Every Summer After(56)

“Is Charlie still as hot as I remember?” She wiggled her eyebrows. Delilah’s version of man hating was admittedly pretty thirsty. Charlie had started school at Western in the fall, and I hadn’t seen him since the Christmas break.

“He’s not ugly,” I told her. “But you can be the judge of that, too.” My parents had agreed to let me have Mason, Delilah, and Patel up for the Civic Holiday, which they would be spending in Prince Edward County for a second year.

Mason had stayed in Toronto for university, and we had made it official in the fall. I’d been holding out hope that Sam would change his mind about us, but when I saw him over Thanksgiving, it was like the night we spent in his bed had never happened. The next weekend, I let Mason feel me up under my skirt at the movie theater. “I hope you start calling me your boyfriend now,” he had whispered in my ear, and I agreed that I would, reveling in the feeling of being wanted.

Sam had spotted the silver bracelet around my wrist as soon as he walked through the door to the cottage on Christmas Eve. My parents had invited the Floreks for holiday cocktails, and he pulled me aside and held up my wrist that wore the friendship bracelet as well as the one Mason had given me.

“Have any updates for me, Percy?” he asked, his eyes narrowed. It wasn’t exactly how I planned to tell him about our relationship, with our parents standing nearby and Charlie within earshot, but I didn’t want to lie to him, either.

“The silver doesn’t really go with ours,” was his only response.



* * *





THAT SUMMER, THE tension between Sam and Charlie was obvious almost as soon as I got out of the car. The Florek brothers stood towering by the back door of the cottage a full meter apart.

“You’re looking more gorgeous than ever, Pers,” Charlie told me, his eyes on Sam, before pulling me into a long hug.

“Subtle,” Sam mumbled.

Charlie helped unload but had to leave early to get ready for his shift, giving me another lingering embrace before he departed.

“For the record,” he whispered in my ear so no one else could hear, “my brother is a fucking idiot.”

“What’s going on with Charlie?” I asked Sam when we were lying on the raft later that afternoon.

“We’re not exactly seeing eye to eye on a couple of things,” he said vaguely. I rolled onto my stomach and rested my face on my hands.

“Care to elaborate, Dr. Florek?”

“Nah,” said Sam. “It’s nothing.”

That night, Sam invited me to come over after dinner. I showed up in my sweats with a copy of my latest story for him.

“I brought homework,” I said when he opened the door, holding up the pages.

“I’ve got something for you, too.” He smiled. I followed him to his room, trying not to think about what happened the last time we were in there.

He pulled out a stack of three somewhat worn books, tied up with white ribbon, from the top shelf of his closet: Rosemary’s Baby, Misery, and The Handmaid’s Tale. “I spent months tracking these down at yard sales and the secondhand store,” he said, sounding a bit nervous. “The Atwood isn’t really horror, it’s dystopian, but we read it in English and I think you’ll love it. And I got the other two because I thought you might want to see the words that created some of your favorite movies.”

“Wow,” I said. “Sam, these are so amazing.”

“Yeah?” He seemed unsure. “Not as fancy as a silver bracelet, though.”

I wasn’t even wearing the bracelet. Was it jealousy? I hadn’t known Sam to be insecure about money before, but maybe that was it.

“Not as fancy, but way better,” I said, and he looked relieved. I passed him the revised version of the ghost story I’d long been tinkering with.

“Reading time?” he asked, flopping onto the end of his bed. He patted the spot beside him.

“You’re going to read it in front of me?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, not looking up from the page and holding his index finger over his mouth to shush me. I settled onto the bed beside him and dug into The Handmaid’s Tale. About half an hour later, Sam put the pages down and ran his hand through his hair. He’d cut it a little shorter since I’d seen him last. He looked older.

“This is really great, Percy,” he said.

“Swear on it?” I asked, putting my book down.

“Of course.” He sounded surprised I’d asked and pulled on my bracelet absentmindedly. “I’m not sure if I’m terrified of the dead sister or if I feel sorry for her—or both.”

“Really? That’s exactly what I was going for!”

“Really. I’m going to read it again and make notes, okay?” It was more than okay. Sam was my best reader. He always had ideas to make the characters stronger or questions that pointed out a hole in the story’s logic.

“Yes, please. Delilah’s critique was very Delilah and totally useless, as always.”

“More sex?”

“Exactly,” I laughed. An awkward silence fell upon us, and I racked my brain for something not sex related to say, but Sam spoke up.

“So when did you and Buckley get serious?” he asked, squinting at me.

“Are you ever going to call him Mason?”