Summer's Desire (51 page)

She stops and
looks at me as if waiting for some further reaction from me, a response to her
factual recap of the best and worst years of my life. I stare back at her with defiance,
refusing the bait, and at last she sighs.

"I can do
the math, Summer."

"So you
sending me to Rockford was never a coincidence!" I challenge.

She smiles coolly.
"There are hardly any coincidences in this world." Why, I could swear
that was smugness I'm hearing in her voice! Oh my God, I knew it! I freaking
knew it.

"I worked
for almost an entire year," she explains, "until I succeeded in
arranging a foster home for you in Rockford. A good friend that I went to college
with and who's currently employed at a hospital in Grand Rapids helped convince
a former colleague of hers to register for foster care and take you in."

"Greg
Anderson."

"Indeed."

"But ma'am—why?"

She sighs again.
"As I said, Summer, I can do the math. Five years and seven months of you
living perfectly fine in one single home. Then five years of you scraping your
way through an endless procession of foster homes. Obviously, there was
something in Rockford that you needed."

"So you
thought my former home..."

"I thought perhaps
the house would help, so I concentrated my efforts into securing you a
placement with the family that was currently occupying that same house. But if
Greg Anderson hadn't agreed, I would've just found you another local family.
What mattered most wasn't the home, I believed—but purely the chance of you
meeting a certain person again."

"But ma'am,
how could you be sure that...?"

She shakes her
head in seeming impatience. "Naturally, I couldn't be certain of how
things would turn out. Nonetheless, I thought the gamble was worth it. You
don't realize, do you? How you look now is a thousand miles' difference from
the way you looked the last time I saw you. You were wasting away, Summer."
The usual lack of inflection in her voice has fallen away, and her words
resonate with kindness and worry.

So I take a
gamble myself—the greatest gamble of all.

"Ma'am...
Ms. Walker, I found my childhood friend again." My voice is husky with
entreaty and sincerity. "And I can't lose him again."

Her gaze slides
from me to the window and focuses on something outside. Then she looks back at
me and tells me simply, "Don't lose him, then."

"He's going
to college on a football scholarship. I won't let him give that up because of
me."

Her eyes narrow
with understanding. "Well, you should've mentioned that from the start.
Where is he going to college? I should be able to arrange a foster home for you—"

"Ms. Walker...
I want to live with him. In fact, I
need
to live with him."

She cocks her
head slightly, her eyes drilling into me with extra force. "That sounds like
sentimental drivel." Her tone is once again unreadable.

"You know
me, ma'am," I tell her huskily. "And you know that I'm being truthful.
Believe me: he's the only one who can keep me sane. Who can give me peace."

"And how
does
he
feel about you?"

"He loves
me, ma'am."

She averts her
gaze once again to the side and out the window. "That's your young man down
there, pacing a hole in the sidewalk?" she asks wryly.

And I follow her
gaze and realize that our window provides a perfect view of the sidewalk in
front of the coffee shop. And also a view of Seth, who apparently couldn't stay
still in his car any longer and instead is pacing outside.

"That's him,"
I confirm while a wonderful,
wonderful
feeling of completeness and joy
spreads from my heart and into the furthest reaches of my body.

When I turn back
to Ms. Walker, I find her eyes no longer focused on Seth but on my face, and
they glitter with some inscrutable emotion.

"He loves
me more than I could have ever hoped to be loved," I whisper. "Certainly
more than I deserve, ma'am."

And at that, her
impassive mask falls down and her face softens with kindness. "Not more
than you deserve, Summer."

Outside on the
sidewalk, I refocus on Seth, on his anxious face. Slowly, ineluctably, my lips
curl up and up, and I'm smiling the biggest, most relieved smile of my life.

"I have one
word for you, Seth: Supervised Independent Living."

"That's
three words, Sunny. But does it mean...?" He's still strung tight with enormous
tension, as if he can't believe what I'm saying, that we've finally got a good
break for once.

"Yes, Seth!
It does mean what you think it means. I can stay with you!"

I jump up and
curl my hands around his neck, and his arms embrace me tighter, lift me up to
him so that my feet aren't even touching the ground. And we're spinning round
and round... Now he's smiling too and he's kissing me. I'm flying with relief
and happiness, and the drugging, sizzling, overwhelming force of his kiss.

And then he
retreats just two inches and his eyes are blue flames of intensity. He whispers
against my lips, "Forever, Sunny?"

"Forever,
Seth."

And we kiss
again.

Epilogue

He was late.

For the hundredth
time in the last half-hour, Summer glanced at the clock on the wall and thought
she'd explode with frustration if those wretched clock hands kept spinning much
longer without her hearing any news from Seth. She couldn't call him either,
because what if he was still in the meeting? If that was the case, there was no
way she'd take the risk of distracting him. Oh God, she could hardly believe
that it had finally come: the moment that Seth had worked so hard for, the
moment that they had
both
hoped and fought and sacrificed so much for, these
last three years.

Two young men,
one dark and one blond, entered the restaurant and sat down in her section. She
quickly grabbed two menus and went to hand them to the guests. As she walked up
to them, she noticed the blond's gaze travel the length of her bare legs up to
the short dark skirt she was wearing, then up her tight-fitting white peasant
blouse. Summer bristled in annoyance at that gesture. She still hated drawing
attention to herself, but Seth had told her they were going out today, to
celebrate—so she had put extra effort into looking her best for him. She
couldn't remember the last time they had afforded to go out on a real
date,
and she was unbearably excited about this one!

She reached the
table, handed the menus, and kept a cool, professional attitude while
interacting with the guests. She steadily ignored the blond man's flirting, and
finally he got the message and desisted. Luckily, this restaurant was upscale
enough that it was frequented by customers who kept to the niceties of polite
behavior, most of the time.

