Summer of Love (26 page)

“That sounds so weird. I have to meet my mother.” I want to ask for the detail-oriented version of the “brief meeting” my dad had with her. What they said, how he felt when he first laid eyes on her, if she looked the same. But I know from telling my own stories, from sharing details with Chris and Arabella, that those items, the concrete of what actually happened, makes it so real it sometimes hurts. And I suspect my dad isn’t quite ready to relive that. “And then? After I meet her?”

Dad shrugs. “It becomes part of your life. Part of change. You’re still you. You still sing and laugh and notice everything and have Chris and Arabella. You’re still going to be a senior with — ahem — college applications and a future ahead of you.”

“I know, I know,” I nod my head. “But that’s what’s so bizarre….these things happen, right? Huge things — finding a long lost relative, or losing Mable, or even getting a boyfriend — which granted is not quite so huge but it’s still a big deal….”

“And?” Dad reaches out a hand and pulls me from the rock and toward the car.

“And then you think well, if such and such would happen, my life would be totally different.”

“But it’s not.”

“No,” I say and look out at the ocean. Staring at the waves I remember Charlie telling me to count them if I ever needed to calm myself down. I’ve used the technique many times but right now I don’t feel the need for it. Instead, buried in the center of the nausea, of the fear of not knowing what’s going to happen with Gala, with my romantic ruins or revelations, with college, I feel just a small nugget of something else: excitement. “Dad?”

“Yeah?” He shakes his shoes free of sand and looks at me. He checks his watch. “Louisa’s at the farmer’s market in Tisbury. I have to pick her up, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” I say, thinking that the market is right near Charlie’s beach cabin. “You can drop me off nearby — I’ll make my own way back. No doubt Slave to the Grind misses my finesse with the milk frother.”

“You don’t want to head right to the cottage?” he pauses, clears his throat and clarifies. “Her cottage?”

“I know whose cottage it is, Dad. And no, I mean, it’s fine that Gala chose to come all this way to meet me. Even if it was at a totally inconvenient time. But I think if I jump cause she says jump — if I just show up because she’s ready? That I’m not going feel very good about it. I think I need to take care of a couple of other things first. I can see her tonight.” I pause, wondering what else I’ll do tonight — work, or see Charlie. If I’ll bump into Jacob. If Chili Pomroy — the cool soon-to-be-sophomore I’ve become friends with — is around. If Chris is torturing himself by being near Chili’s brother, Haverford, his longtime crush who is otherwise attached.

“Just as long as you don’t put it off forever,” Dad says.

“Are you talking about meeting Gala or doing my college applications?”

“Both.” Dad slurps the dregs of his drinks. “I take it you’re planning on interviewing this fall instead of summer?”

“Nice segue, Dad. But yeah, that’s sort of how it worked out. Lest you think I’m procrastinating, I have been thinking about those essay questions. And about schools. And other ideas.” Dad waits for me to say more, but I give him my look to signal that the subject is — at least temporarily — closed.

We get in the car and I don’t complain about the fact that my dad is driving my car. For once, I enjoy being passengered around the island, looking at the land and sea swishing by, at the families and couples enjoying the sun.

“What were you going to say?” Dad looks at me. “Before — when I interrupted you about getting Louisa.”

I slink my arm out the window, feeling the hot metal of the car door, and stick my head into the breeze like a dog might. “Oh, then? Just…thanks.” I turn around, the wind pushing all my hair forward so part gets into my mouth, part in my eyes, part freeflowing. “I’m glad you’re here.” I watch him drive my car — the car that’s already taken me so many different places. Where will I be when the odometer reads 120,000? I’m tempted to ponder the possibilities, but I stop myself. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

