Page 55 of That Summer Feeling

“I’ve realized that my life doesn’t make sense without you,” he told me. He wasn’t used to me being such a stone wall. It disarmed him in a way my crying never had. “It’s been a whole year and I still haven’t stopped buying that weird granola you like. I eat every bag because I tell myself that I have to finish it. When the twins emailed me that you wanted me to come, I realized it was a sign. That I was waiting for you to come back.”

To call it a sign felt both cheap and significant. Cheap in that he knew it was a way to get my attention when his other tactics weren’t working. He was always the first to tell me he didn’t believe in signs. But it was significant in that it was true. Itwasa sign.

Signs didn’t just exist to tell me where to go. Sometimes signs reminded me of what I needed to avoid.

“This is the first time I’ve been propositioned via flaxseed granola,” I told him. Ethan had to see it. How wrong all of this was, comical even in its absurdity.

Instead he smoothed his already gelled hair, patting down invisible flyaways. It took a lot to get him nervous. In another version of this moment, it would make me feel unstoppable to know I was the one to do it. That my presence had finally cracked the uncrackable. I was a lightning bolt through the world’s sturdiest tree.

“I came here because I want our life back,” he said. And with that, he wrapped up his speech. Over a year without seeing each other, and that was all he’d cooked up to win me over.

I could feel how the old me would respond. Something muted, desperate to cover up the intensity of my actual emotions. Something like, “Lucky for you, I have our life right here in my pocket.” I’d pretend to pull the past out of my jean shorts. And that would be that. We would be together again.

Instead I said, “I don’t.”

Ethan’s face scrunched up in confusion. “You don’t what?”

“Want our old life back,” I told him, unflinching.

Stevie called out my name. I turned to see her with two blonds who could never be mistaken for anyone other than her parents. They had not just the same hair but the same spirit. The Magnussons all did.

“Garland! Come meet my mom and dad!” she yelled.

25

Stevie gave Ethan an openhearted smile. She had no idea who he was, and she clearly never expected him to come visit me at camp. Which, join the club. To think she could look at Ethan and me together and not see a sprawling history between us felt so liberating that I didn’t even feel awkward getting up to meet her parents in front of him.

We were not Ethan and Garland here. We weren’t college sweethearts, permanently linked. I was my own person. And Ethan was just someone who’d visited me. Someone who had never really seen all of me. Or hadn’t understood it, at least. And never would.

The fact that Stevie wanted me to meet her parents could have completely overwhelmed me, if the surprise of Ethan’s presence hadn’t managed to stun my senses in such a profound way that there was no curveball that could stop me. I felt invincible in my shock. I strutted toward the Magnussonswithout so much as a sideways glance at Ethan, who followed me, saying nothing. I had already given him my answer. If he wanted to stick around beyond that, it was his decision.

“I hear you’re quite the gift giver,” I said to Mrs. Magnusson as she kissed my cheeks hello.

She blushed, tossing a hand over her heart. “I can’t believe you know that!” I caught in her voice the same youthful wonderment I’d been picking up in Mason.

Mr. Magnusson offered up a strong handshake. “Nice to meet you.”

“Garland is my roommate,” Stevie explained. We had no other name for what we were. It seemed from her look at me that it was a top priority to create one. “She’s my favorite person here.”

“The feeling is mutual,” I said, grinning at her.

All the while, Ethan lingered behind me, waiting to be introduced.

From the moment Ethan served me papers over Valentine’s dinner, I’d thought of myself as divorced. I had the bumper sticker and the perverse sense of humor to prove it. But I’d never thought to call Ethan my ex-husband. Divorce had to do withme. It was a personal journey, and a quick way to let people know I’d been through a lot more shit in my life than they’d expect when first meeting me. To me, Ethan was not myex-husband. He was just Ethan, this absent presence I’d spent over a year waiting to return to.

Not quite ready to reckon with how to redefine him, I said, “This is Ethan,” to all the Magnussons. “I haven’t seen him in a really long time.”

“Oh, that’s so lovely,” Mrs. Magnusson gushed. “What a wonderful surprise.”

I understood exactly what Stevie meant about her mother. She was so nice there was a kind of reckless abandon to her love, completely unearned. What if it was a bad surprise? How could she know? All I’d said was his name.

Ethan shook everyone’s hand. “Nice to meet you all.”

He always had a habit of tossing me into new situations headfirst without giving me any context. I had to navigate his college friends, his work friends, and his family without being made aware of any land mines I should avoid, instead gracelessly falling onto them on my own. For the first time ever, I got to be the one doing that to him. As far as he knew, he was meeting my roommate’s parents. He had no idea I’d spent the morning kissing her.

In fact, Stevie and Ethan on either side of me was like the final boss of brain-melting situations—my former husband and my very special roommate. My solution was to treat it all as something mundane. Like every single day of my life, I went around having to introduce my—shudder—ex-husband to my love interest’s parents at summer camp. Snooze, yawn, we’d all been there.

“Oh! My oldest sister is here,” I told Stevie excitedly. “I want you to meet her.”