Sixteenth Summer (25 page)

Zzzzzzzzzzzz
.

I looked around.

“What’s that sound?” I wondered.

ZZZZZZZZZZ!

Caroline gasped, jumped to her feet, and pointed at my pole.

“Fish!” she shrieked.

“Oh my God!” I cried. I’d forgotten all about our proppedup poles. Whatever it was at the end of my line was pulling so hard, it was threatening to take the pole with it. I grabbed it just in time and scrambled to my feet.

“What do I do?” I yelled.

“Turn the handle thingie!” Caroline said. She was gasping with laughter now. “Reel it in.”

I started to crank the handle backward. The fish was really tugging.

“It’s big!” I cried. “Help me hold this pole. I’m freaking out here.”

Caroline grabbed the pole and I reeled. I reeled and reeled and reeled, but the fish didn’t seem to be coming any closer. I peered into the water and didn’t see a thing.

“You want some help with that? You’re about two reels away from breaking your line.”

Caroline and I peeked over our shoulders.

“Sam!” Caroline squeaked.

“Sam,” I huffed. “Take this thing, please!”

Somehow, Caroline and I maneuvered the pole into Sam’s hands. With some mysterious rhythm, he began pulling at the pole, letting the line zing out, then reeling it back in. At the same time, he chatted with us as if this was the most normal situation in the world.

“Hey, baby,” he said to Caroline. “So is this spontaneous enough for you? It doesn’t get any less formal than this, am I right?”

Caroline grinned and gave Sam a kiss on the cheek.

“You’re right,” she said.

They didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that, instead of orchestrating some big date night, Sam had moseyed down to the beach just like old times. That he seemed more comfortable in his skin than he had in a long time. And that Caroline was looking at him the way she had when they’d first gotten together.

I think maybe they got over themselves
, I told myself.

Sam finally pulled a thrashing, foot-long fish out of the water.

“Redfish!” he announced, exchanging a gleeful smile with Caroline. “Good one!”

I felt myself choke up again, this time from sentimentality. A dull glow of happiness for my friends was bumping up against my own shadowy sadness.

Perhaps it had made a small dent.

But despite Sam and Caroline’s sweet efforts, the emptiness I felt in the wake of Will remained.

W
hen I got home, I quickly retreated to my new normal—me brooding on the screened porch while my brother and sister played a noisy prebedtime game of hide-and-seek upstairs.

My parents had given me several nights off from work, but I decided that I would head back the next day. Even if the idea of being out among people (read,
couples
) kind of made me want to walk straight into a riptide, anything would be better than another night stewing alone at home.

Of course, I still had
this
night to get through. A few
ping-ping-ping
s of rain on the porch’s tin roof, along with a distant rumble of thunder, were encouraging. A big ol’ storm would suit my mood.

The rain’s gentle patter quickly became an onslaught.

I got off the porch swing and pressed myself against the screen to catch a whiff of it. The rain smelled dark and acrid as it steamed up the clay and gravel in our driveway. In a few more minutes, I knew, it would start smelling green, as the parched trees and grasses began soaking up the water and coming back to life. When everything had been completely saturated, the night would smell blue. Clean. Renewed.

I wanted to enjoy it. Or
anything
for that matter. But I felt as flat as a pancake.

When I decided to go ahead and freeze the ice cream I’d mixed
the night before, it was only because it would kill a half hour. I found myself wondering if the rest of the summer was going to be like this—incrementally trying to fill the Will-free hours.

I went back inside and got the Greek Holiday mix out of the fridge, then pulled the ice cream churn from the pantry. But just as I was plugging it in—
zap!

The power went out.

I heard a screech from my siblings upstairs, followed by my mother laughing to calm their nerves. Then there was that eerie silence that happens only during a power-out. No humming appliances, no thrumming air conditioner, no ticking oven timer, no nothing.

“Seriously?” I sighed.

It seemed a perfect excuse to just give up and go to bed.