She went to get
the drinks for the young men, jotted down their orders after they'd made up
their minds, and passed them on to the kitchen. Her section was otherwise
nearly empty at this time of day, so she had a few minutes of respite.

She was
fortunate to be working in this restaurant, she knew that. Although it did get very
hectic at rush hours, the general atmosphere here was infinitely better than in
those student bars where she had waitressed during her and Seth's second year in
Ann Arbor—after their little nest egg had long run out, and her stipend from
the State had stopped. When life had started to get really difficult.

The apartment
they rented wasn't the greatest, but neither was it the cheapest—not by far.
Because it had to be a good enough place, in a good enough location, that Seth
could feel safe leaving her alone when he was gone overnight because of
football. Of course, he'd also installed a different, more solid door and two
extra locks that she was never allowed to forget securing when she was by
herself. And whenever he was out-of-town, he always called her at night to make
sure she was all right. But still it was progress: that when circumstances
demanded it absolutely, she and Seth were now able to spend the one or the
other night apart without going crazy with anxiety.

Seth especially
was such a huge old worrywart when it came to her! she thought with an inner
smile. But it helped immensely for his peace of mind that, even though she still
had night terrors sometimes when she slept alone... these days they were never
as bad as they used to be. Not since she'd told Seth the truth about her
parents' death... and he'd told her it wasn't her fault.

It
was
her fault, of course—he was wrong about that—but still he loved her. And maybe,
just maybe, if Seth—who was the one person in the world whose opinion mattered
to her—could forgive her and love her regardless... then maybe she could
forgive herself too. Maybe she could stop paying penance for her thoughtless
actions, after all these years, and allow herself to move on at last.

It was still a
struggle—believing that she might become worthy of redemption one day—but she
battled on and she was getting better. She still didn't like sleeping away from
Seth, she never would, but she could deal with restless sleep or plain old
insomnia infinitely better than she had dealt with the awful nightmares that
she used to have. And Seth could now sleep away from her when he had to without
tearing himself to shreds worrying about her state of mind.

She glanced at
the clock again, and the pins and needles she was sitting on started to jab her
even harder. Her two guests signaled for the bill. She took it to them and they
made their payment. They smiled at her before leaving; she thanked them and
didn't smile back.

It had been a
constant source of contention with her boss, at first: that Summer didn't smile
at the customers. That just wasn't her personality, and luckily her boss backed
off when she saw that the customers seemed to like Summer anyway. They always
tipped her generously, at any rate. And that's why Summer was working as a
waitress—even though it meant she had to interact with lots of people all the
time, which she pretty much hated—instead of working in a library or a book
shop or someplace with less exposure. But being a waitress was what got her the
best pay possible, and so a waitress she was. She and Seth had needed the
money.

Seth's
scholarship fully covered his schooling, but what was left barely covered the rent
and utilities for their apartment. So once their other funds had been
exhausted, they had to do without a great many things. Without new clothes
(whatever new clothes were bought at all, Seth always insisted that they be for
her), without eating out or going to the movies, without Seth's beautiful BMW.
Actually, the BMW had been one of the first things to go, but they still needed
a car, albeit a cheaper one, and then there was Summer's college tuition to
pay—she didn't have a scholarship at U-M—so even the money from selling the car
didn't last long.

Seth had an enormous
course load because he wanted to graduate in three years, before he got drafted
by an NFL team. And obviously, Mechanical Engineering was no breeze. College football
was extremely demanding as well, so there really was no conceivable way that
Seth could hold down a job on top of everything else. Though God, how he had
run himself ragged trying, when their money first ran out! Summer shuddered at
the memory.

When his
performance playing football (and in school) inevitably started to take a dip, she
and Seth had a huge fight: she asked him to quit his job and he refused
categorically. As a result, they didn't talk (and didn't make love) for almost three
days—which was the absolute longest they'd ever stayed mad at each other during
their entire relationship. It nearly killed her but she stood firm. And when Seth
saw that she wouldn't change her mind, wouldn't let him touch her, wouldn't
even talk to him, he walked around like a wounded bear. He acted as if he'd violently
had his heart cut out of his chest and was slowly bleeding out. At the end of
the third day, he broke down. He quit his job, and they made up and made love the
entire night. Now
that
was a memory that made her quiver in a wholly
different way! thought Summer.

So afterward,
Summer had quit her previous low-paying job in a book shop and started as a
waitress, at first in a student bar. There however, unlike in this restaurant, drunk
male students and their catcalls and groping attempts had been a constant
occurrence. Seth used to always pick her up in the evening when she went off
her shift (and she never worked at all when he was gone on training camps or
away games). He usually came in ten minutes before her shift ended and took a
seat at the bar—and God forbid that any drunk-off-his-butt customer should try
and get fresh with her while Seth was around! A bloody nose was the least what
he'd get for his trouble. Owing to such incidents, Seth got her fired (or made
her quit) from four bars before she finally found this classier restaurant
where to work. Here she had lasted for more than one year already, and
counting.

She and Seth
hadn't lived the easy life these past three years—and even less in the last
year and a half. But they'd been together and so they'd been happy. Every
endless shift spent on her feet carrying heavy trays of drinks and food, every
day when she didn't get enough sleep because there just wasn't enough time in a
day for everything she needed to do, every moment spent counting pennies to
make sure there'd be enough money left for that week's groceries, every torn
pantyhose and every broken heel; each and every little and big disaster of these
last three years—they had all been worth it. Because in exchange she got Seth.
And today, God willing, Seth would get his dream.