“We were here visiting Melanie one summer, and there was a SpongeBob marathon on TV. Sam and I basically watched every episode about seventeen times.”
I’d wanted Luke to tell me something no one else knew about him, not something Sam had known for years. It made me realize that she probably knew things I’d never find out unless we spent the entire summer playing this game of question and answer.
“Did you come here a lot?” I asked.
“Every summer for as long as I can remember, usually for a week, sometimes just a few days, but always.”
“How come you never mentioned Charlie before? Or Sam?”
“How come I didn’t know you had such talented elbows?” he replied.
He was trying to get me to laugh, something that was usually so easy. But I didn’t feel like laughing. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling a combination of damp, salty air and fresh cut grass. “Come on, I’m serious.”
When I opened my eyes, Luke was staring at me. “Some new yoga thing you learned on the road with your mom?”
I stared at the mound of elbow pasta on my plate and moved it around with my fork as I carefully chose my words. “This is probably my imagination, but I get the feeling Sam doesn’t like me.”
I wasn’t expecting Luke to tell me Sam thought I was the best thing ever, but I thought at least he’d remind me that Sam didn’t even know me. Instead, he was quiet.
“We just met. How could she not like me already?” I didn’t even know she existed until a few hours ago, but Sam already knew enough to dislike me?
“Are you saying that once she knows you, at least she’ll have a reason?” Luke joked. When I didn’t smile, he shrugged. “What’s it matter? I like you enough for both of us.”
His answer should have satisfied me, but it didn’t. “Why doesn’t she like me?”
“I didn’t say she doesn’t like you. Look, she hates her job. And she hates that Charlie gets to do nothing all day but sleep late and hang out. She didn’t even want to come here this summer. All her friends got internships in the city or something, and she wanted to stay home. If she’s not exactly the friendliest person in the world, it’s not personal, believe me.”
I wanted to believe him, because the only other option was that Sam had decided she didn’t like me before she even met me, and there was no logical reason why she’d do that. Unless it involved Luke. Because she may not know anything about me, but she obviously had a long history with my boyfriend.
“Okay, if you say so,” I conceded.
“Good.” He speared what was left of my pasta salad with his fork and took a bite. “Besides, I’m sure once you two spend some time together, she’ll love you as much as I do.”
“And how much is that?” I asked.
Luke tapped his fork on the table while he thought of an answer. “A 9.5.”
“Oh, really? And what about the other point five?”
“The Russian judge is tough.”
I pushed my chair away from the table, scraping the legs across the slate patio like nails on a chalkboard. “How about I bring this stuff inside and meet you in the boathouse…without Charlie this time?”
“I think I like where this is going.” Luke smiled at me, and I couldn’t help but smile back thinking about being alone with him on that faded pink and blue floral couch. “I’ll get a head start, since I don’t move very fast these days, as you’ve noticed.” He reached for a crutch and used it to pull himself up from the table.
I started piling our plates on the tray, and Luke hopped away in the direction of the boathouse, moving more quickly than he had since I’d arrived. Obviously, he was looking forward to the couch, too.
As soon as I pulled open the kitchen screen door, I saw Sam standing at the counter with her back to me. Maybe Luke was right about her. Maybe we just needed to get to know each other.
“Hi.” I set the tray down beside the sink and opened the dishwasher door.
“Hey,” she answered.
“So you don’t like being a lifeguard?” I asked as I scraped what remained on our plates into the trash can and then placed them in the dishwasher racks. “I always thought it seemed like a fun job.”
“You’d think so,” she answered, not taking her eyes off the sandwich she was composing with the care of an artist working on a canvas.
“I have a job at the Scoop Shack in Falmouth. I start tonight,” I told her. “Have you ever been there?”
“I have some friends in Falmouth for the summer.” Sam peeled two slices of Swiss cheese apart and carefully laid them on the two slices of bread laid out on the cutting board in front of her. Either she found me to be the most boring person on the Earth at that moment, or making a turkey sandwich was something that required extreme concentration.
Obviously, we weren’t going to bond over summer jobs.
“It’s supposed to have some of the best ice cream on the Cape,” I added, but Sam was now focused on folding slices of turkey into perfectly portioned pieces.
Luke was wrong. Sam wasn’t going to try to get to know me. She was barely going to carry on a conversation with me.
Pickles. Lettuce. Sam just continued to meticulously build her sandwich like she was on a cooking competition show where the precise placement of green flourishes was the difference between being voted off or winning the grand prize. I tried to do what Luke suggested, not take it personally, but that was difficult because it felt awfully personal.
“Well, I’m just going to grab us some drinks.” I took two bottles of peach iced tea from the refrigerator and paused to see if Sam would acknowledge anything I’d said. She didn’t. “See ya later.”
“Luke told me what you did.” Sam’s voice stopped me as my hand reached out to push open the screen door.
At first, I thought she meant Charlie—that he’d told her about our ping pong match. But she didn’t say Charlie. She said Luke.
I turned around and found Sam standing there with her sandwich in one hand and the mustard knife in the other as she chewed her first bite. She still didn’t look up at me. “What I did?”
