The Summer Remains (4 page)

              I stared at this strange boy, baffled, and suddenly it seemed like my lungs had forgotten how to process air completely. The world had become a vacuum, and I was sucking oxygen fruitlessly. When I finally gathered my wits and slowed the beating of my heart, I considered my options. I could say yes and lead this boy beside me down a path that could lead to…well, God only knew where,
or
I could politely decline and go back to my normal, grey life. Back to winter.

I looked over at the hostess, cleared my broken throat a little, and for the first time in my maybe-waning life, chose danger.

“I think we’re gonna need that table.”

4

Eight minutes later we sat at the aforementioned table in silence, the gunmetal grey sea stretching out all around us. The Long Island in my hand was sweet – too sweet to be good, really. I didn’t drink much alcohol, orally at least, but I’d dabbled enough to know that this tasted more like off-brand cough syrup from a gas station than a cocktail. In fact, something just seemed off about
everything
all of a sudden. The colors of the restaurant were too bright, I felt fugly in my top, and people kept staring at us and then catching themselves and looking away, because ICYMI, the world sucks and people are assholes. Even in the South sometimes. Cooper looked a little embarrassed about it, actually. It wasn’t hard to notice. Being around him after meeting him on a phone rather than, say, in a dog park or something, felt simultaneously way more intimate and way more impersonal – like when you get up close to a computer screen and notice the images are really just thousands of little pixels that together constructed a mocked-up visage. I felt like I’d gotten a projected image of him on the phone, all witty puns and virtual winks, but now that I was with Real Cooper instead of Spark Cooper, I knew things could go anywhere.

“So,” he finally said with a little smile, “let me just get the whole Spark awkwardness factor out of the way.”

“Okay?” I asked, wondering how he’d guessed what I’d been thinking about.

The smile spread into his dark eyes. “Although we met on a dating application that has basically transferred the human mating experience onto a plasma screen that you hold in your hand, that fact does
not
make us desperate, lonely, or insufficient in any way. We are just two normal twenty-somethings utilizing the unusual means of our times to reach out and connect with others in a world suddenly made lonely by hyper-connectivity. Sound good?”

For a long while I just stared at him again. Because I was the most embarrassing individual on the planet, I sort of awkwardly put my hands on the table and then fidgeted and placed them back in my lap – I guess I never did know what to do with those things.

“Well?” he asked. “How’s that?”

“Well, then,” I finally said. So there
was
truth in the virtual wink. “I think you just about summed it all up. Wasn’t really expecting that level of…well, um, that amount of…you’re just smart, that’s all.”

He leaned forward, suddenly looking fascinated by me for some reason. Honestly, it was hard returning his gaze. He was so intimidating. You know those people who just looked like they were
somebody
? Like they had either come from somewhere, or were going somewhere? He was one of those. In all the faded dilapidated-ness of my modest hometown, he looked as out of place as a dolphin in a desert.

“Ha,” he said again. “So, what
did
make you do it, anyway? The whole Spark thing, or whatever?”

“Um. Well. I’ve never really been good at dating, I guess. And this helped, since it makes things less awkward. In the beginning, at least.”

“Same,” he said, and I felt my eyes narrow.

“Somehow I don’t believe that.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He looked away, and I took a sip of my drink. I was a total lightweight since I never had anything solid in my stomach to absorb alcohol, which was what kept “normal” people from being waste cases every time they drank, but tonight I definitely needed the help. “And, like, what made you download the app and pick me?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Something different,” he said automatically. My shoulders fell, and he noticed. “Oh, no, I didn’t…I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant-”

A waitress arrived with a few waters just in time to rescue us. After she left, Cooper turned back to me.

“You look great tonight, by the way. Really.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I was a little annoyed that he’d said
really
, as if I didn’t already know I looked like this. “So do you,” I added quietly.

“Ha,” was his only response, once again. We heard some people talking about us, and we both looked over at the same time as two girls giggled pretty shamelessly and then cut their eyes and turned red. My pupils met Cooper’s for a moment and the next thing I knew,
we
were averting eye contact, too.

“Yeah,” I said as he looked down at the table. “So.”

Out of nowhere he looked up at me, a question in his eyes. “True or false,” he said. “Humans are inherently good.”

“Hmm. Heavy subject for a Spark date, but I’d say true
and
false.”

“Explain?”

