Say Yes Summer

by Lindsey Roth Culli

  “Well, I don’t,” Carrie says flatly. “Because you guys didn’t invite me.”

  “I—” Oh.

  I think back on the end of middle school, realizing with a warm rush of shame that Carrie has a point: It was me and Ruoxi, a lot of the time. The two of us sitting in the back of her family’s minivan on our way to the quiz bowl in Grand Rapids. The two of us staying up too late in the dorm room at Hope College’s summer program. My dad picking me up from Ruoxi’s after a late night of practicing for debate team. “I didn’t…I mean, you never said anything.”

  “What was I supposed to say?” she asks. “ ‘Hey, guys, don’t leave me out just because you think I’m a moron’?”

  “You’re not a moron,” I say immediately.

  “I know I’m not a moron!” Carrie laughs. “I’m just not, forgive me, a giant school nerd.” Then she smiles. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to be around you guys. Or, more to the point, for you guys to want me around.”

  “We did want you around,” I tell her. “We used to spend all this time trying to figure out why you didn’t like us anymore. Ruoxi had this whole giant conspiracy theory going. But then when you started being friends with Bethany and Tricia, it was like, oh, obviously the answer is that we weren’t cool or popular enough for you.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she promises. “And they’re not that cool or popular, for the record. They’re just normal, when you actually get to know them.”

  “That is fully a thing that only cool and popular people say,” I counter.

  Carrie smirks. “Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now, does it? I mean, we’re all going off in a million directions and it doesn’t matter who was like what in high school. We can all just kind of like…be who we actually are.”

  I think of what Clayton said the other day, about how he was still going to have to be Soccer Dude even once he left for college. “I hope so,” I tell her. “That sounds really nice.”

  We’re quiet for another minute. I finish my milkshake, setting my cup down on the boardwalk at my feet. “For the record,” Carrie says quietly, “I’m really glad we’re hanging out now too.”

  I swallow hard, my chest tight. “I’m really sorry we left you out,” I tell her. “And for all the dumb time we lost.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Me too.” She clears her throat then, like possibly I’m not the only one feeling a little bit emotional. It’s hard, being a person in the world.

  “So hey,” she says as we head back along the boardwalk, “what are you doing Friday? Adam’s having a party, if you want to come by.”

  I shake my head. “I already checked ‘party’ off the list, remember? I feel like that means I should be exempt for the rest of the summer.”

  Carrie snorts. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. Come on,” she urges. “It’ll be fun. And he doesn’t even have a pool, so you’re totally safe there.”

  “Maybe,” I promise as we part ways at the edge of the boardwalk. “We’ll see.”

  “I don’t know, Rachel.” Carrie shakes her head, braids swinging. “Sounds like a yes to me!”

  The following day is freezing—by July standards anyway—and except for a couple people out running, the beach is empty. “You realize the Venn diagram of the types of people who run in this weather and the types of people who want to impulse-buy ice cream sandwiches are two completely separate circles,” Miles announces, peering up at the ominous-looking rain clouds. “Should we just pack it up?”

  I grimace. “And go do inventory with everybody else back at the restaurant?”

  “Fair point.” Still, it’s not like Miles is wrong: the Cream Cart’s customer base is basically entirely contingent on the weather, which despite my control-freak tendencies remains infuriatingly out of my realm of influence. We haven’t sold a single Gondola all day. “Can we go somewhere else, maybe? Down by the arcade?”

  “Too close to Moxie’s,” I point out. “But I wonder if there’s like a festival or a camp or something that we could—” I break off. A camp, I think, flushed with pleasure at my own quiet brilliance. That’s it. And if it happens to be a camp where I might or might not run into Clayton Carville and he gets an eyeful of how fabulously I am doing without him, well, that would just be an added side benefit, wouldn’t it.

  I grin across the Cream Cart at Miles, flipping the storage compartments shut with a satisfying chorus of clicks. “Let’s go to Holland.”