Sam continued chewing and didn’t answer me until she’d swallowed. My mother would applaud her manners. “How you got together.” Now Sam turned her eyes on me. “Your experiment. The guide.”
I stood there silently while Sam consumed her lunch and the meaning behind what she just said sank in.
“I’ve known Luke for practically my whole life, and he’s a good guy. A really good guy,” she repeated, as if I didn’t get her point the first time. “I know he wants us to like each other and be friends and all that, but I think what you did was shitty.”
I opened my mouth to respond, attempting to formulate a response to Sam’s declaration of war. But nothing came out. After ignoring me in the Jeep and avoiding my attempts at conversation in the kitchen, Sam was finally ready to talk, and that meant she wasn’t going to wait for me to defend myself before continuing.
“I mean, who does something like that?” She shook her head at me and turned back toward the counter, placing the knife in the sink before twisting the end of the bread bag and tying it closed.
I was torn between pointing out that what happened between me and Luke was none of her business, and wanting to explain what happened—to have her understand that no matter what she thought, it wasn’t that simple.
And that’s when it hit me. Luke told Sam. The only way she could know what happened was if Luke told her our story and all of its gory details.
There was no forgiving and forgetting, no putting it behind us and moving on. What happened was part of our brief history, but by telling Sam, Luke had made it part of our present.
Instead of explaining, I turned my back on Sam and let the sound of the screen door smacking closed speak for itself.
• • •
“You told her?” I found Luke in the boathouse, his leg up on the couch as he bounced a ping pong ball against the wall. “You told Sam?”
>
“Told her about what?” he asked, continuing to bounce the ball against the wall and catching it in his left hand.
About what? Was he kidding me? “The guide, Luke. How could you do that?” I demanded.
“She asked how we met.”
“We met at school, Luke. That’s all you had to say.”
This time, Luke didn’t catch the ball when it bounced off the wall. He just let it land on the floor and roll under the couch. “First of all, I didn’t mean to tell her, and second, I didn’t make it sound terrible at all. I just started explaining how you’d just moved back from Chicago and I hadn’t seen you since you moved away after freshman year, and the next thing I knew…”
“The next thing you knew, you were telling her about the guide?”
“I didn’t make a big deal about it, Em. I told her we figured it out, that everything was fine. Better than fine.”
“You acted like you didn’t know why she was being such a bitch to me, but you knew! And you let me walk into a trap. She just ambushed me in the kitchen, where I was trying to have a nice conversation, and she starts telling me what a horrible person I am.”
“Come on, I seriously doubt she did that.”
“Now you’re defending her?”
“I’m not defending anyone, Emily. Jesus, I don’t know what you’re getting so bent out of shape about.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Why don’t you calm down and give me the benefit of the doubt this time.”
It felt like a low blow, a backhanded way of reminding me that no matter what he did, what I’d done would always be worse.
“Look, I was telling her about my girlfriend. So when she asked how we got together, I told her. I wasn’t going to lie about it.”
“I’m not saying you should have lied. I’m just saying you didn’t need to tell her everything.”
The hollow chime of a church bell echoed in the distance. It was already three thirty. “I should go. And I’m not asking Sam for a ride. I’ll take the bus or something.”
“Em—” Luke jumped off the couch and reached to stop me, immediately letting out a pained groan as his hand brushed my arm.
“Are you okay?” I asked, lightly touching his elbow as he inhaled deeply and rested his weight on his good leg.
The sound of the bell’s last chime faded away. “Em, what’s going on? You come here for the day, and now you’re pissed at me. Yes, I told Sam, but I had no idea she’d make it into a thing with you. I’ll talk to her if you want.”
Luke chewed on his lip, his face serious. I noticed his hand rubbing the side of his knee as he waited for me to say something, anything, as long as it would get us back on track now that I’d derailed our day together.
“Here…” I led Luke back to the couch and helped him swing his braced leg up onto the cushion. I watched the tight lines across his forehead fade. Then I sat down on the edge of the sofa and faced him. “You don’t have to talk to her about it.”
“I will if you want me to, like I said—if it matters to you that much.”
I laid my hand on his brace, the metal cool against my fingers. I knew that somewhere under the aluminum, black mesh, and Velcro, his skin was warm, the fine hairs pale from hours in the summer sun. “No, it’s fine.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
I moved my hand to his other leg and laid it just below the hem of his shorts, so I could feel his skin. “I can’t be late for work, though. I should probably head to the ferry.”
Luke moved his hand over mine. “Stay.”
“I can’t stay, Luke. Mr. Holden will kill me.”
“I doubt that. Come on, the rest of the day, just you and me.” He patted the sofa and then rubbed his palm in circles against what was supposed to be a hot-pink petunia, but which looked like a pale, threadbare memory of its former self. “It’s awfully comfortable here.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Em, I’m sorry. Believe me, if I thought it would upset you this much, I wouldn’t have said anything about it to Sam. I had no idea she’d call you out, and if I did I would have stopped her.”
“I just don’t understand why.”
