Every Summer After(32)

As he starts the engine, my mind begins racing. I need a strategy, ASAP. I told Sam last night I’d give him an explanation for what happened all those years ago, but that was before I met Taylor. He’s moved on. He has a long-term relationship. I owe him an apology, but I don’t have to unload my past mistakes on him to do it. Do I?

“You’re quiet,” Sam says as we head out of town toward the lake.

“I guess I’m nervous,” I say honestly. “I haven’t been back since we sold.”

“That Thanksgiving?” He glances at me, and I nod.

Silence falls over us. I used to twist my bracelet when I was anxious. Now I bob my knee up and down.

When we turn onto Bare Rock Lane, I roll down the window and take a deep inhale.

“God, I missed this smell,” I whisper. Sam puts his large hand around my knee, stopping its jitterbugging, and gives it a gentle squeeze before moving his hand back to the wheel and pulling into his driveway.





8



Summer, Fifteen Years Ago

My feet crunched on the driveway, the air heavy with dew and the lush smell of moss, fungi, and damp earth. Sam had taken up running in the spring, and he was determined to convert me to his cause. He mapped out an entire beginner’s program to start today, my first morning at the cottage. I was instructed to eat a light breakfast no later than seven a.m. and meet him at the end of my driveway at eight a.m.

I stopped when I saw him.

He was stretching, his back turned to me with headphones in his ears, pulling one arm over his head and leaning to the side. At fifteen, his body was almost foreign to me. Somehow, he’d grown at least another six inches since I’d last seen him over the Christmas break. I’d noticed it yesterday, when he and Charlie came to help us unload. (“It’s officially an annual tradition,” I heard Charlie tell Dad.) But I didn’t have time to properly inspect Sam before both he and Charlie had to leave to get ready for their shifts at the Tavern. Sam was working in the kitchen three nights a week this summer, and I was already dreading the time apart. Now, his black running shirt lifted to expose a slice of tanned skin. I watched, mesmerized, a flush creeping up my neck.

His hair was the same thick tangle and he still wore the friendship bracelet around his left wrist, but he must have been well over six feet tall now, his legs stretched almost endlessly past the hem of his shorts. Almost as improbable as his height was that he was somehow thicker, too. His shoulders, arms, and legs all carried more bulk, and his butt was . . . well, it could no longer be mistaken for a Frisbee.

I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Jesus, Percy,” he said, spinning around and taking off his headphones.

“Good morning to you, too, stranger.” I wrapped my arms around his waist. “Six months is too long,” I said into his chest. He squeezed me tightly.

“You smell like summer,” he said, then put his hands on my arms and stepped back. His gaze traveled over my spandex-clad form. “You look like a runner.”

That was his doing. I had a drawer full of exercise gear based on the list of items he’d suggested. I had put on shorts and a tank top as well as a sports bra, which Sam had embarrassingly included on his list, and one of the cotton thongs Delilah gave me before she left for her mother-daughter European vacation, which he had not included. My hair, now well past my shoulders, was gathered into a thick ponytail high on my head.

“Fake it till you make it, right?”

He hummed and then turned serious and took me through a series of stretches. During my first squat, he stood behind me and put his hands on my hips. I almost tumbled backward with the shock of his grip.

When I was suitably limber, he ran his hand through his hair and went over the plan: “Okay, let’s start with the basics. The most important part of learning to run is . . .” He drifted off, waiting for me to fill in the blank.

“Good shoes?” I guessed, looking down at my new Nikes. He shook his head, disappointed.

“Didn’t you read the couch to 5K article I mailed you?” He’d clipped it from a running magazine, complete with some kind of complicated time and distance chart. I read it . . . once . . . ish.

“The most important part of learning to run is walking,” he said with his hands on his hips. I smothered a giggle. This bossy thing was entirely new and sort of adorable and definitely funny. “So we’ll spend the first week doing a 3K out and back, increasing the distance you spend running each day until you’re running the whole 3K by the end of the week. You’ll take two rest days a week, and by the end of week two, you should be running a full 5K.”

I barely understood a word he’d said, but five kilometers sounded pretty far. “How far do you usually go?”

“To town and back. It’s about 12K.” My jaw dropped. “I worked my way up to it. You will, too.”

“Nope. No way!” I cried. “There are too many hills!”

“Calm down. We’ll take it day by day.” He gestured down the road and started walking. “C’mon. We’ll walk for the first five minutes.” I looked at him dubiously, but picked up my pace to match his.

If my elementary school’s annual track-and-field day of hell hadn’t already made it obvious years ago, it was now: I was not a natural runner. Ten minutes in, I was brushing sweat off my face and trying to ignore the fire in my lungs and thighs.