The Summer Remains (7 page)

7

The next day my best friend Autumn stopped by after work, which I guess lifted my spirits a little.

“And speaking of Tyler, did you
see
his ex Michelle Braun’s wedding album?” she asked ten minutes into a rambling story about the latest guy she was trying to date. “That girl is
so
over the top. I mean, a dove release after your vows?
Really
? Ugh.”

“Yes, unfortunately my eyes were assaulted by that album the other day,” I told her as I flipped channels from the couch.

“Ugh. I swear, if that girl were any more low-rent, she’d be a spring break destination!”

I laughed as Autumn took another dramatic sip of her Diet Coke in an attempt to send her quip off into history with appropriate flair. Autumn was…interesting. She was about my age and was a year past her second round of chemo for an outrageously vicious, and early-striking, form of breast cancer. She was sort of in remission, but her doctors had been worried lately, and you know what that meant. We’d met at the hospital when she was first diagnosed and had clicked immediately. Even though her mouth sometimes moved faster than her brain, she was my best friend – one of my only friends, come to think of it, since adulthood seemed shrink my Circle of Friendship smaller and smaller every year – and I loved to meet up with her at Panera and listen to her bitch about life. Basically she was unsinkable, the cancer doing nothing to her famously buoyant personality, except perhaps make her sense of humor even more pointed. She was always going on about the latest gossip, but a lot of the time I felt like she was talking
at
me instead of
to
me. And this might sound mean, but she had a lunch lady body and wasn’t exactly as pretty as she thought she was, but that was sort of the point of Autumn in the first place: her delusions of grandeur were strangely endearing. (And I know – best friends named Summer and Autumn? That only happens in impossibly-twee YA novels with cupcakes on their covers, right?! But our seasonally-themed names were one of the first things that had drawn us together, and besides, her name wasn’t even really Autumn at all, but Atushmati or some other Indian name that had proved so unpronounceable to Americans that she’d had to Americanize it after moving over at age six.)

“And
why
does it seem like there’s a new wedding or baby announcement literally every time I check Facebook?” she asked, and I frowned. Bitching silently was one thing, but I was kind of annoyed that Autumn would talk about this to someone who was obviously nowhere near attaining marriage, either.

“Because we’re twenty-four and that’s the logical next step,” I told her. “To some people, at least.”

“Yeah,” she said vacantly, picking at her lilac nails. “I guess. But whatever, screw everyone and their dumb weddings. I wanna go to Key West.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m miserable here and everyone was just posting spring break selfies from the Keys and I’m dying of FOMO and I just really wanna go to Key West.”

“Comparison is the enemy of happiness,” I said, as I simultaneously wished I could take my own advice and stay the hell away from Oak Tree of Love girl’s profiles. “Stop measuring yourself against the world. And you can’t just run away somewhere to get away from yourself. If you go to Key West and sit on a beach with a pina colada in your hand, you’re just gonna be unhappy on a beach in Key West with a pina colada in your hand. That’s just relocating misery. Not to mention the whole cancer thing.”

She blinked and shook her head. “Whatever, Therapist Johnson. I’m sick of staring at a screen, watching strangers live the life I wanted to live. And anyway, I was-” she paused and leaned forward. “Wait. You’re distracted, and you’re acting all weird and stuff. Or, like, weirder than usual, at least. Are you hurting?”

I fidgeted with my arm and then pawed at my scar out of habit. I’d put myself on strict orders not to tell anyone about the seriousness of my diagnosis, meaning Autumn knew only that there was a surgery, and that there would be a long hospital stay involved. I hadn’t mentioned the mortality rate to
anyone
. After all, there was a chance I could survive, and freaking everyone out by telling them about the stakes involved would just be needlessly placing a burden on them, even though to be totally honest I found myself craving the attention at times. Sometimes the grosser parts of me almost wanted to draw people into dark rooms and confess my life-changing news and then soak up the sympathy and tears while they reacted. Growing up, I wasn’t the girl all the boys chased around the schoolyard, and eventually I formed some sick, parasitic relationship with sympathy, because sometimes it was the only kind of attention I could get. I guess that’s why I shunned all sympathy and emotion now – my disgust at my own attention-seeking ways had forced me to veer in the other direction, perhaps too forcefully.

