That Summer Feeling

by Bridget Morrissey

When Dara and I were growing up, our mom and dad fought way more than they ever got along.

We knew it was the kind of wish that didn’t get fulfilled right away. It was something that needed to grow with us. Dara decided we had to guard each other’s bracelets until we were adults.

The next day, I tied my bracelet onto my wrist for the first time ever. It looked childlike against the formfitting white dress I’d selected for my post-wedding luncheon, especially since I’d pulled my long brown hair into a sleek bun, but I didn’t care. I was proud of myself for fulfilling my heart promise. Every time I looked at my arm, I saw proof that my marriage was going to be better than my parents’ had been.

This is just your imagination trying to psych you out, I told myself as my chest heaved from the exertion. Heart promises aren’t real. They were a childhood coping mechanism, and you are on your way to your honeymoon with the man you love.

It all worked out, just like he’d said it would. We had a lovely trip together.

“Are we really doing this?” I asked, nervous. “We’re absolutely doing this,”

Now Dara and I were in our thirties, and we’d finally made it to a real summer camp after all.

I was supposed to stay for one week. One week had turned into one year and I still hadn’t left. I never wanted Dara to think I planned to intrude upon her life in a permanent way. No matter what she said, I felt like I was a bother, and I hated being a bother.

“One, two, three,” I counted. “Failed marriage!”

“Hi! I’m Garland! This is my older sister Dara. I can’t wait for your documentary,” I blurted out.

My body was fully smashed atop hers, flush against her matching sports set. My hands got stuck in the space between her body and her backpack. Her own hands had such a tight grip on me in return that the pressure of it almost made me cry. It had been so long since anyone had held me in that way. It made me feel like I was fragile and worth protecting.

He looked exactly like the man from the airport—the man I’d had a premonition about when our hands connected on my heart-promise bracelet. I’d long ago convinced myself that hadn’t been real. I sometimes saw that face late at night, right before I fell asleep, when my mind liked to play tricks and make me think I’d missed out on an opportunity with my soulmate or something. It couldn’t be the same guy. There was no way.

“Wait,” he said to me. “I know you.” I opened my mouth to speak. No sound came out. Instead, I fainted. Right at the feet of the man of my dreams.

Then he surprised me with a divorce over Valentine’s Day dinner, and all the little head-in-the-clouds quirks about myself I once saw as wondrous now seemed like a burden.

“Shit, Garland. Are you okay? I’ve never seen you do that before in my life.”

I lived my life in waiting mode, holding out for Ethan’s return.

The full reality of what was actually occurring had no proper diagnosis. After my marriage died, I swore off the prospect of dating anyone new.

So even if my soulmate happened to be here—and according to my own vision, he was—I wasn’t about to do anything about it. I was not going to be falling in love at summer camp.

I needed to purge it from my system. Be free of the burden of my prophecy, so that every little detail stopped unnerving me. I had to tell my sister.

“He picked up something I’d dropped, then chased after me to give it back.” “That was surprisingly generous of him,” Stevie said. “What I dropped was a bracelet.” Dara gasped. “The heart-promise bracelet?”

Maybe Mason could just be a summer fling.

I could be casual here. I could have a summer fling. “Deal,” I said, shaking Stevie’s hand yet again.

I smiled. I liked being known as Stevie’s friend.

If she got up again, I didn’t feel it. The last thing I remembered was the comfort of her body atop mine.

Maybe if I changed my mind and I did end up marrying her brother, my wedding would be nontraditional. As most second weddings were. Perhaps Stevie could walk me down the aisle? She was the key to all of it.

I was already imagining my alternative second wedding with him despite not wanting to get married ever again or expecting anything serious to happen with Mason. There was no way to know my future if I never stayed in the present. So I took to looking at the trees again. Breathing in and out. Appreciating that I was alive and I was here, and that was the best I could do.

Stevie was my ally. For her, I would try.

I knew if I invested that much effort in the contest, it would get ugly. So I came outside.”

I wanted to be sure Dara understood that I was getting closer to Stevie as a way to know Mason better. When drunk, Mason and I were apparently the resident dance hall maniacs, cutting rugs for the community at large.

Allison was Stevie’s ex. The one her mom sent cards to, I bet.

All four of us stopped what we were doing to stare at her in silent awe.

The brothers and I shot up in near-perfect unison. I almost laughed at our eagerness. We were all dying to know what had happened with Stevie and Allison.

It was a sweet revelation. I liked seeing how loved Stevie was.

Mean mugging, to be more exact.

At that, the band started playing “Hoedown Throwdown” from Hannah Montana: The Movie.

fire song tbh

There was only her and me. The whole moment was so joyful I felt wild with it. No matter how old I got, I could always find new ways to be young again.

Stevie stopped moving. “I’m sorry. I never should have said that,”

I couldn’t abandon Stevie, even though we’d just been fighting. No, not fighting. We’d been doing something. I owed it to both of us to stick around and find out what that something was.

I didn’t like Mason. I never had. Not for a single second. I liked Stevie. No. That wasn’t enough. I had a full-on crush on her. A heart-stirring, hands-shaking, forget-how-to-breathe crush.

Instead I stood with disco lights swirling against me, wondering who the hell I was anymore.

That was not how any rational adult with a crush behaved.

Crushes—or attractions, or sensations, or arousals, or whatever—did not get any easier with age.

To really exist. Not just survive. To be myself in all my completion. And I liked who I was becoming.

I just wanted her to see that what I’d done was as much for me as it was for her. Not only could I try new things, I could be good at them.

My heart-promise vision wasn’t about Mason and me. It was about Mason and Dara.

I could feel her analyzing me, trying to understand why I wanted Mason to hang out with Dara.

Stevie didn’t answer him. She just wrapped herself in the towel, shivering, shocked, and silent. “I’m so sorry,”

My sister—with the bitter, waterlogged look of a half-drowned rat—huffed her way toward dry ground. I’d made a mess with my recklessness in the exact way she’d taught me not to do.

“What are you saying?” “I’m saying I don’t think I’m the one who is meant to be with Mason. I think you are.”

“Because I want to be alone, Garland.” “No, you don’t,” I told her. “You’re just saying that because you’re scared. You can’t avoid love forever.” “I’m not avoiding love, or whatever else it is you seem to think I’ve been doing for the last thirty-four years of my life. Being by myself is not a flaw. It’s a feature. So no, I’m not the one who will be falling in love with Mason. End of discussion.”