Say Yes Summer

by Lindsey Roth Culli

  I just need to find the right moment.

  I’m lurking around the kitchen waiting for my phone to charge when Jackson traipses in. He flops down in a chair at the table and crosses his arms. “You okay?” I ask.

  He groans in response.

  “So…no?” Whoever said girls are more dramatic than boys has never had a twelve-year-old brother. “Jacks, we could play charades or you could just tell me what’s up.” I glance down as my phone lights up with a text from Carrie confirming Adam’s address.

  See you soon, I tell her. I’m bringing Miles along—hope that’s cool?

  Three dots trill for a moment, then: O rly?

  We’re just hanging out, I assure her quickly. I don’t even know how to begin to explain the situation between me and Clayton and Miles.

  Carrie texts the eyebrow raised emoji, the phone buzzing just as Jackson loudly announces, “It’s this girl.”

  I blink. “Okay,” I say as calmly as I can manage, not wanting to sound as surprised as I am. “From school?”

  Jackson hesitates and then nods.

  “And you want my advice?” This is a first. Not to mention the fact that I’m probably the very last person who should be giving anyone dating advice. I only just started doing it thirty seconds ago, and I’m already in way over my head.

  “Well, I can’t ask Mom. Or Nonna…” He groans.

  “Nonna what?” Nonna says, coming into the kitchen like we’ve summoned her, needlepoint in hand. I can’t help but wonder if she’s been waiting in the hallway this whole time like a beloved theater actress waiting for her cue.

  Jackson’s cheeks redden and he throws his head back against the chair. “Forget it,” he says. “It’s nothing.”

  “No no no,” I say quickly, eager for the chance to dig into a romantic drama besides my own. “Let us help.”

  Nonna pours a cup of coffee, glancing back and forth between Jackson and me. “Help with what?” she asks.

  “A girl.” I wiggle my eyebrows and Nonna gets this huge smile.

  “Oh my God,” Jackson groans. “Seriously. I never said anything.” He gets up and stomps out of the room.

  Nonna ignores him, setting up at the table with her needlepoint: a floral pattern this time, I see, plus the words feminist killjoy. Have I mentioned today that I love my nonna? “What’s with him?” she asks, jerking her head toward the door.

  I shrug. “Puberty?”

  Nonna laughs. “Fair enough.” She peers down through her bifocals at her pattern, then back up at me. “So how about you?” she asks. “You off somewhere exciting tonight?”

  “A party, actually,” I admit, pleased to be able to tell her. “With Miles.”

  “Ah, Miles,” Nonna echoes, busying herself with her stitching. “You two have been spending a lot of time together lately, it feels like.”

  “Some,” I allow. “We’re friends, that’s all.”

  Nonna nods without looking up. “And you’re still spending time with that young man from school?” she asks. “The one you went to Canada with, the soccer player?”

  “Clayton?” I ask dumbly, like there are just so many gents in my life who fit that particular description that I can’t be expected to know which one she means without further clarification. “I saw him last night, yeah.”

  “Hmm.” Nonna keeps her eyes on her embroidery, doesn’t miss a stitch, but still there’s something in that one simple syllable that says more than Dr. Paula managed to cram into an entire book.

  I blow a breath out, already sort of knowing where this is going. “Nonna—”

  “I didn’t say anything,” she cuts me off, holding a hand up. “And I wouldn’t say anything. You’re young! I’m happy for you. After all this time, you should be getting out and having fun. I just want you to make sure you’re being careful, that’s all.”

  I chew on my thumbnail, not liking the trajectory here. “What are you worried about?” I ask, and it comes out a little snottier than I mean for it to. “That I’m going to get some kind of reputation?”

  Nonna shoots me a look. “No, Patatina,” she says calmly. “I have never in my life worried about a reputation, yours or my own. I’m worried about you getting hurt, that’s all. Or, more to the point, you hurting someone else without meaning to.”