“No, no,” I said. “I’m fine.”

She looked down at my chest region. “Um. I just noticed you’ve lost some weight. Or some
more
weight, I should say, you skinny bitch. Are you sure you’re fine?”

I wrapped my arms around myself. The truth was, I kind of
was
hurting, but I always hurt, so I’d learned to ignore it, and if not ignore it, then overlook it.

“Autumn, the whole ‘not being able to eat solid foods’ thing doesn’t really lend itself to morbid obesity,” I said, and she blinked again.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, I just…oh my God,
Spark
!”

I jumped and hid my phone under my shirt. Oh,
shit
. Since I’d been reading and rereading Cooper’s messages all day, I guess she’d seen the app’s telltale red-and-white messaging bubbles on my screen.

“I can’t believe it!” she cried. “You’re one of
those
.”

“What’s wrong with Spark-ers?”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have one,” she scoffed. “I’ve just accepted the fact that you are better than me in every way, and I do not approve of you using a hookup app. The big sister in me wants to take you out back and spank you, actually.”

“But you’re younger than me,” I said.

“Uh, yeah, by like three months. Anyway, why did you get it?”

“I don’t know. And, actually, um…I kind of met up with a guy off it the other night – nothing sketchy,” I added after she threw me a look, deciding to just vomit it all out, “just for a drink, and we didn’t
do anything
, or whatever. We just talked. But he was really cute and nice and funny, and I think I kind of embarrassed myself at the end, and I don’t know how to fix it, or if I even
want
to fix it. Like, I’m not sure if I should let myself be with him.
Because of the stomach tube and stuff,”
I said quickly, to keep from tipping her off about the whole death thing.

“Oh, shut up,” she scoffed. “We have just as much of a right to get laid as anyone else out there, healthy or not. But no matter what you do, do
not
use a winky face.”

“Why not?” I asked, thinking of the winky emoji Cooper had sent me that night.

“Because a winky face is a universal sex invite, everyone knows that. You’d might as well say ‘Hey, I’m just lying in bed in some trashy lingerie, wanna stop by?’ Which is fine, obviously, but you don’t want to give it up too quickly. Personally, I wouldn’t have sex with him until your second hangout session.”

“
Second
?”

“Is that too long?”

“Ugh,” I sighed. “Never mind. Calm your tits, I haven’t even said anything to him yet.”

“Gross, don’t say ‘tits.’ And who is this boy, anyway?”

“Nobody special,” I lied. He was totally special, but for some reason I didn’t want to say his name out loud. He was
my
secret to creepily obsess over.

“Well just wait and see what happens. You’ve got nothing to lose, right?”

I looked away.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, Summer, I just, like…”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I fully understand that I am the most single person that ever single’d.”

“No, no, Spark is good for you! Because they don’t have to meet you right off the bat, and-”

She stopped again. This reminded me of another facet of Autumn, besides her perkiness: she also had some serious problems in the whole “accidentally being horribly offensive” department.

She walked up and gave me a hug. “I’m gonna stop while I’m behind,” she said quietly. “I know we face the same issues. We’re ‘sisters in sickness,’ to quote that annoying chaplain lady at the hospital, God bless her soul. But my foot is so far up my mouth, I’m choking on my knee. I’m taking my fat ass to the elliptical, or I’m gonna try to, at least. See ya later. Text me if you need any more advice.”

“I think any more of your ‘advice’ would make me end up pregnant and in a halfway house. But hold on. Before you leave, check the top shelf of my fridge.”

Autumn went into the kitchen and then came out with a trembling bottom lip, holding the Funfetti cake I’d made for her with the words RIP GRANDPA written in yellow icing on top.

