Say Yes Summer

by Lindsey Roth Culli

“Yeah, yeah.” Miles waves me off, nodding at a cater waiter strolling by with a silver tray hoisted on one shoulder. “Baby quiches, mothereffer,” he crows triumphantly. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  I hang around the Felt Mansion with Miles for another hour or so, picking at the appetizer trays as surreptitiously as possible and hiding a smile as a steady stream of women my mom’s age wander over to flirt with him. “Who knew you were so popular with the over-forty set?” I tease as we head back out to the parking lot.

  “I mean, I knew,” Miles fires back, digging his car keys out of his pocket. “Cougars love me.”

  “Don’t say cougar,” I chide automatically, settling into the passenger seat. Miles drives a low-key black Civic that used to be Tommy’s, a mostly-peeled-off Iron & Wine sticker still adhered to the front of the glove compartment. Miles would probably die of embarrassment if anyone ever thought he listened to Iron & Wine.

  “What’s wrong with cougar?”

  “It’s gross.”

  “You’re gross.”

  “Oh, very mature.”

  Miles grumbles good-naturedly, rolling the windows down as he pulls out of the parking lot. It’s a warm, humid night, the brackish lake smell of home just barely perceptible on the air. It occurs to me all at once how much I’m going to miss that smell when I leave in a few weeks. “You need to get home?” he asks.

  I glance at the clock on the dashboard. “I’ve got some time, actually.” I told my parents about Dine Around when we dropped by the restaurant to return the Cream Cart after our shift this afternoon, and apparently a Historical Society benefit synthesized closely enough with my usual nerdy extracurriculars that neither of them questioned it or even told me what time to be home. “You hungry?”

  Miles glances over at me, looking surprised. “Sure.”

  We head over to the Shak, a divey burger place not far from the boardwalk, still dressed in our flapper finest. The Shak used to be “Shake’s,” but over the years the sign out front lost the apostrophe and then the E and the S and no one ever bothered to replace them. Miles pulls the greasy front door open, and I duck under his arm to step inside.

  At the counter, he insists on ordering in character as Scarface, all “two Number Ones and a pop for the lady, nice and quick so nobody gets hurt.” I roll my eyes at him, charmed in spite of myself, even as the cashier looks like he’s never been so unamused by anyone in his entire life.

  “You realize he’s probably spitting in your food right now,” I tell Miles quietly as we settle ourselves at a two-top by the window. “And my food, most likely.”

  “Extra protein,” Miles says, no hesitation at all. He’s himself again now, tie loose around his neck and the sleeves of Capone’s dress shirt rolled up to reveal the sharp knots of bone in his wrists.

  “Where did you learn how to do all that?” I ask, taking a sip of my Coke. “And when?”

  “What, like, pretend to be a 1920s gangster?” Miles shrugs. “I don’t know. Movies, I guess. And I did that kids’ theater thing when we were in elementary school.”

  “Oh yeah.” I remember that, vaguely, Mom and I going to see him in Seussical at the community college. We brought him a bouquet of grocery-store carnations. “You ever think about getting back into it?”

  “Acting? No.” Miles shakes his head. “I don’t know. I do enough of it in everyday life, probably.”

  I tilt my head, intrigued. “Deflecting?” I ask pointedly.

  Miles makes a face. “I’m sorry I ever told you that, I swear.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Miles’s eyebrows quirk. “No,” he agrees after a moment, “I guess I’m not.”

  “What do you think would happen if you stopped?” I ask. “Deflecting, I mean.”

  I’m expecting a snotty answer, but Miles actually seems to consider it, sitting there quietly in his wobbly burger joint chair. “Honestly, Rachel,” he says finally, curling both hands around the edge of the chipped melamine table, “I think that possibly the world would eat me alive.”

  I blink, my heart doing something weird and twisty and unfamiliar deep inside my chest. “Miles,” I start to say, but the guy brings our burgers just then and we inhale them in not-uncompanionable silence, passing the ketchup and Shak sauce back and forth across the table. I want to tell him…something, but I can’t decide exactly what.