  I frown. There’s a part of me that knows she’s right—most of me knows she’s right, actually; after all, haven’t I spent the better part of today tied up in knots over what I’m going to say to Miles? Still, it feels hugely unfair that all of a sudden she’s so worried about collateral damage. “You know, you were the one who was always on me about getting out of the house and not being such a loser all the time,” I point out. “But now that I’m actually doing it—”

  “Who said anything about you being a loser?” Nonna interrupts me. “Sweetheart, that’s not what I think at all. You’re incredible—smart, funny, a world-class Gondola engineer.” She shakes her head. “I wanted you to be open to the world, that’s all. Figuring out how to do that and still be true to yourself is just a part of growing up.” She pushes her chair out and takes my face in her smooth, papery hands, plants a smacking kiss on my cheek.

  “Have a ball tonight,” she instructs me. “I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

  Adam’s party is way closer to what I always imagined when I tried to picture how other people were spending their Saturday nights in high school: drunk-sounding laughter and the pulsing bass of a forgettable pop song, the slightly animal smell of too many people in too small a space. Which isn’t to say Adam’s house is tiny. The opposite, actually: it makes Spencer’s look like a summer cottage, with a great room boasting a two-story stone fireplace and what looks like the library from Beauty and the freakin’ Beast visible through a set of wide double doors to one side.

  I glance over my shoulder to make sure Miles is following as I weave through the densely packed crowd in search of Carrie, grabbing his wrist a little roughly so he doesn’t fall behind. “You okay?” he asks in my ear, and I nod. It’s the third time he’s asked since he came to pick me up, and I guess I don’t blame him: he leaned in to kiss me hello and I feinted, pecking him on the side of the mouth before ducking around him and slipping into the passenger seat of the Civic. Probably I’d be wondering what the heck was up, too, if I were him. Still, the wary way he’s watching me, like he’s on the lookout for danger, makes me feel trapped and surveilled. I should have just told him the truth up front instead of dragging him to this party he didn’t want to go to in the first place, this house full of people neither one of us knows.

  I just had no idea what to say.

  The kitchen is wall-to-wall bodies, a bunch of liquor bottles on the counter and a cooler full of melting ice on the floor near the wide accordion door. “Keg’s on the patio!” announces a guy I don’t recognize, offering Miles a drunken high five.

  Miles obliges, slapping the guy’s palm before trailing me out into the wide, artfully manicured yard. The lawn is crowded with partygoers, the pool so full of people it looks like a human soup. “Where did they all come from?” Miles asks, and I shake my head. “It’s like a plague.”

  Thankfully I spot Carrie a moment later, perched elegantly on the stone ledge at the far end of the patio in shredded jeans and a silky crop top. “Rach!” she squeals, the contents of her red plastic party cup sloshing onto her wrist as she hops down off the wall and hurries over. “You came!”

  “Summer of yes,” I remind her grimly. “You know Miles, right?” I ask.

  “Obviously,” she says, drunkenly expansive. She holds her cup up in a toast. “We’re old friends.”

  “The dearest,” Miles agrees gamely, though I’m pretty sure the only time they’ve ever exchanged even the briefest of pleasantries was that day beside the Cream Cart.

  “I’m so glad you guys are here. I
want you to meet Adam!” Carrie grabs my hand in her free one and hauls me across the patio before I can remind her that we actually already know each other, that even before she reintroduced us at the carnival a couple weeks ago we spent the better part of elementary school in the same class. “Did I already say I’m glad you’re here? I’m so glad you’re here.”

  I shoot Miles a look over my shoulder like, Oh God, please save me. He makes an exaggerated I’m sorry, what? I don’t understand you gesture in return that has me laughing in spite of myself. He looks sort of ridiculously cute tonight, if I’m being honest, dressed in jeans a click nicer than the ones he usually wears and a lightweight plaid button-down rolled up to the elbows. His hair, for once, is actually combed. It makes me feel kind of crappy, to think of him getting ready over at his house while I paced mine trying to figure out how best to let him down easy. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the effort.

