Say Yes Summer

by Lindsey Roth Culli

  Miles shrugs. “You’re cool,” he says easily. “Just glad you’re not dead in a ditch with your hands and feet chopped off, et cetera.”

  “Aw, Miles.” I bat my eyelashes at him. “You say the sweetest things.”

  By the time we get to the beach, there’s already a small crowd waiting for us. Word of the ice cream Gondolas has traveled fast, and the cart sold out both days. Dad even got extra gelato delivered with the hope that we can start filling up twice a day on weekends.

  “So,” Miles says, his voice muffled as he leans over the cooler, scoop in hand. “What did you get up to yesterday, anyway?”

  I press my lips together, trying not to smile too hard at the memory. “I left the country, actually.” It sounds so absurd that if my cheeks weren’t still wind-burned from that boat ride, I might doubt it actually happened at all.

  Miles straightens up, looking over at me in surprise. “What?”

  “I mean, just to Canada.” I zip an Amex through the card reader before passing it back across the counter. “But still.”

  “That’s random,” he says, dropping the Gondola into its waxed paper sleeve and thrusting it wordlessly at our waiting customer. “You realize people usually commit a crime first. Did you commit a crime first?”

  “Have a good day!” I call pointedly, then look back at Miles. “No, I did not commit a crime first. I didn’t have any stamps in my passport, that’s all. Clayton took me across the border so I could get one.” It sounds a little like I’m bragging, which I guess makes sense since I kind of am.

  Miles, however, looks unimpressed. “Oh” is all he says.

  I frown. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Miles says. “So, are you going to have, like, a million of his babies now or whatever?”

  “What?” I feel myself blush. “No. I don’t know. Jeez.”

  “Okay.” Miles busies himself wiping the counter.

  “What?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Miles, I swear to God—”

  “Just—” Miles looks over at me, shrugging a little. “Be careful with that dude, okay?”

  I frown, thinking of the text messages and the Pringles can and the “It’s complicated.” “Why?” I ask, trying to sound casual. “What do you know?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Miles says stubbornly.

  “Well, that’s a fact. But—”

  “Can you not be a pain in the ass for one second?” he interrupts, sounding wounded. “I’m trying to help you here.” He sighs, scrubbing his hands through his dark, messy hair. “You know my house is across the street from Bethany’s, right?”

  “Yes,” I say, already not liking where this is going. “So?”

  “So, Clayton’s car is over there. Like, a lot.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling relief course through me. “Yeah, no, I know. But they broke up.”

  Miles looks skeptical. “They broke up since last night?”

  That stops me. “His car was there last night?”

  “That giant SUV with the youth soccer sticker on it?” he asks. “Yeah.” Then, off what I’m assuming is my stricken expression, he sighs. “Look, I’m not trying to shit stir.”

  “Aren’t you?” I snap.

  “No, actually,” Miles fires back. “But if it were me, I would want somebody to tell me that my new boy toy’s car was in his old gal pal’s driveway all night last night.” His eyes widen meaningfully. “Like, until this morning.”

  “I…Oh.” I feel my whole body deflate, my stomach suddenly queasy as if I’d eaten our entire supply of Gondolas in one gluttonous sitting. “Okay.” Yeah, Clayton told me things were complicated between him and Bethany. Yeah, I saw those chips in the back of his car last night. But I didn’t actually think they were still—

  He made me feel like—

  What kind of person—

  “Rachel,” Miles says, and his voice is so quiet. He takes a cautious step in my direction, and for one deranged second I think he’s going to hug me, but in the end all he does is nudge me gently out of the way so he can get to the counter.

  “Hey there,” he says brightly, greeting the next person in line like he’s the king of customer service. “What can I get you?”

  * * *

  I spend the rest of the afternoon in a deep, malignant sulk, the cloud above my head dark as a midsummer thunderstorm. Miles tries to cheer me up by making off-color comments about unsuspecting passersby, but it’s no use, and we work the last hour of the day in dreary silence. “Look on the bright side,” he instructs as we part ways back at the restaurant. “Sooner or later, he definitely would have given you chlamydia.” I flip him the bird in reply.

