Meet Me at the Lake

Will was in the bathroom changing out of his coveralls when my phone lit up with a text from Jamie.

Let’s smoke a j tonight and talk 😉

Can’t, I replied. I’m fresh out.

🙁

Nine more days and I’ll be back. I erased the period and added three exclamation points before pressing send.

How was your visit with Whit?

I sighed. Good? I dunno . . . A bit weird. I’ll fill you in later.

I hadn’t told Jamie how I was dreading moving back, but he knew everything about my falling-out with Whitney and how precarious our friendship still felt. It was as wobbly as a suspension bridge, one of those ones from a children’s book with missing slats and fraying rope, hanging across a gorge. At least I could repair it when I went home.

“That looks intense,” Will said, emerging from the hallway.

This was the moment to tell him I was texting with my boyfriend. Instead, I slipped the phone into my bag and said, “It’s nothing.”

I wasn’t a cheater, and I never questioned Jamie’s loyalty during our four years of long-distance coupledom. We were one unit in the summer, but otherwise it was mostly phone calls and texts and Skype sessions. But on that day, part of me—and not a small part—wanted to pretend like I wasn’t going home. That Jamie and Whitney and my mom weren’t waiting for me to say goodbye to this life. I wanted to enjoy myself without dragging Muskoka all the way down to Toronto. I’d be there soon enough.

Will’s jeans were scrunched into the top of his boots, and he had on a black T-shirt with a lightweight cardigan overtop that he’d left undone. Out of his coveralls, his body had taken shape. He seemed taller somehow. He was lean, but not skinny. Broad shouldered with a long torso. I pictured him so wrapped up in his art that meals were forgotten or poorly planned—a slapdash PB and J over a kitchen sink filled with dirty dishes at midnight, a shawarma wrap scarfed on the sidewalk in the late afternoon.

“Clever,” I said, pointing to Will’s T-shirt. The word sketchy was written across his chest in a fine white cursive.

“I try not to take myself too seriously.”

With the neon pink laces and the work boots, the cardigan and the mess of hair, Will’s style was hard to define. It definitely wasn’t what I saw on the guys in my lecture halls—who I was certain dressed by a sniff test of whatever lay atop the closest floor heap. Or on Jamie, either.

Jamie was board shorts slung low, flip-flops slapping on the plywood floor of the outfitting hut, curls wrestling with a hunter green bandanna. Bare bronzed skin and muscle and sweat. The first time Jamie visited me in Toronto, he leaned against the Pitman Hall residence security counter in dress pants and a navy wool coat, his hair tucked inside its upturned collar, a bouquet of dahlias in his hand. I walked right by him.

“So, Fern Brookbanks,” Will said, hitching an army green backpack onto his shoulders. “Are you ready for the world’s greatest tour of Toronto?”

Will wouldn’t say where he was taking me, only that we needed to hop on the Queen streetcar for a short ride. Fifteen minutes of standing at the stop, and we were still waiting.

“I don’t think the world’s greatest anything begins with the Toronto Transit Commission,” I said, stepping out into the street to see if I could spot a car in the distance. Griping about public transportation was practically a sport in this city. “I think there’s one behind that truck.”

Will pulled out a tin of lemon hard candies from his backpack, offering them to me.

“No thanks. For the record, I’m twenty-two, not eighty-two.”

Will put one in his mouth and I watched his cheeks hollow around it. “For the record, I am eighty-two,” he said. “I may look twenty-two, but that’s just diet and exercise.”

A handful of people waited with us. An elderly couple sat on the sole bench, hands tightly clasped, a trumpet case by his feet and a cane by hers. As the streetcar pulled up, the man helped the woman to her feet. We followed behind, and when they began to slowly climb the stairs, his hand on her lower back, Will offered to hold the case.

“World’s greatest love story,” Will said in my ear after he’d handed the instrument back, his breath lemony sweet.

The seats were full, so we moved to the end of the vehicle, stumbling as it lurched forward. Will steadied me by the waist, letting his hand fall almost as soon as he touched me.

“World’s greatest staph infection,” I said, grabbing a metal pole, and he chuckled.

We swayed against each other, and when we got to Yonge Street, the car half emptied. I pointed to a pair of free seats, taking the one by the window. I was a little over five feet tall—there was plenty of legroom I didn’t need—but Will soared past six feet, and the geometry problem meant his knee was pressed against mine. There was a small rip in his jeans that I had a bizarre urge to stick a finger into. Disturbed, I combed my hand through my hair, looking up to find Will watching me.

“What are all these about?” I asked, pulling at the front flap of his backpack, which was decorated in pins and patches, a Canadian flag at its center.

“Most of them are from places I’ve been.” He pinched a miniature electric blue guitar between his thumb and index finger. “Seattle.” He tugged on a mushroom. “Amsterdam.”

Some were food—a taco from L.A., a plate of poutine from Montreal.

“That one was hard to find. My friend Matty ditched me after a couple of hours of searching. No stamina.” My brain sizzled.

The largest was an oval brooch, more old-fashioned than the rest, a lemon embroidered on its face. “What’s with this one?”

“Fred made it for me. She’s really into needlework and textiles—tapestries mostly. And I like anything lemon flavored.”

