Every Summer After(81)
“Are you sure?” he asked gently. In reply, I pulled him down onto the bed on top of me.
* * *
I MUST HAVE fallen asleep immediately after because when I woke, pink morning sky glowed through the windows. Still groggy, I felt breathing on my shoulder before I realized there was a thigh thrown over me. The box of condoms my mom had given me last year sat open on the nightstand.
“Good morning,” a gravelly voice rasped in my ear. It sounded so much like Sam. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping it was a bad dream. He shifted his weight over me and kissed my forehead, nose, then my lips, until I opened my eyes and stared up into a pair of green eyes.
The wrong eyes.
The wrong brother.
I inhaled raggedly, seeking oxygen, feeling my pulse, fast and uncomfortable, all over my body.
“Pers, what’s wrong?” Charlie moved off me and helped me into a seated position. “Are you going to be sick?”
I shook my head, looked at him wild-eyed, and gasped, “I can’t breathe.”
* * *
I MOVED THROUGH the final days of summer in a fog of self-loathing, trying to figure out why I’d done what I’d done and how I could possibly tell Sam about my betrayal.
After the panic attack subsided, I kicked Charlie out of the cottage, but he’d come back in the afternoon to check on me. I yelled and screamed at him through hot tears, telling him it was a huge mistake, telling him I hated him, telling him I hated me. When I started hyperventilating, he held me tightly until I’d calmed down, whispering how sorry he was, how he didn’t mean to hurt me. He apologized once I had, looking pained and flattened, and left me alone feeling even worse for having hurt him as well.
Charlie apologized again when he picked me up for my last shift at the Tavern a day later, and I nodded, but that was the last we spoke of what had happened between us.
When I returned to the city, my parents immediately broke the news that they would be putting the cottage up for sale in the fall. I should have seen it coming, paid more attention to the way my parents had been sniping at each other about money. I burst into tears when they explained how our Toronto home needed renovations and, besides, I could always stay with the Floreks. It felt like punishment for what I’d done.
Sam and I had only exchanged emails since the night with Charlie, but he called me as soon as he read my message with the news, saying he was sad but was sure I could spend the next summer at their house.
“I know how upset you must be,” he said. “You won’t have to say goodbye alone. We can pack your things together over Thanksgiving and move a bunch of it to my place. The Creature from the Black Lagoon poster can go in my room.”
Neither of us mentioned his email. And I said nothing of what had happened with Charlie.
What I needed was to talk to Delilah, but she had already shipped out to Kingston. I wanted to confide in her, I wanted her to give me a plan for how to make everything better, but I couldn’t do that via text, and I didn’t want to do it on the phone, to hear her voice but not see her reaction.
I don’t remember much about those first weeks of school. Only that Sam began to write longer emails between our scheduled Sunday calls. Now that Jordie and he were rooming together and he was getting used to the campus and the city, he was feeling more settled. Also, while his workshop wasn’t graded, he had received a glowing review from the supervising professor and an offer to work part-time on his research project. He hadn’t yet bumped into Delilah, but he was keeping his eyes open for a head of red hair.
He explained how lonely he’d been when he first got to school, how he kept his notes short so as not to worry me. He apologized for the drunken state he’d been in when I called him, and told me that when he thought of building a future, it was always a future with me in it. He also apologized for not making that clear. He told me I was his best friend. He told me he missed me. He told me he loved me.
Sam’s classes ended early on Fridays and he wanted to take the train to Toronto to see me on weekends, but I pushed him off, telling him my professor had asked for a twenty-thousand-word short story to be completed in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t a lie, but I also finished the assignment well ahead of time without letting Sam know. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was humming with nervous anticipation. I still hadn’t told Delilah what had happened, but I had talked myself into telling Sam the truth. I would do anything I could to make it right between us, but I couldn’t lie to him.
I drove up Friday, not even stopping to pee, so I could make it to the cottage by the time Sue got back to Barry’s Bay with Sam. My parents had already moved most of our knickknacks out of the cottage and weren’t coming back for the holiday. They left my room for me to take care of. The Realtor would be there the following week to stage the place and start the showings.
I had emailed Sam that I had something important to talk to him about as soon as he got home. That’s funny, I have something I want to talk to you about too, he wrote.
I kept myself busy waiting for him, my stomach in knots and my hands shaking as I untacked the Creature from the Black Lagoon poster from over my bed. I cleared out my desk, flipping through the clothbound notebook Sam had given me, and running my fingers over his slanted inscription on the inside cover, For your next brilliant story, before packing it in a box. I set the wooden box with my initials carved on its lid on top. I knew without having to peek inside that it still contained the embroidery floss I made our bracelets with.