Page 14 of That Summer Feeling

“Do you know what’s funny? I don’t even know your last name.” We’d already spent most of the day together, except for whatever moment she’d stolen away to tell her brother to notice me, and we hadn’t even thought to cover the basics.

“Magnusson,” she answered. “Anything else you need to know?”

“Everything,” I said honestly. “But I’ll settle for the quick hits first.”

Stevie grinned. “Okay, let’s see. Our dad was born in Sweden, but he moved to the States when he was a teen. Our mom’s from Rhode Island. We were all born in Vancouver. Then we moved to Connecticut when I was three. Then Idaho. Then New Mexico. Then Florida.”

“Wow.”

“Before you even ask, we got out of Canada too early for the whole niceness thing to really settle in. Only our oldest brother, Andrew, absorbed the Canadian spirit. The rest of us are, as my dad sometimes says, ‘aggressively American.’ ”

“Where do you live now?”

“It’s a long story, but I kind of live nowhere.” She paused, then added, “Mason’s still in Florida.”

She was good at incorporating her brother into our conversations, but I wanted to know more abouther. What did it mean to live nowhere? Mason, the Florida resident himself, returned with a beer and a mission, and I lost my opportunity to ask.

“We need to play beer pong,” he told me. “You and me against Stevie and our brother Andrew.”

Before I could protest, which was what I always did when it came to anything that required competition, Mason guided me toward the staircase that led to the lofted section of the hall. He kept his hand on my back in that same confident way he’d squeezed my shoulder, and I hated how it reminded me of Ethan.

It occurred to me then—at the base of the stairs in the middle of the event hall—that it was because this was the first real trip I’d ever taken without him. We didn’t go on vacations in my childhood. Only in college, when I’d cobbled together enough money through a part-time job and a healthy dose of financial ignorance, did I ever take trips for fun. Because that was something Ethan did.

“Oh, you’re out for blood,” Mason said to me. He thought I was pausing to mentally prepare to annihilate everyone at beer pong, not having a full-scale internal crisis over my capacity to love again after having my heart broken.

“Something like that.” I downed the last swig of my drink and headed up the stairs.

The loft had a beer pong table, a single chair, and a huge painting of the lake that looked to be straight from the 1970s. Exactly the kind of gentle, dreamy landscape work I’d imagined someone would do of this place.

Andrew, the oldest Magnusson brother, grabbed Mason by the shoulder and roughed up his hair, then kissed him on the cheek like he hadn’t seen him in weeks.

“This is Garland,” Mason told him afterward.

Andrew offered me a gigantic bear hug, which I took readily. “I’ve seen you. You’re Stevie’s friend.”

I smiled. I liked being known as Stevie’s friend.

“She’smyfriend too,” Mason corrected, which made me laugh, because we’d said all of ten words to each other.

Andrew let me go. “She’smyfriend too,” he said in good-hearted mockery. A family trait, it seemed. He had the same build as Mason, but a more weathered face. He looked like he lived his life out on a boat. I could picture him with a flowing blue shirt, half-unbuttoned, navigating a steering wheel with one hand and holding a cigar in the other.

“Right?” he asked me. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course,” I said. “The best of friends.”

Andrew high-fived me, then pointed to the other Magnusson brother, who sat sideways in the leather chair, sulking. “Best friend, that lunk over there is Frank.”

Frank offered up a sad wave.

“He hates to come in last,” Andrew explained. “He lost the first game, and we had to ban him from playing any more for the night. He’s not in the best of moods right now.”

“Welcome to life with my brothers! You’d never know all of us were adults, would you?” Stevie had come up the stairs, and she stood a few paces behind me with a smirk on her face, taking in the scene before her. “I told you, Andrew’s the nicest one. Right?”

“Not you?” I asked.

Frank readjusted his position in his pouting corner, moving closer to sitting upright. “Stevie’s only nice if you earn it.”

“I don’t believe that,” I challenged. “She was nice to me right away.”