Page 1 of One Last Summer
1
THE TEXT MESSAGES from my assistant, Lydia, came through back-to-back at exactly 7:24 p.m., announced by two beeps chirping from my phone, like baby birds fighting over a worm from their mother.
OMG. Clara!!!
Charles is ENGAGED.
????????? I replied, smashing the question mark key until the tip of my index finger ached. This was the universal text message bat signal for Ex-Boyfriend Panic, and I was now deep in it.
Just the sight of Charles’s name sent my sweat glands immediately into overdrive. It didn’t help that I was already an anxious mess over the disaster on the computer screen in front of me. If there was ever a moment for my drugstore antiperspirant to show off its promise of forty-eight-hour “protection,” this was it.
After waiting through the longest minute of my life, I finally shot up from my desk with an exasperated huff and rocketed out of my little corporate cave, plowing straight into a wall of sensible, pale-blue collared shirts tucked into equally sensible khaki pants. I’d landed behind the sales team, and right smack in the middle of the Summer Friday happy hour I was definitely supposed to be attending.
In the center of it all was Amaya Conrad, our company founder and CEO, dinging the edge of her iPhone against a plastic cup of champagne. She’d never met a toast she didn’t love to give, especially when it was about all the money Four Points was raking in. And this quarter, Four Points’ earnings had “been lit,” according to a recent company-wide email she’d sent.
Lydia had scrunched her nose in horror when she’d read it. According to her, forty-somethings using Gen Z slang was “cringy.” Lucky for me I was only thirty-five, so she cut me some slack when I did the same.
“I’m so thrilled to celebrate our biggest quarter yet!” Amaya shouted through a cupped hand as she simultaneously kicked off her Valentino rock-stud pumps with the gusto only a buzzed person could muster.
She practically tossed her drink to her assistant, Abe, who had taken up his usual spot, hovering dutifully just a few inches off to her side. Then, with a grunt, she pushed herself up to stand on a chair. Stepping onto his pristine white desk, she steadied herself with the edge of his computer screen before grabbing her cup back, chugging whatever was left, and pumping her fists in the air.
Oh, yeah. Definitely drunk.
I glanced down at my text messages—still nothing—and then back at Amaya, who was pontificating about the many ways in which Four Points was “the freaking G.O.A.T. of creative marketing here in Boston. We are the Tom Brady of branding. You could literally call us Tom Branding!” Oh, man. Someone was going to be chasing ibuprofen with Gatorade tomorrow morning.
I gave my phone another impatient glance. “Come on,” I murmured under my breath, which elicited a stern look from… Mark? Mike? Our sales team was made up entirely of straight dudes with M names, and they all seemed to blur together into an amorphous blob of button-down shirts or fleece vests, depending on the season.
Engaged to who? I tapped out as my heart ping-ponged around my chest.
Blocking Charles across the internet had done wonders for my post-breakup mental health. But it had also severely restricted my favorite hobby of late-night internet sleuthing and falling down social media rabbit holes. I had no idea what he’d been up to since he’d unceremoniously dumped me in the middle of the Public Gardens last year with the casual disgust of a person discovering a week-old cup of coffee in their car console and emptying it out in the street.
Not being able to stalk Charles online hadn’t stopped me from obsessively wondering, of course. Crafting elaborate fantasies of my ex miserable and regretting his decision was a skill I’d honed over this past year: Charles, devastated when he couldn’t remember our Netflix password (it’s B@@bs69, which was obviously hilarious but never made him laugh). Charles, restless and grumpy waiting for his drink at the Starbucks counter, crumbling when they called out an order for someone with my name.
None of these concocted tales included Charles falling in love with another human, much less proposing marriage. But it was fine. And I was fine! Totally fine. He was my ex; he could get engaged to whomever he liked.
After all, I was also off doing my own thing. I’d bought a new vacuum this year, one of those futuristic handheld thingies that cost a small fortune but can suck up an entire spilled bag of Dorito crumbs in, like, three seconds flat.
When I hadn’t been self-soothing with late-night internet shopping, I’d been channeling my energy into work, like the looming proposal that was currently causing me acid reflux, for Boston’s very hip, woman-owned brewery, Alewife.
Our pitch—selling them on why we should brand and launch their new Summer Ale—was in exactly two weeks. Current status: a total fucking mess, and my chest tightened at the thought of it, the same kind of heart-racing, jaw-clenching anxiety that had become my constant companion.
I’d be fixing it tonight, all night if I had to.
I was absolutely, completely fine.
Amaya’s voice cut through the din of jumpy thoughts in my head.
“You all are killing it out there.” Her face crumpled ever so slightly, like a parent about to weep at their kid’s high school graduation. “I’m so proud, and so deeply honored to know each and every one of you.”
I clapped along, following the lead of the Mikes and Marks in front of me. My phone buzzed in my hand, setting off a jolt of adrenaline that electrified every muscle in my body.
Finally!
But the new message at the top of my screen wasn’t from Lydia at all.
There, instead, was my oldest camp friend, Sam Cohen; she’d sent a photo of her face—framed by her gorgeous, dark ringlets—peeking out from under a white cap on her head. Her cheeks were rounder, with circles under those familiar, wise eyes, and she was pointing a finger at the logo on her hat, a dark green pine tree, complete with an exaggerated pout.
It was a photo designed to make me feel guilty, and it definitely worked. I’d missed our last five reunions at Pine Lake Camp, and tomorrow our old crew of camp friends was making the annual trek up to the woods of northern New Hampshire without me, yet again.
