Page 63 of Same Time Next Summer

Wyatt: So I guess I’m going to wake up tomorrow and write Missy another song

I don’t know how to reply. I’m going to wake up tomorrow and go for a swim. I want to tell Wyatt to walk away from that mess and meet me at the beach. Which is selfish and absurd. I’m lying in a treehouse with nothing to lose, and he’s fighting to reclaim his creative independence. I’m not going to walk outside tomorrow and find him sitting on the back porch waiting for me. I’m not going to wake up in the middle of the night and feel his breath on my neck. A breeze comes in from the water and moves over me like Wyatt himself. I think of the least desperate thing I can type.

Me: I bet it will be a great song

Wyatt: Tell me about the kids at the library

As I text him the highlights of my day, I can picture him looking out at the beach that’s facing the wrong way. He’s in a really bad place again, and I’m glad that I’m here for him this time. When we’ve said good night, I close my eyes and picture Wyatt the way I want to see him, happy, with his guitar in his hands, and I let the waves sing me back to sleep.

59

I’ve been in Long Island for a week, and I’ve started getting up to swim in the ocean first thing, even before my coffee. I’m trying to swim half a mile down the beach and back, and I’m getting close, depending on the tides. I remember the days of counting my laps in the YMCA pool, in a constant negotiation with God. Stripped down now, I’m just me in the water, swimming stroke after stroke because I want to, because it feels good. When it stops feeling good, I will stop.

That night under my blanket on the futon I text him: New best day today

He doesn’t text me back, and I lie there wondering what he could be doing and who he’s with. I have an idea of what his life in LA looks like, what his view is. I imagine him in dark-colored sheets, and I don’t know why. I fall asleep picturing Wyatt in dark-colored sheets.

Hours later a text wakes me: Tell me

I blink and stretch, then reply: It’s the middle of the night, you have no boundaries

Wyatt: I didn’t know we had any, I think I wrote a song about this

This makes me smile, and I pull the covers up over us.

Me: So it was pirate day and I had these swashbuckling costumes so that we could perform a ten-minute play. But they hated my play and wrote their own—in three acts—to perform for me.

Wyatt: How was it

Me: Nonsense and violent. Can’t wait till tomorrow, reading a book about soup. Who knows?

Wyatt: That’s the best thing ever. Go back to sleep

As expected, thewhole soup thing doesn’t go as expected. I brought soup for tasting, and instead, the kids wanted to peel off the labels and make a collage. I ride my bike home with a basket full of unmarked cans that will get me through a dozen surprise dinners. This feels like my whole life right now, knowing generally where I’m going without a single specific spelled out for me. I honestly don’t care what kind of soup I eat.

I pull into my driveway and choose one can of soup to bring inside. It’s warm for mid-September, and the wisteria has lost its blooms but not its leaves. I run one between my fingers and feel that dark-green-turning-to-brown feel.

After dinner (chicken noodle!), I take a beer up to the treehouse to watch the sunset. It’s a great place to sketch, and I’ve finished three different takes on Gracie walking through the dunes with that Bryant kid. I’m trying to capture that in-between stage where she’s just figured out whyshe should be a little self-conscious. I wonder if I’m in an in-between stage where I’m figuring out why I shouldn’t.

I decide my drawing of Gracie is nearly finished. I turn to a new page and start to sketch Wyatt, sitting on a stool, singing at the Owl Barn. I am concentrating on the way the fabric of his shirt lies on his shoulders. I reach for my phone to text him but decide to wait. It’s only four thirty in Los Angeles, and I’d rather be talking to him when he’s lying down.

60

Wyatt

I leave my suitcase and my guitar on the front steps, because I don’t want to wait any longer. It was a long trip, but then again, it’s been a long decade. Her bike’s out front with a bunch of unlabeled cans in the basket. This is so random, and it makes me smile. I know there’s a story behind it. I knock on her door, and there’s no response.

The sun’s setting, and she could be on the beach. I walk around her porch and down the back steps and through the dunes. There’s no one on the beach. I have this horrible feeling that I’ve missed her, that there was this tiny window of time where I could have had her back, but I missed it, and she’s gone to Europe or met someone else. I shake off this thought; I just talked to her yesterday.

I could have told her over the phone. I wanted to, but I also wanted to see her face, to know for sure if she was all in with me. I didn’t want to lay it all out there and then sit on an airplane second-guessing her response. I hurt her worse than I ever imagined, and I need to see her to know if she’sgoing to be able to trust me again. After all, she left Jack, but she didn’t leave him for me.

I walk back through the dunes and into my own yard, and I see legs dangling off the side of the treehouse. They are my favorite legs. I want to rush over and climb up that ladder, but I stop myself for a second just to look. She’s drawing, and she’s completely in her head. Her hair is a mess, like she went for a long swim this morning and just let it dry in the sun. That’s the rest of my life, right there. I am a little afraid of how happy I feel as I walk over to the rope ladder. The last time I was this happy, I lost everything.

“Hey, Sam-I-am.”

She looks up and her eyes go wide. “Wyatt.” She puts down her pad and pencil and stands up as I’m climbing the ladder. She throws her arms around me and hugs me tight. I pull her even closer and feel the front of her body touch every part of mine. My thumbs loop themselves into the waistline of her jean shorts, just like they always did. I am back in time and also not; we aren’t the same people we were. I can’t believe I’ve traveled so far in my hunt for a happy life, and my happy life is right here, in my treehouse. “Were you going to tell me you were here?” she asks.

“I’m telling you now.” I breathe in the salty smell of her hair as her head rests heavy on my shoulder. There’s something about Sam pressed against me that floods me with relief, like I was about to fade away but I’ve been restored to my full strength. I want to run my hands under her T-shirt and rest them on the small of her back. I want to kiss thatspot on her neck and hear her catch her breath the way I’ve always remembered.

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