“Well,” I began. “I mean, people are garbage, and the world is kinda shitty. But I think
I’m
pretty good on the inside, and so I’m fine with all that, because my goodness is a sort of a shield against a lot of that, I guess? I don’t know. What do you think?”

Cooper smiled again; a big, dazzling, goofy sort of thing. A dizzying
whoosh
of a feeling sank into me, pulling me under with it.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But that’s the best answer I’ve heard yet. I’m leaning towards the whole ‘people are good’ thing, or at least I’m trying to, but I’m not quite there yet.”

“Easy for you to say,” I whispered.

“What was that?”

“I said, that’s easy for you to say, that humans are good.” I motioned at his general glory.

“You don’t know anything about me,” he said, except the way he said it made it sound like a warning, as cheesy as that sounds.

“What do I need to know, then?”

“Nothing.” Something in his eyes changed. “Hey, your name. You definitely don’t meet a Summer every day. Where’s it come from?”

“Oh,” I said, shifting gears. “Um, I mean, the story is a little awkward, but whatever. I was actually, like, the fifth child my mom got pregnant with, but the first that actually survived through to birth, you know? And so when she found out she was pregnant with me it was the dead of summer and it was boiling outside and she was totally miserable and sick and all that, and so she made a deal with God or whatever that if she could just carry me through the summer, she’d name me after the season. And obviously I survived, so that’s why I’m Summer. And I mean, I don’t hate the name. I live for the summer. Like, for me the rest of the year is just a countdown to when I can spend my days in flip-flops again. I’m basically only happy when I’m under a palm tree with salt on my skin.”

“Don’t be so hesitant about sharing stuff like that,” he smiled after a minute. “Everyone has sad things in their past. Shit, I could write a novel about mine.”

“About your name?”

“That too.” Something on his face was kept secret, like an embarrassing middle name in middle school.

The waitress dropped by and asked us if we wanted anything to eat while we drank. I could tell she was pushing us to order food and spend money since we were taking up a table or whatever, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to dismiss her with a shake of my head like usual. I panicked a little and looked over at Cooper. This was it: the moment in every budding friendship (or whatever this was) when I had to reveal my Other-ness and see how hard the other person flinched.

“I’m fine, I think,” he said, and then he looked at me.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I, um, can’t eat solid foods, or whatever?”

Cooper looked back at the waitress, barely hesitating. “We’re good for now, then, thanks.”

“You’re not going to ask why I won’t eat?” I asked after the waitress rolled her eyes and left. He just sort of shrugged.

“It’s whatever. That’s your business.”

“Oh.” I was baffled that he wasn’t baffled. Where were the weird stares? The awkward pauses?

And then I realized what had been making me feel so weird: I didn’t want to believe that someone like Cooper was even being nice to me. (Another Scar of mine was that I was so afraid of people mocking me that I rejected anyone who was kind to me even if their intentions were as pure as Caribbean sand, but that was another Scar for another Scar Story.)

Cooper leaned forward again. I inched back, overwhelmed by the reaction his clean, crisp scent gave my body. Honestly, could he, like,
not
, for a minute? To give myself some time off from being dazzled by him, I opened up the good old First Date Line of Questioning.

“So, how come I’ve never seen you around?” I asked. “Not that I go out a lot or anything, but I know most people at the beach through mutual friends and stuff. Or I know
of
them, at least.”

He looked away. “Oh, um, I grew up in St. Augustine, actually,” he said, which was this touristy but gorgeous town forty minutes down the coast. “I haven’t lived up here for that long.”

“Ah! I love St. Aug. I used to go down there with my family all the time. Their bakeries are, like,
beyond
. Not that I could eat much of what I found at them – I just liked to stare.”

“Indeed they are, certainly stare-worthy,” he said with a smile that was more than a smile. “What about you?”

“Grew up in Neptune,” I said, pointing north. “Nothing too exciting.”

“Gotcha.”

He took out his phone, and because I was a mature, honest person, I refrained from checking to see if he had any texts from any other girls.

JK! Immediately I scanned the screen and saw an unreadable-from-my-viewpoint text from someone named Taryn, along with several starry-eyed emojis.

He swiped away the text and jumped a little. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

He returned his attention to me. “So, you know how people use that ‘I’ve gotta go feed my dog’ excuse to get out of a bad date?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Or, like, I’ve
heard
of it.”

“Well, my dog actually
is
sick, like in real life, and I really do have to go feed her and give her some medicine, since my mom can’t.”

“Oh.”

