then
I spend the entire year waiting for summer. Not the whole of it, but its return. The moments just before it actually begins on a calendar, when you’re already calling it summer, when people are already on patios and at markets and kids are out of school. I wait for the edge between the pleasantly warm days of late spring and the heat of July, when there is nothing but a seemingly endless stretch of days ahead of you.
I used to be waiting for a trip: a group of people, an A-frame cottage with creaky floors and the rush of salt air through open windows. But even with that all gone, I still find myself waiting for that moment. Some shift in the air that starts in April and lasts through the solstice in June that signifies something turning over, starting fresh. Not fully realized yet, but getting there, waking up.
I wasn’t always this way. I used to be someone who vowed that I’d never live for weekends, vacations, summers. But the habit rooted in me ten years ago. Checking off days on a calendar, marking moments by how much closer they were to summer coming back.
And it all started at a party I wasn’t even supposed to go to.
one
Spring
Ten Years Ago
It was unusual for me to go to a party without anyone else in tow, and by “anyone else” I mean the five of us—me, Laurel, Gabe, Davi, and Zoey. But it was the last Friday of spring break and Laurel was out with a girl from one of her marketing classes after she’d decided to ghost the guy she’d been seeing from her econ class last week, Gabe and Zoey weren’t back from their trip to Barbados with her parents until Sunday, and Davi had one of those infuriating spring colds, made all the worse by the fact that we only had so many weekends like this left between us and graduation.
But there was a call from a classmate, and springtime California air as we walked the few blocks to the house where she knew about a party. Music and drinks in the fridge and no real concept of a before or a during or an after for any of us, and then a cheer going up at the front door for someone arriving. Golden-brown hair and flashing eyes and a case of beer hoisted in the air. A second beer in the kitchen while I laughed along with everyone else, and a screen door closing behind me as I stepped onto the quiet back deck to cut through the alley and head home.
“Got to be a record,” said a voice from behind me. I turned. The guy everyone had been so happy to see earlier leaned against the railing, a water bottle in hand. He was wearing a navy-blue sweater, the sleeves pushed up to above his elbows, the white of a T-shirt just peeking out underneath the neck of it.
“What?” I asked.
He glanced at a watch on his wrist. I didn’t know anyone who wore an actual watch at that point, and this one looked well loved, a leather band that had been worn by someone before him. “Ten thirty,” he said. “Sorry the party disappointed you.”
“This is your party?” I asked, pointing back at the screen door, a rectangle of yellow in the dark, voices and a song that Laurel turned up every time it came on the radio spilling out of it.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. A lock of hair fell across his forehead, and he pushed it back. I didn’t know it was a restless habit then, that his hair wasn’t pushed back by design, but by anxious necessity. “I’m just friends with the guys who live here.”
“You keep them in beer,” I said, settling against the wall opposite him. The light from the kitchen fell across his face just in time for me to see a smile tug one side of his mouth up. “Everyone was certainly happy to see you earlier.”
“I think if you show up to any party with a case of beer on one shoulder people will be happy to see you.”
“Was it on one shoulder?” I asked, pretending to think. “From what I recall, it was over your head.”
“Youwerepaying attention,” he said, that smile stretching.
“You’re the Lloyd Dobler of beer.”
“Wasn’t Lloyd the key master inSay Anything?” he asked,crossing his arms over his chest. “You know, holds on to everyone’s keys, makes sure they’re sober before they drive?”
I nodded at his water. “If that’s all you’re drinking, you could be key master if you wanted.”
He glanced at the bottle, something flitting across his face before he looked back at me. “I try to follow the water-between-drinks rule,” he said. “Not big on being drunk.”
“Fair.”
He shifted then, like something had occurred to him, and held out his hand. “I’m Everett,” he said. “Bridges.”
“First and last name,” I said without taking his hand.
“Something wrong with that?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Everett Bridges. Sounds like you’re going to be an actor or a writer or something. Am I close?”
He exhaled a small wry laugh. “Something like that.”
“Sutton,” I said, finally taking his hand. We didn’t exactly shake them, just kind of held them there, suspended. I realized I was waiting for him to ask me my last name, probably so I could say something likenow that’s more information than I wanted to give you tonight, but he didn’t. He just looked at me until the warmth of his palm started to crawl up my arm and I quickly said, “Hale,” and dropped his hand.
