Every Summer After

by Carley Fortune

He gave me a lopsided grin. It was a quiet smile, but it was a great smile, his blue eyes glinting like sea glass against his sunny skin.

wondering if there’s a chance he might be thinking of me. Sometimes I felt sure he was—like there was an invisible, unbreakable string that ran between us, stretching vast distances and keeping us joined.

We spent the mornings swimming and jumping off the raft, then read on the dock until the sun got too hot, and then we’d hit the water again.

May i have this every day please

He was beautiful at eighteen, but adult Sam is so devastating I could cry.

We stand staring at each other silently, and then he takes three giant strides toward me and wraps his arms around me so tight it’s like his large body is a cocoon around mine. He smells like sun and soap and something new that I don’t recognize. When he speaks, his voice is a deep rasp that I want to drown in. “You came home.” I squeeze my eyes shut. I came home.

Sam reached out his hand to help me, and a hot current of electricity buzzed from my fingers to my neck. What was that?

pay attention to a lot of things about you, Percy Fraser.”

“Sam told us about your story. Wouldn’t shut up about it, actually.”

“What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter what other people think about you, because if they don’t like you, they’re clearly morons.” He was so close I could make out the darker flecks of blue in his eyes. “But you’re not other people,” I whispered. His eyes flicked down to my mouth, and I leaned a tiny bit closer. “I do care what you think.” “Sometimes I think no one gets me the way you do,” he said, the pink of his cheeks deepening to scarlet. “Do you ever get that feeling?”

though. My roommates thought I was nuts to have all these movies I didn’t watch. But I just couldn’t bring myself to. It felt wrong without you.”

“You and me are special,” he started. “There’s no one else I’d rather spend time with than you. There’s no one else I’d rather talk to than you. And there’s no one else I’d rather kiss than you.”

and I think he’s going to pull my hand away from his mouth, but he doesn’t. He closes his eyes. And then he plants a kiss in the center of my palm. Once. And then again.

“I want you. I’ve always wanted you,”

“I loved you,” he whispers. “I know,” I say. Hurt eyes move across my face. “You broke my heart.” “I know that, too.”

You’re my best friend. My favorite person.”

“You drive me crazy, you know that? You always have.”

“And I never laughed with anyone like I laughed with you. I’ve never been friends with anyone like I was with you.” He takes my hands and puts them around his neck, pulling me up so we’re both kneeling. I want to tell him we need to talk before we head down this path, but he hugs me tight to his chest, and my bones and muscles and all the bits holding them together liquefy so that I melt into him.

brush the hair back from my ear and whisper into it, “I’ve tried to forget about you for more than ten years, but I don’t want to try anymore.”

he tastes like pizza and movie nights and resting on the sand after a long swim.

psychopath’s girlfriend, but I was relentless. It didn’t make a difference, though. All I could think about every day was you,”

“I fell in love with you when I was thirteen, and I never stopped. You’re it for me.”

And later tonight, when everyone has left and it’s just Sam and me in our pj’s in the basement, there will be popcorn and a movie playing in the background and a ring in an old wooden box with my initials carved on top. It will be made from twisted threads of embroidery floss that match the faded bracelet on my wrist. And I will get down on one knee and ask Sam Florek to be with me. To be my family. Forever.