“I told her because we’re friends. I told her because she asked and I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal because everything is good now. I just told her the truth.”
The truth. It was something we promised each other moving forward. No more secrets.
“When we said no more secrets, I meant between us. You can keep secrets from anyone else you like!” I expected Luke to laugh, which was my intention as I tried to lighten the air between us before I had to leave him. I didn’t want to end our day like this.
But Luke didn’t laugh. I couldn’t even get him to smile. Instead, he cast his eyes down at the faded petunia and avoided looking at me.
He just told Sam the truth. Maybe what really bothered me wasn’t the fact that he told Sam, but what telling her meant. Luke confided in Sam, let her into our relationship in a way that made it feel less special, less ours.
But I believed him. I may not have eighteen years of history with Luke, but I did know him. He wouldn’t have told Sam if he knew it would hurt me.
Luke continued to stare at the faded floral pattern between us, his brows knitted together like he was struggling with what to say next.
“Okay,” I conceded, and Luke finally looked up at me.
“Please stay?” Luke pulled me toward him and brushed his lips against my neck, his warm breath softly blowing on my damp skin. “It’s your job, I get it. But you have the entire summer to prove you’re the model employee with the skills to swirl a large cone like nobody’s business. I’m just asking for a few more hours.”
Josie and Lucy were expecting me. Mr. Holden was expecting me. My mom would probably write an entire chapter in one of her books about being accountable for your responsibilities if she knew I was even thinking about skipping out on my first night of work.
Still, it was hard to believe I was that indispensable to an ice cream stand that had managed to survive the month of June without me.
“Okay, but I have to go back tonight.” I wiggled away from Luke and sat up so I could text Josie and Lucy. Catching the last ferry. See you at home tonight.
I waited for a reply, but there was none. That was a good sign, right? If they were pissed or the entire place was going to come crashing down in a pile of waffle cones and rainbow sprinkles because I wasn’t there to put cherries on top of sundaes, they would have texted back and I would have caught my ferry as planned. But there was none of that. I was good to go.
“Any way we can walk into town and look around?” I asked Luke.
“Only if you’re willing to have a five-minute walk take six times longer than it should.”
I gently moved Luke’s leg over and laid down beside him. The couch wasn’t attractive, but it was wide. “That’s okay. I think I like my other idea better.”
“Which idea was that?” Luke asked, sliding his arm under my neck and rolling me over onto my side so my chin rested against his chest.
No secrets, that’s what we’d promised each other.
I ran my fingers along the waist of his shorts and pushed his T-shirt away, exposing the tanned skin of his stomach. “The one where it’s just the two of us here alone.”
Long-Distance Relationship Tip #14:
Make good-byes short and sweet.
It sounds simple, right?
Until you’re sobbing and clinging to his leg while strangers
are giving you dirty looks and preparing to call 911.
I’d texted Josie and Lucy from the terminal to let them know my ferry would arrive right around the time they got off work. I hadn’t planned on it taking me almost twenty minutes to finally find a cab in Woods Hole, which is why when it finally dropped me off at the Holdens’, all the windows were dark and the house was silent.
For a minute, I almost wondered if Josie and Lucy had gone
out after work, but then I remembered seeing Josie’s car was in the driveway. A noise down the hallway made me think they had waited up for me, but as I followed the only light in the house to the kitchen, I didn’t find my friends—just a tall figure standing in front of an open refrigerator. “Mr. Holden?”
Josie’s dad turned around to face me, a carton of milk in one hand and a bowl of strawberries in the other.
“Emily.” It wasn’t the most welcoming greeting. He nodded toward the kitchen table, where a box of Mini-Wheats sat beside an empty bowl. “Take a seat.”
I did as he asked, even though it was almost midnight and I wasn’t exactly in the mood for breakfast. From the look on Mr. Holden’s face, I had the feeling he wasn’t inviting me to join him for a meal.
“I have to say, I didn’t expect this from you of all people.” Mr. Holden came over and sat down across from me at the table. “I mean, Josie, sure, Lucy, maybe, but not you, Emily.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Holden. I promise I’ll be ready for work tomorrow right on time, even earlier if you want,” I offered, hoping he’d see that this was a one-time thing and not an ongoing employment habit.
“You know I like you, Emily, but if I let you slide on this, what message does that send to the rest of the staff?” He held the carton of milk in the air mid-pour, as if pondering the answer to his own question.
“That you’re understanding?” I tried, but it was already obvious he had come to his own conclusion.
“I’m sorry, Emily. You know I don’t want to do this, but I don’t really see any other choice.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
He poured the milk into his bowl before continuing, and I hoped he was just going to cut my hours for a few weeks or make me work the day shifts. “I’m saying you’re fired.”
“Seriously?” I stammered. “You’re firing me?”
“I guess I am, but you know what else I’m doing?” he asked, and all I could think was ruining my summer, helping me go broke, and giving my parents an excuse to make me go home?
But instead of letting Mr. Holden see that I was on the verge of freaking out, I decided to let him see me as the poised, mature person I wanted him to think was sitting in front of him. Someone worth giving a second chance.