Page 34 of Same Time Next Summer

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My mother serves margaritas before dinner, and I only have half of one. They are that deadly kind of margarita that tastes so sweet that it leaves you wanting tortilla chips and another margarita. I’ve learned this lesson, so I switch to water. Jack, as it turns out, has not learned this lesson.

Jack has a strict two-drink maximum, but he has three margaritas that I see, maybe more. “These are delicious,” he says at first. “These are delicith,” he says later. Jack rests his hand on my shoulder as Gramps grills my dad about his art sales.

“So how’s the art world? You still making those big swirly things?” Gramps has never understood my dad’s work and can double over laughing when he talks about how people were conned into paying good money for it. This has never bothered my dad a bit.

“Not lately,” he says. “People want straight lines and earth tones, they tell me. It’s taking me some time to connect to that.” He looks out at the view his swirly paintings paid for. I feel myself soften as I watch him. For a long timeI felt like his dry spell was an appropriate punishment. But looking at the earnest way he searches the horizon for an idea, I miss seeing him thrive. “Takes time,” he says.

“Must be nice,” Jack says.

“It is nice,” Hugh says, measured. “Doing something you love. You must feel that way about being a doctor.”

“I guess. But digging skin cancer out of goddamn sun worshippers all day, I wouldn’t do it for free.”

This feels overly negative for a sunset barbecue. I say, “Well, I like my job.”

“Bossing people around?” Travis says. “It’s like they invented a whole industry for you.” I laugh, remembering all of the summers I orchestrated adventures on the beach. A race to the jetty, the sandcastle contest. A million games of Capture the Flag. Of course, back then I just made up games because I wanted to play them. Now I organize people to keep them in line.

“Ah yes, Sam and her flash mob.” Jack gives me a sleepy smile, and I hope to God he’s not going to say any more about this. “I’m going in,” he says, and kisses the side of my head.

I should go with him and make sure he gets to bed okay. But the weather is perfect and Granny’s made pesto.

By eleven o’clockTravis and Hugh have gone home, and everyone is in bed. I try to readWetlands of Westerleighand find myself reading the same sex scene six times. I can’t understand where the body parts are in relationship to each other. He has both hands on the back of herneck and is pulling her hips toward him. How many hands does this guy have? I realize I am missing the point and should go with the feel of the whole thing. I wonder whether if I read this to Jack he’d think it was funny or if he’d just say, “Someone should have caught that.”

When I think of Jack with his perfectly shaved face and aqua blue eyes, I wonder at the improbability of the two of us ending up together. Sometimes I follow this train of thought in the middle of the night, watching him sleep the sleep of a man who’s worked a full day and exercised twice. For sure we are together because of Jess Landry, a secretary at Human Corps. The office threw her a baby shower on a Monday in the conference room. They’d over-catered and I was mildly broke, so I wrapped up two extra sandwiches and left them in the shared refrigerator for my Tuesday and Wednesday lunches, which is why I showed up at my Thursday haircut with thirty extra dollars for the extravagant blowout. Which (I’m positive) is the only reason Jack ever for one second considered me to be a person he might date when I got into that cab.

The million times I’ve traced back what brought Wyatt and me together, I get as far as my dad’s paintingCurrentand making all that money so he could buy this house. IfCurrentwas actually inspired by that old sky-blue VW Bug, then I guess it was the moment he bought that car. Something as tiny as a Bug or Jess Landry’s fertilized egg could change the course of a person’s life. Or something as huge as a shift in the weather pattern that heats up the East Coast enough to make a boy fill the water bottles at the house with the ice-cold water. I am overwhelmed thinking of all thefactors beyond my control that have conspired to change the course of my life. I really hope they’ll let me keep my job.

Wyatt’s in the treehouse. He’s just started with a slow melody, and it reminds me of the ocean. I’m putting on sweatpants and a sweatshirt over my nightshirt and am walking out the back door before I’ve really thought it through. My mom is right: we need to get it all out in the open and then bury it safely. And with Jack on a once-in-a-lifetime bender, this may be my only chance. I make my way into the Popes’ yard and see his feet dangling over the side of the treehouse. I am up three rungs of the rope ladder when he stops playing.

“Sam?” he says, before I’m all the way up.

“Hi,” I say. “I heard you playing and I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted to...” My eyes focus in the dark and I take in the treehouse. The splintery floor has been swept clean. There’s a blue and green striped rug in the center and a futon folded up in the couch position on the left-hand wall. Next to it is a small table, like a TV tray, with a lit candle on it. To the right, there are three acoustic guitars mounted on the wall, next to a well-used broom. “I don’t understand.”

“Come on in,” Wyatt says, standing up, and we both start to laugh.

“Seriously, do you live here?”

“I do not. I mostly stay in the house.”

“Then why all this?”

“I don’t know. It’s my favorite place. I fixed it up a little. I didn’t want to leave it behind.” These words land heavy on my chest. He left me behind.

I sit down on the futon. It’s simple, and I can see howthis can all be dismantled when he goes, but this space has been put together with a lot of care. I flash on Wyatt’s wanting to frame my drawing, wanting to keep it nice.

“Can we talk for a sec?”

“Sure.” He sits down next to me, but not close. You could fit a fully grown Labrador retriever between us.

“I know it was a long time ago, but I just wanted to say I’m really sorry we ended in such a bad way, at such a bad time.”

Wyatt seems surprised. “Me too,” he says.

“And I wish I’d been less hurt so I could have come back into your life. That had to be really hard with your family. And your career and everything.”

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