The inside of Clyde’s is nothing to write home about, but the yard out back has always been our happy place on warm summer nights, at least since we all turned twenty-one and could come here together. There’s a bar in one corner, where locals camp out in their usual spots, and picnic tables dotted all around, where tourists sip from plastic cups. A huge tree grows in the center of it all, lights strung into the branches above. Signs from old businesses line the walls of the neighboring buildings. Barry’s Boat Rentals boasting its opening in 1979. The Salty Dog advertising breakfast that hasn’t been served in fifteen years. A faded maroon sign promotes a business called Shear Sisters that doesn’t seem to be a salon but rather a tree-trimming service, maybe the very one that took care of the behemoth that stretches above our picnic table.
Being here again feels out of time, like I’m a slightly different version of myself that I seemed to have lost and am now finding my way back to.
From a stage set up at one end of the yard, a twentysomething guy in striped overalls is crooning out covers on his acoustic guitar,a drum track behind him, everything from Tom Petty to Taylor Swift.
“Shots!” Stevie shouts to the rest of the red team, who will be footing the bill tonight, her fist in the air. As the lead guitarist and Oliver pop up at the other end of the table and head to the bar to order, she leans toward me. “Is Clyde going to cebelrate—celerate—” She screws up her face, thinking hard.
“Celebrate?” I offer.
She snaps her fingers and points at me. Turns out she was the main participant of her drinking game.
“Is Clyde going tocelebratewith us?” She pronounces the word with enormous concentration.
“If we can track him down,” I say, glancing over my shoulder as if to search for the eponymous—and likely deceased—original owner of the place. We’ve never met Clyde, but he’s something of a legend in town.
Stevie crashes into me, squishing her cheek against my shoulder. “I love you,” she coos. Stevie is an affectionate drunk, and this place seems to amplify it in her, the way it makes all of us feel more carefree. “You’re my favorite sister.”
“You’remine.” I tuck a lock of brown hair behind her ear as she smiles up at me, this beautiful bride-to-be. She and Leo are perfect for each other, but it hits me now how much I’ve missed being able to walk into her room and curl up in her bed, or decorating for holidays together, that we may be doing even less of that in the future, and I haven’t treated these last vestiges of our childhood with the sacredness they deserve. While Stevie told me she understood when I couldn’t make her engagement party, or Leo’s shows, I should have tried harder to be there during these important moments in her life.
Oliver returns with a tray of shots the color of Pepto-Bismol. I’ve been taking it easy tonight, nursing a margarita all through dinner while I emceed the game, so the shot doesn’t go down quite as easily as it seems to for everyone else.Except Ren, apparently. At the other end of the table, he grimaces.
“Dance!” Stevie says after she tosses back a second shot, having resorted to communicating in single, easily pronounceable words for the rest of the night. A chorus of cheers goes up around the table.
The line at the outdoor bar is long, so as our table heads toward the dance floor, I weave my way inside to order a beer, desperate to wash away the sickly taste of the shot still on my tongue. On my way back out, the ancient jukebox in the corner catches my eye and I wander over, idly flipping through the records.
“Diet Bob Dylan not doing it for you?”
Ren’s presence is so familiar I’m surprised I didn’t notice him approach.
I glance up at him, his hair mussed from him dragging a hand through it. He leans an arm on the jukebox as I keep flipping. “Not a G&T girl anymore?”
“No, I am,” I say quickly. I squeeze the cool beer bottle tighter, reach out to tap a toe against his. “I’ve just been waiting for when you can make me one again.” In all honesty, it’s still my usual order, but Ren will forever make my favorite version.
“Or it’s probably not best to mix margaritasandgin with whatever’s in those pink shots.” His knuckles tap against the top of the jukebox.
“No.” I shake my head. “Just left my best bartender back in Portland and a gin and tonic has never been the same.”
“If you say so,” Ren says as I raise the beer to my mouth. He keeps an eye on the bottle, like one Modelo is so damning.
“I haven’t changedthatmuch in two years,” I say.
“Two and a half,” Ren says.
My hand stills as I’m raising the bottle to my lips again. I’d said it casually, tossed out in the name of seeming like the six extra months aren’tthatimportant,when really, they’re scratched on the inside of my brain like tally marks. “What?”
“Two and a half years,” Ren says, eyes suddenly, deeply focused on me. “Or, if you want to bereallyspecific, thirty-one months, one week, five days, and roughly—what, twenty-one hours?”
For a second, I feel a little off-balance, like I’m back in the kayak.
“I’ve missed you, Joni,” he says quietly.
On the list of things I’ve wanted to hear from Ren, this is near the top. Some acknowledgment that the time we spent without each other was worse than however complicated it would have been to remain in each other’s lives. His admission buoys and scares me in equal measure, the implications too much to think through in this setting, and with his body so close to mine.I’ve missed you too, I want to say. My brain is repeating it, but the words don’t come out.Say it, say it, say it, I think, but I’m stuck on the way Ren’s mouth moved around the words.
I look up at him, warmth thrumming between us as his expression shifts into something almost hopeful. “I’ve missed you,” I tell him, even as I think that maybe I should lead us out of this territory into something less dangerous, where we aren’t making tipsy confessions, where the years lost between us aren’t laid bare.
“Hey!” We both turn at the voice shouting from the now-open back door. Sasha leans inside, glaring at us. “What the hell are you two doing in here? Get your asses onto the dance floor!”
Ren looks back at me once she’s disappeared. He holds out his hand. “Shall we?”
