Summer by Summer (16 page)

It was weird to think of my mom and dad no longer living together, of times with Joshie being different from now on.

Sleepiness had finally started settling into my dry eyes, but as
soon as I heard the noise again, I was wide awake. I jumped up. It wasn’t an animal. And it wasn’t outside. I ran into the hut right into her bedroom and started shaking Summer. She screamed once more before fear-filled eyes opened, blinked, and found me in the darkness.

She stayed still a moment, not moving, not breathing, eyes empty, hollow, and haunted. Then, the dam broke and she was crying out, body convulsing against the sorrow and pain. I dragged her into my arms and held her, fearing her entire body might come unhinged. She cried so hard her forehead would sometimes smack against my collarbone, the force so great I knew it would be bruised tomorrow. I’d never heard a sound so terrible. It ripped from inside her, shredding me with it as well. My eyes squeezed shut and I was surprised by the tears — my own tears — spilling down my cheeks.

I rocked her back and forth like one might rock a small child, but the motion did little to soothe either of us. Summer was broken, shattered, and I was finally seeing the reality of her sorrow. I wanted to help her, to quiet her. But this was too desperate for words, too deep to console. It sounded like Summer was dying inside. A groan started in her throat, and when she released it, it became a howl. Mournful, painful. Somewhere in the outcry, I heard the word “Michael.”

Summer

Grief brought a weird sort of numbness. Aware, but blissfully unaware. Alive, but mercifully dead. I knew Bray held me while I cried. I knew he was bare from the waist up and that my tears had streamed down his torso. I knew he was once again being strong for me because I was incapable of doing it myself. They say that when someone loses a leg, they can still feel it. It itches, it hurts. It might
even seem to move. The mind is strange. Playing odd tricks on itself. It was easier to feel nothing. I’m sure anyone who’d ever had ghost sensations in a lost leg would agree.

I scooted on the bed until my back rested against the wall. Bray didn’t say anything. Just sat there with me. He scooted too, so that our faces were still close. Outside my window, the moon had moved in the sky, and a cluster of clouds held it in silence.

Bray’s hand moved to my face, where hair stuck to my cheeks. I’d done nothing to clean up the mess that was me. He stroked gently, fingertips sliding along my cheekbones, hands pushing the hair out of my eyes and from my face. Finally, he whispered, “You okay?”

His blue eyes only picked up tiny splashes of the moonlight. “Yes,” I said, and was surprised at how hoarse my voice had become. Upon hearing it, silent tears began again. But I had no energy to fuel them.

Bray blinked a few times and I could see him considering, weighing something. Then, he scooted even closer, placed his hands on the sides of my face and kissed my cheek with such a gentle brush, it felt like angel wings. When another tear slid onto the other side, he kissed there. Again and again his lips, soft and sweet, pressed so lightly against each tear. He’d move back, look me eye to eye, then close in and kiss another away. But as the tears continued to fall, his lips rode the curve of my face to each new spot of moisture, no longer pausing to look at me. He smelled like salt and sea and hard work, and I liked his scent because it represented how he’d protected me.

When he started to draw away, my fingers coiled around his arm. He couldn’t go. Not yet. His lips parted, still wet with my tears, and I thought I saw a war going on inside his eyes. His tongue slipped out and ran slowly along the ridge of his bottom lip, then his top. He was tasting me.

I knew I needed to loosen my grip on him. But I just couldn’t make my body agree with my mind. So I relaxed.

And Bray tensed. He pulled an earth-shrinking breath, his broad shoulders rising, his lungs expanding. He released it slowly and smiled. I smiled too.

“You want to go sit by the fire?” I knew what he was asking. I could say no. He hadn’t pressed me to talk about my past. Not now and not before when he’d asked me what had happened to make me so strong. Even then, he’d just said he wanted to know one day. And he’d allow me to say no. But I wouldn’t do that now. Bray deserved more.

He deserved honesty. So as I sat there, with my tears still on his lips, I decided to do the one thing I swore I never would. I was going to talk about Michael.

One day had come.

