Page 50 of Same Time Next Summer

“And he has a girlfriend he met in school. So she’s there a lot too, which is fine because I’m at Missy’s a lot.”

“Oh.” I take a too-big forkful of pancakes.

“Not like that,” he says.

“What do you mean ‘not like that’? We’re grown-ups, Wyatt.” I hold his gaze because it’s fun that he’s embarrassed.

Wyatt laughs. “I think there’s some teenage version of me that doesn’t want you to know I’ve cheated on you.”

“I hate to say it, but I’ve been cheating on you too.”

“You. You’re getting married! I should totally break up with you. Or at least stop writing sappy songs about you.”

My insides go warm at the thought of Wyatt’s writing songs about me when I was in so much pain. As if that fact is retroactively healing. “Why can’t Missy write her own sappy songs?”

“She doesn’t write. When I played at the open mic for Carlyle and he told me my voice wouldn’t record well, I was crushed. But I’d played ‘Sam, I Am’ and a year later he contacted me to buy it for Missy. That’s how we met and my whole career started.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“I’m not even dating her.”

“Come on.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time together obviously. And sometimes we’ve been together.” He is visibly uncomfortable talking about his love life. “The basic problem is we don’t agree about anything, especially the music. From the beginning she was making my songs more pop than I like and now she’s trying to record one with synthesizers, which, I mean, come on.” He runs his hands through his hair like he’s trying to wipe an annoying thought from his brain. He takes a deep breath. “She’s a brilliant artist and all that, just not the kind of person I’m looking for.”

“What kind of person are you looking for?”

“I don’t know, Sam, just someone I like hanging out with. I’m not that complicated.” He studies his pancakes. “This is your cue to change the subject.”

“Okay, what about the cars? You said you still fix cars. Are you like Jay Leno with a fleet of Ferraris?”

“I drive a Toyota.”

“So that was a full-on lie.”

“No, when I was first in LA I worked at a gas station in Venice, pumping gas and fixing cars. This old guy Manny owned the shop and I kept checking in on him after I didn’t work there anymore.”

“That’s not fixing cars.”

“A few years ago he was in financial trouble so I bought the place and hired him to run it. And I do go by sometimes to help.”

I lean back in the booth, taking him in. Wyatt. The goodest of all the good people I’ve ever known.

“So where do you want to look for waves?” he asks.

50

We secure our surfboards to the top of Marion’s station wagon and make our way along the coast. Wyatt drives to Garnet Bay, to the same spot where he told me he loved me for the first time. I wonder if he remembers this as clearly as I do.

At the shore, we take off our shorts and T-shirts and avoid looking at one another. We carry our boards into the ocean and paddle out to waves that are bigger than I expected. Most of the surfing that I’ve done in the past decade has been this summer, and currently my whole life is off-balance, so I’m relying on muscle memory and good luck.

Wyatt takes the first wave he likes, and I wait. He paddles back to me. “What are you waiting for? An invitation?” He splashes my board.

“The waves are kind of intimidating,” I say.

“You’ve got this, Sam. Come on.” He turns away from me and paddles out, like he’s not going to entertain mynonsense. He thinks I’m still that girl who’s great at Capture the Flag.

I take the next one that comes along and fall pretty quickly. But it feels good, and when I come up for air, I am smiling.

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