Meet Me at the Lake

Guys were always so slumpy. They leaned in doorways and slouched over cafeteria tables. Jamie often used me as a resting post, his elbow propped on my shoulder. Will was much more vertical.

He was outlining the wing of a plane soaring above the skyline while I pretended to read The Grid. I had my notebook on the table, open to the list of things I wanted to do, see, eat, and drink before I went home in little more than a week. Between classes, homework, and shifts, I hadn’t made the most of living in Canada’s largest city. I was hoping to find a couple of cheap ideas in this week’s issue to add to my bucket list, but I’d been staring at the long line of Will’s back and the steady grip of his hand around the brush. Mostly I was struck by the upright way he held himself. Definitively unslumpy.

“I can feel your judgment,” Will said. “It’s extremely loud.” He looked over his shoulder, hair falling into his eyes, lips slanted up. “Want to put on some music to drown it out?”

So he was funny and hot. I glared, but Will’s smile only widened. I’d never seen one as beautiful as his.

“Are you always this toothy?” I asked.

“Are you always this friendly?”

“Pretty much.”

He chuckled, and I could feel the sound in my belly, warm and sweet. “I won’t take offense, then.” He nodded to my iPod on the table. “Music?”

“Sure.” He’d found my weak spot in record time. I rubbed the newsprint off my fingers onto my shorts and thumbed through my albums with chipped blue nails, taking a guess at what he’d like. “I’ve got the new Vampire Weekend. Have you heard it?”

“Is that what you were listening to when you came in? I saw you out on the street earlier.”

I cleared my throat, surprised. “Oh, no. That was one of Peter’s playlists.”

“Your boyfriend?”

I snorted. “Peter’s my mom’s best friend. Playlists are kind of our thing.”

Understatement. Peter and I communicated through music. Mom called it our secret language.

According to her, Peter didn’t let a lot of people into his life— we had that in common. From how she told it (and she loved telling it), Mom had elbowed her way in long before I was born.

He didn’t know what to make of all my talking, and he didn’t know how to ask me to shut up, so after a winter of living at the house, he was stuck with me for life. Confinement—it’s how I forced him to be my friend.

I was glad she had. Without Peter, it was just Mom and me. He’d bought me my first set of headphones, and every pair since. We sent each other mix CDs in the mail, and I put them on my iPod.

“What’s on it?” Will asked, wandering closer. There was a tiny pin fixed to his collar, the word surrealist written on it. I held my screen out and he leaned over, his brush suspended in midair, reading out song titles.

“ ‘Stop Your Crying.’ ‘I’m Only Happy When It Rains.’ ‘Road to Nowhere.’ ” He looked down at me, eyes sparkling. “I think he’s trying to tell you something.”

“Peter likes a theme.” I was impressed Will picked up on it. “He said I sounded cranky the last time we spoke, and this is what he sent me.”

“What were you cranky about?”

I shrugged.

“Top secret business?”

“None of your business.”

Will studied me for a second, his smile unsure. “Let’s put it on.”

I ducked behind the counter and connected my iPod to the speaker system. Fiona Apple filled the coffee shop. I looked up to find Will watching me. My stomach dipped.

“I love this song,” he said. “It’s called ‘Every Single Night,’ right?”

“Mm-hmm.” So he was funny and hot and had good taste in music. Whatever.

Will returned to the mural, and I went back to my paper.

“What’s in that notebook?” he asked after a few minutes. “Are you a writer?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, but I didn’t answer.

“Poems? Diary entries? Top secret world domination business?”

“You’re a smidge nosy, you know that?”

A bright clap of laughter erupted from him. “A smidge!” He glanced over his shoulder, and I tried to glower, but I was smiling harder than I had in months. There weren’t many people who could make me smile that June.

When Will had finished the plane, I jumped out of my seat, announcing that I needed coffee. “Do you want one?”

“Yeah, please. That’d be great.”

“What’s your order?”

“A latte. With a double shot?”

“No problem.” I was hoping he’d want something with foam.