Instead, I glared stubbornly at the plastic container of luscious-looking custard. Then I went back to the pantry. I grabbed the flashlight from the hook on the door, then dug our manual ice cream churn, along with a box of rock salt, out of a dusty corner.

After all, why snuggle up in my nice comfy bed when I could engage in the self-flagellation that was
hand churning
ice cream?

I pulled some ice out of the dark freezer, then brought the whole business outside. I set up the churn on the front steps, where I could get a prime view of the rain from under the eaves.

Then I started cranking.

I almost didn’t notice that I’d started crying again. I suppose that was my new normal too. Through my tears I watched the rain puddle in the dirt and splash my outstretched feet. It made
Figgy Pudding’s tired leaves do little shimmies; made them shine like they had on the Fourth of Jul—

I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead on my knees, and stopped cranking.

Now I’d gone and done it.

I’d gone back to
that
night.

So many of my dates with Will had seemed charmed, even the completely dorky ones like that putt putt golf outing.

But the Fourth of July had been more than charmed. It had been magic.

That was the night I’d fallen in love with Will.

I’d realized this—that I loved Will—a while ago, but I’d never put it so bluntly into words, even in my own mind.

But now, as I stared at the fig tree and remembered the way we’d leaned against its trunk, kissing and kissing and never wanting the night to end, suddenly the words were there.

I almost said them out loud:
I am in love with Will Cooper
.

Caroline had been right. There’d been no earth-shaking sign of it. No before and after. It was just a feeling that suffused my entire body, the way a hot bath warms you from the inside out on a chilly night.

“What did I
do
?” I murmured. “Why did I let him go?”

I’d told myself so many times since that horrible night of the turtle hatching that I’d done the smart thing, pushing Will away before he could leave me. That I was taking care of myself.

But if that was true, why was I so
broken
? So pathetic?

My tears were angry now. I stamped my foot on the rain-slick steps, spattering myself with water and sand. I went back
to cranking the stupid ice cream. I wanted to crank until I got blisters on my palms.

In truth, I wanted to scream my frustration out into the rain, but I knew that would only bring my mother running down the stairs to see what was wrong. So instead I cranked harder, almost glad to feel tender welts begin to rise up at the base of my fingers. As I cranked, I stared out at Figgy Pudding, awash in blissful, painful memory.

And that’s when everything stopped—the scenes running through my head, my hand on the ice cream churn, and I’m pretty sure, for an instant, my heartbeat.

Because just beyond the fig tree, at the end of the driveway, a figure had appeared—on a chunky red bike named Zelig.

Will rode toward me, his hair rain-plastered, his T-shirt drenched, and his face looking both hopeful and tortured. His eyes looked about as puffy as mine felt.

I don’t remember running down the stairs to the driveway. In hindsight, I’m surprised I didn’t fall on the slippery steps and break an ankle.

But somehow, in an instant, there I was. With Will. Rain pelted down on me, soaking me almost immediately. I barely noticed it, much less cared.

Will stumbled off his bike and let it fall to the ground without bothering to kickstand it. Then he stood before me, his arms hanging limp at his sides.

For a long moment we just stared at each other. Looking at his face, I felt like I was getting my first bite of food after starving for days.

“I missed you,” Will said. His voice sounded raspy and he was still breathing hard from his bike ride.

I couldn’t talk at all, so I just nodded hard.

I reached out to touch his arm, then pulled my hand back again. I’d just been telling myself that I’d been right to end things with Will. Completely miserable, but right.

So now I didn’t know what to do.

Will, however, seemed to have arrived with a plan.

“Anna, I’ve thought and thought about this,” he said. “And being apart now
isn’t
better than seeing this through the summer. Because
this
is a breakup.”

Hearing Will use that term—“breakup”—made tears spring to my eyes again. Over the past few days, I hadn’t ever used that expression because it had seemed so melodramatic and ugly.

But Will was right. Melodramatic and ugly was exactly what this was.

“If we stayed together,” Will said, “we would have to say good-bye at the end of the summer, yes. But we’d be saying good-bye to something amazing, Anna. Something happy.