He was leaving. And why wouldn’t he be? I couldn’t believe I was stupid enough to think he’d actually been having fun with me.

He put a twenty on the table and got up to leave, just like that. But then he turned around, a little nervous for some reason. “Uh, you’re coming, right?”

I froze. “Um, I…I didn’t know that was an option?”

“Of course it is,” he said. “I just lost track of time when I invited you out, that’s all. Do you want to come?”

“I mean, yeah…if you want me to?”

He smiled, his face unfairly beautiful. “Don’t be silly – you’re coming. Just follow me, I live right around here. And I promise I don’t live in a murder shack.”

I laughed, but then my expression went slack, the word “murder” reminding me what this really was: a girl on her way to the grave, reaching out and calling this beautiful boy to accompany her. So I pumped the brakes.

“But we’re going to your totally-non-murder-shack as just friends, right?” I asked, and he frowned.

“Summer, if you’re trying to insinuate that this was all some elaborate date-rape scheme, you can breathe easy, because I’m not that kinda guy. And trust me, even if I was, I would’ve had
way
better style than Joe’s Crab Shack.” He motioned at our immensely tacky surroundings and then threw me an incredulous look. “I mean, really?
Joe’s
?”

“Shut up!” I laughed as I got up from the table with another rush of dizziness I hoped was Cooper-related and not death-related. (Dizziness and weight loss were mostly what had caused me to get checked out earlier this spring, setting into motion this whole stupid surgery thing.) “It was a momentary lapse of judgment, I don’t usually come here. And fine, I’ll follow you.”

As my sternum vibrated with some foreign and wonderful giddiness, I took out my phone and texted my mom:

Change of plans, Shelly. I’m gonna be home later. Maybe a lot later.

5

Cooper’s house was just north of mine in Atlantic Beach, in a cute but ramshackle part of town behind Dairy Queen. He apparently lived in a little guest apartment atop the detached garage of a rambling beach house with peeling sea foam green paint, and I loved it immediately. It didn’t bother me that he seemed to live with his parents, because half the guys my age did, too. That’s what happened when an entire generation grew up into a world that didn’t know what to do with it.

Park behind me, on the grass,
Cooper messaged me after I pulled up behind him. He drove a black Volkswagen Beetle, which, like, somehow worked for him for some reason? I was beginning to suspect he could make
anything
work. He was certainly doing a number on my heart, sweat glands, and central nervous system already. Or was I just dehydrated?

I took out my syringe and grabbed a fresh can of Instamilk from among all the mess on my passenger’s side floorboard.

Give me five,
I responded.
Girl stuff.
Then I parked under a magnolia tree and tried to hide myself in the shadows as I transferred the milk into the syringe.

I won’t ask,
he said, and that was soon followed by a silly, smiley emoji, which should’ve been weird coming from a stranger but wasn’t for some reason. My face mirrored the emoji’s as I lifted up my shirt, unclasped the end of my feeding tube, and inserted the milk, giving me the fuel I would need for whatever was going to happen tonight.

“Hey, sorry,” I said after I’d hid everything under my seat and met Cooper in his front yard. The sun had set, and the sky was this perfect shade of pinkish lavender broken up by a few golden-orange clouds. You could hear the waves crashing on the sand two blocks to the east, and a middle-aged woman walking her chocolate Labrador across the road smiled and waved at us. God, I loved our forgotten little corner of the world sometimes.

“Oh,” he said as he looked into the dim garage, sounding a little worried, “I wanted to remind you again – my mom’s here. Is that cool? Play it cool. We’re cool.”

“Cool,” I laughed. What was the big issue? As far as his mom knew, I was just a random friend. And how could
anyone
play it cool around Cooper Nichols, anyway?

We climbed a rickety outdoor staircase and entered a cramped kitchen. You know how when you were little, your senses were stronger and you could practically put on a blindfold and still tell which of your friends’ houses you were in just by how they smelled? Cooper’s house had this very bold and distinct scent, something like driftwood, dust, and sandalwood. I looked over and noticed his mom, who was reading a book on the couch while halfway watching
Dr. Phil
. She was long and maybe a little on the thin side of healthy, but
wow
, she was pretty. She looked like one of those models from the ‘70s that my mom used to worship, with the kind of face that made me want to crawl into a hole: high cheekbones, little button nose that curved up at the end like a ski slope, the whole works. Honestly, I was a little mad that she looked too sweet for me to hate without feeling guilty about it. Her only flaw was her slightly weathered skin, which looked almost too wrinkly to be due to the Florida sun alone.