  Back at home, I shovel a couple slices of reject pizza into my face—buffalo chicken and jalapeno, so spicy it makes my nose run—before shuffling upstairs and flopping face-first onto the mattress. I’m scrolling through Snapchat for the millionth time today, looking for further concrete evidence of Clayton’s betrayal, when my phone dings with a text from Soccer Dude himself.

  Hey, he says. You around tonight? There’s a 7:15 Indiana Jones at the dollar theater that a bunch of people are going to.

  Like Bethany? I think snottily, throwing the phone across the mattress before leaning over and picking it up again. Can’t, I tell him. Grounded. I don’t actually know if this is true—my mom hasn’t said a word to me all day beyond “wear sunscreen” as Miles and I set out with the Cream Cart this morning—but it sounds plausible, at least.

  Shit, Clayton says. Because of yesterday?

  Yep.

  A pause here, then: You okay?

  Fine.

  Are you sure?

  I bite my lip. Yup, I text.

  Another pause and I think he’s going to push me—let’s be real, I hope he’s going to push me; that’s why I’m being such a pill to begin with—but in the end he just sends a thumbs-up emoji. Okay. Have a good night.

  So, I think, collapsing back onto the pillows and staring up at the ceiling. That’s that, I guess. Good try, Dr. Paula! Sorry my young life is already too pathetic for successful course-correction!

  Then I sit up again, so fast it almost makes me dizzy. No, I decide. That’s not that. After all, why should Clayton get off that easy while I sit at home and brood? He kissed me. He took me to freakin’ Canada! At the very least, I deserve closure.

  I cross the room and dig through my closet, feeling a momentary pang of annoyance at Past Rachel for choosing a wardrobe that, for the most part, did not spark joy, before pulling on jeans and a V-neck T-shirt and heading downstairs. My parents are closing at the restaurant tonight, which means they won’t be home for another couple hours, and while I’m pretty sure the fact that they haven’t explicitly grounded me yet isn’t cart blanche to do whatever I please, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

  The dollar theater is one of my favorite places in town, actually—this old-fashioned movie house that was restored a few years ago by an eccentric rich guy with fond memories of watching black and white movies there back when he was a kid. It’s got plush red seats and a cool art deco marquee and shows mostly tourist-friendly modern classics, stuff like Toy Story and Troop Beverly Hills, plus the occasional weird experimental film.

  Clayton and his friends are buying their tickets at the window when I approach, the smell of buttered popcorn drifting out the front door and hanging like a scrim in the warm, humid air. “Hey,” he says when he sees me, offering me a surprised smile. “Your parents change their minds?”

  I don’t smile back. “Not exactly,” I tell him. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  Clayton glances from me to his friends, then back again. Bethany isn’t here tonight, I notice, but Tricia Whitman is watching us curiously. Spencer doesn’t bother to hide his smirk. “Uh, sure” is all Clayton says.r />
  He follows me around the corner to the side of the theater, where posters covered in Plexiglas announce baby-friendly matinees and a midnight showing of The Princess Bride. “I just came to tell you I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” I announce.

  Clayton blinks at me for a moment. He’s wearing frayed green shorts and his Tottenham hoodie, a pair of Wayfarers hooked in the neck of his T-shirt. He looks so deliciously summery; it makes me want to punch him in the throat.

  “Okay…,” he says slowly, shaking his head a little. “So you came out to tell me we shouldn’t…go out?”

  “Yes,” I say imperiously, not liking how ridiculous he makes it sound. “Listen, yesterday was fun. But next year you’re going to be in Milwaukee and I’ll be in Chicago—”

  “Evanston,” he corrects.

  “Whatever. Same difference.”