“But this?”

Will held his hands out, his palms turned upward.

“This feels awful.”

“You’re right,” I said through the lump in my throat. “Terrible.”

“And do you know why?” Will said.

I shook my head, confused.

“Because, Anna …”

I saw a flicker of fear in Will’s eyes. He looked downward for
a moment, the same way he had the other night after the turtle watch. He was considering his next words very carefully.

When he looked up, he took a swift step toward me. He put a hand on each of my cheeks and gently lifted my face so that we were gazing into each other’s eyes.

“I love you,” he said. He almost yelled it. “And I know that sounds crazy. That’s what you say at the beginning of something, not when it’s almost reached its end. But—I don’t care. I just want to be with you. Maybe it’ll only be for these next few weeks. Maybe it’ll be forever. We can’t know what’ll happen, Anna. All I know is
I love you
and … we should be together. We just have to be together. We
need
to be together.”

I began to sob. I lifted my hands and put them over Will’s, which were still cupping my face. His skin was warm beneath the chill of the rain.

And then I was kissing Will; crying and kissing him all at the same time. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the ground. All the hurt and confusion and regret of the past few days flowed off us along with the rain.

When we pulled apart, I turned my face toward the sky, gasping as cold droplets landed in my eyes and mouth and even my ears.

Then, suddenly, my crying turned into laughter. Incredulous, grateful laughter.

I was getting a second chance.

Will was right. Being with him now was worth braving the uncertain future.

This
was worth it.

I blinked the rain away, gripped Will by the shoulders, and said, “I love you, too, Will.”

Will grabbed me again, so hard it took my breath away, and buried his face in my neck. I felt his shoulders shake for just a moment before his lips were on mine again.

And these kisses weren’t about cleansing away our hurt, or healing the rift between us. They were simply, and happily, about sealing the deal—Will and I were together again, for however long we had.

Like Will had said, that
was
an amazing and happy thing. I was finally and absolutely certain of it.

I just
knew
.

I
wanted to do so many things with Will before he left. I wanted to walk through all twenty-four of Savannah’s historic squares. I wanted to go back to The Swamp, play nothing but slow songs on the jukebox, and dance to them. I was going to teach Will how to eat crawdads, head sucking and all. I was going to invite him to family dinners and private picnics. Or maybe we’d just skip some meals altogether and proceed directly to making out (plus ice cream).

I could have made a to-do list as long as this one on my mom’s tattered legal pad.

But I also wanted to do
nothing
with Will. I wanted our last days together to be luxurious, lazy, and most of all, long. I wished I could spend an entire day just drinking in his face, his salty, shampooey scent, the way he looked in those khakis, the way he
looked at me. I wanted to memorize all of it, somehow store it away.

The morning after he’d shown up at my house in the rain, I had an idea for a memory to give Will—a part of the island I knew he hadn’t seen yet. I wanted him to see it now—with me. And I wasn’t going to let the chance slip by, even if it meant waking up at six a.m.

Out of politeness, I waited until six fifteen to call him.

“Hello?” he rasped, his voice cutely sleep clogged.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s me.”

How I loved being able to say nothing more than that and know that it had probably made Will smile, even if he wasn’t a morning person. (And he definitely wasn’t.)

“You know not
all
of us have skylights above our beds waking us at dawn, right?” Will joked.

He was definitely smiling.

“Oh, I’ve been awake since before dawn,” I said. “Look out your window.”

From where I was standing—which happened to be on the deck of Will’s cottage—I saw the slats of his window blinds wink open and shut.

Two minutes later, he burst through the door in a frayed green T-shirt, gray cotton shorts, and bare feet. His eyes were still puffy with sleep and his rained-on hair was going every which way, but he was grinning.

When he closed the door behind him and took me in—I was wearing a faded blue sundress dappled with white flowers, my also-rained-on hair ringleting down my back—his smile faded
to something more reverent. He all but ran across the deck and wrapped his arms around me. Without a word, he kissed me—a long, hungry, amazing kiss.