This Summer Will Be Different

by Carley Fortune

It felt like we’d reached a new level in our relationship. We’d been roommates for a year, and friends for a year before that, but you never really know someone until you meet their family. And I couldn’t wait to meet Bridget’s. She was the most confident, most capable, most bighearted person I knew, and I wanted to see where she came from.

My best friend has the mouth of a sailor, the heart of a mother lion, and a frightening passion for lists, label makers, and spreadsheets.

They say university is where you meet your people,

I met my husband in college - he is My Person.

For once, this summer will be different. It has to be.

She’s holding a periwinkle blue hardcover of Anne of Green Gables to her chest and

openly weeping. “Look at how many lives she touched. This is a happy ending.”

This is Lucy’s happy ending.

I am here now, and everything is okay.

I loved you like you were my own.

every month, a yellow envelope of seeds arrived at the store. I had ten packets now. Zinnias and snap dragons and daisies. And every month, I sent him a book back.

I felt like a bottle of champagne, shaken and ready to pop.

The ten books I’d sent Felix, all in a row.

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

I’ve buried my feelings for Felix in a secret garden beneath my rib cage.

want to hold it between my hands like dough and stretch it out slowly and carefully so that it never ends.

“You look like an anal gland.” “Thank you so much.”

Books come and seeds go.

“Felix, I brought you here to tell you that you are in every one of my dreams. I came here to ask whether I’m in any of yours, too.”

“You.” He kisses me once. “I am so in love with you. Wildly. Deeply. Unrelentingly in love with you.”

I used to wish that we had met earlier in life, when we were kids or teenagers, but now I think we found each other at the right time. We became adults together. Our friendship is how I learned to compromise. It’s how I learned that the families we make are as significant as the ones we’re born into. It’s how I learned that the greatest loves are not always romances.”