“Summer,” she said. “You remembered.”

“Of course I remembered,” I told her, referring to the one-year anniversary of the death of her grandfather who’d basically raised her, since her parents hadn’t been able to emigrate from Sri Lanka with her right away. “I mean, you made such a production out of the funeral, it was hard
not
to remember it.”

“Seriously, Summer. You are such a good friend. You’re the best person I know and I don’t deserve you. I’d hug you if I didn’t have this cake in my arms. So go out and slut things up, babe. You deserve someone. You deserve
love
. And not to mention that you’ve always been the cute one out of this friendship, and I harbor a deep resentment towards you for it, so you’d might as well take advantage of that.”

“Whatever, stop being a weirdo. You know I like making cakes more than I like eating them. For obvious reasons,” I added with a giggle, which she mirrored.

“Okay, well, thanks, and don’t ask for a piece, because this cow is eating the whole thing by herself. Fuck marriage, I’m hungry.”

“Couldn’t if I wanted to!” I called after her, and at precisely the same moment as the door slammed behind Autumn, my phone pinged with a message that made me feel like I’d just been drenched in a bucket of ice water:

It’s Cooper. I know your secret

8

So, here’s the thing: as I mentioned before probably a hundred times, when you basically grew up in an ICU, where you’re woken up two or three days a week by the wailing of parents whose kid had just died, you learn to see the world for what it was, not for what you wanted it to be, or what you hoped it would become. This had served me quite well so far. I was logical. I was levelheaded. I could tell you everything there was to know about bedpans and IV drips and how to dress a stomach bandage.

Unfortunately this life had taught me nothing about how to text tall cute boys with messy hair and goofy smiles and muscular forearms and improbably good taste in music.

After I regained the ability to breathe, I huddled on the couch and wrote (and then rewrote) about ten different messages to Cooper with trembling fingers, scared shitless of what he knew, and how. What I was doing terrified me, sure, but I was sick of being scared – I felt like a coward or a weakling or a shut-in or a closeted Evangelical or anyone else who was ruled by fear. Autumn’s words –
you deserve someone
– had been ringing through my head for an hour, and I wanted to agree with her.

You do?
I finally asked, and by this point the sun was setting.

Indeed I do,
he said, and for a moment it felt like all the oxygen in the world had evaporated yet again.

You’ve been driving yourself crazy because you can’t stop thinking of me, and all you want is to see me again.

My relieved sigh was audible even to Socks, who glared at me for making a ruckus and then sneered his way off to find somewhere quieter.

Am I right?
he asked after I didn’t respond.

You may be right. You may be wrong. Some things are just better left unshared.

Meet me at the Ritz tonight, and tell me in person, then,
he said immediately, which was one of the nicer bars in town.

Why?
I asked as my whole body vibrated with something between panic and excitement.

Because it’s a beautiful night and I’m alive and I would like to be standing in a chilly bar next to you?

For a while I just sort of scared at the screen. I felt warm and funny and a little dizzy, like I’d just jumped off a roof and was falling through warm air. I really
had
to train myself to stop acting like such a moron with him, I told myself silently.

Too much?
he asked a moment later.

Oh, no, no,
I typed after I’d snapped out of it.
I was just caught off guard.

I’d love to,
I said, the word
unclimbable
ringing in my head as I typed,
but right now I’m busy :/

Sorry

Can we at least text then?
he responded.

Why?
I asked.

…Because I like talking to you?

Well, then
. Suddenly I remembered that my face was covered in tiny little hairs, because they all stood on end at the same time, giving me this weird feeling like I’d been kissed by a cold phantom wind.

“Who are you texting?” Shelly asked as she breezed into the kitchen, a bag of groceries in hand. “And what is that look on your face about?”

“Nothing,” I said after a pause that was a bit too long. “Autumn wants info on a guy who lives down the street. What’s for dinner?!”

