Sixteenth Summer (21 page)

Suddenly I had that same choky feeling I got every time I glimpsed a calendar. It didn’t exactly make me feel strong.

But Sam had been right about everything else. I
had
been
trying to push Will away to protect myself. And
that
was definitely weak.

So I decided to get over myself. For real this time. I pushed ahead of Sam and stalked right back into The Swamp. When I saw that Will was sitting alone at our table, I plunked down next to him. Then I planted a big kiss on his lips.

“Wow,” he said. His smile was immediate and wide. “You smell like clean laundry. I
love
the smell of laundry.”

This time, I didn’t look away when he said it. Instead, I kissed him again.

“Now, none of
that
, children,” Helen said as she skimmed by with steaming buckets of food dangling from both arms. Will and I broke apart, bright red, but grinning.

“So,” Will said, raising his eyebrows at me, “good talk with Sam?”

I glanced around to make sure Helen wasn’t looking. Then I gave Will one more kiss, sweet and lingering.

“Yeah,” I said, gazing happily into his eyes. “Good talk.”

T
he dinner invitation from Will’s mom had been casual enough. It came a few days after our night at The Swamp, when I’d stopped by to pick up Will for a morning swim.

“We’re going to get some fish for the grill tonight,” Ms. Dempsey had said. “Why don’t you join us?”

Since it happened to be my night off from The Scoop, I said yes without thinking twice about it.

But now that I was knocking on Will’s cottage door at
six p.m., I felt a nervous thrill. Like our first kiss and our first fight, the first dinner with Will’s family seemed like a sort of milestone. I gulped when Will swung the door open, his hair still wet from the shower. His T-shirt stuck to his skin in places where he hadn’t dried off before throwing on his clothes.

He looked so irresistible, I wanted to throw my arms around him and bury my nose in his shampoo-scented neck. But we were in his doorway, with his mother bustling around the kitchen behind him. There was also the minor obstruction of all the things I was carrying.

“Anna?” Will said, grinning at me. “Are you in there?”

I plopped the rather large bunch of flowers I was holding into Will’s arms.

“It’s just a few hydrangeas,” I said, fluffing up the pompoms of tiny blue-and-purple blooms. “I snipped them on my way out of the house. They’re gonna start shriveling up in the heat soon anyway.”

“A
few
?” Will said, pretending to stagger under the weight of the (not
that
huge, I swear) bouquet.

I followed Will into the kitchen. The big, open living/dining room was classic rental cottage. Everything was the color of ocean, sky, and sand. Every available surface was covered with sand dollars, starfish, driftwood seagull sculptures, and glossy wood plaques that said things like
Our memories of the ocean will linger on long after our footprints in the sand are gone
.

“Oh, Anna!” Ms. Dempsey said when she saw the hydrangeas. “Those are beautiful! Where did you get them?”

“Just, you know, from my front yard,” I said.

Ms. Dempsey clapped a hand on her forehead.

“Of course, I remember noticing those amazing bushes at your house on the Fourth,” she said. “You know, you live in New York long enough, you forget that flowers don’t all come from the deli wrapped in plastic.”

While Ms. Dempsey left in search of a flower vase, I plunked my other packages—a soft cooler and a grease-stained white paper sack—on the Formica counter. Will unzipped the cooler.

“Anna,” he burst out. “There are
four
pints of ice cream in here!”

“Well,
I
can’t exactly show up at a dinner party without ice cream, can I?” I said with a shrug.

“And what’s that?!” Will asked, pointing at the paper bag.

“Um, just some fried pies,” I said. “Well, a dozen. To go with the ice cream. What? Too much?”

Will wrapped his arms around me with that delighted/bewildered expression that I’d come to recognize.

“Yes,” he said very softly, planting a sweet, smiley kiss on my lips. “Too much.”

“You really are a Yankee,” I whispered, grinning up at him. “This is nothing. Most people would have brought a casserole, too.”

An instant after we parted, there was a shriek from the kitchen doorway.

I spun to stare at Ms. Dempsey, my heart flapping around my chest like an injured bird.

She just saw me kissing her son
, I thought.
And now she’s going
to sit me down and give me a lecture about respect and boundaries, from which I will never recover
.

