Page 49 of One Last Summer
His name set off something inside me, like emotional carbonation, every feeling bubbling to the surface.
“Okay, I am not here to kink-shame, but I’m going to need more info.” Sam took a sip from a beige plastic cup, crunching the ice between her teeth.
I cackled at her eloquence, and she gave me a pleased look; I’d forgotten how wicked her sense of humor could be, how well she balanced her steady, serious side with biting wit. It hit me then, like a wave crashing over me, just how very much I’d missed her.
And so I did as she’d requested, and started from the moment I’d last seen her, when I’d bounded off the steps of Sunrise earlier in the afternoon and marched down toward the boathouse to find Mack.
By the time I caught her up to the moment outside the hospital when he grabbed my hand, she’d tucked the blanket up under her chin and was giving me an easy, relaxed smile.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked, and I nodded.
“My mom tried to talk me out of coming this weekend. Long drive, the baby almost being here, blah blah blah. Typical overprotective mom shit. But this is just what I needed.”
“Being in the hospital?” I joked.
“No, though she’s going to have a field day with that.” She gave an exasperated sigh as she waved a hand around the hospital room. “I mean being up here. At camp. Gossiping about crushes and doing stupid shit and laughing to the point of peeing my pants.”
“I haven’t ever seen you pee your pants before.” I jabbed a finger toward her stomach. “It might just be because you’re extremely pregnant. Doesn’t that happen?”
“Oh, I definitely peed my pants laughing before I got pregnant,” she said. “I’m just an under-the-radar pants-peer. Incognito.”
“Don’t you mean ‘incog-pee-to’?” I countered.
“Piss-cognito,” she clarified. And with this, we were both laughing, that kind of stomachache-inducing, chest-clasping laugh that felt like an electric charge running through your body.
It had become familiar by now, this feeling of pure happiness that filled me when I least expected it, with zero planning or force from me to help it along. Nick and I locking pinkies in the car, that loon floating by in the lake, Mack’s face as he watched me, teetering between amused and awestruck.
I wished more than anything that I could bottle this feeling, tuck it into a tote bag, and carry it with me when it came time to leave Pine Lake. I couldn’t take my friends back home to Boston with me, but I could take this: real joy.
Just then something clicked, way back in the dark, dusty corners of my brain. This was what we’d been trying—and failing—to capture for our Alewife pitch.
Bottle the feeling.
The creative angle for their Summer Ale appeared fully formed in an instant, a vision of old friends, gatherings around picnic tables that stretched on from day until night, light cast on lake water, and the rich scent of dew-covered grass. It bowled me over so intensely that I had to give my head a shake, not noticing that Sam had gone quiet and was watching me through drooping eyelids, her lips curled just so.
“I think I need to sleep,” she said through a huge yawn, and I signaled my agreement with a pat of her hand. There would be no sleep for me, though, not right now. Because it was as if the idea had exploded in my head: Alewife Summer Ale wasn’t about the beer, it was about the people you shared it with, the memories you made together.
And that magic was born in the summer: with endless days by the water that stretch on so long it’s as if the sun will never set, and laughter that has no clear beginning and no end in sight. Barbecues that turn into legendary all-night celebrations. If you could bottle that feeling, it would be Alewife’s Summer Ale.
I was so impressed with myself that I let out an actual laugh under my breath. I think I just solved all our problems with the Alewife pitch. I texted Lydia. Going to write it all out and then send it off to Amaya.
It was time to get to work.
21
I WAS NAKED and kneeling, my shins aching against the floor.
“Millen.” Mack brushed his hand through my hair, his voice shooting straight to my core, driving heat in between my legs.
“You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” I nodded as he pressed his index finger under my chin, tilting my gaze up at him. “I’ve always wanted this.”
He was sitting on Abe’s desk in the middle of the Four Points office, a glass of champagne in his other hand. “I want you to—”
“Sorry, honey, but we’ve gotta check vitals.” A voice yanked me out of sleep, followed by the scraping sound of a curtain being abruptly dragged open.
I was not naked and on my knees, ready and willing to do whatever Mack asked. No, I was a sweaty mess, my head lodged against the hospital chair’s wooden arm, my back knotted like a tangled necklace from my awkward sleeping position. I flopped myself up to sit, heart still pounding from my dream, and found Sam scraping lime green Jell-O out of a plastic cup, chatting with a very tall nurse who stood next to her, studying the blood pressure machine that was attached to her arm.
“Hello, sunshine,” Sam said from her bed.