“Hey, Mom,” Cooper said. “This is Summer.”

I studied him. He didn’t say “my girlfriend,” but then again he had no reason to call me that and we’d just met and God, I was a psycho for even thinking that. But he didn’t say “my friend Summer,” either, which was how I usually got introduced, just so people knew not to assume I was dating their kids. But still…hmmm.

His mother looked over and then glanced at the air above me when her eyes were naturally drawn to my scar. I smiled to let her know it was okay.

“Hey, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Summer. Cool house, by the way. Very rustic.”

She smiled back as she took my hand. She didn’t get up off the couch to greet me, which frankly came off as a little rude – until I noticed how thoroughly her arm trembled as she took my hand. I scanned the room, spotted a wheelchair in the corner, and guessed multiple sclerosis. And I wasn’t surprised that she still hadn’t been able to make eye contact with me, either. Disease did not necessarily make its sufferers any more or less empathetic or able to deal with things than anyone else. Only they could do that.

And just like that, a few things I’d been wondering about Cooper clicked into place.

“Oh, thanks, yeah, I love it, too,” she said, stuttering and halting as she spoke. “It’s nice to be so close to the water. And great to meet you, as well. I’m Colleen.”

She looked over at her son, still totally confused. A little
too
confused, honestly. I was used to even my mediocre-looking guy friends’ families being perplexed with a capital
P
whenever I was brought around, but this took the cake. (Mmm, cake. I wanted Funfetti in or around my mouth immediately.)

“Well, I’m just finishing up my reading,” she said. “Have fun, you two. How’s your birthday going, Coop?”

He blushed and looked away, cringing. I faced him.

“
What
? It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you…?”

He angled his body further away, and Colleen sort of politely looked at me like I must’ve been some random chick off the sidewalk for not knowing it was his birthday. This was getting very awkward, very quickly – but at least I now knew the reason behind Taryn’s text.

“It’s going well, Mom, but I’m
trying not to make a big deal of it
, so let’s not do that,” Cooper said, and seeming to understand something, Colleen nodded and got back to her show. “The medicine’s in the back, Summer. Follow me.”

I followed him down a dark hallway, and something told me to look over my shoulder. Sure enough, Colleen was still staring at me, and before she got all startled and looked away, I noted genuine surprise on her face.

“In here,” Cooper said as he turned into a back room and bent into a cardboard box with BEACHES VETERINARY HOSPITAL – FIDO’S FIRST CHOICE written on the side.

“Cool. Happy birthday, by the way!” I said after a pause. “Wish you would’ve said something, I would’ve ordered an ice cream Sunday or whatever.”

“Ah, thanks, but I really wasn’t trying to make anything of it. You know how parents are.”

“Yeah. Um, is your dad home?” I asked to move things along, but the expression on his face told me I shouldn’t have. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know anything about your dad situation, or, like…sorry,” I blushed.

“Nah, it’s fine,” he said. The air suddenly became very heavy and sort of sad – Waiting Room Air, I called it. “My dad situation is that I
have
no dad situation. My mom was stoked when I was born, but my dad, not so much. He pretended to care that I existed for a few years before leaving one day to ‘work on an oilrig off the coast of Louisiana’ to ‘make a better future for me,’ or so he said. A postcard from New Orleans was the last thing we ever got from him. I was eleven. We think he’s probably dead now, but nobody really knows for sure.”

“Wow, that’s – I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. I hated him. He drank himself nearly to the point of liver failure and we had to take care of him a lot or whatever, so his departure wasn’t a huge heartbreak. He was so draining to be around. He left my mom the day she got diagnosed with MS, actually, the dickwad.”

“Wha – you’re kidding me, right?”

“Wish I was,” he said, a hard edge in his voice. “She started getting shaky, dropping things in the kitchen, stuttering her words, you know the rest, and then she went in for testing. When she came home from the hospital with the paperwork one day, he got drunk, grabbed his things, and left. Said it wasn’t his burden, and that he didn’t want to leave even later down the line and make things even worse for her. It happened on my birthday, actually, which is why I’m still weird about it. I feel like I’m celebrating her pain or something.”

I tried not to focus on the last part. “Good god – what an asshole.”

“I know. Being my mom’s sole caretaker was…not easy, to say the least, but we made it work. Anyway, what about you? Family?”