  “What, for the tulip festival?” Miles raises an eyebrow. “You know, you stick one toe over the Canadian border and now all of a sudden—”

  “Hope College,” I interrupt, impatient to get going. “There’s a soccer clinic there this week—and if we leave now, we can probably catch people right as they’re picking up their cranky little athletes.”

  Miles eyes me for a moment, an expression on his face like possibly he can see the tissue underneath my skin. “A soccer clinic, huh?”

  “Yup,” I say primly, daring him to make a comment. “Is that a problem?”

  He shakes his head. “Sounds great,” he says, digging the keys to the cargo truck out of his back pocket. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Turns out we’ve timed it perfectly, staking out a tree-lined corner of the college parking lot just as the clinic wraps up for the day. We’ve barely gotten set up before we’re completely mobbed by a throng of sweaty, hungry kids and their parents; in fact, we’re so swamped we stop taking custom orders and Miles makes up his own combos. “Chef’s choice today, mate,” he says, handing one to an eager-looking ten-year-old. It feels like this is where the entire tween population of Michigan is hanging out today.

  No sign of Clayton, I can’t help but notice. I can’t decide if I’m disappointed about that or not.

  “Holy shit,” Miles says once the rush has dissipated. “Was that seriously less than an hour?” He nods his angular chin at my apron pocket, which is bulging with a fat wad of cash. “Is that money in your pocket or are you just glad to—”

  “Do not,” I cut him off, using a plastic spoon to flick some leftover Stracciatella in his direction. It lands on his nose and he doesn’t even blink.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks with a laugh, reaching up to wipe it off. “Do I have something on my face?” I watch the way he bites the pad of his thumb, feeling my cheeks warm.

  Oh my God. What is with me lately that I keep having this reaction to him? Am I actually, like, physically attracted to Miles?

  Holy crap, do I like Miles?

  I don’t have time to dwell on it, because—predictably—the next thing he does is grab a spoon and return the favor, flinging a blob of Gianduja at me. His aim isn’t as good as mine, though, and it lands right on the collar of my DiPasquale’s T-shirt, dripping down into my shirt.

  “Nice,” I say, rolling my eyes at him before reaching for a paper napkin. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he says pleasantly. “You missed some.” Then, without waiting for me to take care of it, he reaches out and swipes his thumb right over my collarbone, dipping ever so briefly into the neck of my shirt.

  It’s a lot, the sticky coldness of the ice cream and the slight pressure of his fingers on the side of my throat, and I gasp without entirely meaning to. It’s not a bad gasp, strictly speaking—it’s not, if I am being totally honest, a gasp that means I don’t like what you’re doing right now—but still Miles backs up right away.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Not trying to cop a feel.”

  “Oh no?” I manage, coming back to myself enough to tease him. “If you were trying to cop a feel, I’d know it, et cetera?”

  “Exactly.” Miles coughs, turning back to the empty cooler; even from this angle I can see that his ears have gone pink. He’s embarrassed, I realize suddenly. Miles Vandenberg, the crown prince of the double e
ntendre, the person from whom I first heard an are you just happy to see me joke to begin with, is embarrassed. It kind of makes me feel like I’m the valedictorian all over again.

  “Okay, weirdo,” I tease, dumbly fond of him suddenly with his stupid messy hair and crooked tooth and thick eyebrows, the scar on the side of his chin from where Tommy beaned him with a remote control when he was five. “I see how it is.”

  Miles makes a face at me over his shoulder. “Oh,” he says, seeming to finally register that I don’t in fact feel anything close to harassed at this particular moment, “I’m the weirdo.”

  “You are always the weirdo, yes.”

  “I will keep that in mind.”

  “You do that.”

  “I will.”

  Miles shakes his head, smiling a little. We work in silence for another couple of minutes, wiping down the counters before loading the cart into the back of the cargo truck. “So,” I say as we climb up into the cab, “what are you up to tonight?” The truth is, I don’t want this day to end yet.