The summer Jamie and I first hooked up, he’d lob these random questions at me to pass the time at the outfitting hut. I’d be sweeping pine needles off the docks, and he’d be lifting a canoe out of the lake and call out, “What’s your favorite water-dwelling animal, Fernie?”

Or, “Fernie: ocean, lake, or pool?”

Or, “If you were one of Peter’s desserts, Fernie, which one would you be?”

“I don’t know,” I’d told him. “I love all the desserts.”

He mulled it over all afternoon, then pronounced, “You’re a lemon tart. You’re a bit sour, Fernie. But in a good way—in the way that makes the sweet taste better.”

I stared at Will. “Really?”

“Really,” he said. “Ice cream, cake, pie—lemon’s always the best.”

I cleared my throat and touched a little silver box with a rounded top. “And what’s this?”

“That’s a lobster trap. It’s from a family vacation to Prince Edward Island the summer before my parents split.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was actually a great trip,” Will said, though his voice had gone sad.

“And where did you get this one?” I tapped the i ♥ ny button. “It’s a little basic, don’t you think?”

“This is my first one, and it’s classic.” He traced the outer edge. “Another family trip, before things got really bad between my parents. I was probably ten.”

Will was quiet for a second, but then he turned his head. “Got any more salt in that bag of yours to rub into my familial wounds?”

I dug around my tote, pulling out a pack of Doublemint. “I have gum?”

Will laughed. “My parents are better apart anyway. I can’t imagine they ever made sense as a couple. My dad’s this uptight real estate lawyer who doesn’t even pretend to care about art. And my mom lives and breathes her work. They fought a lot. Mom lives in Rome now.”

I looked at the tiny Colosseum on Will’s backpack. “Italy. That’s it so far.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I used to visit a couple times a year, for holidays and stuff,” he said, squinting into the sun before looking back to me. “But now with visiting my dad and my sister here, it’s harder to get over there.”

“Are you close with your sister?”

“Yeah. Annabel’s three years younger than me, so she was eleven when Mom left. We got along before, but after, it was us against our dad. We’re tight.”

I straightened the Colosseum. “Do you think she’d ever move back?”

“My mom? No way. She says Toronto’s the birthplace of mediocrity, and she needs to be somewhere that inspires her. Her art comes first.”

“That must have been hard.”

He shrugged and looked at his hands. “I sometimes feel like a selfish asshole for moving away and leaving my sister to deal with Dad by herself.”

“Hey,” I said, nudging him with my elbow until his eyes found mine. In the sun, I could see they weren’t black. They were a deep coffee brown with an ebony ring around the perimeter. “I don’t think living your life in Vancouver makes you an asshole. But I only met you today, so I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that does. Just not that.”

Will’s gaze darted around my face. “You’re sweet.”

“I haven’t really been anywhere,” I said after a moment.

He cocked his head. “I find that surprising.”

I copied the gesture. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I visited my grandparents in British Columbia once. I didn’t make it to Vancouver, though. They’re in Victoria.”

The four of us lived in the house together until I was about seven, when Grandma and Grandpa moved into a retrofitted apartment in the resort’s lodge. After school, I’d find them playing cards in the library among a crowd of white-haired guests, and I’d settle down on the couch in front of the fireplace with my homework. On Fridays, Peter and I would fail to beat them in euchre, and Mom would send over fish and chips from the restaurant. When she finished her rounds in the dining room, she’d join us, a tray with three frosty beer glasses and a Sprite balanced on one hand. We’d all cheer at her arrival, and if there was no one else in the library, she’d lock the doors and kick off her heels, rolling her ankles and cracking her stocking-covered toes.

“What did you think of Victoria?” Will asked. “I’ve been out to Vancouver Island a few times. Drove up to Tofino with a couple friends last summer. For the record, I can’t surf for shit.”

“I didn’t get outside the city, but I liked it. Beacon Hill Park, Butchart Gardens, the harbor. I’m going out to Banff in November for the ski season to work at one of the resorts.”

Jamie and I were looking for a short-term furnished rental, but I was nervous. He was a good long-distance boyfriend, but I didn’t know about sharing an apartment with him. I’d seen the state of his bunk in the staff cabins, and the way his hair became a blond nest by the second week of summer.

“Why Banff?”

I pulled at the frayed edge of my shorts. “My mom owns a resort up in Muskoka—it’s kind of our family business. So Banff is partly a travel opportunity, but it’s also good work experience.” When I floated the idea to Mom, hoping to buy a few more months out in the world, I expected her to shoot it down. But she thought some time at one of the bigger hotels would be valuable.

“You grew up at a resort?”

“Uh-huh.” I looped a thread around my finger, pulling it tight until the tip turned white. “I’m moving back there in nine days.”

Will put his hands over mine, then unraveled the thread. Blood filled my finger. My eyes skidded to his, and he let go.

“When you say it’s the family business, does that mean you’re going to run it one day?”

“That’s the idea.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“No, I do.” My voice had gone up an octave, and my lungs felt pinched, like there wasn’t enough space for them in my rib cage.

Will leaned a little closer, stealing all the oxygen between us, his gaze hooked on mine. “One great thing about meeting someone you’ll likely never see again is that you can tell them anything about yourself without any consequences.”

I shook my head. “Everything has a consequence.” I learned that when I was seventeen.