Bray wrapped me in the tarp and worked on the fire, then brought me a drink of water from a half coconut shell we kept in the cooler. When he went to sit near, I opened the tarp to let him in with me. He thought about it for a few seconds, donned another smile, and sat down on my right side. We closed the tarp around us and I started telling him about Michael. How a bully in first grade nearly beat him up until I intervened, how we’d gone from being best friends to being in love over one summer. Even our first kiss. It’s not that I wanted to be insensitive. But when the words began spilling out, I couldn’t seem to stop them. But that was all stuff people already knew. It was the stuff they didn’t know that haunted my mind.

“And you broke up with him?” The sound of Bray’s softened voice echoed off the tarp tucked around our shoulders. His voice was honey. Thick, rich, and vibrating with a tone that was purely male and purely caring.

“Yeah. Over the phone. He was at a party. I didn’t know he had his car. I thought he rode with a friend. I just couldn’t take it
anymore. He’d been drinking a lot and it scared me so badly. When we were together, he was a different person.”

“What happened?” Again, Bray’s words soothed.

“He told me he was on his way over to my house.” Heat rose from Bray’s body, but I still felt a chill revisiting that night.

“I take it that he never made it to your house.”

“He did. Almost. Died at the edge of my neighborhood. His car hit the entrance — it was a short brick wall on either side of the road. I heard the crash. Ran out.”

Bray’s expression tightened. Even from my periphery, I could see it. His arm slipped around me.

“He was trapped and bleeding from his head. I tried to pull him out of the car.” I angled to face Bray and look into his eyes. “I thought if I could get him out, he’d be okay.” Suddenly I couldn’t look at Bray anymore, because his concern for me was readable in every micro movement he made.

“The paramedics got there, but it was too late. He died in my arms.”

Bray ran a hand over his face as if trying to erase the image.

“When we got to the hospital, they said they’d revived him. But I knew he was gone. For good.” The tarp held in so much body heat, I started sweating. I fanned the opening a bit and Bray readjusted it so our shoulders were exposed.

“But you were with him at the hospital?”

“Yes.” Flames from the fire caught my attention, and I stared at them with tired eyes that became mesmerized by the dancing blaze. “His mom got there, but his stepdad was in China. He’d gone for business and caught some kind of virus. They wouldn’t let him leave the hospital for weeks.”

“I guess you and Michael’s mom were there for each other, huh?”

Did I have animosity toward Rachael, Michael’s mom? No, it
wasn’t exactly that, but I did find myself wondering why she didn’t take better care of him. “I was there for her.”

“I’m sure you were both devastated.”

“She couldn’t . . . couldn’t do anything. She was in shock. When I made the funeral arrangements —”

“Wait a minute.
You
made the funeral arrangements?”

“She couldn’t do it. I was supposed to meet her at the funeral home to be with her while she made plans. When I got there, the funeral director told me Rachael had called. She said I could make the arrangements. She was in shock.”

“In shock for
days
?”

“For weeks. She didn’t start snapping out of it until her husband came home.”

“I mean, the community was there to help her, right? To help you?”

“Our youth pastor was gone on a mission trip when it all happened, otherwise he’d have been there to help me. I know he would have.” I shook my head. “But I don’t think anyone realized how badly off Rachael was. I tried to tell her sister. She arrived right before the funeral, but she was so busy on her cell phone, she didn’t really hear me. Michael’s grandparents are in a nursing home out of state. The doctors said they couldn’t make the trip. She just had me. And with Michael gone, I felt so much guilt over him that it didn’t seem there was anyone I could confide in.”

Bray’s arm closed around me. “Summer. I’m so sorry.”

“I chose the clothes he wore. I went to view the body — another thing she’d decided she couldn’t do — I picked out his casket. I chose the music that would play during the memorial service.”

“What . . . what about your parents?”

“They didn’t know I was doing all of that. They just knew I was with Rachael through it. No one knew I’d broken up with Michael and caused the wreck.”

“Whoa.” Bray’s side of the tarp dropped. “
You
didn’t cause the wreck.
He
made a bad choice to drink and get behind the wheel of a car. He did that, Summer. You can’t carry the weight of his poor decision.”

“If it hadn’t been for me, he would have stayed right there at the party. You know the last thing he said to me before his eyes closed and he was dead?”

