Page 31 of That Summer Feeling

“See?” Michelle said when I came back into the room. “You look better than I ever could.”

Stevie stole a single glance over her shoulder. She said nothing, and still I felt it again. The heart hammer. More like a jolt. Something deep inside me attempting to leap out and be seen.

“Ugh. I’m just gonna wear this.” She grabbed something from the very bottom of her bag and disappeared into the bathroom with it.

“As your counselor, I don’t think I’m supposed to suggest this, but do you want to drink?” Michelle asked me while we waited for Stevie. There was an innocent, conspiratorial energy to her request that created sudden and powerful community between us.

“This is a perfect time for me to ask what the hell it means to be our counselor,” I said.

“I have to make sure you’re accounted for every night. That’s the main job. But I also have to watch that you’re not doing drugs or committing crimes.”

I threw up my hands. “There goes my night.”

Stevie came out of the bathroom in a baby-blue minisundress and cowboy boots. She’d taken her curls out of the braids again and let them loose in a cascade of golden ringlets. She had an aura around her that glowed. “Be honest, do I look ridiculous?”

I took the opportunity to scan her again, as if I hadn’t already gotten a thorough look the first time.

“I know,” she said. “This is too honky-tonk. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“No,” I said, too urgently. “It’s perfect. You look perfect.”

Stevie stopped. “See?” she said to Michelle. “This is what Garland does. She makes me believe untrue things.”

“You do look honky-tonk,” Michelle deadpanned. “But who says that’s bad? We’re literally in Georgia.”

She started humming a song the band had played the night before. “Chattahoochee” by Alan Jackson. The tune lit up a corner of my memory. I remembered myself the night prior, boot-scooting across the dance floor with Mason as the band performed it. Now Michelle was the vocalist, and Stevie took to making up a line dance in our room as Michelle turned her humming into full-blown singing. When she reached a stopping point, Stevie did one last knee kick before taking her well-earned bow.

“Honky-tonk suits you,” Michelle told her afterward. “I say go for the dress.”

When Stevie looked my way, my whole body flushed. “My opinion hasn’t changed,” I told her. “You look perfect. Just like I said.”

She didn’t roll her eyes or throw up her hands. Instead she gave me a nod, almost shy, and headed for the door.

“Last call for someone to drink with me before we go,” Michelle said.

Stevie said “Hell yeah” and made a U-turn to get her tequila.

“Just one shot,” I said. “But that’s it for me today. Truly.” I still planned to have as much fun as the night before, without forgetting a single moment of it.

The three of us huddled in the living room with the alcohol in the exact way I suspected we would have if we were teens and the illicit item were a gross bottle of rum stolen from one of our parents’ home collections. Not that I really knew for sure. There was so much I felt like I’d missed in life. I had so few opportunities to test those kinds of boundaries as a kid because I was trying to survive instead. To not get in the way of anything. I felt the burn of that loss in me. All that I’d never gotten to be when I was younger.

I couldn’t go back. But I could continue to honor that younger version of myself going forward.

“To Cabin Seven,” Michelle offered as our cheer.

“To Cabin Seven!” Stevie and I responded.

We took our shots, turned off the music, and danced our way out of our cabin together.

13

A band of musicians framed the entrance of the event hall. Five people in a varying array of flannel and denim, ages thirty to seventy-five by my best guess, were each holding their individual instruments and staring at me. Mean mugging, to be more exact.

“You guys look ready to be photographed for an album cover,” I said, hoping to cut the tension. Surely I was projecting and they weren’t actually angry with me. “If we tossed a couch out front, you could be Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Plus some extras. Bonus-edition band members!”

A white guy in his early sixties turned up the volume on his vengeful glare, smoldering with displeasure. Beads of perspiration broke through on my face. I always started sweating on my nose first, and I could feel the cold pinpricks of nerves sprouting up above my nostrils.

The man and I stared at each other—me panicked, himfurious—until suddenly,triumphantly, his anger collapsed, and a megawatt grin filled the vacancy. “We’re messing with you,” he said in a manner that suggested he believed I knew very well he was kidding.