  Once we’re finished, we head back out to the parking lot, neon lights from the boardwalk blinking in the distance. “We should probably drop these back at the Historical Society,” Miles points out, motioning to our costumes. “You know, now that they smell like fryer grease and human desperation.”

  “Okay. Yeah.” The truth is I’m hardly listening. I stop short when we get to the Civic, leaning back against the trunk and turning to face him, shifting my weight in my uncomfortable borrowed flapper shoes.

  “Listen,” I announce before I can talk myself out of it. “For the record. If you were honest with more people about who you are and how you feel—if you stopped deflecting so much, or whatever—I don’t think the world would eat you alive.”

  Miles raises one eyebrow, takes a step closer. He does smell like fryer grease, actually, but also like himself. “Oh no?” he asks, tucking his hands into his pockets.

  “No,” I tell him, squaring my shoulders. “I think you’re smart and occasionally funny and actually sort of decent, when you want to be. And I think the world, like, responds to that kind of thing. Positively.”

  Miles’s lips twist. “Occasionally funny,” he mutters, shaking his head. “Thanks.”

  “Can you shut up for a second?” I complain. “I’m trying to tell you something nice about yourself and you’re too busy being a dope to even register it.”

  Miles looks at me then—really looks at me, full on, in a way that makes me suddenly very aware that my back is pressed up against the trunk of the Civic. “I’m registering it,” he says quietly, taking another half step closer. “I promise.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I swallow. “Okay, then.”

  “Okay, then,” Miles echoes. “Can I say something now?”

  I sigh theatrically. “If you must.”

  “I—” He breaks off, shakes his head. “I don’t actually have anything,” he admits, and I’m starting to make an irritated sound but then he puts both hands on my face and kisses me.

  He’s a better kisser than Clayton, is my first thought, which is fully shocking because (a) I would have bet a considerable amount of money until this moment that Clayton has kissed significantly more girls than Miles, so either I’m wrong and Miles is a secret ladies’ man or he’s just, like, naturally extremely talented at kissing, and (b) how am I suddenly in a position to be comparing the makeout techniques of two different guys when literally one week ago the entire breadth of my life experience was Charlie Patterson and his Pokémon cards? I should send Paula Prescott a fruit basket, assuming she’s still alive.

  But not now.

  Like. Definitely not now.

  Right now I am busy.

  Miles keeps one hand on my face and rests the other on my rib cage, nudging my mouth open and sucking gently on my lower lip. My own hands are just kind of hanging there like two dead birds until finally my crude motor skills come back online and I reach up, wrapping my arms around his neck so we’re pressed together from chest to thigh.

  “Rachel,” Miles mutters, his smile slow and sly against my mouth. I can tell from the tone in his voice that he’s going to make some dumb joke that’s going to break this moment and make it absolutely necessary to talk about this: what it is or what we’re doing, what any of it might mean. It’s exactly the kind of thing I’d want to talk about, normally, the kind of conversation I’d force with anyone else, but here in this parking lot with the person I’ve known long
est, I look in his eyes and shake my head.

  “Not yet,” I tell him firmly, then pop up on my tiptoes and kiss him again.

  A few days later, I’m covering a front-of-house shift at DiPasquale’s so one of the new girls can take her food safety class. I hand a pair of women their laminated order number and tell them their food will be right out, then grab a tub of dirty dishes out of the wait station and bring them back to the kitchen. Miles, who’s hard at work on a chicken parm Gondola, catches my eye and winks.

  I stick my tongue out and head back to the floor even as a full-body flush works its way up from my toes. I can’t stop thinking about our kiss the other night. More than that, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that we’ve kissed twice more since then: the following afternoon behind the garlicky plastic curtain in the wait station while Michael Bolton piped in over the speakers, and then again in the cab of the truck before we returned the Cream Cart yesterday, only breaking apart when Miles accidentally leaned on the horn.

  It’s Miles. It’s Miles.

