Page 52 of Same Time Next Summer

“I would have pushed you away. I was reeling, and so angry with your family. I couldn’t control it. The only thing worse than losing you would have been unleashing that on you.”

I’m looking at my feet, which are getting sunburned. I scoop some sand over them.

“By the time my head cleared, you were so angry at me. And it was too late. Seems like such a waste.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you forgive me.”

“Of course I forgive you. It was forever ago. It doesn’t matter.”

Wyatt sits up and runs his hands through his hair. He looks away and then back at me. “It mattered, Sam. It may be over, but it mattered. So stop with that.”

“I know.” Of course I know.

He’s quiet for a while. He looks at me and looks back at the water. “The way we felt that summer, it changed me. Like knowing that love could make a person that happy opened up something in me. It’s why I can write songs. It gives me a lot of hope, that it’s possible to feel that way. If what we had didn’t matter, then my whole life is based on nothing.”

I lower my forehead onto my knees and laugh a small laugh. If it was real, then nothing in my life since then makes sense.

“What?”

“Thinking it wasn’t real, sort of acting like it was a dumb teenage obsession, was the only way I could get through it,” I say.

He’s quiet for a while. “We both turned out okay, right?”

I smile at Wyatt, who has turned out better than either of us ever imagined. I think of the trajectories we were on that summer, Wyatt with his laser focus on his music, and me just wanting to try everything. Wyatt’s worked really hard to make his dream happen, and I’ve worked really hard to create a life that requires I try nothing.

“I might need to quit my job.”

“For sure,” he says. And we both lie down and take in the sun.

51

I can’t sleep. I don’t have any feeling of anxiety at all, more like excitement. I feel really good. It’s that kind of good you feel when you’ve had the stomach flu and you wake up the next day and it’s over. You forget how good it feels to be well. I spent practically the whole day outside. My muscles are the right kind of sore, and my skin feels alive from the sun. I try to think of how I can bring this feeling into my real life. I want to make room for surfing. I want to try things, wobble and fall down.

I look up at my tree of life, lit slightly by the moonlight. I don’t like to critique my nine-year-old self, but it’s a bit childish. One shade of brown for the trunk and all those branches. My dad was right, it needs texture. I rub my forefinger and thumb together to conjure the feeling of wood and remember the dead-tree museum in the dining room.

I get out of bed and knock on my parents’ bedroom door. When there’s no reply, I go in and tiptoe to my mom’s side of the bed. I kneel down and put my hand on her arm. “Mom? Everything’s okay.”

“Why are you talking to me?”

“Do we have a glue gun?”

“Of course. Over the microwave.”

“Can I have the sticks in that basket?”

“Of course,” she says, and turns over.

I smile looking down at the two of them sleeping. The only two people in the world who would have absolutely no follow-up questions about why you might need a glue gun and sticks in the middle of the night.

By six a.m.I am out of sticks, but most of the tree and its branches are covered. At first, I was gluing them to the wall in uniform lines, but as I went on I started placing them in a more organic way. I used to do things like this when I was a kid. I used to just follow myself into the night, into an idea that was going to either work or not. As I look at the wall now, I know that what I’ve created is not beautiful. It may even be a mess. But it’s something.

I sleep for a few hours and find my mom at the kitchen table doodling and nursing a cup of coffee. “Wild night?” she asks me.

“I don’t know what got into me. I just had to cover that tree in my room with texture. And your stick collection was exactly the thing.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

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