I ragged on Barry’s Bay when I was a kid, but I missed it a lot when I was away at school. I’m lucky to have this,” he says, nodding to the water.

“Who are you and what have you done with Sam Florek?” I joke. “But no, that’s great. It’s so amazing that you came to help your mom. And that you don’t hate it here. I’ve missed this place so much. Every summer I get cabin fever in the city. All that concrete—it feels so hot and itchy. I’d do anything to jump into the lake.”

He studies me, a serious look coming over his face. “Well, we’ll have to make that happen.” I give him a small smile, then look out over the bay. If things had turned out differently, would I have been living here for the past year? Keeping Sue company at her appointments? Helping with the Tavern? Would I have kept writing? I would have wanted to. I would have wanted all of that. The loss squeezes at my lungs again, and I have to focus on my breath. Without looking, I can feel Sam’s attention on the side of my face.

“I can’t believe you were here all that time,” I murmur, pushing the hair off my forehead.

He prods my leg with his foot, and I tilt my head to him. He’s wearing the biggest smirk, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “I can’t believe you got bangs again.”