Page 9 of One Last Summer
“Are you kidding me?” I raised my brows at her, horrified.
“Excuse me if I don’t get all of your old-person references,” she scoffed back. “Seriously, though, Clara. You know how my dad died right at the beginning of my sophomore year in high school?”
I softened my expression, nodding. She’d told me about losing her dad in a car accident in bits and spurts, but I never pushed it, wanting to give her space to share her grief on her own terms.
“Well, after that I threw myself into building my art portfolio. My dad was a photographer, went to art school at RISD, moved to New York City, all that shit. So I thought that’s what I should do too. What I was supposed to do. And so it was all I did. Obsessively. For over two years I devoted all my time to art so I could follow in his exact footsteps.” She threw up her hands, making her point. “And you know what I didn’t do?”
I shook my head, not entirely sure where she was going with this.
“I didn’t deal with my grief,” she continued. “I didn’t do anything for myself that truly made me happy. I don’t even think I really wanted to go to art school. It was just what I felt like I should do, which is probably why RISD rejected me.”
“Well, I’m selfishly glad that you ended up at Northeastern, because it means you got to be my intern,” I said as I fiddled with the lid of my now-empty cup.
“That’s not the point of this story!” she scolded.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. Continue.” I waved her on.
“I want you to get out there and fucking live, that’s all!” Lydia smacked her palms on the table emphatically, leaning forward. “I think you’ve been doing what you’ve thought you should do for so long that you don’t even know what it is you want. And don’t make some dumb fucking dad joke about wanting pizza or something right now, to deflect from this conversation.”
I let out a snort of a laugh. “Am I that obvious?”
“Most of the time, yes.” She slumped back in her chair, like this talk had exhausted her.
“Thank you for sharing that,” I said, tilting my gaze to catch her eye. “Seriously.”
“But?” she asked, still wary.
“But,” I said as I slipped off my sneakers and curled my legs in my chair, “what if I go away for a week and nothing’s changed? Or what if I go, and I still screw things up with this Alewife pitch? It’s just not what I’m supposed to be doing right now.”
I’m supposed to land Alewife, run the account, and snag a promotion, I thought to myself, refocusing. I’d repeated these goals over the last few months like a mantra, written them over and over in my notebook, as if they could save me from that sinking feeling of dread that plagued me when my thoughts drifted to anything other than work.
And sometimes they actually did.
“Were you not just at the same office party I was at?” Lydia cracked, and I avoided what was surely a look of disbelief, turning my focus to the mail pile in front of me.
“Go to New Hampshire! See your friends. Relive your past,” she continued, leaning forward to tap me on the hand as I riffled through the stack of catalogs, yanking out the occasional bill. “Get out of here for a little bit. Go run naked through the woods.”
“Excuse me?” I paused and looked up, giving her a look. “What the hell kind of camp do you think I went to?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never been to sleepaway camp. I’ve only seen Wet Hot American Summer and both versions of The Parent Trap.”
“And you make fun of me for being a millennial,” I scoffed.
“What?!” She raised her hands defensively. “I stand by the Lindsay Lohan remake. It’s better than the original.”
“Well, I’m not sure streaking through a forest naked is going to fix my issues.” I pressed my lips together, holding back a laugh.
“Says you,” she snapped, never one to back down from a fiercely held opinion about something ridiculous. “Do you have anything to drink in here?”
She gave her chair a scoot back, hopping up with an expectant clap of her hands.
“I think there’s some wine in the…” I trailed off, my mouth dropping open at the sight of the letter I was about to toss in the junk pile. “Holy shit.”
That was enough to send Lydia backtracking. “What?” she asked, leaning a hand on the table as she peered over my shoulder.
“This is what Sam was talking about,” I said, tracing a thumb across my name, neatly printed across the front of the envelope. “Oh my god. I’d totally forgotten we did this.”
Sam had sent it to my old address on Tremont, scribbled in her messy cursive. But my name, written above it in those precise, familiar block letters—I’d recognize that handwriting anywhere.
