“Thanks for reminding me.”
“You’ll be fine.”
The front door opened. Sarah stood there, lamb in tow, waiting for Diana.
“I wish I could say the same for you,” Summer said with a smile.
Summer climbed into the backseat. Esme’s arm was draped around Austin’s neck.
“Hi,” Summer said.
“Hi,” Austin said.
“Hey,” Esme said. She planted a kiss on Austin’s neck, leaving a lipstick shadow.
“You smell good,” Austin said.
“Thanks,” Summer said. Unfortunately, she said it at the same time Esme did.
Well, duh, Summer chided herself. He wasn’t talking to you. You could smell like fresh dog poop on the bottom of a sandal and it wouldn’t matter to Austin. Unless you got it on his carpeting.
“Es can’t come with us,” Austin said, looking into the rearview mirror. “We’re dropping her off.”
“Work,” Esme explained.
“Oh. That’s too bad,” Summer said, sounding not even remotely sincere to her own ears.
Austin pulled out of the drive and hooked up his iPod. It emitted a sinewy, howling sort of sound underscored by loud thumps. Summer wondered what was wrong with the speakers.
“You like Popping Zits?” Esme inquired.
Summer’s hand flew to her chin. Why hadn’t she used more Clearasil?
“The music,” Esme clarified.
“Oh.” Summer felt her cheeks heat, no doubt further highlighting her less-than-perfect complexion. “I’ve never heard of them.”
“They’re big in clubs around here.”
Summer nodded sagely. “The name rings a bell. I haven’t been doing a lot of, you know, nightlife. School’s totally dominated my life this semester.”
“Tell me about it. I thought undergrad life was bad, but grad school’s really a killer.”
“You’re in grad school?”
“Biochem.”
Austin nudged her. “For now, at least.”
“Austin thinks I should chuck it all and turn to a life of poetry.”
“She’s a brilliant writer,” Austin said.
Summer stared out the open window. Austin had never called her brilliant. Come to think of it, no one had ever called her brilliant.
“How old are you, Esme?” Summer asked, holding her windblown hair back with one hand.
“Twenty.”
“And you’re in grad school?”
She shrugged. “I skipped some grades.”
“Oh,” Summer said. Was that hissing noise coming from the speakers, or was that just the sound of her ego slowly deflating?
Austin drove onto the FCU campus, the college Marquez and Diana attended, and parked next to a small red brick building.
Esme turned to smile at Summer. “Well, duty calls.” She pulled Austin to her, fingers twined in his hair, and kissed him. Not a quick good-bye-and-see-you-soon kiss. This was on par with any backseat all-out makeout kiss Summer had ever engaged in. It went on and on and way too on.
Summer opened her notebook, eyes averted. Where was a barf bag when you needed one? She hadn’t felt this awkward since Marcie Barrett’s eleventh-grade makeout party in her pine-paneled rec room, when Summer had been paired with George “the Droolmeister” Gurtz.
She stared at a blank page in her notebook until she heard the door open. Austin and Esme were just starting to disentangle. Austin’s cheeks were flushed.
Summer made a point of staring at her fingernails, convincing herself that she didn’t care about Austin’s being with another girl. That was fine, that was the deal. But she didn’t have to have a front-row seat to one of their tongue-diving exhibitions, did she?
Esme grabbed her purse and climbed out of the car. “Call me,” she said. She mouthed the words “Love you.”
Austin turned to the backseat. His eyes were a little glazed. He had a smear of red lipstick on the corner of his mouth. Summer decided not to tell him.
He smiled sheepishly.
She took a deep breath. “I’d give it a nine-point-five,” she commented coolly.
“What?”
“The kiss. Average technique, but you get points for the high degree of difficulty. What with having an audience and all.” She was pleased with the casual tone of her voice.
“Come on up,” he said. “You’re not going to sit back there the whole trip, are you?”