Bray was sick. Sickened by everything I was telling him. Maybe it was hard to look at me now that he knew the truth. It was hard to look at myself sometimes. When I waited for him to answer, he shook his head slightly. “What?”

“His eyes were already going glassy, and I cupped his head as my hand filled with the blood from the gash on his skull. He said he was sorry. He was just trying to have some fun. You know, you’d think at the moment people are dying they’d say really profound things or tell the person they loved them. He just said he was trying to have fun.”

The night wind whistled around us. Bray was close, so close that his leg rested against mine. My arm was cold from the wind-dried sweat, and he rubbed his hand up and down it, probably half to warm me, half to soothe.

I stood and walked to the edge of our crescent-shaped lagoon, with its flowing night water and its swaying palms. “Fun leaves a horrible wake, doesn’t it?” I spoke the words to no one. I’d left Bray back at the campfire.

I knew the exact moment he stepped behind me, like a sentry. Like a strong wall to lean on. I leaned back. Into him. His arms slowly closed around my midsection. His chin rested on the top of my head. For a very long time, we stayed there. Neither talking, just staring out at the sea, the sky, the night.

Then something broke the surface of the water. “Is that a dolphin?” I asked, looking closer.

A second fin materialized, then a third. “Must be a few. Look, there’s a baby.” His hand left my stomach and pointed, the muscles of his upper body tightening with the movement. Farther out in the lagoon, the dolphin played.

He tugged me toward the water. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Wait. You said we couldn’t swim at night. Sharks.”

He pulled again, and I didn’t have much strength left to fight. “No sharks around if there are dolphins this close. It’s safe.”

“Wait. I don’t have my swimsuit on.” Instantly, I regretted saying it.

His eyes shot to my chest. I shrunk, caving my shoulders. “I’ll . . . I’ll just run inside and get it. I mean, I’ll put it on inside.” I turned and bolted, kicking sand as I ran.

I’d never been in the ocean at night. It felt like a completely different place than in the daytime. Usually, it was the heat of day and blinding sun that drove us into the water. It was to cool off and remove the sweat from our skin.

But the night breeze was cool, making the water feel warmer, like bath water. The dolphins didn’t come close, but maintained a distance and seemed content to play at the outermost edges of the lagoon. With my arms out, air filled my lungs and my body tilted back, floating on the ocean’s surface. Bray was close, and I didn’t even jump when his hand came up from under me to rest against my back. I released the air in my lungs and let my weight fall into his capable hold. I loved floating on my back, but had to admit, this was nice. After staying there a while, I decided I was probably taking advantage of his good nature, so I started to move off his hand. His other came up and lightly pressed my shoulder.

“Don’t,” he said.

My eyes opened and peered at him. He hovered over me, our bodies making a cross in the water.

“Relax.” The hand on my shoulder slid around to cup my neck.
He kneaded the muscles there, and as he did, the exertion of talking about Michael caught up to me. My tension became Jell-O. My weightless body was floating, drifting in Bray’s arms. I’d even lost interest in the dolphin family and was content to stay right there. Somehow, I felt lighter. Not just from the water, but as if speaking about what happened that night had released some of the pain from me. What had Bray said about not carrying the weight? Maybe he was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have carried it so long. It felt good to talk. I hadn’t wanted to worry my parents or Becky about it. But Bray hadn’t judged me. He never judged me. Just let me be Summer. Maybe the island was teaching me even more than I suspected. Maybe who we really were inside couldn’t break through the surface until we were here. On the island and alone. After all, I felt more myself right now than I had for a very long time. It was liberating. And if that was true for me, maybe it was true for Bray. Maybe reckless party boy wasn’t who he was on the inside. My eyes snapped open with such intensity, it made him jerk slightly.

He chuckled, looking down at me with the blue-white moon over his right shoulder. “I thought you’d fallen asleep.”

I smiled. “Just deeply relaxed.” My hand cupped his shoulder and I slid from his grip, but didn’t move away. My feet hit and sank into the sandy bottom of the sea, warm water whooshing as my legs worked to hold me up so I could look at Bray eye-to-eye.

The moon on the water danced in confetti pieces in his gaze. I stared deep into him as if I’d be able to read all that was in his heart. “Who are you?” I whispered, my hands still latched to his shoulders.