  And I am feeling…

  Something.

  “Excuse me?” someone says, startling me out of my thoughts. When I look up from the counter, I find Bethany Lewis blinking back at me. She’s dressed in a pair of immaculate white shorts and the kind of perfectly fitted T-shirt that probably cost as much as my parents’ car, her hair waterfalling over her shoulders in perfect waves. “Hi,” she says, smiling a smile I usually associate with middle-aged white women asking to speak to my manager. “It’s Rachel, right?”

  I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes, my innate panic at the sight of her giving way to annoyance. Why is she pretending she doesn’t know who I am? We’ve gone to school together since we were, like, six. Is it some sort of psychological trick? Is she here to make a scene about Clayton? Is she here to challenge me to a duel?

  Okay, now I’m back to panic again.

  I nod. “Can I help you?” I ask, sliding a menu across the counter in her direction. She glances at it momentarily, then shakes her head.

  “Actually, I was hoping to talk to you for a minute.”

  “To me?” Bethany and I have literally never had a conversation in all the years we’ve not-known each other, and the last thing I want to do is start now. “Um, sorry. I’m…working?” I glance around the mostly empty restaurant, which definitely does not require my tending at this particular moment. “Kind of a busy time.”

  Now it’s Bethany’s turn to be irritated, her glossy mouth turning down at the corners. “Look,” she says, “it’ll take two seconds, okay?”

  I hesitate. I may be shiny-new Rachel these days, thanks to Dr. Paula, what with my cascading party invitations and many suitors, but at the end of the day she’s Bethany Lewis. And old habits die hard.

  Deferential in manner. Eight letters. Ends with T.

  Obeisant.

  “Sure,” I hear myself say, untying my apron and following her over to a booth in the corner—the same one she was sitting in with Clayton the day I spilled the Italian soda all over him, which feels like a whole lot longer ago than just a couple of weeks. I wonder if she thinks of it as her booth; I wonder if she thinks of Clayton as her Clayton, and I’m so busy wondering that I don’t notice until after we sit down that Bethany Lewis…doesn’t actually look that good today.

  It’s a mean thought to have, the kind of girl-on-girl negativity they’d frown on in my feminist superhero show, but it’s also kind of true: There are dark circles under her eyes that even her fancy concealer can’t hide. Her hair doesn’t seem as shiny as usual. And her expensive T-shirt has a tiny smear of toothpaste on the neck.

  It’s the toothpaste that gets me most, actually, and I feel myself softening. “So,” I say, trying not to sound like a total snotrag, “what’s up?”

  Bethany blows a breath out. “Look,” she says again, “first of all, Clayton doesn’t know I’m here.”

  My stomach turns over unpleasantly. So this is about Clayton, then. Not that there was anything else it could reasonably have been about, I suppose, but I guess maybe there was a tiny part of me that was hoping she wanted to be my new best friend or at the very least wanted me to participate in her multilevel marketing scheme. “Okay,” I manage, finding a rogue straw wrapper on the table and twisting it around my fingers.

  “Second of all, he and I are not together. At all.”

  My head snaps up. “You’re not?”

  Bethany ignores me. “Third of all,” she continues, not bothering to hide her incredulity at this juncture, “he likes you. Like, a lot. And he told me you basically lost your mind about him staying over at my house the other night—”

  “I didn’t lose my mind,” I defend myself, humiliated. Holy crap, is that what he’s telling people? “We went on one date.”

  “Okay, well, whatever.” Bethany is unmoved. “He said you were very upset and that you guys haven’t talked since then, and like—” She breaks off now, her composure slipping for the briefest of moments. “Clay’s been a really, really good friend to me lately. And I don’t want to mess things up for him just because my life happens to be a disaster and he’s been trying to help me.”

