That Summer

by Michelle Flick

  I know immediately that something is wrong with Amber when I come into the house. It’s silent, and not the "she's in the kitchen doing something, for some background noise" type of silent.

  It’s silent and her car is in the driveway so she’s here somewhere, but apparently silent.

  “Amber?” I call out. She doesn’t respond and I look in our living room and the kitchen.

  “Amber?” I call a little louder. I call it up the stairs. “Amber?”

  I notice that the sliding glass door is open and I head to our deck. She’s sitting there, with her feet up on the rails, staring out into the woods that surround our house.

  “Hey,” I say when I am on the deck.

  “Hi,” she responds, looking at me, with sadness in her eyes.

  “I was calling for you.”

  “Were you now?” she asks.

  “Everything okay?” I ask, already knowing the answer to this question. But she obviously has something on her mind and this question will let her get it off her chest.

  “I heard today that the other morning when you left early, you went over to Remmington Crawford’s.”

  “We fixed her steps,” I say as nonchalantly as I can.

  She doesn’t look like she believes me. I really thought this wasn’t going to be an issue for us, Remy’s return. But I clearly am not staying away and Amber is clearly watching to see what I do. I don’t want this to be an issue for us. I say this to myself but wonder how true of a statement it is.

  “She paid us. You want the receipt.” I flinch inwardly for lying. It was right, but it would spare her the thought I would leave our bed to go take care of another woman. Lying seems a little better. I also don’t need to add I was at Joe’s where she was bartending.

  “I see the way you look at her,” Amber says flatly.

  “I don’t look at her in any way,” I counter, annoyed the conversation has taken this turn.

  “You’ve never looked at me that way. Not once in three years.” I can hear the frustration rising in her voice.

  “Amber, I don’t know where you got that, but it’s in your head.” She flinches when I say that. I don’t mean to make her sound like she’s crazy and I wonder if it’s true.

  “It’s not. You’re happy she’s back. You go over and fix her steps at seven in the morning?” Her voice is rising and I’m thankful we don’t have neighbors. “And you just expect me to sit here and wait for you to come home. I’ve been waiting three years for you to wake up and see I’m right here. I’m the right one for you to spend your future with.”

  “Amber, we are spending the future together.”

  “Jack, you know what I mean. I want to get married. I want to have a family. I want that with you. And you, I’m afraid, have never wanted that. You‘ve been waiting all this time for her to come back, wasting my time, leading me on, so you can be with her.”

  “I haven’t been unfaithful to you. Ever,” I say trying to sound as sincere as I can.

  “Maybe not in the physical sense. But I know, Jack. I know.”

  “What do you want from me, Amber?”

  “I want you to stay away from her. I want you to no longer go to Joe’s. I don’t want you helping her or fixing anything at her house.”

  “Fine, we will lose the business she will give us. Because that’s exactly what my dad’s company needs. To tell people no, right?”

  “No, your dad doesn’t have to say no, you just don’t have to go.”

  “Fine. And I’m just supposed to stop going to Joe’s, a place you and I both go. A place we both have been to while Remy’s been there?”

  “Yes, you do! If I’m worth it, you’ll stop going there.”

  “No. You’re being unrealistic. You need to calm down and get a grip before you push me away.” I turn and head back inside the house and before I’m out of earshot I hear her say, “You would just love for me to give you a reason, wouldn’t you?”

  Would I?

  Chapter 9

  RC

  Steve and I are on our third date. I am getting comfortable and so is he, but not in the same way. I was in jeans, no longer feeling the pressure to be in a skirt on a date and be pretty. I was more relaxed. He, on the other hand, seemed to have the third date rule, the one where he thought this was sufficient time spent with a female and we should sleep together.

  While he was a good kisser, I had no intention of sleeping with him tonight, or any night.

  Poor bastard.

  We had gone to dinner on the ocean tonight and were back at my house, my beach, and we were walking. Mia, a fan of the water, was frolicking in and out. Steve’s hand was intertwined with mine, and if it could just be this, it really would be a great date.

  But he kept bringing up how comfortable he was with me. How he felt like he was really getting to know me. How he thought this was going places. When he said this one, I almost snorted and almost added, you mean like the bedroom? I didn’t though because he would take that as an invite. I think if I made any flirtatious move tonight, he would consider it an invite.

  “Don’t you feel like we know each other?”

  I smile dutifully. Saying, hell no, would be socially inappropriate.

  “Kind of,” I reply instead.

  “Kind of?” he echoes.

  “Yeah, I mean. I know you work for your dad. I remember you from the summer I was here.” I don’t add the part where Jared, Jack, and I called him a tool a lot. “I know you like to be outside and you like sports. But that’s stuff anyone can know.”

  In the dimming sunlight light, I can tell this is confusing to him. His face reads: What else is there to know? I wonder if he has ever had a relationship that was not driven by hormones. I doubt it. He just had a lot of notches on his bedpost. I really don’t want to be one of them either. I let go of his hand, feigning a chill and wrapping my arms around myself. He wraps his one arm around me to warm me up. No doubt trying to snuggle up to me.