Ms. Dempsey’s scream brought Owen running from the long, narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms. He was holding a book and wearing chunky black glasses that made him look like a nerdy hipster. I glanced at the book cover. David Foster Wallace. I raised my eyebrows, impressed, but Owen didn’t notice. He was looking a little freaked-out.

“What happened?” he burst out.

“Are those … Hubley’s fried pies?” Ms. Dempsey asked me breathlessly.

Hubley’s logo—a grinning peach flashing a thumbs-up—was stamped in blurry purple ink on the side of the bag. Hubley’s was a bare-bones bakery on Highway 80. They made cakes and cookies, but nobody paid any attention to those. You went to Hubley’s for one thing and one thing only—half-moon-shaped, white-glazed fried pies.

“Those
are
Hubley’s,” I told Ms. Dempsey, the bird in my chest starting to calm down. “Have you had them?”

“Not for twenty years!” Ms. Dempsey sighed. She peeked into the bag and breathed in the pies’ burned-sugar scent. “Mmmm. You won’t believe this, but when I talk to my composition students about recalling sensual imagery, I use Hubley’s fried pies as my example. I tell them about the glaze that piles up in the crimps of the crust and the almost-too-much nutmeg that makes your mouth tingle …”

Owen pulled off his glasses and rolled his eyes.

“Uh-oh,” he said to Will. “Nostalgia alert.”

“I just can’t believe I forgot to make a pilgrimage to Hubley’s myself,” Ms. Dempsey said to us, shaking her head. “It’s literally in my lesson plan.”

“I got peach,” I told her, “cherry, and sweet—”

“Sweet potato!” Ms. Dempsey interrupted, almost jumping for joy. Between that and the jeans and stylishly frayed T-shirt she was wearing, Ms. Dempsey looked about twenty years old. “That was the best one.”

“Well, you can’t leave Hubley’s without the sweet potato pies,” I said. “It’s like a law.”

“You know, I think that joint was actually in the guide book,” Owen said, peeking into the bag.

“Anna, you are a sweetheart for bringing over all this stuff!” Ms. Dempsey said. “I’m going to eat big pile of them, even though it would give my yoga teacher back home a heart attack if she knew.”

She took another whiff from the bag.

“Of course,” she reconsidered, “they might not be as good as I remember.”

She seemed to get a little pensive then, no doubt drifting into a memory.

“Mom,” Owen piped up, “have one now. Call it an appetizer. I’ll split it with you. We can save the rest for dessert.”

Will crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter, watching Owen break a pie in two and hand half to his mom. Will’s face darkened, even looked a little sullen, and I remembered what he’d said about Owen’s anti–Valentine’s Day.

“I never would have thought of it.”

But clearly he wished that he had.

My attention shifted to Ms. Dempsey when she took her first bite of the shiny glazed pie.

“Oh my God. It’s exactly the same.”

“So they were always that greasy?” I asked. “Even I can’t eat too many of those in one sitting. And Will will tell you, I can
eat
.”

I shot Will a conspiratorial grin, but he seemed to have trouble returning it. That melancholy that I’d seen around his mouth and eyes when we’d first met—and which I’d barely detected since—was making his face seem long and pale.

Owen didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy bonding with his mom over the revelation that was a Hubley’s sweet potato pie.

“Yummm,” he groaned. Then he glanced at his mom. “Maybe we should split another one?”

Ms. Dempsey giggled like a kid.

“Well, while they’re fresh,” she said, digging into the bag. “Anna, Will? Don’t you want some?”

“I’m going to wait until after dinner and have it with the Bananas Foster ice cream I brought over,” I said. Now I had a conspiratorial grin for
her
. Clearly Will had gotten his taste for salt from his dad.

The thought jolted me. Will’s dad. Will had barely told me anything about him—yet even I could feel his absence here. It created a halo of sadness around even this goofily delicious little moment.

“Okay!” Ms. Dempsey announced, popping the last bit
of her pie into her mouth and dusting off her hands. “I’m quitting until after dinner. And I’m doing an hour of vinyasa tomorrow.”

“Yeah, heard that before,” Owen said, pretending to yawn. He wandered over to the fridge and started pulling out paper-wrapped packages of fish. “I’ll man the fire.”

Over his shoulder he added, “Hey, Will. As long as we’re getting all nostalgic, you should show Anna
the room
.”

“The room?” I said.

