Sixteenth Summer (16 page)

“Then what’s your excuse?” Caroline said to me. “Didn’t I see you gnawing on a big, juicy rib earlier?”

“I was
not
gnawing,” I protested, giving Will a shifty glance. “I was … nibbling.”

“Oh yeah,” she replied. “You always drip barbecue sauce down your chin when you ‘nibble.’”

I gasped in horror until Caroline leaned across me and said to Will, “I’m kidding, of course. Our Anna is the picture of manners and decorum.”

“Well, let’s not go too far,” I said while Will cracked up.

But before the quipping could continue, Sam hunched over his battered black guitar and started tuning it.

Twang, twang, twaaaaang
.

The endless string-plucking, combined with a squeal of feedback from the bass player’s mic, made for some awkward squirming in the audience.

Some of the guys started hooting, “Sam-MEH!” Sam waved them off.

I laughed, but Caroline just huffed and shifted from foot to foot, taking agitated slurps of her cider.

“I
told
him to tune up during the mayor’s boring set,” she muttered.

“I liked that music,” I protested, taking a tiny sidestep closer to Will.

“You
did
?” Caroline squawked. She pursed her lips and shot me a cynical squint. Her eyes swung from my red cheeks to Will. When I followed her glance, I saw that
he
was gazing at me.

And when I looked back at Caroline, I saw a quick succession of emotions flash across her round, oh-so-readable face—recognition, amusement, and a
maze
ment. Then she glanced at Sam and I saw one more emotion flash across her face—wistfulness.

Which was puzzling to me. Were Caroline and Sam already such a fusty, old couple that it made her nostalgic to look at shiny, new Will-and-me?

Before I had a moment to think about this, a swell of music jolted all thoughts from my head. Undertoad had launched into one of their edgy, throbbing anthems of angst. Most of Undertoad’s songs were self-mocking meditations on being awkward, adolescent, and loveless. I realized now that Sam had probably written many of them while he was pining for Caroline.

She surely knew that too, because her twisty mouth softened as she watched Sam thrash at his guitar strings, his brow crunched up with the effort of singing:

“Then there was your voice

“Like a windup tin toy

“Like the sweetest nails on a chalkboard

“That I ever heard.”

I threw back my head and laughed.

“I’ve heard Sam play this song a hundred times,” I yelled in Caroline’s ear over the peppery drumbeats. “How did we never realize it was about you?!”

Caroline gave a wan smile and shrugged.

“The guy knows how to make a romantic gesture, that’s for sure,” she yelled back at me. But instead of affectionate, her voice was hard, even a little bitter.

I’d been shimmying my hips, dancing to the music, but at that comment, I stopped.

“Caroline?” I said, turning toward her. “What’s
wrong
?”

She shrugged again and waved me off.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just being moody. At least that’s what
Sam
says.”

For the first time since they’d gotten together, Sam’s name didn’t lilt in her voice, like its own little song. Instead, it sounded off-key. And frankly, a little pissed off.

“C’mon,” I said, hooking my arm through Caroline’s. I began to pull her away. “Let’s talk.”

Even as I said it, I felt a pang at the prospect of leaving Will’s side. My left arm felt a little cold after being pressed up against his right one.

But then Caroline shook her head and planted her feet.

“No,” she said. “It’s nothing. Besides, Sam’ll unravel if he doesn’t see me listening to the whole set. Prepping for this party was, like, all he did this week.”

She glanced at Will’s arm, which was making its way around my waist again, and her mouth got a little twisty. But she didn’t say anything. She just returned her gaze to Sam and the band.

I craned my neck to try to meet her eyes, but Caroline was dancing vaguely, staring at the porch/stage. Had she detected my reluctance? That was the problem with friends who knew you as intimately as anyone in your family did. They could read your every gesture. It was a blessing and a curse.

I wondered if that was part of Will’s appeal. His mystery. All the things I still
didn’t
know about him—but wanted to find out.

Of course, I realized as I looked at Caroline’s stony profile, you never knew
anybody
completely.

Not even yourself.