I poured hot milk over Will’s coffee, angling the cup and wiggling the pitcher in one direction across the surface then dragging it back in the other. Spiritualized played on the speakers. If the café had been full, it would have been perfection. I was in my zone behind the bar—no one paid attention to me there; it was almost as good as walking through the city.

“I’m basically done,” Will said, wiping his hands. “I’ll let this dry for a bit and then do a varnish coat. It won’t take long to apply.”

I set the mugs down on a table. “This one’s yours. Do you take sugar?”

“Three?” Will grinned. “I have a sweet tooth. It’s a problem.” Will’s coveralls were so baggy, it wasn’t obvious what he kept underneath them, but I was certain it was no problem.

He took a seat while I pulled back the cloth covering the milk and sugar station.

“You said three like you wanted four,” I said, dropping an extra packet of sugar and a stir stick on the table as I sat down. Will looked up from his drink with an odd expression on his face.

I had a latte art code. I gave most of my customers hearts. Fat hearts. Little hearts sitting atop big hearts. Rings of hearts. Hearts made them feel special. But my favorite customers didn’t get hearts.

“A fern from Fern,” Will said, his voice low.

I made ferns when someone rippled with joy, or if they seemed sad, or when they complimented the music when I was in charge of the stereo. The day Josh proposed to Sean with his poster, I topped his drink with two fern fronds, their stems joined at the center. I made ferns for my favorite people. I hadn’t realized I was making one for Will until I’d finished pouring the milk.

I pushed the sugar closer to Will. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”

He blinked, then picked up all four packets.

—

“I’m moving back home right after convocation,” I told Will after he’d taken his first sip. I ran my fingers over the soft black leather cover of my notebook. It was a gift from Mom before I went away for school—it had refillable pages and a snap closure. A grown-up journal for my grown-up daughter. I’m so proud of how you’ve turned things around, pea. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff I want to do before I leave, so I’ve been keeping track. Nothing too exciting.”

“That depends on what’s on your list,” Will said. My eyes followed the slow spread of his smile, catching on a tiny scar below his lip.

“It’s a bit of a jumble,” I said. “A bunch of it is food. There’s a restaurant in the financial district making a twenty-dollar chocolate bar. It sounds douchey, and I’m definitely too broke to blow twenty bucks on candy, but like, what does a twenty-dollar chocolate bar taste like?”

“I have no idea.”

I opened the book, scanning the list. “There are some neighborhoods: the Distillery District, the Junction. I haven’t been to High Park. Can you believe that? I’ve lived here for four years.” I paused. “Which part of the city did you grow up in?”

Will half cringed. “Right around High Park.”

“Shut up.”

He held his hands up, laughing. “It’s stunning, especially when the cherry blossoms are out in the spring. You should really go.”

I threw my pen at him. “I missed blossom season.”

“I always thought Toronto would be a boring destination unless you had a local showing you around. All the cool stuff is kind of hidden,” Will said, turning an empty sugar packet in his fingers. “Where’s home?”

“Muskoka—just outside Huntsville.” Muskoka was a large lake district north of the city, and prime cottage country.

“Must be gorgeous there.”

I stared at the milky brown puddle in my cup. “It is.”

“But . . .”

My eyes rose to his.

“There’s no but,” I lied.

Will’s gaze flickered over my face, then down to my fingers scratching at my left wrist.

“So overpriced candy, urban parks . . . what else?”

I recited a few of the bigger attractions.

“The CN Tower?” Will asked. “Isn’t that kind of . . .” He smirked, eyes dancing. “Basic?”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “You’re a snob.”

I was about to ask Will what he thought was worth seeing, but I stopped myself. I didn’t usually get along with people so quickly, but I was enjoying talking to Will. I was really enjoying his smile. A bit too much for someone who had a boyfriend. I pushed my chair out, collecting our cups and utensils and taking them over to the sink.

Jamie had been a fixture of my summers for as long as I could remember. But the summer I was eighteen, I hadn’t seen him coming. Stories of my teenage antics were spread on whispering lips through the resort, and I’d come to dread working the front desk and waiting tables at the restaurant, where too many people knew who I was and what had happened. Mom agreed to assign me to the outfitting hut for the season. So it was me and Jamie down at the docks, schlepping boats and sizing guests for life jackets and paddles.

