Page 4 of The Summers of Us

His voice isn’t any different—it stopped deepening years ago—but it takes me a moment to remember how he speaks like he’s already written the words, how my name dances from his mouth.

A laugh dances from mine. These things will never change.

“It’s good to be back.” My heart is a penny, flipping between what we could have been and what we are now. I’m not sure where it lands, but I pull him into a hug anyway.

The last time I hugged him like this was just before last summer’s abrupt end. If I’d had a clearer head then, I would have known it was our last. Ironically, seventeen managed to be my most naïve summer, but that’s what happens when you go so far beyond jaded that you loop back around and convince yourself things might actually be okay.

I’m back. It’s time to start over.

“It’s good to see you,” I whisper into his chest.

He smells like coconut-tinged cologne; I forget I don’t like coconuts.

I forget thatIsmell like sweat and bleach and the grime I’ve coaxed off the floor.Shit, and I’m wearing knee pads. I pull back and fix my hair. It falls right back into my face, wet and stringy. “Sorry, I’ve been cleaning up.”

“Can I help?” Everett closes the front door. His white-toothed smile contrasts with his olive skin. “Also, I brought s’mores stuff for later.”

My cheeks are hot coals. My heart leaps at the very fact that he’s standing in the living room at all. Have I been plucked from this timeline and put back into seventeen? “You didn’t go on the boat?”

“We’d never go out knowing you’re stuck here.”

I shrug. “I didn’t want to burden you guys.”

A look of shock strikes his face. “You’re only burdening me if you don’t have s’mores with me.”He shakes his head and grabs the back of his neck. “I mean, you don’thaveto, I just wanted—”

“I’d love to have s’mores with you.” I cut him off and take the bag from his hands, smiling. “And I’d love your help.”

It doesn’t feel likethe first day of summer anymore. A gentle evening breeze brushes through my bangs. My goosebumps, confused about the June chill, are soothed by my hoodie. Dewy grass adds to the confusion. Mosquitoes kiss my ankles and leave itchy welts behind.

After scrubbing the rest of the floor and bleaching mold off the walls, Everett and I lie on beach chairs on the edge of Blair’s backyard. My bones lie to rest, unwound and burning from within. Fireflies light up the trees, so we play a game from the past.

“I bet the next firefly is going to be on that branch sticking out past the rest.” Everett stretches out to soak up the moonlight. He needs moonlight because heismoonlight, like how humans need water because wearewater.

Our knees touch and I feel his leg bounce, or maybe it’s mine.

I watch the silhouette of the tallest pine, waiting for a yellow light where the sky meets the trees. The sky turns one notch darker before my eyes. It feels like a forbidden glitch I wasn’t meant to see.

The firefly flickers a few trees down.

“There it is!” I point in the darkness.

Everett points out another firefly on the edge of the yard. We wait in the darkness between their sparks. I expect it to reemerge closer to us, but it lights up above the back deck.

The game fizzles out once the fireflies stop flickering, once the day officially detaches from night. I lean the beach chair all the way back. My hair pools on the grass.

It’s dark enough to see all the stars in the sky. Beyond the trees’ looming silhouettes, Sagittarius is a rainbow umbrella among a shore of black ones. I swallow hard and close my eyes. The story of Sagittarius and Scorpio plays on my eyelids—Sagittarius the Archer taking a shot at Scorpio the Scorpion. This was how the universe intended it, written in the stars as an inevitable strike in the sky, like all the other ungranted wishes resting up there.

We sit like that for a little bit, listening to the symphony of cicadas and locusts in the trees starting then stopping then starting again like time is a conductor they’re following. Then the katydids snarl in response. Everything around us sings a perfect tune Everett and I can’t find our place in.

Until we do.

“How are you?” Everett’s voice breaks the silence.

“Good,” I say out of habit.

“But how are youreally?”

I bite my lip. I’m not going to cry, not even in the face of such a lethal question. Those are words that always bring stifled pain to the surface—the final raindrop that splits open a dam—but no, not on my first summer night. Not in this moment with Everett.

---