“It’s my room,” Ms. Dempsey said. She went to the counter, which was piled with salad ingredients and unshucked ears of corn. “It’s the only one the owners didn’t strip bare of all character, then stuff with seashells and driftwood.”

“This place
is
a bit of a theme park, isn’t it?” I had to admit, eyeing a scary-looking coral collection on top of the microwave.

“But they left one room in all its old, fugly glory,” Owen said. “That’s how
I
ended up with the master bedroom.”

He pumped his fist in the air and hooted before he started ripping open the packets of fish.

“C’mon,” Will said, lightly hooking my fingers with his. “I’ll show you.”

“Wait, I don’t think I made the bed today!” Ms. Dempsey gasped. “Anna, what will you think of me?”

“You’re on vacation,” I told her. “You’re not supposed to make the bed!”

“Will, I like this girl,” Ms. Dempsey said as she tossed the lettuce into a salad spinner.

I felt giddy as Will led me down the hall. His step seemed
to lighten too. We were clearly approaching the cottage’s star attraction.

“Whoa!” I exclaimed as we walked through the door. “I think I went blind for a second there.”

There was a lot of wallpaper. Zigzaggy orange and brown, seventies-glorious wallpaper. And a big, yellow faux-fur rug. Clustered on one wall was a collection of framed needlepoints of owls, mushrooms, twiggy-looking girls in short A-line dresses, and other blasts from the past. The curtains had little orange pompoms dangling from the hems, and the disheveled bedspread was orange velvet.

“I know, right?” Will said. “It’s like a shrine. I lie awake sometimes wondering why the owners kept the room this way.”

“Why on earth?” I said.

“Anyway, my mom laughed for five minutes straight when she first saw it,” Will said. “Which was definitely better than her bursting into tears. So we like The Room.”

“And
Owen
got the master bedroom,” I teased. “Did you guys fight for it or something?”

“Nah,” Will said. He picked an ancient troll doll up off the low dresser and spun it between his two palms so its bright orange hair stood on end. “Soon he’s going to be living in a cinder-block dorm with a roommate. I figured I’d throw him a bone.”

“NYU, huh?” I said.

“The honors program,” Will said, looking both proud and a little gloomy. “Full scholarship. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Owen’s kind of a genius. Someday he’s gonna cure cancer or something.”

“Right now it seems like he’s trying to cure your mom,” I said.

Will’s mouth formed a grim line. For the first time I noticed that only one side of the queen-sized bed was unmade. The sheets and quilt were all over the place, and the bedside table was littered with books. The other side of the bed was still tucked, the nightstand bare.

“Do you miss your dad?” I asked Will quietly.

He shook his head angrily.

“Nope,” he said. “I guess maybe I miss the past when, you know, everyone was together, but …”

“It must be a lot of pressure,” I said. We both leaned against the edge of the dresser, our upper arms pressed together. Will was still fussing with that dumb troll. “Being the only one left with your mom after Owen leaves?”

“I guess,” Will said, looking down.

“You know, you don’t have to make up some ingenious scheme, or cure cancer, to cheer her up, right?” I said. “You just need to be
you
.”

“Well …” Will gave me a heavy-lidded glance before returning his gaze to his mom’s smashed pillow. “Thanks but it’s not that simple.”

“I know,” I said. I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I know.”

I guess this was another milestone—Will showing me how he really felt about what had happened to his family. I realized that the more Will and I revealed to each other about our quirks, our passions, and our wounds, the more complicated our relationship would become. We were getting more serious. The
knowledge filled me with a surge of happiness … and a twinge of trepidation.

T
he rest of the month slipped by in a watercolor wash of swimming, snacking, strolling, and of course, kissing and talking, talking and kissing. As every day got hotter, we moved more slowly, like the lizards that dozed the days away under flat rocks.

Will took to showing up at my house early in the mornings to help me and Sophie fish prickly cucumbers off our vines and fill bulging grocery sacks with teardrop tomatoes. The tomatoes were ripening so fast now, we pretty much had to eat them as fast as we picked them.

Kat and Benjie were in charge of picking the blueberries, but Will and I helped them with the tall branches. We worked side by side, munching a piece of toast or a Belgian waffle with one hand while we gathered fistfuls of fruit with the other. We tossed the warm berries into a basket that rested on the ground between us, and somehow our picking rhythm always had us reaching down at the same time, our fingers grazing one another and our eyes meeting through the leafy branches.