  “Ugh, screw me.” Miles rolls his eyes and groans, banging his head lightly against the seat. “I had actually forgotten until right this second, so thank you for that. I’ve got this thing I have to do.”

  “Mysterious,” I tease.

  “It’s…truly not.” He shakes his head. “It’s for my mom. It’s ‘Dine Around’ tonight.”

  “Dine Around?” I repeat.

  “Yeah,” Miles says. “It’s this thing for the Historical Society—”

  “Yeah, no, I know what it is,” I say, unable to keep the smirk off my face. At least, I have a vague idea: a bunch of middle-aged women paying a bunch of money to go snoop around other peoples’ houses while they eat appetizers and drink Dixie cups of white wine. “Nonna did it one year, but she said you didn’t get enough booze for your buck.”

  “Nonna is correct,” Miles tells me flatly. “But my mom got really into it after my brother died, and she’s the chair this year, so I told her I’d help her out a little.”

  “That was sweet of you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a sweetheart.”

  “Uh-huh. What do you have to do, stand around serving baby quiches for three hours?”

  “Worse.”

  “What?”

  Miles closes his eyes, shaking his head like it’s too gruesome even to contemplate. Then he opens one again. “Actually,” he says, looking at me speculatively. “You wanna come see for yourself?”

  “You know,” I tell Miles a couple hours later, “when you said you were helping your mom out a little, this is not exactly what I pictured.” The two of us are standing on opposite sides of a partitioned storage room at the Historical Society, changing into musty-smelling period costumes. I think I’m meant to be some kind of flapper, in a fringy black dress and a feathered headband. I can only imagine what Miles is dressed as.

  “You were really hoping for those baby quiches, huh?”

  “I mean, yes,” I admit, my stomach rumbling; neither of us has eaten anything since we loaded up the Cream Cart this morning. “But also I figured we’d just be standing on a corner somewhere handing out maps or helping clueless tourists not go into the wrong house.”

  Miles cackles. “Can you imagine someone wandering into Mrs. Sheffield’s garden and expecting to be not only welcomed but also supplied with libations?”

  “Mrs. Sheffield probably spends Dine Around evenings on her porch with an actual shotgun on her lap, daring anyone to try and trespass.”

  “That’s how she spends all her evenings,” Miles fires back. “You ready?”

  “I guess so?” I put the headband on, then grab my real clothes and stash them in my bag before stepping out around the partition.

  Miles looks at me speculatively and I’m expecting some kind of raunchy comment, but all he does is nod. “Not bad.”

  “Thanks.” He’s wearing a ’20s-style fedora with a fat black band around it and a button-up shirt and regular pants. “No fair. How come you get to look normal?”

  “Right,” he says, raising his arm to reveal a gangster-style holster. “Never leave home unless I’m packing heat.”

  I tilt my head to the side like, Fair point. “Remind me again what we’re doing, exactly?”

  “I told you,” he says patiently. “We’re hosting.”

  “Hosting what, though?”

  There’s a knock on the door and Miles’s mom pokes her head in. “Capone, you ready?” Then, beaming at me: “Oh, Rachel, you look like a regular Daisy Buchanan.”

  My gaze flicks from Julie to the fedora and back again. “Capone?”

  “Didn’t Miles tell you?” she asks. “This year’s theme is Roaring Twenties. There are three sites here in town, and then Felt Mansion is the final stop for everyone. Jazz in the gardens, cocktails, a special presentation. I have to say, this is an extremely well-chaired event.” She winks at Miles and he groans playfully.

  “Capone and his goons used to stay at the hotel in town and the Felt Mansion,” Miles explains, gesturing down at the suit and holster. “Thus the getup. Though I’m way better looking, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” his mom and I chorus dutifully.

  “All right,” Julie says, reaching out to straighten Miles’s tie. “You two need to get up to Felt by five-thirty, okay? Ask for Donna and she’ll tell you where to go and what to do. The buses and guests arrive at six, so you all better scoot.” She claps her hands. “And have fun!”

