Page 10 of That Summer Feeling

4

Inside the mess hall—themess hall I’d conjured in mymind—Dara sat by herself at an empty table near the back left, looking at the walls with an idle curiosity. She’d chosen a perfect location for me to slide in across from her and reveal something weighty and shocking.

Stevie did not see my frantic beeline toward my sister as something she should politely ignore. Instead she followed me, matching my intensity as we walked. “What are we doing? It seems urgent.”

“It is,” I said.

“Very mysterious response. Do you think you could give me even the smallest hint as to why you’ve suddenly developed the attitude of a doctor who’s been unexpectedly paged to perform a lifesaving surgery?”

Having Stevie around when I told Dara about the vision might benefit me. Stevie would be a good buffer, and Isuspected she’d have my back in case things went sour. Plus, she was Mason’s sister. Which meant she knew way more than I did about how possible all of this really was. Maybe he was married. Maybe he was queer. Maybe he was both?

“I don’t have time to explain,” I told her. “You’re just going to have to enter the operating room with me. Scrub in, Doc.”

She pretended to wash her hands as I threw myself onto the bench across from Dara.

“When I was on my way to my honeymoon,” I started, staring Dara in the eyes, not bothering with a greeting.

Stevie reacted to the news of me being married with a small gasp.

“I’m divorced now,” I said. “That’s very important to know for what I’m about to say.”

Stevie shook imaginary water off her hands, then sat beside me on the bench, so close our hips touched. “This is even better than I anticipated, and I anticipated a lot.”

“I ran into your brother at the airport on my way to Cancún for my honeymoon,” I told her. “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?”

I nodded, and then, as simply as possible, I explained to Stevie what the bracelet meant to Dara and me. Dara hadn’t even heard the wildest part yet—the vision—and she was already shifting in her seat, excitement getting the better of her.

Stevie gamely kept up. “You think this bracelet represents finding the person you’re meant to love forever?”

“Right. And I got mine back at my wedding. Then I dropped it at the airport, and your brother found it. When he handed it back to me, our hands touched. And I, uh, saw a vision of me with him.Here.In this exact mess hall. Down to every detail. We were surrounded by his family. Laughing. We were...”

“In love,” Dara finished, staring at the antler chandelier overhead. “Garland, I can’t believe you never told me this.”

“You know I couldn’t,” I whispered.

“Of course you could,” Dara countered, instantly insulted. “I would have handled it well.”

It was true. She would have been as unfussed about it as she was about everything else. Unlike the rest of my family, Dara had never seen my divorce as some kind of failing on my part. Instead she’d taken the news of my split like a nurse jotting down information before the doctor entered the appointment room, gathering up the necessary details without opinion. It was another one of the countless kindnesses she’d given me, and all that time I’d been lying to her, leaving out a crucial piece of information.

I looked to Stevie. Up to that point she had been nothing but supportive of everything I threw her way. But her energy had changed as fast as mine had when I entered the mess hall. She folded her arms across her chest and angled herself away.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Her doubt crushed me more than expected. I wanted her to believe me, not just because I knew what I’d seen was real but because I didn’t want her to think less of me for believing it myself.

“It sounds ridiculous,” I admitted. “Maybe it means nothing. But itdidhappen.”

“Don’t say it means nothing,” Dara warned. “You fainted at the sight of this guy. Obviously it means something. How could it not?”

Stevie put a hand on my shoulder. That pull between us once again set my pulse racing. It felt as if she could see through me, somehow. “Sorry. I do believe you.” She paused for a second and tilted her head. “It does require an unusually high amount of faith from me up front, but I’m happy to give it. I just meant that—” She searched for the right words. “Mason can be a nightmare.”

“Oh,” I said softly.