Meet Me at the Lake

I got to the docks early. I told Mom I was meeting a friend, but I’d been deliberately vague on every other detail. It was my first trip home since Christmas, and she was suspicious. I’d graduated from university a year earlier, and my friend circle was small—more of a triangle, really. Whitney and Cam were up north, and Ayla was my good friend in the city. Aside from my coworkers at Two Sugars, I wasn’t close to anyone else.

It had been twelve months since I’d seen Will. After he’d left my apartment, I spent the morning in bed, staring at the spot where he’d lain the night before, his words on repeat in my head.

It’s still your life.

It wasn’t exactly new information, but it felt like I was seeing myself in a different light. Will’s light. His conviction that I needed to be honest with Mom and his own passion for art cast one thousand watts on how passive I’d been about my future. I was letting life happen to me.

I had repeated his words to myself in the bathroom mirror later that afternoon. It was Sunday, and when it was time for my call with Mom, I held the list Will had written, staring at the four items on the plan. I explained to Mom that I had something to tell her, that I wasn’t sure how to say it, but I didn’t want to work at the resort that summer. Or any summer. Or ever.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You’re coming home in a week. The Roses are throwing a party. I have you booked on the front desk through July. I was going to show you how to do the scheduling. I ordered you a new uniform.” She spoke quickly without pausing for air. “I got the good coffee beans and bought a fancy grinder I still can’t figure out. I was going to surprise you on your first morning back. You always say my coffee is too weak.” I heard her suck in a breath. When she started speaking again, her voice trembled. “I was looking forward to our mornings at the lake. I thought this was going to be me and you, pea.”

I closed my eyes. I apologized and said I was grateful for everything she’d done for me. I told her I didn’t want her life. I wanted a life of my own, whatever that was.

She went quiet for a few moments, then she said, “Okay, Fern.” Her tone was flat. “You go figure your life out, but I’m not going to pay for it.”

I started saying that I didn’t have any savings, but the line had gone dead.

Shaking, I put my phone down. I hated hurting Mom. But I was also buzzing with adrenaline. I had done it. I wasn’t going home in a week. I wasn’t going to work at Brookbanks.

I could hardly believe it. I had to call my boss and beg for more shifts. I had to tell Jamie and Whitney. But the person I most wanted to talk to was Will. Only I couldn’t.

Not once did I contact Will, although the first time I got high after he left, alone in my apartment, I typed “Will Baxter” into a Google search bar. I found an article in the Vancouver Sun about a student art exhibit that featured a photo of Will looking just as I’d remembered. I dug up his private Facebook page—the profile pic was a cartoon self-portrait—but I didn’t friend him. I searched for Roommates, hoping his comic had a digital trail, but came up empty.

I spent twelve months desperate for his company, his wide smile, his explosive laugh. His certainty. I imagined what our day would have been like if we’d both been single. I imagined the night going very differently. I imagined pressing my lips to his scar.

I spent twelve months thinking about what it would be like to see him again. I’d take him out on the canoe. We’d paddle up the lake to the quiet strip of sandy shoreline and sit with our toes in the water, and we’d talk. We would talk for hours.

There was so much I wanted to tell Will—how I had stayed in my apartment in Toronto and how I was broke but much happier than I had been when we met. I wanted to tell him I was working full-time at Two Sugars and that people loved his mural. I smiled whenever I saw the tiny fern on the plane’s rudder. I wanted to tell him about the inkling of an idea I had to open my own coffee shop one day. I wanted to tell him I’d gone to High Park to see the cherry blossoms in the spring. I wanted to tell him I was single.

I decided not to go to Banff with Jamie. I convinced myself it was because I couldn’t afford the airfare and didn’t want to give up my apartment. It was a Tuesday in early July when he broke up with me. I had just gotten home from a double shift when my buzzer rang. I knew why he’d come as soon as I saw him. We sat on the front steps of the building, and Jamie told me that loving me felt like holding water. “I’m trying to hang on too tight, Fernie,” he said. “I think we both need to face the next adventure on our own.” I knew he was doing what I should have already, but I ached for weeks.

Whitney said she understood why I didn’t want to come home, but then she asked why I hadn’t mentioned anything while she was visiting, and I could tell I’d hurt her, too.

Ayla, my closest friend in Toronto, was doing an internship in Calgary until September, and I wasn’t tight enough with the Two Sugars crowd for more than the occasional after-work drink. I was lonely.

Countless times, I stared up at the crack in my ceiling wondering if I’d made a huge mistake by not going home. There were even more times I almost sent Will a Facebook request. I wanted so badly to talk to him. I had feelings for him, I could admit that. But above all, I needed his friendship.