  * * *

  “Oh good!” Donna says when we arrive in the lobby of the mansion, checking something off on a flower-patterned clipboard. She’s a heavyset woman in her fifties in an expensive-looking suit the color of ripe eggplant, an expression on her face like this is not her first Dine Around rodeo. “Here’s our star of the evening. Now, you know your lines?”

  Star of the evening? Lines? I whirl around to look at him.

  “Ready to go,” Miles assures her, assiduously avoiding my gaze.

  I fully intend to give him boatloads of shit about this newest development, but all at once Donna is taking my arm and leading us over to the far end of the lobby, where a handful of other flapper girls and dudes dressed similarly to me and Miles are leaning against the wall. “You all will be handing out these information brochures about supporting the History Center or if you’re of age, helping the catering staff with beverage trays.”

  “Not a baby quiche in sight,” Miles murmurs mournfully. “You sure you don’t want to back out now?”

  “Are you kidding?” I whisper back. “You have lines.”

  “Miles?” Donna asks, interrupting us. “I need you. Now.”

  Miles’s eyes widen playfully. “She needs me,” he echoes, reaching out and chucking me on the chin, old-timey gangster style. “Be good, doll.”

  I roll my eyes and grab a stack of the brochures from the table. It reminds me of the brochures the Canadian immigration officer handed Clayton and me, and for a second a pang in my chest threatens to settle in. I tamp it back down, standing there with the two other flapper girls who don’t seem like total prima donnas as we wait for the Dine Around guests to arrive. I catch a glimpse of Miles across the room as he listens to whatever instructions Donna is gravely imparting, nodding at her with great tolerance, even affection. I can’t believe he’s voluntarily subjecting himself to something like this.

  I can’t believe he’s letting me witness it.

  Once the first bus turns up and the guests are milling around, the jazz trio starts playing. I spy Miles across the patio, leaning against a wall scowling, and I’m about to wander over to him and see what his problem is when it occurs to me this is him in character. All at once, I completely understand why his mom not-so-gently suggested he do this. It’s so…him. He catches me staring and shakes his head, covering his mouth with his hand to hi
de his smile.

  Just then, Donna’s voice echoes over the speaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to welcome you tonight to the Felt Mansion.” She’s standing on a small stage, dressed now as a flapper in a gown way fancier than the rest of ours. She’s also wearing a metric ton of makeup that wasn’t there before. “As you know, the Felt Mansion was finished in 1928, built by self-made millionaire Dorr Felt and his wife, Agnes, who—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quit yer yakking,” Miles’s voice comes over the speaker. Donna looks flustered and I wonder if he cut her off early before realizing that of course he did.

  He’s Miles.

  I smile as I watch him saunter forth, clambering onto the stage and nudging her aside. He starts talking about his gang of bootleggers who spent a lot of time in this “neck of the woods.” “We sure do enjoy the hospitality. The weather. And, of course, the ladies.” He wiggles his eyebrows and steals a glance at me.

  I’m totally losing it by now, and I almost miss the rest of his monologue, which is mostly just more about the community in the ’20s and what a roaring good time they had. “Now, please, enjoy yourselves this evening. And might I recommend the Gin Fizz? It’s delicious.”

  Miles comes over after accepting a few compliments from fawning older ladies dressed from head to toe in Lilly Pulitzer. “That was…quite the performance.”

  “Thank you.” He grins. “When Mom told me I’d get to be Scarface, I kinda thought there’d be more fake tommy guns involved. Some bathtub gin at least.” He lifts the glass of Coke somebody’s handed him, wipes at the black streak on his cheek. “At least the scar part is fake.”

  “Seriously, though.” I shake my head, with that same feeling I had when he told me he was in therapy—like possibly there’s a whole other side of him I’m only just waking up to, that he’s only just started trusting me enough to let me see. “That was cool of you, doing that for your mom.”