Page 4 of Summer Light on Nantucket

He had a great smile and broad, muscular shoulders. He wore cotton rugby shirts no matter how cold it got. He was almost always the first to answer in class, and the prettiest girls in her grade clusteredaround him, chattering away, trying to keep his interest. Aaden radiated a quiet masculine strength. Blythe wasn’t surprised to learn that he was a wrestler, the best in his league. That was their junior year. She’d giggled with her girlfriends about him. She’d given him a lingering smile whenever their eyes met.

One day, at the end of history class, she accidentally on purpose dropped her notebook, and Aaden had picked it up for her.

“Thanks,” she said casually. “I’m Blythe.”

“I know,” Aaden had said, smiling.

She’d blushed, become flustered, and babbled, “Oh, right, of course you know, we’re in the same class, Mr. Ruoff calls on me all the time.”

“True.” Aaden’s gaze was like sunlight on a cold day. “But I’ve been asking around. About you.”

“You have?” Her breath caught. She was mesmerized, and she wasnevermesmerized. She was pretty and smart and popular. Lots of guys were interested in her. “I’m not always like this,” she told him.

“Let me take you out Saturday night and you can show me what you’re like.” Aaden suddenly blushed, and it was a gorgeous, sexy sight, the way the pink flooded up from the base of his neck to his cheeks. “That sounded wrong somehow.”

Blythe had shamelessly batted her eyelashes. “It sounded right to me.”

Students were pouring into the room for the next class. Aaden and Blythe cut through the crowd and went out into the hall.

“I’ve got to go this way,” she told Aaden.

“I’ve got to go that way. Look. I’ve got a car. Meet me in the parking lot when classes are over.”

“I will!” she promised and hurried down the hall with the few stragglers late for class.

She sank down into her seat, her heart pounding, and for all she knew, she wasn’t even in the right classroom, and it didn’t matterwhere she was, because she had Aaden waiting for her at the end of the school day.

It happened so quickly between them. It wasn’t just physical, although that was fierce and compelling. Aaden was smart, too, super smart, and he didn’t hide the fact that he loved words, he loved poetry. Wait! Blythe had thought. A guy liked poetry and was also on the wrestling team?

It was his Irish heritage, he explained. Both his parents were Irish immigrants and his grandparents lived there still.

“I’ll take you to meet my grandparents sometime,” Aaden promised. “They’ll love you and you’ll see where I learned to love words.”

As their junior year progressed, they becamethatcouple. They went everywhere together. They spoke on the phone before going to sleep. Blythe attended all his wrestling matches even though she’d never paid much attention to any kind of wrestling before.

And the wrestling! As they became more and more intimate, Aaden showed her different wrestling moves. The screw lock throw, the fireman’s carry, the takedown. First, he demonstrated the Irish collar-and-elbow grip when they were in Blythe’s bedroom—with the door open, always—and when he gently thumped Blythe onto her bedroom floor with its wall-to-wall carpet, her father came up the stairs demanding to know what was going on. After that, he showed his wrestling moves in the family room, where Blythe’s parents could watch. He was always gentle with Blythe, but she learned how strong he was, how powerful he could be, and how their bodies felt together, even in the strangest of holds.

Blythe’s parents liked Aaden. Her mother, a high school teacher, had insisted Blythe take birth control pills the moment she turned sixteen and her main concern was that she didnotget pregnant or decide not to go to college because of Aaden. Blythe’s father liked Aaden but reminded Blythe that she was only a teenager, and that while teenage romances were passionate, they never lasted.

Aaden’s family also liked Blythe. He had an older brother, Donal, who was bigger and stronger than he was. He treated Aaden like a family pet and Blythe quickly realized that when Aaden’s brother punched him in the shoulder or slapped his head, it was his way of showing affection. Brendan Sullivan, Aaden’s father, owned Awen, an import company specializing in Irish clothing and gifts. He’d opened a branch in Boston with his own brother still living in Ireland, and for a few decades it was successful. By the 1990s, synthetic fleece was being made into blankets, sweaters, and sweatshirts, and people were stuffing their itchy Irish wool sweaters into the back of their closets. Aaden’s father and his wife, Sheila, tried to modernize the business with scarves and capes and jewelry. They went to Ireland several times a year to meet with their family and business partners there and managed to keep the company successful, but not like it had been.

Donal refused to join the business and instead went into construction. He married young and often came to Sunday dinner at the Sullivan house with his wife, Maeve. By the time they were seniors in high school, Blythe had every Sunday dinner at the Sullivan’s. She and Aaden were with each other every moment they could be. They could argue fiercely, at school or a coffee shop or their own homes, but they would always make up. If Blythe had a cold, Aaden caught it. If Aaden went to a school football game, Blythe went with him. She learned a lot about families by watching Aaden and his brother and parents argue and insult one another and then sit down to dinner and talk and laugh. When Blythe argued with her parents, or when they argued with each other, it always ended with each person going into another room to sulk or think or nap, returning after an hour or so wearing their hurt feelings wrapped around them like an invisible cape, refusing to speak and going to bed mad. Because of his family, Blythe felt safe in arguing with Aaden, knowing that they would always make up.

Aaden learned to fit in with Blythe’s parents, who were always more formal. Their discussions tended to touch on current weather in the area or the newest movies and television shows. Watching themtogether, Blythe realized how different her small family was. They never argued at the table, but gently changed the subject. They used cloth napkins, gravy boats, and good glasses, not, like Aaden’s family, paper napkins, or in a pinch, paper towels, and beer or cola cans right on the table. But the families were more or less equal financially, and that made things easier.

Blythe and Aaden applied to the same colleges and agreed to go to whichever one accepted them both. Aaden wanted to major in business administration so he could take over his father’s business. Blythe chose education. An only child, she enjoyed being around kids of any age.

Thanksgiving Day, which they each spent mostly in their respective parents’ homes, Blythe and Aaden met by the salt-and-pepper bridge over the Charles River. The day was clouded and chilly, and they walked along Memorial Drive with their coats buttoned up and gloves on their hands.

“So,” Blythe prompted. “What did you want to tell me?”

Aaden cleared his throat. “The family is going to Ireland at Christmas. They only just decided. My grandmother is ill, her son Sean, my father’s brother, you’ve heard us talk about him, he’s an alcoholic and useless, but their daughter, Sarah, wants to keep the business going and begged us to come help her sort it out. And Liam, my father’s other brother, has seven children and works hard but he’s getting old.”

“How long will you be gone?” Blythe asked.

“A month. Maybe a bit longer.”

“You can’t miss your final semester.” She was shrinking into herself from the cold wind and her fear.

---