Page 54 of That Summer Feeling

As I paused, attempting to come up with a word that captured what Stevie was to me without having to sit and spell out the entirety of my journey, both of my sisters looked beyond my head.

A shiver ran up my spine. I’d never been sent to the principal’s office, or had a deadly spider crawl up my shoulder, but I imagined the feeling wasn’t much different than what I experienced in that moment. Because the way they looked told me the killer was behind me, and I had a split second to survive.

I turned around slowly, savoring every moment before my reality surely changed.

Ethan.

He’d shaved again. And he looked taller somehow. Or it had been so long that my brain had forgotten how he filled rooms, built both physically and emotionally like a large, sturdy tree, incapable of shedding so much as a single leaf. I’d rewritten him to take up less space. The last place I physically saw him was outside the courthouse. In that moment, he and I were nothing more than bugs to the universe, so easily smushed.

In the mess hall, he held a bouquet of flowers to his chest, a pretty collection of dusty blue hydrangeas. They were the same flowers we’d had at our wedding. It gave me a carsick feeling. Everything moved faster than I wanted it to, and if it all would just stop, I could catch my breath and make sense of things.

He handed the flowers to me. I think he even said my name, but I was still trying to make this picture make any sense. I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t feel anything. My mind had been slingshotted into outer orbit.

“Are you her visitor?” I heard Dara ask on my brain’s crash landing back to Earth.

Ethan gave me the exact sheepish grin he’d invented in front of my eyes in college. He used to make that face at professors when his grade was a little lower than he needed. It was a forgiveness smile. Aplease see me for the good of my heartexpression. He’d never used it on me before—and I realized in that instant that it was because I’d always granted him forgiveness without conflict.

“I am.” He leaned in toward me. “I was hoping to talk to you alone, if that’s okay?”

I looked to my sisters for permission, as if they were the ones who could grant it. I needed someone else to give direction. Move my limbs. Speak in my place. Be me for me.

Dara nodded, and so I went, following Ethan to the back of the mess hall.Mymess hall. He was here, in the white banded-collar shirt I’d gotten him from Urban Outfitters for his twenty-eighth birthday. He’d pulled out every stop for this. Plucked every heartstring for whatever melody he intended to play me. I could somehow see it all outside myself, as if Ethan’s decisions got sent to me early for review and I was watching them on a playback loop before he even made them.

I bit my tongue so hard it actually hurt. My manners wanted me to say thank you for coming, but my heart wanted me to be above that.

I settled on, “What brings you here?”—trying to sound casual, which was the last thing in the world I’d ever managed to be. I finally embraced the fact that I wasn’t casual about lunch. Or summer camp. Dating. The products I used to wash my face. What I bought someone for their birthday. Anything at all.

I’d chosen that particular button-down for Ethan because that year he’d become obsessed with the reality showHomestead Rescueon the Discovery Channel, and it looked very similar to the shirt the main guy on there always wore. It was not a casual gift. It required deep knowledge of many small, personal things to make sense.

When I was around Ethan, I always tried to be casual anyway. That’s what he made me think I needed to be. All my big emotions sapped him of his energy.

Attempting to be that person again felt like putting on clothes that had been tailored to fit someone else—the old version of me. I couldn’t be her anymore. Not after all I’d been through here to set myself free.

Ethan and I moved to a new bench. Michelle was sitting farther down from us, beaming at two very cool-looking people I knew were her best friends in New York. I recognized them from her Instagram, where she’d written more than one heartfelt caption about their bond, and how they were all artists who’d grown up together in the city. I’d wanted that for myself even then. A friend I liked enough to write long, sincere captions about. Ethan was the reason I didn’t have any of my own. Everything had beenours—including friends—and when we split, I surrendered all of them to him.

Michelle looked down the table at me with the unbridledhappiness of someone truly overjoyed by a surprise, and I smiled like I too was happy. Like this had all gone exactly as I hoped it would. I wasn’t casual, but Iwasin survival mode. The exact kind Dara and I knew from our childhood. I would see this moment with Ethan to its completion. I owed that to myself.

“You look beautiful,” Ethan told me. There was a barely perceptible shake in his voice. My brain was like an earthquake monitor, designed to pick up on his nerves.

I accepted the compliment with nothing more than an exhalation of air.

“I first found out about this place from your sister,” he started.

That was a shock. “Which one?”

“Dara. She asked me to come for the week. I kept almost signing up, then backing out.”

How many times had I—somewhat jokingly, but mostly seriously—told Dara that I wanted Ethan to show up? How many times had she looked at me flatly, not entertaining that road of thought?

“I didn’t end up going through with it, obviously,” Ethan continued. It was the closest he got to fumbling. He adjusted the collar of his shirt, tugging for room he didn’t need because he wore two buttons undone. Not as many as the guy on theHomestead Rescueshow, but close. “I guess there was a question on the application about visitors, though. And you put me?”

My mind raced back, accelerating faster than my wild heartbeat. Dara and I had filled out the camp applications so late at night. It was a longer process than both of us expected, requiring paragraph answers to unexpectedly deep promptslikeWhat do you hope to gain from this experience?By the end, I was working as quickly as possible. The last question had beenIf you could have anyone in your life come visit you at Camp Carl Cove, who would it be?

I’d put down Ethan’s name because I wanted to finish the application, and writing him down seemed equivalent to saying I hoped Tom Hanks would find time to see me. I didn’t imagine it was the kind of question that would result in Ethan’s actual presence at camp.

Iwas the one who had given the twins access to Ethan. Made them think he’d be the one I’d want to see. Up until a few days ago, I’d thought he was.

As he sat before me, I knew with complete certainty that was no longer true. He wasn’t at all the person I hoped to interact with at camp. He represented my past. The very thing I’d come here to shed.