“I’m allowed in the makeout seat? Would you mind wiping up the saliva first?”
Austin rolled his eyes. “Sorry. Esme is a little, um, demonstrative.”
Summer moved to the front seat. “What’s Esme’s job?” she asked.
“She’s a research assistant. Helping this Ph.D.—something about developing proteins that will keep cancer cells from growing.”
Of course. “Back when I worked at the Crab ’n’ Conch, I developed a way to pass out lobster bibs and refill iced teas at the same time.”
Austin looked over at her. His eyes seemed to clear. He grinned. “I’ve missed you, Summer,” he said softly.
A shrill whistle pierced the air. Esme poked her head out of the second-floor window. “Have fun!” she called.
Austin honked.
Summer gave a vague wave. She’d always wanted to whistle like that, two fingers in her mouth, shrill, attention-getting noise.
“She’s something,” Austin said under his breath as he backed up the car.
Summer nodded, picking too hard at a hangnail on her thumb. “She’s something, all right.”
6
Survival of the Fittest
Austin lay in a hammock, eyes closed, on the wide back porch of his great-uncle’s town house. Summer’s laughter floated through the screen door. She and Harris really seemed to have hit it off. She’d been interviewing him for almost two straight hours.
It occurred to Austin that this was the first real time he’d spent with her since August. He’d run into her once or twice since then. They’d talked for a few minutes at Blythe’s party, but he’d been there with Esme.
Not that this was a date, really. Austin knew nothing would come of it. Didn’t want anything to come of it They’d broken up, and that was that.
Broken up. He hated that phrase. It conjured up images of dishes thrown in fury, feelings in a jumble of puzzle pieces that could never be reassembled.
And it hadn’t been like that at all. He’d been so cool that day she’d ended it.
She needed time to figure out who she was, she’d said. To be Summer alone, not Summer part of a couple, part of Austin-and-Summer. She needed to concentrate all her energy on college.
No problem, he’d said. He’d said, “I love you, Summer.” He’d made a joke of it: “I know you’ll come to your senses eventually.” He’d told her he could wait.
Only he hadn’t waited. He’d met Esme and tried not to look back.
Because waiting, he knew, would have been like promising Summer that he would be there for her forever. And he didn’t have forever anymore.
The screen door opened, and Summer slipped out. She was holding a glass of lemonade. The ice cubes clinked liked tiny bells.
“For you.” She handed it to him. Her soft cotton dress brushed his arm.
“Thanks.” He took a sip, set the lemonade on the floor, put his arms behind his head. “How’s it going?”
“Great. Harris is incredible. I just came out to see if you’re okay. I feel like I’m sort of hogging him. But Harris said you wouldn’t care because you’ve heard it all a million times before.”
Austin laughed. “I’m kind of enjoying just lying here, thinking profound thoughts.”
“Such as?”
“Actually, I was thinking about that day when you told me to get lost.”
Summer looked away. “I don’t think that’s what I said, Austin.”
“Okay, that you wanted to fly solo.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly what I said either.”
“Words to that effect, then.”
Silence fell. Austin rocked the hammock, one leg on the floor. Summer moved to the edge of the porch, leaving a touch of her perfume in her wake. She’d worn that perfume all summer. It made him think of vanilla, of sunshine, of kisses under the stars.
“It was a good thing,” Austin said. “I think you needed to be on your own. You’ve changed.”
She turned. “I have?”
“You’re calmer. More self-confident or something.”
She smiled. “Or something.”
She always smiled with her whole face—her eyes, her lips. It was the first thing he’d noticed about her. It was, come to think of it, probably the first think he’d loved about her.
“Well, I should get back. Harris said he’s got a photo album I can look at.”
“Thanks for the lemonade.”
Summer opened the screen door, then hesitated. “You know, I think what I said that day was that I needed to be by myself for a while. To figure out who I was and stuff.” She shrugged. “Just for the record.”