“Yeah, I kinda know how all that can be,” I said, thinking of the little brother I was basically raising as my own, since my mom was always off trying to find a boyfriend and get remarried. Or had been, until The Big News, at least. “Sorry again. But what about me? Um, I live with my mom and my little brother, Chase. He’s in fourth grade and he’s the coolest. He likes video games and reading and kickball. My parents got divorced when I was eight. No dramatic story to tell, they just sat me down in the Florida room one day and told me they didn’t love each other anymore. Equitable division of their meager assets, visits at dad’s house every other weekend, etcetera. Nothing too interesting.”

“Ha,” Cooper said as he found two small boxes of something and started removing them from their packaging. I felt a familiar twinge on the back of my neck as I watched. To be honest I still felt guilty about my parents’ divorce and knew I was mostly to blame, not that I would ever tell anyone that. Everyone wanted to think that families heroically Banded Together and Rose Up and Overcome the Odds whenever their kid got sick or had problems, but the reality was that it sucked, and that it was hard on everyone involved. My poor parents had probably envisioned spending their first few years of marriage and parenthood going to dog parks and taking me to the aquarium and going to the beach on the weekends and stuff, not sitting with me in a dark hospital room while we waited for throat tissue to grow. I couldn’t even imagine the stress of settling down and starting a family and then promptly having your firstborn spend months at a time in a hospital bed. So it all became too much, and they drifted apart. My dad remarried, of course, and moved to Orlando and acquired two young stepsons through his marriage to Cindy, whom I vaguely liked, I guess. She was nice enough, but she was from the North and she wore a lot of beige and shook hands instead of hugging and didn’t eat carbs and/or celebrate most major holidays, so…yeah. Not exactly a match for someone like me. My dad was a cruise ship captain for Royal Caribbean, which was, like, one of those random jobs that nobody ever thought of people having, but that had to get done nonetheless. Cruise ships couldn’t park themselves, and everyone couldn’t be doctors or lawyers, you know? It annoyed me sometimes, actually. Why didn’t anyone ever think of the cruise ship captains instead of the doctors, the Esophageal Intresia sufferers instead of the cancer patients?

“Come, let’s go get Hadley,” Cooper said.

“Hadley?”

“The dog.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

We hit the stairs again and went into the dank, faintly mildew-smelling garage below his house. Cooper made a kissy sound, and after a minute a decrepit old miniature dachshund with long, light brown fur came limping out of the shadows. Cooper dropped to his knees and held out his arms, and after throwing a fearful glance at me, the dog rested between his knees.

“Come here, little babykins.”

“Aw,” I said as I watched.

“I’ve had her since I was thirteen,” he said as he scratched her. “She was my aunt’s, and after she got too old to take care of her, she gave her to us. And for whatever reason she latched onto me. She has a tumor in her shoulder, and she won’t last much longer.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “We try to keep her in the house, but she always escapes and comes down here – my mom thinks the cold concrete floor feels good on her fur, I don’t know. It’s not like anyone ever parks in here, anyway. The owners of the house are snowbirds,” he said, referring to the term Floridians used to describe Yankees who spent November to March in Florida and then left once the heat and humidity and hurricanes became too much for their delicate souls. “Hadley’s a total weirdo, but I love her. This medicine is just supposed to make her transition peaceful. And God, how am I even gonna get her to take this, since I forgot to stop and get some of that beef jerky she likes? It’s like my mom says: sometimes you just gotta jump, and then make your parachute on the way down.”

I shivered as Cooper awkwardly stuck some pills into a hunk of some kind of weird doggie salami he’d found in a box in the corner and then coaxed Hadley into eating it. After she’d finally swallowed it with a grimace, he smiled.

“Good girl,” he said as he patted her. “You know, this medicine should buy her time, but not much. The vet told us she might not even make it to the Fourth of July.”

I fought off the shivers and stood tall and tried to act like I wasn’t in exactly the same boat as his dying dog. “Ah. That, um, really sucks. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said, love flowing out of his eyes as he smoothed her fur. “She’s happy. She’s a happy girl.”

He got up, grabbed a leash, and turned to me. “Come. Let’s take her out before it gets too dark.”

“With me?”

He looked around. “…Unless there is some other person standing in this garage that I cannot see?”

“
Oh
.”

He wanted to spend more time with me. What a strange and wonderful concept. “But just as friends, right?” I asked, and his beautiful face lit up like the moon. His smile was effervescent; wrapped in so much charisma, you could’ve surfed on it.