Page 3 of Songs of Summer

“Did you like it—you know, last night?” he mumbled, blushing awkwardly.

“Yes,” she laughed, “did you?”

“Absolutely. It may be weird to do it again, though.”

“Maybe,” she lamented.

“Want to come over and find out?” Jason proposed, flashing his best boyish grin.

They laughed until the car behind them beeped.

While it was a little weird making love to her best friend in the light of day, it was also very sweet, which only brought up a bigger question.

Namely, were they now boyfriend and girlfriend?

Seven months later, when their birthdays rolled around, they were still sleeping together, though Maggie had never done so entirely sober. The one time they attempted it, Maggie found herself laughing every time Jason touched her. She claimed she was feeling ticklish, but he didn’t buy it, and it sparked their first lovers’ quarrel. That’s what Maggie kept calling it, in the hopes of making Jason laugh enough to let it go, but he only moped harder. Beyond that, they were still sneaking around in secret and hadn’t made it official in any way whatsoever.

And now Maggie wondered what they were waiting for.

•••

Both Maggie andJason had moved back home right after college graduation, Maggie to help her then-ailing parents in the store, Jason to save money by living at home during grad school at Case Western, where he was now a professor of ethics. When Maggie’s parents passed away a few years later—her mother from the same heart disease that had prevented her from carrying children, her father six months later from a different kind of broken heart—Jason and his family were with her every step of the way. There was no doubt in Maggie’s mind that they were her family now. It was one reason she never mailed in the 23andMe kit she’d ordered one night at three in the morning, when curiosity about the family origins she had never paid much attention to got the better of her. That, and remembering the tears of relief thathad poured down her mother’s face all those years ago, after Maggie learned she was adopted.

Always intuitive, always empathetic, young Maggie had touched her mother’s cheek in response to her offer to help find her birth mother and comforted her by saying, “You’re my only mom. I’m good.” And Jenny was still her only mom, in memory at least. Maggie had no intention of revisiting that question now that she was gone.

On the morning of May fourth, Jason looked at Maggie as she carried in the pile of perfectly wrapped albums she’d put together and asked, “What did we get everyone?”

Maggie was excited to flip through the stack, excited to be with family again on their birthdays and to show off how well she knew everyone by nailing each gift.

“Wanna guess?”

“You know I don’t want to guess.”

“You may as well give in now.” Maggie smirked, but as much as Jason still wasn’t a game player, he could never resist Maggie, who would turn anything into a friendly competition if she could.

“Fine, I’ll try.”

She boosted herself onto the countertop like a gymnast and ruffled Jason’s perfectly coiffed hair before planting another quick kiss on his lips. She wondered, if they were ever to settle down together, whether their kids would be fair-skinned with silky straight hair and matching brown eyes like Jason’s, or olive-toned with violet eyes and brown curls like her own. She hoped they’d look like her. It wasn’t that Maggie didn’t think Jason was cute; he was certainly cute, especially when dressed in his little tweed professor jacket. And she wasn’t feeling her biological clock ticking or anythinglike that. It was just a side effect of being adopted. She yearned to see herself in someone else.

Jason feigned eagerness.

“Hit me,” he said, slapping his hand on the counter like a Vegas card player.

“OK, record number one, The Cars,Shake It Up?”

“That’s easy, Cousin Bobby, the wannabe race car driver.”

“Good job! The Kinks—Soap Opera?”

“My drama queen sister—the older one.”

“Yup! James Brown.Sex Machine?”

“Me?” Jason laughed, adding, “That’s a good way to break it to my family that we’re sleeping together.”

Maggie tossed that one aside with a big smile and a “Kidding!”

Since they still presented as best friends, never kissing or holding hands in public, and certainly never in front of his family, she couldn’t imagine the reaction that revelation would bring. Well, she could imagine. Jason’s father would be over the moon, fast-forwarding to their wedding and declaring Maggie would finally be his daughter. Jason’s sisters would burst into happy tears, and his mom, “Sheila the worrier,” would pull them aside separately and warn them of all the potential negatives of their coupling. And there were negatives. If either were to want something different in the end, they could very possibly lose their best friend and, for Maggie, the only family she had left.

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