Jamie was three years older than me, and a relentless flirt. He wasn’t a skilled flirt, but he was persistent. With his tan and his matted curls, he had this grimy-surfer thing going on that I didn’t hate and an unhurried way of speaking that made him seem either wise or dense, depending on the situation. Unlike some of the other Brookbanks employees, Jamie didn’t treat me differently because of my last name or any of the stupid stuff I’d done. When I kissed him at a staff bonfire on the August long weekend, I was as surprised as he was. That was four years earlier, and we’d been together since.

“Want to give me a hand varnishing?” Will said as I washed our mugs. “If we do it together, we can get out of here faster.” He twisted his pinkie ring.

“You want me to do your job for you?” I wasn’t sure working alongside Will was a good idea.

He walked behind the counter and picked up a tea towel, then began drying one of the cups. “With me,” Will said, and my insides swooped.

—

Will demonstrated how to apply the clear coating in a crosshatch pattern with a wide brush, starting at the top of the wall and working down. “It’s kind of hard to mess up,” he assured me.

“Why are you living in Vancouver?” I asked as I covered the mural with gloss.

“I moved out there for school. I just graduated from Emily Carr.”

“That’s an arts university, right?”

“Yeah, and design.”

I pointed my brush at his lapel pin. “Surrealist—is that the style of painting you do?”

“No.” He pulled out his collar as though he’d forgotten it was there. “I guess it’s kind of an inside joke since my work is fairly literal. My girlfriend gave it to me.”

The word girlfriend was like a finger prodding between the ribs. I flinched. I couldn’t help it.

“Literal how?” I asked, trying to loosen the tight squeeze of envy. I had no business being jealous. I had Jamie.

“I’m an illustrator. Comics, mostly. I dabble with portraiture, but—”

“Dabble! I’m pretty sure dabble and smidge are related.”

Will laughed. “Definitely from the same gene pool.”

“Okay, so you dabble with portraiture,” I said in my haughtiest English accent.

“Cute,” Will said. “I had a comic strip in a campus newsletter last semester. My dream is to turn it into a graphic novel.”

“You have your own comic?”

He raised one shoulder as if it was no big thing. “Fred was the art director of the newsletter. I had an in.”

“Fred?”

“My girlfriend.”

Of course his girlfriend was the art director of an art school newsletter, and had an awesome, non-plant-based name like Fred.

We finished our sections and shifted farther down the wall.

“You said playlists are your thing—you and this friend of your mom’s,” Will commented after a while.

“Peter. Yeah, we’ve been listening to music together since I was little.”

Mom got snippy whenever we geeked out in front of her. If I hear the words distortion or tonality one more time tonight, you two can find someone else to play cards with. But I could tell she never meant it.

“That’s different. I mean, it’s cool,” he added. “I don’t know my parents’ friends well. You and your mom must be super tight.”

“My mom and I are . . .” I listened to the swish of Will’s brushstrokes, trying to figure out what Mom and I were. Our relationship had been strained throughout my teenage years—I was annoyed by how much she worked and how often I had to cook dinner for myself. Then I read her diary, and I became a human wrecking ball. But I’d spent the last four years at university showing her I was responsible—earning a business degree, same as she did. We spoke every Sunday. We watched The Good Wife together, our phones on speaker, while I folded laundry and she did her nails. Alicia Florrick was our hero. “I wouldn’t say we’re super tight, but we’re getting there.”

I started painting again. Will hadn’t paused to look my way, and I wondered if he knew that made it easier for me to talk. “Peter helped raise me. He says he oversaw my musical education. Mom says it was more like indoctrination.”

Peter was the head pâtissier at the resort. When I was a kid, I was his resident taster. He kept a white plastic stool in the pastry kitchen so I could stand beside him, dipping my fork into various tarts and pies, music blaring. Whenever Mom came in, she nagged him to turn it down. Or better yet, Peter, turn that crap off. Mom hated our music.

