Page 1 of That Summer Feeling

Three Years Earlier

My honeymoon started with me sprinting barefoot through the airport holding a pair of sandals and a broken bracelet that may or may not have been magical. We’d left for LAX way later than I wanted to, but I didn’t mention it, because I never said anything I thought might make a moment worse. Besides, our weekend of wedding festivities had been so draining that both of us deserved every extra minute of rest we could get. My new husband, Ethan, had a gift for sleeping in late and then arriving on time. I’d watched him do it enough that I decided the talent had been extended to me through our marriage.

Traffic on the 405 was the usual nightmare. We were keeping a five-mile-an-hour pace, inching toward the promise of relaxation that awaited in Cancún. Ethan said very little. He had the kind of perpetually mellow energy that made babies stop crying when he held them. It was another trait of his I hoped to acquire through our union. I was, by all accounts, too excitable for my own good. In her maid of honor speech, my older sisterDara described me as someone who watched a true crime documentary believing that if I rooted hard enough for the people involved, their story might not end in murder after all. Then I found myself inconsolable when the death inevitably came, crying as if I were a member of the victim’s immediate family.

By the time Ethan and I got dropped off at our gate, I’d taken to making up a song to coach myself through the moment, singingThis is fine, this is greatunder my breath. I was always trying to find the good in my struggles, and this was me in my full glory, humming my own tune over and over as if the repetition guaranteed a successful outcome.

In the stereotypically beachy apparel I’d insisted we wear for our flight—Ethan in a floral button-down and cargo shorts, and me in a flowing white maxi dress with gladiator sandals—we took long, purposeful strides toward security, where a snaking line awaited us. We looked like textbook newlyweds, and that meant the world to me. I wanted every person who saw us to know I’d done it. I’d picked a man to love forever.

The security line moved comically slowly. As I repeated my song to myself, catching stares from strangers in the process, I checked my phone every thirty seconds, hoping my incessant eye on the time would make it stop moving. Or better yet, our flight would be delayed.

“Garland,” Ethan said as he planted a kiss on my forehead. The fresh stubble on his chin grazed my sweat-slicked skin. He hated to be barefaced, but his mother had insisted on it for the wedding, so he’d shaved off his auburn beard for the first time in years. It made him look so youthful that I gasped when I walked down the aisle. He had freckles on his jawlinethat I’d never seen before, and two little nicks on his chin from the razor. “We’ll make it.”

“Our flight leaves in fourteen minutes.” I illuminated my phone screen to show him the time.

“And we will be on it,” he told me.

“I hope so.”

He laughed softly. “Just relax. We will.”

When we finally got to take off our shoes and put our belongings into bins, panic overtook me. The moment I stepped out of the body scanner, I grabbed my stuff and started running, not even bothering to put my sandals back on my feet. Ethan kept his usual pace. To him, we may as well have been strolling the beach already.

Eventually I turned my head, trying to make sure he wasn’t as far away as he felt, and I ended up crashing into someone else. A very tall someone else. I was immediately torn between apologizing for not looking where I was going or running to the gate at speeds faster than ever before reached by humankind.

I chose to attempt both at the same time. “I amsosorry! Incredibly sorry!” I said.

To my surprise, the stranger started running after me. “Hold on,” he called out. “You dropped your... bracelet?”

I froze.

When Dara and I were growing up, our mom and dad fought way more than they ever got along. One late night when Dara was twelve and I was ten, whispering underneath the yells of our parents’ latest argument, we promised each other that we’d never let our love lives sour like they had.

Dara always said she and I had the power to bend theworld to our will. We could make impossible things happen, if only we tried hard enough. Most of the time we were too busy distracting ourselves from the constant friction in our household to put forth the kind of effort she spoke about. That night was different somehow, in the way some nights just are. An extra crackle in the air. A brighter shine to the stars. Dara and I decided to finally put our energy toward rising above the circumstances we’d been given.

Under the watchful glow of a new moon, we made bracelets out of random things we scrounged up in our shared bedroom: garden twine, beads from other jewelry, charms, and random junk like small buttons and sequins. We called the bracelets our heart promises, imbuing them with a magic we believed we created together.

As we assembled them, we came up with the rules behind the promise—we would have better lives than the ones our parents had shown us. We would find people to love with care. We’d never become bitter and stubborn as we got older. We’d be happy in our relationships.

We knew it was the kind of wish that didn’t get fulfilled right away. It was something that needed to grow with us. Dara decided we had to guard each other’s bracelets until we were adults. Then, whenever one of us made our promise come true, we would get our original bracelet back, as a reminder to continue living out the wish we’d made real.

Through the years, we took the job of looking after each other’s bracelets very seriously. What started as a late-night childhood whim had become a very deep representation of not only our dreams but our bond. We considered ourselves theprotectors of each other’s contentment. We would never let the other person settle for less than they deserved.

Dara gifted mine to me on my wedding day. She called it my something old, and she tucked it into an interior pocket she’d asked the tailor to hide in my gown. I nearly cried off my makeup when she handed it over. It always felt like she knew me better than I knew myself, and it meant everything to know she approved of my marriage to Ethan. She wasn’t jealous that I was younger and I’d gotten married ahead of her. She was happy for me. She believed in the love I was making legally binding.

The next day, I tied my bracelet onto my wrist for the first time ever. It looked childlike against the formfitting white dress I’d selected for my post-wedding luncheon, especially since I’d pulled my long brown hair into a sleek bun, but I didn’t care. I was proud of myself for fulfilling my heart promise. Every time I looked at my arm, I saw proof that my marriage was going to be better than my parents’ had been.

The man in the airport extended his hand out to pass the bracelet back to me. He was in a highlighter-green tank that showed off his muscular physique, and he had shoulder-length blond hair pulled off his face by a pair of sunglasses resting on his head. He looked to me like he surfed. Or played beach volleyball. Something sandy.

As a rule, I did not trust blond men. No real reason other than pure skepticism. But this tall, toned stranger had chased me down to return a piece of jewelry that may as well have been made during kindergarten arts and crafts. He had to be a little decent.

“Thanks,” I said to him, reaching for my bracelet.

As soon as my fingers grazed his palm, I was no longer in the bright, busy airport. Instead I sat across the table from this man. We were in a large dining hall that smelled like firewood and bread. It was nighttime, and the sconces on the wall cast a buttery glow. Crickets chirped outside the logwood walls. We were surrounded by what I took to be his family—Nordic-looking blonds with beaming smiles and sun-soaked skin. There was a woman beside me, about my age. She pressed her hand against my forearm as we all laughed so hard and deep that my stomach ached. I felt the kind of soul-deep contentment I hadn’t realized I’d never experienced before. I could tell I was an important part of this man’s life, and everyone around me loved us both.

Quick as a blink, I returned to the crowded airport, clutching the stranger’s hand. When I pulled away, startled, the man didn’t seem at all disoriented.

Did he see what I saw? Does he feel like he knows me too? What just happened?