Page 37 of Summer After Summer

It’s a week of kissing and holding hands and sneaking moments. A week of making plans for our future, what we’ll do when we run out of time this summer and he goes back to Boston.

We can’t stop talking about it, where we’ll be in six months, one year, five.

Somehow, that becomes our catchphrase.

“In five years, we’ll …”

“You’ll be about to start your junior year in college,” Fred says as we lie on the lawn out of view of the house behind a big oak tree. The summer house is in front of us, and sometimes I think I’ll be bold and invite him inside, but most of the time I think it’s safer to stay out here on the grass, where the possibility of getting caught keeps us from going too far.

“And you’ll be a freshman.”

“Will you enjoy that? Dating a lower classman?”

I turn to face him. His eyes look dark blue in this light, wind tossed. “Do you have to go into the Army?”

“The Navy.” He runs a finger over my lips. They’re dry and swollen from too much kissing. “I do. Even before my dad died, that was the plan. I’ll enlist and then I can do the G.I. Bill, and that’ll pay for college.”

“But it’s dangerous. We’re at war.”

“That’s why I want to go.”

“Because of the danger?”

He moves his finger to my nose, running it along the bridge, and that pulse starts up in my body again. Then he kisses me, a medium kiss that almost dissolves into a serious one where I want to wrap my arms around him and press him close against me so I can feel all of him and he can feel all of me.

He pulls back. “I believe in service. I want to help my country out. Especially now.”

“But you might not end up in Afghanistan. It might be Iraq.”

“That’s okay.”

“But wasn’t the reason we went there a lie? No weapons of mass destruction, or whatever?”

He frowns. We agree on so many things, but this is not one of them. “That’s not the only reason to go. Saddam’s a bad guy. And we can help set up democracy there. Think about it. I can be part of helping to get them on the right track.”

“Like America is?”

“Like America can be.”

I kiss him, thinking he sounds like my dad on the rare times he talks politics. Or like my dad’s friends who voted for Bush and Reagan and Bush again. My mother was a lifelong Democrat, and as far as I remember, it was the only thing they fought about. But it didn’t keep them from loving each other, so I don’t let it bother me, I’m just worried Fred will go and not come back.

Because even though I haven’t known him that long, it already feels like he’ll be in my life forever. Like he already has been. I cannot imagine my life without him, or when I do, it makes me so sad I can’t handle it. That’s how I know it’s love. Not just because my body aches for him, but because I have to keep the thought of losing him at bay.

“Promise me you’ll be safe.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Not everyone is.”

“I know, Olivia. But—and I know this sounds silly—I just know I’ll be all right. You don’t have to worry about me.”

I tilt my head back. “I will, though.”

His lips hover above mine, his breath a soft breeze. “Will you miss me?”

“What do you think?”

He rubs his nose against mine, then kisses me again, teasing at my lips with his tongue. It’s after cocktails but before dinner, those lazy hours when he isn’t expected back at his aunt and uncle’s, and no one’s looking for me. I like kissing him at this time of day, but I like kissing him most of all in the dark, when he feels bold enough to explore more than my mouth and I feel bold enough to let him.

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