  “I mean, sure,” Clayton says, tucking his hands into his pockets. A furrow has appeared between his eyebrows, cautious. “But I guess I just don’t see what that has to do with, like, right now? I thought we had fun yesterday.”

  Oh, that infuriates me. “Is that what you want?” I demand, ignoring a startled look from a mom passing by us with a pair of little boys in tow. “Somebody to have fun with on the side and then throw out at the end of the summer?”

  “What? No, of course not, but—” Clayton frowns. “I don’t know what I want, Rachel. I thought we were getting to know each other, figuring it out.” He shakes his head one more time. “And what do you mean, on the side?”

  “I know about you and Bethany.”

  It’s my trump card, my smoking gun, but Clayton just stares at me blankly. “You know what about me and Bethany?”

  I open my mouth, then close it again, caught up weirdly short. “Well, I know you stayed at her house last night, first of all.”

  “You—” Clayton’s features twist unpleasantly. “Did you follow me?”

  “Of course not!” I snap, offended, although I guess I can’t totally blame him for jumping to that conclusion. He did catch me spying on them from my bedroom window the night of the party. And—even if he doesn’t know it—I did creep on his texts. “A friend of mine saw your car.”

  “Okay. Well.” He doesn’t even bother to try and deny it. “Look,” he says instead, “I already told you, things are complica—”

  “How complicated could they possibly be?” I interrupt. “Either you guys are together or you’re not, and if you’re not, then I don’t see why you need to be at her house in the middle of the night—”

  “And I don’t see how that’s any of your business!”

  “It’s my business because you made me fall for you!”

  “I made you—” Clayton throws his hands up. “We went on one date!”

  Well. That stings.

  I clamp my mouth shut, pressing my lips together even as my eyes start to prickle. It’s not even the words that hurt, exactly—of course it was only one date; of course I know that. It’s the way he says it. Like I’m completely delusional. Like I’m some inexperienced little kid with a crush.

  And maybe I am.

  I knew I had no business trying to do this. I knew I had no business trying to be anyone else.

  “Okay,” I say finally, hanging on to my composure with claws and teeth. I clear my throat, square my shoulders. “Well. It was fun. Thanks again for the passport stamp.”

  Clayton blows a breath out. “Rachel,” he says, and his voice is gentler now, “don’t—”

  “Bye, Clayton,” I tell him firmly. Then I turn around and go home.

  To my surprise, the grounding I’m fully expecting never arrives. Instead, my mom decides I should work off my debt to the society of this family by spending my day off from DiPasquale’s washing the windows at the house.

  All of them.

  Inside and out.

  It’s hard, tedious work—we don’t have the fancy windows that release with the flick of a lever, which means there’s an awful lot of yanking involved—and I spend the better part of the morning climbing up and down the ladder, my back and biceps singing. “Can you please be careful?” I yell down at Jackson, who’s supposed to be holding the ladder steady. “If I fall and break my neck, it’s on you.”

  “It’s fine,” Jackson says, though even from my vantage point I can tell he’s only got one hand on the damn thing, using the other to scroll through his phone.

  “Jackson!”

  It’s late afternoon by the time I’m finally finished and head upstairs for a shower. I’m sweaty, I’m smelly, and I have a big red scratch on my forearm from the particularly finicky pane on my parents’ bedroom window.

  But at least it distracted me from thinking about Clayton.

  He hasn’t texted since last night, not that I was expecting him to. Still, I kind of hoped. I know I was an idiot for trusting him, for thinking I was the type of girl he actually wanted to be with. For thinking he was the type of guy I wanted to be with.

  I was wrong, that’s all, I tell myself firmly as I climb out of the shower, wrapping my hair in a towel and padding down the hall to my room. And in a few weeks I’ll be at Northwestern and none of this will matter.

  My real life can get started. Just like I’ve always planned.

  Miles texts as I’m wriggling into a pair of leggings. Wyd? he wants to know. Still crying into your cornflakes over Mr. Popular?