So Cooper and I texted. And texted. And texted. We didn’t talk about much, just the usual stuff you have to get out of the way with someone you don’t really know: siblings, interests, how horrifically awkward it was that you’d met online, etc. Of course I would’ve already known all this if he’d had a Facebook to stalk, which he didn’t, which I kind of loved. His distance from the rest of my generation just made him even more attractive. He was twenty-five, had no siblings, and was still sort of vague on a lot of other things, just like he’d been on the first night. But I didn’t care. We mostly talked about me, actually, which was, like, really unusual and cool for some reason. I’d never had anyone besides hospital administrators ask me so many questions about myself, and I kinda loved it.

Wait,
I said half an hour into a conversation about the best bars in Jacksonville Beach (or Jax Beach, as the collection of local beach communities was called), not that I had much insight into the matter.
It’s one in the morning
. How had time gone by so quickly?
I have work at nine. I need to crash soon.

But I’d rather keep you up,
Cooper responded, making my whole body jump.

Enticing, but I’d rather not fall asleep at my desk tomorrow
, I said, trying to keep it cool.

Fine,
he typed.
If I must, let me bid you adieu. Goodnight, Summer.

Goodnight, Cooper.

I’m kinda glad I downloaded Spark,
he said next, and I smiled with everything in me and then threw my phone across my bed so I wouldn’t say anything else and betray my feelings, cutting him off before I could cut myself off. (After all, who would I be if I didn’t run from what drew me in?) I didn’t want to go to sleep – that meant there would be eight more hours until I could talk to him again – but I knew I had to, and so I put on one of Saviour’s more upbeat tracks (if that is even possible), called
Blood on the Dance Floor
, and hoped to quell the happy chaos in my head long enough to let Saviour’s crystal voice carry me into the oblivion:

I hate all these assholes and the feathers in their hair

Liquor in plastic cups, disco ball sparkles, but idiots are everywhere

Why does it seem like all I got to offer is this vacant stare

Ugh, I just can’t take me anywhere

But tonight I’m gonna dance ‘til there’s blood on the dance floor

Until I believe you don’t mean a thing to me anymore

And tonight I’m gonna dance ‘til there’s blood on the dance floor

Until I don’t hate you and me and my friends anymore

My father tells me tomorrow’s no guarantee

Be young and wild, baby, run free

But if this is all I have, this one ride

Then why’s it feel like my heart’s on ice?

So tonight I’m gonna dance ‘til there’s blood on the dance floor

Until I forget that you’re the one my pulse beats for

And tonight I’m gonna dance ‘til there’s blood on the dance floor

Cut me open, baby, I’m yours, don’t push me away anymore

(Blood on the dance floor)

~

Cooper texted me first the next morning, which was a huge relief, since I obviously didn’t want to do it myself and come off like some overeager psycho. I was distracted at work all afternoon, and he was deliciously to blame. I screen-shotted (is that even a word? Or is it screen-shat? Oh well) some Facebook pictures to him and we made fun of Oak Tree of Love girl, whom we’d both worked with in the past, and soon we agreed that her Public Displays of Matrimony were both unnecessary and embarrassing. After I got home and made some pork chops for Shelly and Chase, I retreated to my room and got deep into a very serious text war with Cooper over the merits of regular coffee vs. decaf (of course decaf
had
no merits, but he said regular made him too jumpy, so I indulged him in the debate) when suddenly the convo changed course:

Can I call you?
he asked.

Sure,
I typed with a feeling I’d only previously gotten after injecting champagne into my stomach tube last New Year’s Eve and feeling the little golden bubbles rise up into my broken esophagus.
Call away.

I smiled for the millionth time that day. Calling someone was creepy unless you scheduled it out beforehand; I knew that from work, and just from, like, being alive in the 21
st
century. But it was cute that he actually played by the rules. I
liked
following the rules sometimes, even if “the rules” themselves were kind of stupid and weird and archaic.