But at that moment, I was feeling anything but introspective. My world was simple. I was all about dancing on the smooth, flagstone patio in my bare feet. And feeling Undertoad’s music thrum through my whole body. And hanging out with my boyfriend and my best friend.

Even the sight of my mom—absentmindedly hugging Kat to her waist as she chatted with Mayor Dunlap in the side yard—warmed me from the inside out tonight.

I closed my eyes and lifted my arms over my head as I danced, enjoying the small symphony of all these sensations.

Then I stumbled into Will. (Dancing with your eyes closed is not as easy as it looks.) He put his arm around my shoulders to steady me—and kept it there. I cuddled into the crook beneath his arm, feeling happily incredulous.

Was this really me? Was I half of a joined-at-the-hip couple?

Happy couples had always felt to me like the shoobees’ glamorous vacation homes. They were all around me yet untouchable. But now there I was—on the inside of this mysterious phenomenon. Somehow it had been as easy as turning a doorknob.

Undertoad’s set was six songs long. I could tell by Will’s raised eyebrows and the intent way he was taking in the show that he was impressed by the music.

And when Sam brusquely introduced the final song by saying, “This is for Caroline,” I could tell Will was impressed with
Sam
. I turned to Caroline to get her reaction and was surprised to see that she’d slipped away.

She must be at the front of the crowd
, I thought with a smile.
Whatever tension was simmering between my friends, I was sure it would be smoothed over by Sam’s dedication.

I melted back into Will for the last song. He moved me in front of him and wrapped his arms around me, compelling me to lean back against him. It felt as good as floating on my back in the ocean.

I could have stood that way for a
long
time, but too quickly Sam ground out the last chord. And then a voice in the crowd shouted out, “It’s almost time, y’all!”

For fireworks of course. I glanced up at the sky, surprised to see that it had gone completely dark already. Beyond the shimmer of the white lights strung over the yard, the night looked like black satin.

“Whoops!” I gasped. I grabbed Will’s hand (since it was still conveniently located on my shoulder). “We haven’t gotten our ice cream yet!”

“I can’t do it,” Will mock groaned. “I’m so full.”

“Will,” I scoffed as I dragged him around the house to the ice cream case on the screened porch. “This is a Patrick party. You
can’t
skip the ice cream.”

My mom had gone simple this year and made a frothy but impossibly rich peach cinnamon custard. It was velvety, but with a sneaky, peachy punch. I reminded myself to compliment my mom on the flavor later. It was as elegant as Figgy Pudding was, well,
not
.

Once Will and I had loaded up two cups with ice cream, I ducked into the house and emerged with a beach blanket.

We hurried with all the other guests to the field behind
the house. People laughed as they tripped through the weedy yard.

We tiptoed around the pig pit, where orange-black embers still glowed in a bed of salt-and-pepper ash. Then we circled around the blueberry bushes. I grabbed a few early berries from one of them and plunked them on top of Will’s ice cream.

“Blueberry and peach go perfectly together,” I said.

Will grinned and took a big bite as I led him to a spot in the center of the field. All around us were the shadowy shapes of other couples cuddled up together, kids spinning under the stars, and the up-pointed feet of people who’d already flopped on their backs to watch the show. There was an electric murmur in the air.

I lowered myself to my knees on our blanket. My hand was on my ice cream spoon, but I didn’t really feel like eating any more of it. For the first time that night, Will and I were invisible to all the other party guests. We could be together without all those eyes on us.

I could barely see Will’s face in the darkness of the field. (That’s what made it so perfect for fireworks-gazing.) I put my dessert down at the edge of the blanket and turned, just slightly, toward him.

He must have been waiting for this moment too, because suddenly I felt his palms—cool and slightly damp from his ice cream cup—on my cheeks. He leaned in and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t wait to feel his lips on mine.

But then—I didn’t. Confused and a little embarrassed, I
opened my eyes. Will was staring at me, looking serious. I felt a confused catch in my throat.

“Anna,” he said, his voice a rumbly whisper. “This is the best night
ever
.”

I laughed, because of course I’d been thinking that ever since the first boiled peanut. Then Will silenced my laugh with an incredible, romantic kiss.