  We chat with Adam and his private school buddies for a while—or, more accurately, Carrie chats enough for all of us, her voice loose with that cheerful drunken lilt. Eventually Adam lifts his chin at Miles, nodding in recognition. “Vandenberg,” he says. “How you been, dude?”

  Miles nods back coolly, an expression on his face I don’t entirely recognize and a weird tautness in his shoulders. When I pull him aside a moment later, it’s my turn to ask if he’s okay.

  “Yeah,” he says, coming back to himself, “I’m fine. I just didn’t realize this was Adam Meyers’s house, that’s all.”

  I frown. “Oh.” I guess I did actually fail to mention that, now that I think about it, though of course Miles went to school with him when we were kids same as me. “Yeah, why?”

  He shrugs. “I mean, that dude beat me up like four times in middle school,” he admits. “But other than that, no reason.”

  My eyes widen. “Seriously?”

  “It’s fine,” Miles assures me with a crooked smile, shaking his head. “I’m over it now. You know, mostly.”

  “That guy, really?” My mouth drops open at the unfairness of it, outrage on Miles’s behalf. “He had a monkey backpack!”

  Miles smirks. “Not by eighth grade, he didn’t.”

  “Want me to go beat him up now?” I ask. “As, like, payback?”

  He considers that for a moment. “Tempting,” he says. “Think you’re up for it?”

  “I’m very tough.” I blow a breath out. “Do you want to leave?” The idea fills me with a weird, perverse hope, actually—we could get out of here; we could have our Talk and get it over with, even if I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to say, especially in light of the fact that apparently I’ve lured him into the lair of his pubescent tormentor—but Miles shakes his head.

  “Nah,” he says, jamming his hands into his pockets. “You wanted to do this, right? I feel like we’re constitutionally obligated to stay here and drink his booze at the very least.” He leads me toward the keg, filling a red cup and handing it over. “Bottoms up, princess.”

  “You’re not having one?” I ask, taking a tiny sip and wrinkling my nose at the bitter foam.

  “I’m driving,” he reminds me, “which means you’ve got to drink for both of us.”

  “For your honor,” I say solemnly.

  “Exactly.”

  I smile, taking another sip. The thing about Miles is that I actually do have a really good time with him, when I get out of my own way and let myself. There’s a part of me that can picture exactly what it would be like for us to be together for real: meeting at home on the weekends this fall and watching movies on the giant projector screen, him joking around with my parents at the restaurant. Fun and familiar and easy and safe.

  But also: Clayton.

  We do a lap through the crowded house and wind up in the massive basement, which boasts a pool table, a shuffleboard setup, and a Ping-Pong table, which is currently being used for a double-stacked game of beer pong. A crowd of people cheer or clap every few seconds. “You want in?” some dude in a Lions jersey asks Miles, who—to my utter shock—actually seems to consider it.

  “I need a base runner,” he tells me. “You in?”

  “A what?”

  “To drain the cups. You up for it?”

  I stare at him pointedly. “Are you serious?”

  “Don’t worry,” he says, “you’re not going to have to chug a ton of beer or anything.” He grins then, suddenly a little wolfish. “I’m really good at this.”

  “At beer pong?” I make a face but then remember my new mantra. I’m Team Yes, aren’t I? I can do this. “Okay,” I say. “But you better be as good as you say.”

  He winks. “I’m better.”

  To my complete and utter shock, he isn’t actually lying; before long, he’s attracted a huge crowd. Every time he bounces a ball, it goes in immediately like he’s got some kind of preternatural drinking-game ability, the entire basement erupting in cheers. “I’m sorry,” I say after a few minutes, nudging him in the shoulder as he accepts a round of fist bumps from Lions Jersey and his buddies. “Are you a secret beer pong savant?”

