Page 30 of Same Time Next Summer

Sam sat ona bench in Washington Square Park staring at her phone. She hadn’t heard from Wyatt in eleven days. It had been years since she’d gone a day without at least getting a text. She went to school most days but occasionally found herself derailed by her own feet and sitting on this bench until three p.m. She replayed the summer and the summer before that in her mind. She tried to remember what it felt like to laugh until your body shook or to followa whim wherever it took you. She was currently having a hard time finding the energy to get up off this bench.

During these eleven days she had sent two texts that she was starting to hate herself for: Wyatt please, and This can’t be happening. Sipping her coffee and watching his reply not pop up, she felt small and rigid, like one of the flat gray rocks on the beach that just washed out with the tide. She felt a total lack of agency, like her legs and her spirit had stopped collaborating to move her forward. Her body no longer knew what to do.

She found relief in the water. She swam at the YMCA in the evenings, letting the ice-cold water shock her skin into feeling a different kind of pain. She wanted to tell Wyatt that her stamina had improved, that there would be no more breaks when they swam to the cove. She imagined his dramatic groan over this fact, and she ached all over again. With each push off the wall, she welcomed the throbbing of her muscles. If she could swim a full mile, Wyatt would call. If Wyatt would call, she would sleep a full night. If she slept a full night, she would be Sam again.

She returned to the apartment deliberately too late for dinner. The swimming served the dual purpose of wearing her out and keeping her from facing her happy-ish, healing parents across the table. She took a plate into her room each night and continued to make deals with God. If she finished her art history paper in less than ninety minutes, Wyatt would call. As she typed and focused on the Renaissance, she felt the brief relief of feeling in control. She was going to make Wyatt appear. When she completed her task and herphone was quieter than ever, she lay in her bed, numb. She had to stop playing this game. Actually, if she could stop playing this game for a full week, then Wyatt would call. She was in a loop of deals with God.

If she got a few hours of sleep, she’d dig herself out of the darkness and lean toward happier thoughts. She clung to the fact that Wyatt wouldn’t be able to keep this up if they saw each other in person. He loved her, she didn’t have any doubt about that. Even though she no longer knew who her father was, she knew exactly what was in Wyatt’s heart. He’d decide to come to the beach for the summer and everything would go back to normal. Senior year, USC acceptance, Venice Beach. All as planned.

Sam was telling herself this story on a Thursday afternoon as she let herself into the apartment. Laurel was on the phone in the kitchen and hurried to hang up when she saw her.

“What?” Sam asked.

“That was Travis. He heard from Michael that Wyatt’s not coming to the beach after graduation.”

Sam plopped down onto the couch and Laurel sat next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Because of me?” Sam asked.

“Because of all of it. They’re renting out the house, and he’s going straight to Los Angeles.”

“I don’t mean to be dramatic,” Sam said, “but I don’t think I can handle this.”

“Honey, I’m sure he’s going to come around. His life has been turned upside down; maybe he just needs some time.”These were the right words to say, but Sam could see the fear on her mother’s face. Laurel, recovering from her own heartbreak, couldn’t bear seeing Sam suffer her own.

Sam went into her room and cried until she’d completely exhausted herself. She longed for crying yourself to sleep to be a real thing. Sleep would have been a break. But she felt like she was on high alert, abandoned in this weird space with a heart full of terrifying feelings.

It was dark when her dad came in with a cookie and a cup of tea. “I heard,” he said, sitting down on the side of her bed. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to make this up to you.”

“I don’t either,” Sam said, and turned over.

“I was desperate, Sam. It was so selfish.”

“It really was.”

“You’re going to have to forgive me sometime.”

Sam turned to face him. “Actually, that’s one thing I don’t have to do.”

36

Wyatt

Wyatt flew with his mom back to New York immediately after his high school graduation. It was too early for the Holloways to be there, as Sam would still be in school. He stayed one night before getting in his dad’s old truck and driving across the country. As he made his way west, sleeping in the bed of the truck and occasionally splurging on a motel, he tried to think of anything but Sam. It was painful to know how easy it should have been to pick up the phone and bridge this huge gap he’d put between them. But he didn’t have any words that didn’t come out angry.

For three thousand miles, he thought about the time bomb that was his family and how Bill had sped things along. His anger was a huge, ever-growing pain that filled every part of his body. He tried to remember feeling as happy as he had last summer, and the loss of that feeling just made him angrier. He had to protect Sam from the ugliness inside of him. So he didn’t call.

He had two thousand dollars saved up from summer jobs that would buy him a little time to find work. His planwas to bartend at a music venue while he found a way to break into the business. He had a catalog of exactly three finished songs that he wanted to record.

Looking back, it was madness. It was the specific kind of dreaming that belongs to a person who doesn’t know any better. Like a ten-year-old who’s sure he’ll play in the NBA someday. All he had was a duffel bag and Dr. Nick’s guitar, on his way to becoming a rock star. Even if someone had reasoned with him, he wouldn’t have changed course. He knew that his future was in music the way he knew the sun was coming up tomorrow. But then again, he had thought his future was Sam too.

He found an apartment on Market Street in Venice Beach on Craigslist for four hundred dollars per month. It turned out it was just a studio apartment, one large room with his roommate’s bed and a kitchenette in the corner. What passed for his bedroom was the walk-in closet, which had its own window and enough space for a twin mattress.

The building was on an alley that led to the busiest drug-trafficking street in Los Angeles. On either end of this alley were spectacular ficus trees with intricate trunks and root systems that tore up the sidewalks. Wyatt came to see Los Angeles in this light: beautiful and invasive, natural and violent.

His dream of bartending his way to success was an instant failure. There were no jobs in music venues for bartenders. There were no jobs anywhere for bartenders. He eventually took a job at a Shell station two blocks from his apartment and made minimum wage pumping gas, and more for minor car repairs. As he walked to work each day,he felt the flow of his life: playing guitar and fixing cars. Nearly all he’d ever wanted. Except Sam.

He liked to drive up to Malibu to surf at Point Dume and hear the music roll off the beach. The warm air, the gulls, and the cold water brought him back to Long Island. He thought about Sam and how he’d destroyed that last good thing in his life. It was as if everyone around him had let him down, so he figured he’d just finish the job. Wyatt stayed out on the water as long as he could, because there he couldn’t help but be honest with himself. And when he was honest with himself, the songs came.

37

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