Page 26 of Same Time Next Summer

When they got to the cove, Wyatt took her hand and led her up the shore. She shook out her hair and tied it in a knot on top of her head.

“Seriously, Sam, you’re going to kill me.” Wyatt was still catching his breath as they walked hand in hand toward the linden tree.

Sam surveyed her old collection of shells. Some were half covered in sand, and she dusted them off. The sun was setting and she could feel Wyatt watching her.

She looked up. “What?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I was just thinking this would be a nice place to get married.”

Sam looked out on the beach in front of the tree. The sun was starting to set, just the beginning yellow-to-orange stage. “To who?” she asked, stepping toward him.

“I don’t know. I’ll find somebody.” He put his arms around her still-wet back and kissed her. Before she knew it their bathing suits were in the sand and they were wrapped up in each other right under that tree. She looked up at the dark green leaves and had two thoughts before she gave in to the bliss of Wyatt touching every part of her body:Summer is almost overandThis is exactly where I’m going to get married.

30

Wyatt

Most nights, all the kids would meet on the beach as soon as it was dark. Sometimes they went to someone’s house, but in late August time was running out, and no one wanted to waste it being inside. When everyone was seated around the fire, Wyatt saw their faces at every age. They’d been little kids sneaking over to the older kids’ bonfire, they’d been thirteen, fourteen, and he’d been falling in love with Sam all along. He felt like he and Sam had always been on this stretch of sand, and he loved that they’d be there again at the same time next summer.

Wyatt wished he had his guitar, as the sound of everyone talking, mixed with the breeze coming off the ocean and the crackling of the fire, brought a tune into his mind. There was a sound to summer music, he thought. It sounded like warm air.

He wanted to be a person who could just pick up a guitar and play for people without worrying that it was no good. The stakes were pretty low with this crew, and with Sam sitting next to him, her legs draped over his, he felt moreconfident than he ever had. But his music was such a big, aching dream that he wasn’t ready to risk having an audience of more than one.

“I hate the end of summer,” Sam said to everyone.

“I don’t know how you two are going to survive without each other,” said Travis. Everyone kind of laughed, and Wyatt tried to keep the pain off his face. This was something they were trying not to talk about, how they were going to manage an entire nine months apart. They’d spend next summer at the beach, then he’d head out to LA. Sam would be a senior then and would apply to USC and UCLA. They never really covered more than the broad strokes of how that life was going to fall into place. Instead, they talked about what their view would look like, how strange the beach would look facing the wrong way.

“It’s going to suck,” said Sam, because the time apart was going to suck. He put his arm around her and pulled her in tight. Holding her close, he could feel the ache of not being able to touch her for so long. Everything had a flip side.

Sam unwrapped herself from his arms and stood up. “Anyone want to play Capture the Flag? Just one last time?”

31

Sam

It was almost Labor Day, and summer felt like the last inch of water draining from the bathtub. Wyatt met Sam at the library and took her out to lunch at the diner. “It’s payday, m’lady,” he said.

When they’d ordered turkey sandwiches and fries to share, Sam said, “So, I had the talk with my dad last night.”

Wyatt’s eyes went huge. “What do you mean ‘talk’?”

Sam smiled. “Like about you and me.”

“Oh my God, is he going to kill me? I’ll totally marry you right now if you want.”

Sam laughed. “No, he was really cute about it. He just came in and sat on my bed and was like, ‘Sammy, seems like you’re having a pretty big love affair this summer.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ ”

“Is he going to kill me or not?”

“No, it was nothing like that. He said he was happy for me. That there’s nothing more exciting in life than that pull toward another person. It was really nice. And it made me feel happy for my parents, that he feels that way.”

Wyatt’s whole body relaxed. “He’s so cool. Your whole family is so cool. Everything just right out in the open so there are no land mines to step on.”

“Is it any better with your parents?”

“It’s worse, I think. Michael’s wasted most of the time and they don’t say a word about it. They know for sure that I’m not going to college, but we don’t talk about what I am doing. It’s just this big, thick silence in the house.” Wyatt peeled the label off his bottle of Coke. “I wish my dad would be like, ‘Oh hey, son, I see you’re in love.’ Or even ‘Oh hey, I see you’re’anything.”

Sam said, “Yeah, I guess we’re talkers.”

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