June fourteenth was one of those glorious afternoons where lake and sky form blue parentheses around the green hillside of the opposite shore. The resort beach was crowded with families, the water dotted with canoes and kayaks and paddleboards. It wasn’t as hot as the day Will and I had spent together, but there was the same feeling in the air—the thrumming excitement of a summer just begun.

The pair of teenage boys working in the outfitting hut clearly had yet to experience the wrath of Margaret Brookbanks, because the docks were covered in pine needles. I ducked inside, said a quick hello, and grabbed a broom to keep myself busy.

I was surprised when Will was late. He struck me as having a responsible streak—the way he’d checked in on his sister, his idea for a one-year plan, even his insistence we not stay in touch. I was certain he’d be there. I squinted up at the lodge, and when I saw no sign of him, I sat down at the end of the dock. I’d dressed to take him out in a canoe—a pair of cotton shorts and a green bathing suit I’d bought because the color reminded me of the trees in Emily Carr’s paintings. I’d packed a straw bag with supplies—a couple of sandwiches, two bottles of lemon San Pellegrino I’d brought with me from Toronto, a tube of sunscreen, and a bucket hat for Will.

I waited until I started to worry my own nose might peel, and I put the hat on.

I waited until the sun had sunk low in the sky.

I waited for Will Baxter for hours.

And then, finally, I felt the prick of being watched. I looked over my shoulder and found a pair of gray eyes identical to my own. The disappointment hit me in one swift blow.

Mom made her way across the dock.

“Want to tell me about him?” she asked as she slipped off her gold sandals and sat down beside me, her perfume tickling my nose. She was dressed for the evening in a turquoise shift and chunky gold jewelry.

I didn’t reply.

There was no denying an unease had descended between us after I told her I wasn’t coming home.

She and Peter had come for convocation and taken me to dinner after the ceremony, but the evening ended with Mom and me fighting. I hadn’t visited her at the resort until the end of summer. When I’d woken up late my first morning home, I’d been confused. Mom hadn’t roused me to go to the lake with our coffees—she’d already left for the lodge. She hadn’t woken me the next day, either.

Christmas had been a minor disaster. She talked a lot about a whole lot of nothing, but she could barely meet my eyes. Sometimes I caught her studying me like I was a stranger, like she was rewiring her entire idea of who I was.

She was snippy with Peter and worked Christmas Day, which had always been a sacred day off. Peter and I cooked Christmas dinner together. We had the new Haim album up loud, and I was rage-peeling potatoes, fuming about how Mom hadn’t once asked about the coffee shop. Peter told me I had to be patient—that she needed more time to adjust to my decision.

“All she cares about is this place,” I complained. It felt like my lifelong hypothesis had been proven. Now that I wasn’t going to be a part of Brookbanks, Mom had zero time for me, and she’d never had much to begin with.

Peter handed me another Yukon Gold. “When your mom was your age, it was her dream to take over the resort from your grandparents. She’s thrown everything she has at making it a success, showing she could do it on her own,” he said. “But for the last four years, Fern, all she’s been dreaming about is working next to you.”

I’d stared at the potato in my hand, stunned. I’d promised Peter I’d give her some slack, but when she’d shown up late for turkey, I’d cut my trip short and hadn’t returned until now.

Mom and I sat beside each other on the dock, watching two tweens attempt to steer a paddleboat. She took the hat off my head.

“You could start with his name,” she said.

I considered denying that I was meeting a guy, telling Mom my friend’s name was Beth or Jane, but a tear tumbled down my cheek. I swiped it away with the heel of my hand.

“His name is Will.”

She absorbed this for a moment. “And he was going to meet you all the way up here, at home?” Her voice was laced with skepticism.

“He was supposed to.”

“Is it serious between the two of you?”

“I thought it could be.” I rubbed my cheek again. “I made him a mix CD.”

I’d spent hours perfecting it. I’d wanted it to be summery and meaningful but not in an I’m totally in love with you way. I didn’t know if he was still with Fred or someone else or if he felt the same way I did. I included some of the songs we’d listened to at the coffee shop and some that reminded me of the day we spent together and others that reminded me of him. The only theme, really, was Will.

Music may have been the language Peter and I shared, but Mom knew what making a CD for someone meant to me. She placed a pink-manicured hand on my thigh and gave my leg a little jostle. “It’s his loss then, Fern,” she said firmly.

“Maybe,” I said, tilting my chin to the sky to fend off another swell of tears.

Mom pressed her palms to my cheeks, turning my face so she could look me in the eyes.

“No, pea,” she said, unblinking. “It’s his loss. He has no idea what he’s missing.”

I took an unsteady breath. “You think so?”

She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me against her chest, the same way she did when I was little.

“Oh, honey,” she said into my hair. “I know.”