There’s nothing that compares to being kissed by the right boy at the right time. This is the thought that keep overlapping in my mind after Dad drops me at Charlie’s cabin. The red pick-up truck is in the driveway, fishing poles and lobster traps in the back, and I assume that at any moment his Love sense will kick in, the front door will open, and he’ll rush over (not so much that he looks overly eager, but enough so it’s clear he missed me), and plant a kiss directly on my mouth (forgoing the confusing cheek kiss after an absence which makes you question if something happened while the time apart took place to make the kiss migrate from lips to face). But all of this is under the assumption that Charlie — my Charlie — is in there. I stare at the pick up truck and shake my head at all of my assumptions — that he was a poor fisherman, that he was a local, that he was a typical love ’em and leave kind of guy. I curl my hand into a fist and knock on the door, my heart speeding up as I picture him in his blue t-shirt. For some reason, I often associate a person with one specific article of clothing — my dad and his worn-in Harvard shirt, Arabella and a certain strappy flowy moss-colored dress — even if I’m picturing her in winter, Aunt Mable — even though she exists only in memory now — is always clad in a plain white tank top, and with Charlie it’s his blue t-shirt. So not only have I crafted how he’ll greet me, I realize now, but what he’s wearing, too. Of course, once I’m alone on the steps and knocking for the third time, I wonder if perhaps getting dropped off here was a hasty decision and if, yet again, my assumptions are all wrong.

I reach for my cell phone to call him, but as I think back to being here with Charlie for the first time, how we’d walked on the beach and talked, made out on his porch and by the fireplace. If he were outside now, he wouldn’t hear me. This revelation makes me slip the cell phone back into its nest and get all giddy. He’s here, he’s just outside!

I take off my flip flops and leave them lined up (pet peeve=leaving my shoes scattered — one reason being they get lost and the other, totally weirdo reason is that it reminds me of those shots in movies where kids have been knocked over by a car and they close-up on one red sneaker or something and you know something bad has happened).

The wind picks up as I run from the back of the cabin where the driveway and door are around to the front of the building where the porch is, where the beach is, and where Charlie is, blue t-shirt and all, sitting perched on the railing with his back to me. Even from this view, he’s gorgeous.

Before I can stop myself from standing statue still and admiring him from afar, my instincts take over and I realized I don’t have to admire from afar any longer. He’s mine — or, he is in that way that people feel like they’re yours and you can run up to them and show them how much you missed them or how much you like them (or maybe love them?) without editing yourself. All of which I do, first putting my palms flat on Charlie’s back, then gripping him around the waist. He flinches with surprise which makes me — ten points for having a too high startle response — yelp, which then makes him tense up and turn around. At this point, I completely freak out because again — it’s surprising when someone moves suddenly — but mainly because…

“You’re not Charlie!” I yell this with true shock while not-Charlie falls on his butt from the railing.

“No shit.” He stands up, giving me a full view of similar gorgeousness — and identical t-shirt — but no, not Charlie. He watches me watch him and I feel asinine.

“Sorry.” I don’t bother explaining that I thought he was Charlie because this would be redundant and only add to my humiliation. “Sorry to surprise you and sorry to…” I stop short of saying
sorry about touching you
— which sounds like bad lyrics 101.

“Yeah.”

Unlike Charlie, this guy’s got one-word answers for everything, I guess. Oh, wait — no, shit is two words. Okay. Humiliation begins to fade to annoyance as I wait for him to offer up some explanation. Then I realize that maybe I’m the one who needs to give a reason for showing up here. For all I know, in the couple of days I’ve been gone, Charlie could have rented his cabin out to a stranger.

“I’m Love — I’m a friend of Charlie’s. Charlie Addison?” I end with a question mark, despising how teenage girl I sound, but seriously — what’s the deal?

“I figured as much.” He shakes out his hand, breaking the conversational ice and stretching out his vocabulary.

“And you are…” I do a quick study. He’s older — older than I am, older than Charlie, but not by much. I blush thinking that I had my arms around him — that my boobs brushed against his back.

“I’m Parker.”

“Parker Addison?” Cue nod from him and glimmer of clue from me. “Wait — are you the same Parker Addison who went to Hadley Hall? Who changed the color of the assembly room from white to purple overnight and then played Deep Purple while everyone filed in?” Really, how many Parker Addison’s could there be — but having myth meet reality is bizarre enough to make me question the guy’s identity.

“Among other rumors,” he says and reclaims his perch on the railing.

“So, are you?”

“I could be.”

I consider telling him about his legendary status among Hadley students and alums — and all the stories that go with him (catapulting from one girls’ dorm to another, creating a zip line from his dorm window to the dining hall, taking the entire junior class of girls to the prom, that sort of thing — and all while getting straight a’s) but I don’t. Something in his demeanor — his ruffled hair, the tone of his voice, suggests a disconnect — maybe from the past, or maybe from everything.

