We’ll Always Have Summer

The next time Conrad and I spoke to each other, it was the middle of the day and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my wedding binder. Now that we had our guest list, the next thing I needed to do was mail off our invitations. It almost seemed silly to bother with invitations when we had so few guests, but a mass e-mail didn’t feel quite right either. I got the invitations from David’s Bridal. They were white with light turquoise shells, and all I had to do was run them through the printer. And poof, wedding invitations.

Conrad opened the sliding door and stepped into the kitchen. His gray T-shirt was soaked in sweat, so I guessed he’d gone for a run. “Good run?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, looking surprised. He looked at my stack of envelopes and asked, “Wedding invitations?”

“Yup. I just need to go get stamps.”

Pouring himself a glass of water, he said, “I need to go into town and get a new drill at the hardware store. The post office is on the way. I can get your stamps.”

It was my turn to look surprised. “Thanks,” I said, “but I want to go and see what kind of love stamps they have.”

He downed his water.

“Do you know what a love stamp is?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “It’s a stamp that says ‘love’ on it. People use them for weddings. I only know because Taylor told me I had to get them.”

Conrad half smiled and said, “We can take my car if you want. Save you a trip.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m gonna take a quick shower. Give me ten minutes,” he said, and ran up the stairs.

Conrad was back downstairs in ten minutes, just like he said. He grabbed his keys off the counter, I slid my invitations into my purse, and then we headed out to the driveway.

“We can take my car,” I offered.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

It felt sort of funny sitting in the passenger seat of Conrad’s car again. His car was clean; it still smelled the same.

“I can’t remember the last time I was in your car,” I said, turning on the radio.

Without missing a beat, he said, “Your prom.”

Oh, God.

Prom. The site of our breakup—us fighting in the parking lot in the rain. It was embarrassing to think of it now. How I had cried, how I had begged him not to go. Not one of my finest moments.

There was an awkward silence between us, and I had a feeling we were both remembering the same thing. To fill the silence I said brightly, “Gosh, that was, like, a million years ago, huh?”

This time he didn’t reply.

Conrad dropped me off in front of the post office and said he’d be back to pick me up in a few minutes. I hopped out of the car and ran inside.

The line moved quickly, and when it was my turn, I said, “Can I see your love stamp, please?”

The woman behind the counter rifled through her drawer and slid a sheet of stamps over to me. They had wedding bells on them and LOVE was inscribed on a ribbon tying the bells together.

I set my stack of invitations on the counter and counted them quickly. “I’ll take a sheet,” I said.

Eyeing me, she asked, “Are those wedding invitations?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you want to hand cancel them?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you want to hand cancel them?” she repeated, and this time she sounded annoyed.

I panicked. What did “hand cancel” mean? I wanted to text Taylor and ask, but there was a line growing behind me, so I said hastily, “No, thank you.”

After I paid for the stamps, I went outside, sat on the curb, and stamped all my invitations—one for my mother, too. Just in case. She could still change her mind. There was still a chance. Conrad drove up as I was pushing them through the mail slot outside. This was really happening. I was really getting married. No turning back now, not that I wanted to.

Climbing into the car, I asked, “Did you get your new drill?”

“Yep,” he said. “Did you find your love stamps?”

“Yep,” I said. “Hey, what does it mean to hand cancel mail?”

“Canceling is when the post office marks the stamp so it can’t be used again. I guess hand canceling would be doing it by hand instead of machine.”

“How did you know that?” I asked, impressed.

“I used to collect stamps.”

That was right. He had collected stamps. I’d forgotten. He kept them in a photo album his dad gave him.

“I totally forgot about that. Holy crap, you were so serious about your stamps. You wouldn’t even let us touch your book without permission. Remember how Jeremiah stole one and used it to send a postcard and you were so mad you cried?”

“Hey, that was my Abraham Lincoln stamp that my grandpa gave me,” Conrad said defensively. “That was a rare stamp.”

I laughed, and then he did too. It was a nice sound. When was the last time we’d laughed like this?

Shaking his head, he said, “I was such a little geek.”

“No, you weren’t!”

Conrad threw me a look. “Stamp collecting. Chemistry set. Encyclopedia obsession.”

“Yeah, but you made all of that seem cool,” I said. In my memory Conrad was no geek. He was older, smarter, interested in grown-up things.

“You were gullible,” he said. And then, “When you were really little, you hated carrots. You wouldn’t eat them. But then I told you that if you ate carrots, you’d get X-ray vision. And you believed me. You used to believe everything I said.”

I did. I really did.

I believed him when he said that carrots could give me X-ray vision. I believed him when he told me that he’d never cared about me. And then, later that night, when he tried to take it back, I guess I believed him again. Now I didn’t know what to believe. I just knew I didn’t believe in him anymore.

I changed the subject. Abruptly, I asked, “Are you going to stay in California after you graduate?”

“It depends on med school,” he said. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FɪndNøvel.ɴᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Are you… do you have a girlfriend?”

I saw him start. I saw him hesitate.

“No,” he said.