After a few minutes of kissing, things started to feel serious again. Will’s hands warmed up on the bare skin above the back of my halter dress. He pulled me closer and closer to him. With each kiss, I felt more and more like I was melting into him, like I never wanted to stop.

I gently pushed Will away for a moment so I could catch my breath. And that was when, off in the direction of the beach, we heard a dull thud.

Then
everyone
was catching their breath, waiting, waiting for—

Boom!

Our group cheered as the first firecracker exploded over the water. It was far away from us, but still dazzling, a bright blue starburst tendrilling out in every direction.

Will gave me one more quick kiss before we settled onto our backs to watch. I turned on my side and rested my head on Will’s upper arm. The soles of my bare feet just touched the tops of his.

I’d watched this exact same firework display from this exact spot my entire life. Every few years the Beach Club boosters added a few new dazzlers to the mix—twisty sizzlers, explosions in the shapes of hearts, or double pows from one rocket. Mostly, though, the show felt very familiar.

But watching it with Will made every firework feel new—louder and more vivid and definitely more exciting. I let the big bangs and colored lights envelop me. I succumbed to each one the way you melt into your favorite song played really, really loud.

The fireworks started coming faster and bigger. It crossed my mind, for a fleeting moment, that this show might feel piddly and small-town to Will. I’d seen Times Square on TV on New Year’s Eve. I could only imagine how vast and sparkly the Fourth of July fireworks over Manhattan were.

But as the show got more intense, Will squeezed my arm. He even hooted along with some of the other party guests at some particularly big
pow
s. So I squashed the insecurity as easily as I would a slow-moving mosquito.

Will wasn’t
in
New York. He was here with me. And he was making it clear that there was nowhere else he wanted to be. I was as confident of that as I was of the annual rise and fall of Figgy Pudding.

Until something happened that changed everything.

A few blankets in front of us, a cell phone bleeped, then flickered open in someone’s shadowy hand. I blinked as I realized that the face reflected in the phone’s silvery glow was Will’s brother, Owen.

“Hey, baby!” he said. Clearly his girlfriend was calling. “Aw, I miss you, too. Happy Fourth of July. So you’re with the whole crowd? Ash and Ethan too? And Josh.
And
Mo? I’m jealous! Although, I gotta say, this is quite the scene here. You should visit!”

He paused and chortled at something his girlfriend said.

“Well, you won’t have to wait long,” he said into the phone. “I’ll be back in, what? Eight weeks? That’s nothing! Oh, I think the finale’s about to start. Better go, babe.”

Another pause, then Owen said, “The fireworks? Naw, they’re nothing like that. But they’re cute!”

Clearly I’d been right. Our fireworks were “cute.” Great.

Owen snapped the phone closed and settled back onto his elbows, probably letting the brief phone chat drift from his mind as easily as firecracker smoke dissipating into the breeze.

But I felt a chill wash over me, as startling and painful as an ice cream headache.

If Owen was heading back home in eight weeks, so was Will.

Of course, I’d always known this. Will was a summer guy; an out of towner, if not quite a shoobee. His Dune Island stopwatch had begun ticking the moment he’d arrived.

But somehow I’d forgotten this. Because in June, as the days are just starting to stretch themselves out and the tomato plants are still crisp-leafed and runty, the idea of September seems like just that. An idea, as remote and hazy as a dream.

But now we were just a week shy of mid-July. Suddenly the summer felt to me like one of those log flume rides at an amusement park. You skim along a pleasantly lazy channel, until you land on a conveyer belt inching you upward. With every crank of the belt you grow more breathless, more excited, and then—you thunder downward, and with a cold splash of water to the face, it’s all over.

I felt myself stiffen. Just a moment ago I’d been so pleasantly aware of all the points where my body and Will’s were joined. Our
feet were tangled up, my knees touched the side of his leg, my arm was slung across his chest, and my cheek rested on his shoulder.

But now I was painfully conscious of all the points where we were separated. The night air—damp and coolly redolent of pollen and grass—seemed to whoosh between us, making unpleasant prickles on the backs of my legs and neck.

I continued to stare at the fireworks, but now I found myself focusing less on the sizzles and lights, and more on the clouds of gunpowder that lingered in the air afterward, black and acrid.