Page 11 of Same Time Next Summer

Wyatt: I was just down the hall drinking screwdrivers with some kids

Sam: You could get in so much trouble

Wyatt: I know. But it was fun

Sam: Okay, but be careful

Wyatt: Do you think you’ll ever kiss me again?

It was March by then. They’d talked about every other thing in the world, but never that kiss. Sam stared at her phone. She was taking too long to reply. Her heart was racing, and her mind was going blank. Her friends would have been able to think of the cool thing to say. She could only say the truth: I hope so.

Wyatt: Me too. Goodnight

10

Wyatt

Wyatt’s junior year of high school felt full. He was spending two hours a day in the music department, and he joined the swim team for the feel of the cold water on his skin. He was learning strategies for decoding words that made him a better, if slow, reader. Plus, he had a girlfriend. Well, not really, but he had Sam in his life nearly every day, and the whole thing had potential.

When the Popes pulled into their driveway on Saltaire Lane at the end of May, Sam was in the front yard. She was sixteen, in cut-off shorts and a tank top and no shoes. Her hair was longer and was pulled back in a ponytail. Just that one strand hung loose in the front, and Wyatt wondered if it was on purpose.

“Hi.” She waved as Marion and Frank, Michael, and finally Wyatt got out of the car.

“Well, you look all grown up, Sam,” said Frank.

“It’s creepy,” said Michael, grabbing two suitcases and heading to the house.

Marion gave her a hug. “Don’t listen to him. I’m so happy to be here, we’ll have a great summer.”

When Marion had gone into the house, it was just Wyatt and Sam on the front lawn, six feet between them, which might as well have been a thousand.

“So hey,” Sam started. “Why is this awkward?”

Wyatt laughed. He could always count on Sam to just say it. “I don’t know, because we’re not used to being in real life? You look different.”

Sam looked down at herself and back at Wyatt. “You do too, but in a good way.”

“I mean it in a good way too, Sam,” Wyatt said. Frank called from inside, something about taking the pool cover off. “I’ll see you later,” he said, and hoped it sounded cool.

The Holloways invitedthe Popes for a barbecue on the back porch. Wyatt had eaten there dozens of times before, and there was a formula for it. Bill grilled some kind of protein, and Laurel served some kind of creamy carbohydrate and a salad. There was always a basket of bread on the table and a room-temperature stick of butter, to make it easier to spread. Over Wyatt’s entire childhood he’d marveled at how easy things were at the Holloways’ house. Who thinks to leave the butter out to soften? Wyatt’s mom didn’t like to cook and mostly heated things up, things that Frank found too salty and unevenly heated. There were entire dinners devoted to this line of conversation, just how bad the food was.

This night, the official first night of summer because they were all together, the table twinkled with candlelight. The meal was steaks, macaroni and cheese, and an arugula salad. As always, the kids sat at one end of the table, but this year it felt more like they were almost all adults. Travis and Michael were nineteen, Travis having just finished his first year at Trinity College; Michael was at the University of Miami. Wyatt was seventeen, and Bill offered him a glass of wine. He’d never forget it, this rite of a passage, or anything about this night.

Sam and Wyatt sat next to each other at the table, comfortable in the fact that they didn’t really have to look at one another unless they did so deliberately. When they did turn to face one another they were so close that they quickly looked away. Wyatt’s shoulder occasionally brushed up against Sam’s, and eventually he just let it rest there against hers. Bill asked questions up and down the table—how was Frank’s golf game this winter? What was Marion going to do about the Asian shore crabs that were moving toward her yard? What did Michael think about the Dolphins? When he got to Wyatt, it was about college, of course.

“I’m not really sure,” he said. “I want to go out to Los Angeles and work in music.”

“So like USC? UCLA?” Bill asked. It was an innocent question, but Wyatt knew for sure at that moment that his parents hadn’t told their best friends about his learning situation.

“Someplace around there.” Wyatt smiled generally at the table, in the way he did when he wanted to smooth things over.

Marion jumped in to change the subject. “Well, you’re not going anywhere until you get that treehouse cleaned out or just take the whole eyesore down.”

“Over my dead body,” said Frank. “Taking it down, I mean.”

After dinner, thefour kids ran down to the ocean for a night swim. The moon was low and cast a long white stripe on the water. Wyatt was torn between enjoying the exquisite chill of the water rising up his legs and trying not to look at Sam in her red bikini. She’d worn bikinis last summer, but they had been sportier somehow. This one had actual strings on her hips and on her back. He was mesmerized by them dangling in the water, the invitation to pull one and watch all that fabric float away.

When they got out of the ocean, Michael and Travis went down the beach to smoke a joint. Wyatt wondered if this was the progression of things, if next summer he and Sam would be smoking pot too. He didn’t like the idea of Sam smoking pot.

---