  Miles shrugs in a way that definitely means yes. “Tommy used to always play with our cousins when he was in high school,” he explains. “They’d let me play with water cups.”

  I shake my head. “Speaking of water,” I tell him, “I’m going to go grab some.” I’ve probably had less than half a beer, all told, but still my head is the tiniest bit swimmy. “Might check on Carrie too.”

  Miles nods. “You want me to come with?”

  “Nah, you’re in your element,” I tease, and he rolls his eyes. “You do you.”

  “I always do,” he promises, smiling before turning back to the game. “Hurry back.”

  * * *

  It’s probably been less than an hour since we got here, but still it seems like the population of the house has more than doubled: I can barely make my way through the kitchen to the patio without being jostled or getting lost. Now that I’m moving around, my head is a little fuzzier than I realized. I scan the yard for Carrie or Adam, but I don’t see either one. I’ve just fired off a where’d you get to? text when a hand lands on my lower back.

  “Oh hey,” Clayton says, his voice in my ear low and deep and private. “I know you.”

  Oh my God. “Oh my God!” I say, almost dropping my phone on the patio. “Um. Hi!”

  “Hi yourself,” Clayton says. He looks surprised in a good way—which, I remind myself in a panic, is how I should try to look as well. “What are you doing here?”

  “Carrie invited me,” I explain. “What are you doing here?”

  “Carrie invited Ethan. I’m just crashing.”

  My phone buzzes inside my hand, a bumblebee sounding an alarm: In the living room! Carrie’s texted. Also FYI Clayton is here.

  Yes, thanks, I think wildly, shoving the phone back into my pocket. I see that. “Um,” I say, trying with little success to come up with some kind of plan that isn’t something out of a ’90s sitcom, me running back and forth between Clayton and Miles dressed in some kind of corny disguise. “How are you?”

  “I’m good,” he says with a smile. Then, raising an eyebrow: “You okay?”

  “Yup! I’m great.” I glance around one more time, making sure Miles hasn’t come up here to find me. “Hey, want to go for a walk?” I fan myself with one hand, which isn’t actually an affectation, seeing as all of a sudden I can barely breathe. “So many people out here.”

  Clayton nods. “Sure,” he says.

  I practically drag him toward the far side of the yard and down the hill, where the property meets the water, the smell of pine trees and water replacing the low-hanging cloud of body spray and beer. There’s a long dock there, a speedboat at the end of it. Just for a moment, I imagine taking a running leap and diving behind the wheel, gunning the motor, and speeding off
down the creek. Never mind that I have no idea how to drive a boat.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Clayton asks, nearly tripping over a gnarled tree root before following me out onto the dock.

  Oh my God, if one more person asks me that tonight, I’m going to lose it. “I’m good!” I insist, aware that I’m not totally selling it. “Parties just aren’t my scene, you know?” None of this is my scene, let’s be real; in no universe am I the kind of person to wind up accidentally toggling between two guys in one night like the world’s most awkward romantic multitasker.

  “I mean, fair enough,” Clayton says, sitting down on the dock so his feet dangle a little ways above the water. “Shine starting to wear off the summer of yes?”

  I hesitate, glancing back at the house for a moment. I think back to what Nonna said earlier, about making sure nobody gets hurt here. I know I should make an excuse, then dash back into the house, collect Miles the Beer Pong King, and take us both as far away from this place as humanly possible.

  Instead, I sit down on the dock beside Clayton. “Kind of,” I admit, my hand landing on top of his on the splintery wood.

  “That’s too bad,” Clayton says, pushing his shoulder against mine ever so slightly. When I glance in his direction, he’s looking back at me, steady, intent written all over his face.

  “Yeah.” I can hear the party still raging in the yard—a splash, the sound of someone cackling—but it sounds like it’s happening somewhere very far away. “I mean, let’s be real, it probably couldn’t last forever, right?”

  “Probably not,” Clayton agrees. “For what it’s worth, though? I’m really glad you’re here.”