“Hello there,” he said when I answered. “How goes it?”

“Hmm. It’s going.”

“I would like to hear more about these goings-on, but in person, perhaps?”

I paused. “Are you asking me to hang out?”

“Oh, come on, did you really think I’d be content talking to you on the phone forever?” he asked. “I am, indeed, asking you to meet up. Or not so much asking as telling, actually. Come to the Ritz with me tonight, Summer.”

I got this happy/panicky feeling as soon as he said my name. As I picked at my cuticle I wondered when this butterfly-ish stuff would go away, and then I wondered if I wanted it to.

“That sounds quite demanding,” I said.

“I am nothing is not a demanding tyrant. Couldn’t you tell? No, seriously, come. I was meeting some friends, but they bailed on me.”

“So that’s it?” I asked, laughing. “I’m just a replacement hangout partner?”

He paused. I could hear that he was nervous. “It’s not just that. I don’t know, I kind of, like, enjoy talking to you, and I’d like to do it some more, I guess.”

I gave myself a chance to back out, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to: my whole chest suddenly filled up with this cool, breezy, giddy sensation that felt like letting go of something. “Okay. Why Ritz?” I asked, trying to hide the smile in my voice.

“…Because we live in a beach town in Florida and it’s almost summer and there’s nothing else to do?”

“Touché. I’m sorta busy now,” I said as I looked around my empty room, “but I can meet you there at, like, ten. Is that good?”

“My mind has been read. Can’t wait. But first, let’s make some ground rules.”

“Ground rules?”

“Yep. Did you not hear me say I was a tyrant? Let’s start with number one: no storming off this time. Sound like a plan?”

I laughed from the bottom of my stomach. “Okay. Tonight will be a storm-off-free zone. I promise. Unless you turn out to be a psycho criminal, or something.”

“Point taken. And number two: you must promise to actually let me in, instead of shutting me out again.”

I hesitated a little. Why did he even care? “That’s one’s negotiable,” I said. Although I had a PHD in Pushing People Away with a minor in Putting Walls Up, I told myself to think about it. “And besides,” I went on, “we’re just friends, so none of that matters. Any more diva demands?”

“Yes. When you forget about this ridiculous ‘just friends’ bullshit and inevitably become overwhelmed with physical desire for me and attempt to sexually molest me, I hereby vow not to tell your friends about it and embarrass you.”

“Okay, I’m hanging up now,” I said, even though I didn’t want to hang up at all. “See you soon, you diva.”

“Oh, and speaking of that, I actually have one other demand: wear a bathing suit under your clothes.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Just do it, please?”

“Fine,” I said. “I usually do that anyway in the summer, but not to go out. But whatever, Mr. Prima Donna. Only for you.”

When I got into the car a few minutes later I stopped to feed myself some milk. As I maneuvered around in the dark car, some of the liquid squirted all over my stomach (PS: “squirt” is such a gross word), and I had to find some wipes and clean myself, cursing under my breath all the while. I couldn’t hide the stomach tube forever – how was I going to tell Cooper about all this stuff without revealing the news about the big surgery? I mean, sure, my scar had told him that something had obviously gone wrong in Summer World, but how did I tell him about the rest? Everyone had baggage they inevitably had to lay out after a few dates: their parents were divorced, they’d gotten arrested for underage drinking at the beach when they were seventeen, they made a really weird sound whenever they yawned, etcetera. But my baggage was on another level. How did you say, “
Hey, Date. I was born without a working throat, and I have a tube sticking out of me, and I have a life-threatening surgery scheduled for the end of the summer
?”

And why did I even care in the first place? Usually I tried not to worry too much about my health, as I found worry to be a dreadfully useless emotion, the equivalent of drowning in a kiddie pool on a clear day. Either fix a situation, or accept the unfixable – that was my viewpoint. And I’d mostly accepted mine. Some girls got married, and I just got milk farts. And that was okay! Or it had been, at least, until this mental break of the past few days.