  “Okay,” I say slowly. It’s only now that the reality of what Bethany’s telling me is starting to sink in. Clayton likes you. Like, a lot. Holy crap, it’s better than being valedictorian all over again; it’s like that plus a full ride to Northwestern and a brand-new car all rolled into one. Still, I think again of our fight outside the movie theater, humiliation flaring inside me like a torch. “I don’t get it, though. If he likes me so much, then why wouldn’t he just explain—”

  “Things are complicated,” Bethany interrupts, impatient. “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Can I tell you something?” I blurt out. “I’m so sick of people telling me things are complicated. Like, I’m pretty smart. I don’t see why he couldn’t just be honest about what he was doing over there and trust me to—”

  “I mean, some things are just not your business, Rachel!” Bethany sits back hard against the vinyl bench and throws her hands up, the gesture surprisingly violent for such a pristine individual. “Like, what do you want to hear? That my dad’s been cheating on my mom for eleven years and has a whole other family in Minnesota and we all just found out and so sometimes Clayton comes over to bring me junk food and watch movies and keep me from totally losing the plot? Does that make you feel better about yourself? Like, congratulations, my life is not perfect, whatever you might think.”

  I blink, stunned into silence. Bethany is breathing hard. She looks like she wants to rip my lungs out, and also she looks completely horrified. I can tell she didn’t mean to say any of that at all, and that’s how I know it must be the truth.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, which is of course massively inadequate. I’m a smart person, sure. But I have no idea what I’d do if something that complicated ripped through my family like a hurricane, pulling up trees and knocking whole houses down. “That’s awful.”

  “Yeah, well.” She yanks a napkin out of the dispenser and uses it to carefully wipe underneath her eyes, like she knows instinctively her makeup has migrated. “It’s not great. But that doesn’t mean I want my dad to ruin Clayton’s life on top of everyone else’s just because he can’t keep it in his pants.” She grimaces. “My dad, I mean. Not Clay.”

  “I get it.” I’m silent for a moment, that weird post-adrenaline exhaustion coursing through me, when all at once I have a thought. “Does Carrie know?” I can’t help asking. “About your dad?”

  Bethany looks at me a little oddly, shaking her head. “No,” she says. “Nobody does, except Clay.” She makes a face. “And now you, I guess. Which, like, I would really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone, okay? It’s not exactly the kind of thing I’m advertising all over the internet.”

  “No, no,” I say q
uickly. “Of course not.” I think of what Carrie said that night on the boardwalk, about how my entire concept of Bethany was based on what I’d put together from social media, from the carefully curated stories she chose to tell to the world. Suddenly so many things make sense: Bethany and Clayton shut up together at Spencer’s party. The can of green Pringles. The chasm Carrie felt growing between them, even if she wasn’t sure exactly why.

  “You should tell her, though,” I say. “I mean, not if you aren’t comfortable. But she knows something is up, and she misses you.” I shrug. “I can tell.”

  “Yeah.” Bethany tilts her head back, peering up at the drop-in ceiling for a moment. “I should tell a lot of people probably. But I keep putting it off. And now it’s turned into this big secret I’m keeping, and everybody is going to be, like…” She waves her hand vaguely.

  I don’t know her well enough to interpret the gesture, whether she means mad or judgy or something else altogether. “I mean, I obviously have no idea what it’s like to be in your position,” I tell her. “But most of your friends don’t either. And so they have no right to fault you for choosing to deal with…this…however you felt like you could.”

  Bethany raises her neatly sculpted eyebrows. “You think?”

  I nod.

  “Thanks.” She smiles weakly as she slides out of the booth to leave. “Well, I’ll let you get back to work,” she says. “This was…weird. But I’m glad we talked.”

  “Yeah,” I tell her, and I’m surprised to find that I mean it. “Me too.”

  Miles comes out of the kitchen as the bells on the door jingle behind her, his eyes the size of two large pizzas. “Was that Bethany Lewis?” he asks, incredulous. “What did she want?”

  I look from him to the door to the crumpled-up napkin Bethany left on the table for me to deal with, feeling more confused than I ever have.

  “It’s complicated,” is all I say.

  * * *

  After work I plunk myself down on the front stoop of my parents’ house and text Clayton. I think I owe you an apology, I type.