  He doesn’t press me about this. He doesn’t try and dig deeper and figure out what I mean. I can take this one of two ways; he doesn’t think I’m worth the effort or he really doesn’t get it.

  But I remind myself, dating Steve is about fun. I don’t want to tell him about Tom, because that would bring up my divorce and the big why did I leave him. It was no one’s business that he was an abusive asshole. I have enough problems in my past and I had a hard enough time telling Jack about my screwed up family issues, and he was someone who was non-judgmental and understanding. Steve was not Jack.

  Jack had handled that conversation so well, the night I had told him about my parents. And without meaning to, I leave Steve on the beach for a memory of Jack.

  “My parents are screwed up and you have this perfect family,” I said, not meaning to sound so condescending, but there was a part of me that wished our roles were switched. It had been so long since I had felt like I had a family.

  Jack remained silent. He didn’t react when I said that about his family. He wouldn’t press, even though he knew the reason I was here had something to do with my parents. The wench from the night I first met him had made that clear.

  I was going to come back here, if I was going to really try to make this into something, he had to know. If I didn’t, I would just be stuck in the same cycle, never breaking free from my past.

  Fear welled up inside me, the more I considered how he’d take my story. He could hear it and just leave and I’d lose this relationship that I loved.

  His hand absently rubbed mine as we sat in the sand.

  The sun was rising and I couldn’t believe we’d been out here all night. We had meant to eventually snuggle into the sleeping bags, but instead we’d talked. We talked about everything. It was the most I had heard him speak, but the only subject remained, my parents.

  “They’re pretty crappy,” I continued. His hand continued to move over mine. “They got divorced almost two years ago now. But it had been two or three years before that since we
were an actual family.”

  “What changed?” He looked at me and his grey blue eyes expressed so much. He was concerned and patient. He wouldn’t push. He cared for me. He was sad I had this in my life.

  “I don’t know, really. But whatever it was, my dad started an affair because of it. He married her. She’s my stepmom now. But my mom didn’t handle it well. She checked right out of reality. She literally did not shower for three weeks. She watched bad TV all day and I don’t even know what she did at night. I was never home. She never noticed.”

  “She didn’t pay attention to you?”

  “No, not until the cops brought me home.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She lost her shit on them. She let out every piece of pent up aggression she had on them and they decided to take me to my dad’s. Thought it would be safer for me. She actually threw the remote at one of them,” I said with a laugh and knew how forced it sounded. But I continued. “My dad was not thrilled I was being brought home to him and not because I was with the cops, but because it wasn’t his weekend. One of the officers mumbled something along the lines of no wonder she got picked up.”

  “So that’s why you got sent here. You got picked up by the police?”

  “Nope,” and he looked confused. It was a good guess. “My stepmom and I didn’t get along, so my dad didn’t like that, so it was me who had to go, but I couldn’t go back to my mom. So I’m here.”

  It had to be hard for someone whose family had always loved him, a family that had put him first, to get parents who couldn’t see past what they wanted and didn’t have to notice their kid.

  “And what about college? Where does that fit in?”

  “College is my ticket out. It’s crazy, Jack. At college, I’m this girl who goes to class, gets good grades, plays softball, doesn’t party more than the average college kid, but the moment I’m home, I’m on a first name basis with the third shift cops.”

  “You got bad friends back home?”

  “No, no friends really. How do you have friends with a crazy mom and a dad who might hit on them?”

  He looked at me, a little shocked. “My stepmom is only six years older than I am. I called him a cradle robber one night; it’s the closest my dad’s come to hitting me.”

  His hand never stopped moving on mine. Only when he looked at me did his expression become readable. He leaned in and kissed me. It was his way of telling me I mattered to him.

  For the first time, I felt someone wanted me. I had my grandparents, true. And they loved me, but grandparents, and parents, are supposed to love their kid. Jack didn’t have to love me, but I was beginning to think he did.

  To be loved, even with a crappy past, I didn’t know it was possible.

  “Remy?”

  Steve pulls me from my memory. It’s not my most pleasant memory of Jack, but one that reinforces what a good guy he is.

  “You lost in thought again?”

  “Sorry,” I say with an apologetic smile. “I was thinking about business”

  Steve’s smile widens.

  Crap, he’d heard.

  “I heard that you have quite the business venture.”

  I should have known he’d heard about it. Gossip in small towns spreads like an STD.

  “Yeah, yeah I do.”

  I don’t say anything else.

  “It’s impressive, Remy. I mean, a millionaire from an app.” It is impressive. When I signed up for college I wanted to be a CPA, because that seemed like money to me. A way to get out. Designing an app really wasn’t something I had known about until I fell into it.

  “Thank you, Steve.” Again, I don’t elaborate, and hope he’s not too intrigued. At least he hadn’t jumped on the topic immediately. While I have money, my pants are still his number one concern.

  He lets out an exaggerated yawn and I want to laugh. Do these moves actually work on girls?

  “Yeah, I guess we should call it a night,” I say and the hopeful look appears in his eyes. I squash it like a bug. “I’ll walk you to your truck.”