“You make him playlists, too?”

“We go back and forth. Our only rule is there has to be a theme.”

“Are you putting one together now?”

“I am.” I pressed the brush against the wall with undue force. “The Endings playlist.”

Will was quiet for a moment, then said, “Some people might think of this time in their life as the beginning.”

“Some might,” I said.

“But not you.”

I blinked at the mural, and then looked over at Will. He turned my way.

“What I want to know,” I said, deflecting, “is how you ended up here of all places.”

“Oh, that’s just nepotism,” Will said. “My mom is friends with the owner. When I mentioned I was coming out here for a visit, she suggested I do a piece.”

I imagined having a passion, a parent who supported it, and the freedom to follow it through. “That’s so amazing. She obviously really believes in you.”

He looked at me, and something about it—the way his eyes held on to mine for three long seconds—snagged in my chest. It was the first time I’d seen him without any trace of merriment. He seemed older. Maybe even a bit tired. The urge to tell a joke, to see a smile bloom on his face, was strange in its intensity.

“She says my desire to draw in boxes and paint on walls lays bare my inner rigidity, and that I have a ruinous case of perfectionism that has no place in the heart of an artist.”

My jaw hung open. “Your mother said that? Like, to your face?”

“More than once.”

Mom and I had been through a lot. But I couldn’t imagine her saying something so cold.

“My mother is an artist,” Will said, as if that was an explanation. “A sculptor.”

I frowned. “Are all artists mean?”

“Some of them,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat. “But I like working within a box. I get off on the limitation.”

I heated immediately, palms burning as if I’d pulled baked potatoes from the oven.

“What about you?” he asked. “What gets you going?”

“Me?” I turned to the wall, and then Will leaned over and spoke into my ear, making the hair on my arms stand. “Relax, Fern Brookbanks.”

Unlikely.

“Likes: coffee, music, walking.” I glanced at Will. “The basics.”

“The fundamentals,” he corrected. “What was your major?”

“Business management?” I sounded unsure. I felt unsure, even though I’d all but donned my cap and gown.

His eyes skated over me. “That’s not what I would have guessed.”

I wanted to ask him what he would have guessed, but we’d reached the end of the wall.

“Well, that’s it,” he announced. “I’ll clean up and put everything away, then we can take off.” He put his hand out for my brush.

“Do you want help?” I offered.

“Nah, that’s okay. I already roped you into varnishing.”

I nodded, disappointed. I packed up my things and unhooked my iPod, leaving the café silent except for the sound of Will washing his brushes in the back.

I wandered over to the mural, studying the painting while I waited, my eyes moving the direction we had worked, finally landing on the plane. My breath caught, and I stepped closer. Will had varnished this section, so I’d missed it. He’d put a tiny fern frond on the plane’s rudder.

“You gave me a fern on a coffee, so I gave you one on a plane.”

I turned at Will’s voice. He was drying his hands on a towel. “You painted a fern on a wall for me.”

“A very small portion of the wall. Do you like it?”

It was the best fern I’d ever seen. I wanted to chisel it out of the plaster and take it home. “Yeah,” I murmured. I loved it.

“So I have an idea,” Will said, throwing the towel over his shoulder. “I thought I could show you some of my favorite spots, if you’re free. Nothing basic, I promise.”

I was temporarily speechless.

“I’m going back to Vancouver tomorrow,” he said when I didn’t reply. “I’ve got a mural commission starting Monday—another coffee shop. I’d be into spending the afternoon walking around the city.”

Hours ago, all I wanted was to get high, make my way home, and starfish across my bed, but the idea of seeing Will’s Toronto was exciting. Spending more time with Will was exciting. And that was a problem. Jamie was the only guy I should want to spend time with.

“So?” Will asked. “What do you think?”

I could feel my heartbeat everywhere—in my lips, my throat— a heavy thud of warning throughout my body. I looked over my shoulder at the plane and then back at Will. He was fidgeting with his ring.

“I’d love to,” I told him. Because more than anything, I didn’t want to waste one more moment of my time left in the city.