“I stand corrected.”
He watched her go, slipping away into the shadows. He’d tried so hard to hold on to her the past summer. She’d been trying to mend her relationship with Seth, the rightful heir. Seth was her first real boyfriend, and later her fiancé, and she had tried to work things out with him until even loyal, steadfast Summer could see it was time to call it quits.
And through it all, Austin had waited. He’d known she was in love with him. He’d known that if he just trusted in fate, she’d see they belonged together.
Fate, it had turned out, had an extremely warped sense of humor.
Still, maybe it was all for the best, his losing Summer. There were a lot of good reasons for them not to be together, actually. Reasons he never wanted to have to tell her.
And he had Esme now. Free-spirited Esme, who never needed to talk about the future. Esme, who read the New York Times every day and liked to swim in the nude and claimed to understand the poems he wrote.
All of which, it seemed, were about breaking up with complicated girls with amazing smiles.
Girls who wanted to fly solo.
“So, my lad,” Harris said as he and Austin walked the neighborhood later that day, “can I safely assume you’re aware that you are sporting a spot of lipstick on the corner of your mouth?”
Austin groaned. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Man, Summer could have said something.”
Harris stopped to observe a mockingbird in a nearby oak. Austin was used to such pauses and detours. His great-uncle couldn’t walk ten feet without stopping to examine a plant or watch a bird.
“I suppose I can also safely assume that said lipstick did not belong to the lovely young lady with whom I’ve been having such an interesting discussion today?”
Austin shook his head. Harris had a way of asking the bluntest questions while sounding as discreet as a British butler. It was a good thing Summer was safely out of earshot back at the house, putting her notes together.
Austin wondered if Harris had already asked her the same question. Probably. He wondered what her replay had been. Something sarcastic about Esme, maybe even with a hint of jealousy?
“Summer and I are just friends, Harris.”
“Shame, really. Such a charming girl.”
“Things didn’t … work out.”
Harris pointed to a spiny little plant clinging to the oak. “Bromeliads,” he said. “Such an evolutionary marvel, getting sustenance from air. Ingenious little plants. Survivors.”
He adjusted his straw hat and resumed his stride. Austin had to work to catch up. They were both tall, but Harris had a crisp, efficient way of moving—when he wasn’t dawdling over plants—that left Austin breathless. Amazing. The guy was in his seventies.
Harris looked over at Austin speculatively. “And how are you surviving?”
“If I could get sustenance from air too, I’d be all set,” Austin said. “Unfortunately, I’ve had to settle for a job as a waiter.”
“School?”
“I’m thinking about going back soon.” Austin cringed a little. It was no secret that his great-uncle, who’d spent his whole life teaching botany, was annoyed that Austin had quit college after only one semester.
“That’s good. Very good. Your father would have been pleased.”
Harris took another sudden detour, this time to retrieve a handful of Spanish moss that had fallen to the ground. He held the tangle of gray-green tendrils in his hand, apparently fascinated.
When he was younger, his great-uncle’s absorption with such things had mystified Austin. They were just plants, after all.
But the more he wroteor tried to write—poetry, the more Austin understood Harris’s obsession. Austin studied words, plain, everyday words, with the same intensity his great-uncle reserved for leaves and stems and berries.
“Another bromeliad, Spanish moss,” Harris said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. “See how thick the skin is? Tough and resilient to reduce water loss.” He shook his head. “Wonderful, how adaptable the natural world is. The circumstances can be quite dire, but survival is everything. Air plants adapted to tight living requirements by growing on trees.” He looked at Austin. “They didn’t fight their circumstances. They adapted to them. And the result, quite surprisingly, is such beauty.”
“Why do I feel some kind of plant parable coming on?” Austin asked. He’d meant it as a joke, but it had come out sounding sarcastic and annoyed.