We stand there for a few minutes with only the sound of surf slopping onto the beach to break the silence. “You’re not going to say anything unless I ask, are you?”

“Pretty much,” he says. He lifts a beer from the deck with his feet and brings it to his hands then sips. He offers it to me without any words, just a tilted bottle as the gesture and for some weird reason, I accept it.

“I’m not really a drinker,” I say after swallowing and handing the bottle back. “I get it, I don’t even get why people do it, really. It’s fake freedom, an excuse to act without editing, breaking rules, rah-rah and everything but it’s not really for me.” Did I just say rah-rah? Did I leave my mind and vocabulary back in California? Parker hands the bottle back to me and I swig. “So, not really much of a drinker — I did, before, and I wound up puking all over this guy I really liked but then he turned out to be a raging asshole, so while I was totally embarrassed — I mean, shattered — at the time, I’m kind of glad I puked on him now.”

“You might not be much of a drinker, but you’re one hell of a talker.” Parker takes another sip and then hands the rest back to me. I recall another campus legend involving him: supposedly one hot Sunday evening at dinner, he filled the overly sweet punch pitchers with rum, causing faculty members and student alike to show up soused for the non-denominational chapel service.

I overlook this warning sign as thirst and carelessness in the moment take over and I slide the rest of the beer down my throat. In my belly my body realizes I haven’t had much to eat all day and sends messages to my limbs that alcohol has been ingested. “I do like my words,” I say, putting on a southern accent for no good reason. Well, maybe one good reason: beer.

“Want another?”

I shrug and follow Parker inside, realizing I haven’t yet discerned where Charlie is. I don’t even have true confirmation that Parker is Parker. But in the rush of getting back to the Vineyard, in the haze of maternal mysteries and romantic entanglements, it feels decent to suddenly go with the flow. Even if the flow is illegal and off the subject. Inside, my eyes begin to adjust to the dimness. I watch Parker in the kitchen and sit on the left side of the windowseat. The entire downstairs of the cabin is one room — kitchen at the far end, enormous stone fireplace at the other, and around the whole curve of the main room is a windowseat padded with long cushions.

“Here.” He clinks his bottle against mine and watches me drink as though we’ve known each other awhile or as if it’s totally normal to meet someone — your brother’s underage girlfriend — and give her a beer and not say anything else.

“So, it just occurred to me — this isn’t Charlie’s cabin, is it?” I look around the room, my gaze pausing in front of the fireplace where Charlie and I made s’mores and kissed for hours. In my mind we were the only people ever to do that here, but I suddenly get that probably we aren’t the first couple to wind up here after a proverbial walk on the beach. With a sting I realize also that I might not even be the first girl Charlie’s been with here. Not that we’ve “been together” as far as that expression goes. But we could. Or, we’ve been semi-close. Semi-close-ish.

“No,” Parker says, pulling me back to earth. “This isn’t his. He’d like to think so, but it’s not.” An impressive twelve words in a row. Sip. “He’s my brother, yes I’m
that
Parker Addison — and God love him but he has a way of acting as though anything he touches — anything with which he graces his presence — is his.”

“That’s kind of harsh.” It’s not just that I need to defend Charlie — if I’m truthful, that characteristic, how comfortable Charlie is no matter where he is — is something that draws me to him. I never considered it possessiveness before, more confidence, but maybe Parker’s known him longer and has a different perspective. Does that hold true for me? Am I one of Charlie’s things?

“Harsh but true.”

I chug the rest of my beer, suddenly wanting to be done with it and the conversation. Parker may have an impressive rep at Hadley, but he’s not exactly winning me over with his brotherly love. “I should go.”

“Yeah?”

And we’re back to one-word answers. “Into town, I guess.”

“I thought you were looking for Charles.”

“Charles. That always sounds so weird, so formal. Not at all boaty in the rough and tumble fisherman way, only boaty in the ‘I have a one hundred foot yacht and wear double-breasted blazers kind of way’.” The beer hits my body with a rush, causing words to rush out even more than normal. I stand up and feel myself sway just a little. “Call me a lightweight, but I think two beers is all it takes…”