  I roll my eyes. The truth is, I’m miserable. I wish I could rewind the last forty-eight hours entirely, even if it meant missing out on the trip over the border, and go back to admiring Clayton from afar without ever speaking to him, just like the universe obviously intended. Every time I close my eyes, I hear his incredulous voice—we went on one date—and can barely resist the urge to fling myself into Lake Michigan.

  But I’m not about to tell any of that to Miles.

  Did you need something? I ask. Or did you just want to heckle me?

  Mostly just want to heckle you, he writes back immediately. But also just saw there’s new episodes of that corny feminist superhero thing you like on Netflix, if you wanted to come by and watch.

  Huh.

  I sit down hard on the edge of my mattress, my damp hair dripping onto the pillows. I was just talking about that show in the kitchen at the restaurant the other day, but I’m surprised he was even listening, let alone that he voluntarily wants to put it in his eyeballs. It’s not corny. It’s amazing, I tell him, though the truth is it’s actually kind of both. Tonight?

  Unless you were planning to spend the evening wailing and rending your garments.

  I roll my eyes, full intending to tell him to go screw…but then I think about it. Hanging out with Miles has actually been kind of fun lately—working in the Cream Cart, taking that hike—on top of which it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do tonight. Before I can quell the impulse, I find myself imagining Dr. Paula with a big bowl of popcorn in her lap, watching as our heroine takes down the most insidious supervillain of all—the patriarchy.

  Okay, I decide, hitting SEND before I can think better of it. Can I bring anything?

  Wait, Miles writes back, you’re actually coming?

  What the hell? I have just about had it with stupid boys and their mixed signals this week. You just invited me, didn’t you?

  No, I did, he says immediately. And I meant it. I just didn’t think you’d actually say yes.

  Yeah, well. I pull a tank top over my head, trying not to think about the fact that I’ve been sitting here for the last ten minutes texting him in just my polka-dot bra. I’m full of surprises.

  You know what, though? Miles asks me. It turns out you kind of are.

  * * *

  “It is you!” Miles’s mom crows when she flings open the door to their house a half hour later, her voice familiar as the Sesame Street t
heme song, which she used to sing with us when we were small. “When Mi said you were coming over, I thought he was kidding.”

  “It’s really me,” I say. Miles and I see each other all the time because of school and work, but we don’t exactly hang out, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen his parents. His mom—who I’ve always known as Julie, except I think it’s super weird to call adults by their first names, so mostly I don’t call her anything at all if I can help it—is a few years older than mine, the kind of person who gets all her clothes at Ann Taylor and never goes too long between haircuts. If she and my mom hadn’t grown up together, I don’t think they’d actually have anything in common—not, I think suddenly, unlike Miles and me.

  “The house looks amazing,” I tell her now, looking around at the airy foyer. Last time I was here, the clean white walls were covered in a dated ivy-print wallpaper, with heavy curtains framing the windows. Now the whole place looks fresh and bright.

  “My God, that’s right,” Julie says, her smile falling a little bit as she follows my gaze. “You probably haven’t seen it since—”

  “Yeah.” Tommy’s memorial service. I can’t help but think back to that day, even though I know we’d both rather forget it: the four identical Edible Arrangements lined up like sad soldiers on the counter, a late-summer rain turning the front yard to mud. Miles’s parents hadn’t been expecting to host a gathering, so half the house was under construction, the dining room basically taken down to the studs. The whole thing was a mess in more ways than one. “Um, my mom said you guys did the kitchen too?”

  “We did!” Julie tells me, brightening again as she puts an arm around my shoulders. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Before I know it, I know more than I ever wanted to about Carrara marble and silent-close drawers and “dentil molding,” which sounds like something you need Novocain for. Julie’s fixing me a cup of Earl Grey tea when Miles traipses in.

  “When did you get here?” he asks, looking at me with something akin to suspicion. His hair is damp, and he smells faintly of Dial. I can’t help but wonder if he showered specifically because I was coming.