Still holding the Spanish moss, Harris resumed his hearty pace. “I went to see your father a while ago,” he said. “It was a couple of weeks before he …” He paused, cleared his throat, then continued. “He was … not responsive. The Huntington’s was so advanced. I’d expected that, of course, but it still came as a shock.”
“The last time I went,” Austin said flatly, “he didn’t know who I was.” He said it without emotion, a fact that made him oddly proud. He knew his great-uncle was probably expecting him to break down, but Austin had gotten past all the self-pity and anger. He’d accepted things. It had been his dad’s sad genetic fate. And someday it would be Austin’s too. A disease that slowly robbed you of your ability to move and communicate. A disease that robbed you of your very soul.
They turned the corner, past too-perfect lawns and more pastel town house clones. Harris had moved to the Keys from New York after his wife of thirty-four years, Louise, had died. To Austin, Harris’s move here had never seemed quite right. In the old days, Harris and Louise had owned a big, rambling country home in chronic disrepair with a big, rambling country garden to match. When he was a kid, Austin would visit in the summer and come out of the garden covered with thistles and powdered with pollen from the wildflowers.
By contrast, this place was too sterile. But maybe after losing your wife and retiring from your job, sterile was just what you wanted. Maybe it was easier to be around things that didn’t stick to you and stain you.
This time it was Austin who paused. He picked up a rock, smooth as glass, and rubbed it in his palm. “I have it, Harris,” he said softly. “The gene. Dave and I both do.”
Harris took the rock from Austin, examined it, then tossed it with a great heave far down the road. “I feared as much,” he said. His lower lip trembled, but he tightened it into a firm line. “When I saw your mother at the hospital and asked how you and your brother were faring, there was something about her answer … it’s hard to put into words. Something in the way she tiptoed around your names, I suppose.”
Austin suddenly regretted telling the old man. What was the point? It was cruel, really. Harris would be long gone by the time Austin showed any symptoms of the disease. Up till now, he hadn’t told anyone except his mother and brother. Not even Summer, although he’d come close to telling her a thousand times.
“Don’t worry, Harris. By the time Dave and I start having problems, they’ll have a cure. Look at the amazing stuff
they’re doing with genetics. They’ve already found the gene that causes Huntington’s. It’s just a matter of time.”
Harris gave a terse nod. “You’re right, of course. That isn’t so much what’s troubling me. It’s the thought of you living your life with that ax hanging over your head. It’s the way it may change you.”
Austin shrugged. “We all have an ax over our heads when you get right down to it, right? I mean, face it. Nobody lives forever.”
“True enough. And yet I can’t help wondering if this is taking its toll.”
“Well, sure, I went through my drink-too-much-and-get-all-existential phase. But after a couple of weeks I got tired of dressing in black.”
Harris smiled a little. “And your quitting school?”
“That was more about Dad, about not knowing. And about me, I suppose. I was feeling lost. But I’m better now.”
“I see. And love?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you in love? With the red-lipstick girl, perhaps?” Harris paused. “Or perhaps with some other young lady whose acquaintance I’ve recently made?”
“You know, Harris, I could pry into your love life too.”
“That would be a very short conversation indeed,” Harris said with a rueful laugh.
They walked in silence for a while. Harris’s town house was in sight. The only way Austin could be sure it was his great-uncle’s was by checking the name on the mailbox.
Austin slowed his pace a little. “Summer and I … things didn’t work out, but it wasn’t because of my problem. The timing was all off. Just one of those things.”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“No. I wanted to. I started to a few times. But it didn’t seem fair. Actually, I’m sorry I told you.”
Harris stopped. He pulled Austin close in an awkward, fierce embrace.
Then, as quickly as he’d reached for him, Harris let Austin go. He walked over to a small elm tree and gently deposited the Spanish moss he’d been carrying onto a branch.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, turning to Austin. A lone tear rolled down his cheek. “You’re a survivor.”
7
Love at First Sight and Other Clichés
Sun-Kissed Christmas Page 4