  His face falls.

  When this is over, I should tell him to work on hiding his facial expressions.

  JM

  My phone vibrates early in the morning, before I drink down my first cup of coffee. My screen reads: R texted about fixin' a window. Want 2 come w me. It’s from Jared. I should say no. After my conversation with Amber, I should stay away. The unreasonable side of me, the one that hasn’t let Remy go, says screw it. This side doesn’t usually win out, but today, that side does.

  I text him: I’ll pick u up.

  I finish getting ready and grab another cup of coffee, and without a second thought I am en route to Remy’s.

  We pull up and she’s awake this time, even though I know she’s not a morning person. She’s there on the porch with two coffee mugs in her hand. She was so sure I would be here. Was I that predictable to her?

  “Morning, boys.”

  “He might be a boy. But I’m a man,” Jared says. “Want me to show you?” His big smile lets me know he’s joking, like he always is with her.

  “In your dreams, pal.” Her smile is big and she hands us the coffee. Her smile sobers a little when she looks at me. A spike of envy goes through me. Jared and Remy had been able to pick up their relationship. They were always joking and smiling when they were around each other, much like they had been during that summer. They didn’t have the baggage she and I did. But if we were going to co-exist in this town we needed to have some sort of relationship. But there was air to clear. Jared and she had none. That’s why she can smile like that at him. Maybe if we did, things could be friendly between us and maybe Amber would see it was nothing.

  I know deep down that this is a lie. We can never be just friends, but we do need to have a talk. I want to know what happened that last day she was here all those years ago. I really just need to talk to her about that last day, when I had left. We need to talk about it. I had thought about it several times since her return. Today would be a good day. Jared wouldn’t say anything if it got ugly.

  They had moved down to a window at the corner of her porch.

  “This will be a quick fix,” I hear Jared say as I walk up.

  “We’re going to have to charge you this time, though Remy,” I say, fully aware that bills are getting tighter. I don’t like the thought of taking her money.

  “I’m going to grab my tape measure and then you can order the window with the next big order, yeah?”

  He doesn’t wait for my response, but goes to get his tape measurer, leaving me with Remy, giving me the opportunity to clear the air, to get my answers.

  “He likes to leave us alone together,” she says without the same smile she gave to Jared. She’s really looking at me, trying to read me, how I will react. I go for honest.

  “I think he’s giving us time to talk. He’s hoping we’ll work things out.” I know how this sounds and am immediately embarrassed by what I’ve said.

  She takes mercy on me. “Maybe he’s looking to see if I lose my mind and break down and weep?” I give a slight laugh. The idea of Remy throwing a fit is laughable, though. I could see her throwing a punch. “I think I’m keeping it together pretty good,” she says with a smile, meant to put me at ease.

  “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.” The words spill out of my mouth before I can stop them. Her face falls. This is too much honesty.

  “Well, you were supposed to chase me and you didn’t.” It’s there in her eyes. The hurt that I didn’t come after her. I don’t know what I’m more taken aback by: the fact that she said I should have come after her or that she is so quick with her response. She didn’t mull it over. She spit it out as quickly as I had.

  “I didn’t know, Remy.”

  “What was I supposed to say Jack? I’m leaving. I love you. Come after me? You knew how I felt about you.” Her tone is accusing. She’s biting back her anger that’s masking the hurt that was there a second ago
.

  “You left any way,” I say solemnly. “You left me,” I hadn’t said the words aloud, how hurt I had been that she had left me, that she hadn’t come back for me. I had waited.

  “I was going to college. What was I supposed to do? Not have a future?” She snaps back at me. This is a slap in my face. I had never asked her to do that. And I find myself mirroring her anger.

  “I guess you got one, huh? You’re wealthy. You got married. You got everything!”

  “Is that what you think?” Her voice changes, the anger drops out of it into a cold one.

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “You’re right. I have money. I got lucky. I did. But married? You know what my forever was? A guy who liked to spend my money and hit me when he felt like it. So you know what, forever sucks. And I don’t want it, with him, with you, with anyone.”

  My anger disappears instantly.

  “Remy-“

  Her face is a myriad of emotions flashing before me: shock, hurt, sadness and finally resignment. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I don’t even know why we’re arguing. I mean, we were so young. What did we know about love and forever and whatever that entails? I was an idiot to come back here. I don’t even know what I thought was going to happen.”

  “Rem-“

  “No, Jack. Leave. Jared can finish up. I’ll take him where he needs to go. Go home to your girlfriend. She’s waiting.”

  I don’t even know what to say as she storms off into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  That wasn’t how I had expected this to go. She had an ex who’d hit her. Wow.

  “That did not go well.” Jared appears at my side. “I hear her right?”

  “Yeah. You did.” I can’t believe I’m confirming this.

  “Why don’t you go wait in the car. I’ll be quick.”

  RC

  I cannot believe I told him that! I can’t believe that conversation had happened. How dare he accuse me of getting my forever? What an insensitive jerk! How could I have been so wrong about someone?