Same Time Next Year

Chapter 1 - Year 1

Year 1 - Noah

As I pull up to the beach house on my motorcycle, I find myself lost in thought staring at the house, my memories almost overwhelming me.  Even though I know no one else is around this weekend, I have this feeling like I'm scared of who I'll see when I go inside.  It's hard to believe it's been a year since I've been here.  It seems both like forever and like yesterday.  Both the best summer ever, with Elle and I living together like adults and getting ready to start our life at Harvard together. And also the worst, with fight after fight, until it all came crashing down and we broke up.  I've been avoiding the beach house this year, knowing that Elle and Lee have been staying here for the summer.  Instead, choosing to stay at my parents while working a summer internship at a local law firm where one of my Dad's buddies is a partner.

Elle and I didn't have too hard of a time avoiding each other during the last year, with me away at school and her busy starting college. The holidays were what had me worried, I knew it would be hard for either of us to miss spending the holidays with our families. Thanksgiving was an easy one for me to skip out on, it was impossible to make it home anyway. Now that I'm the starting quarterback on the football team and since we had a game that weekend, there was no way for me to go, even if had I wanted to. Instead, my folks came to visit the weekend before Thanksgiving to spend some time with me and watch one of my games.  Lee didn't bother, but I wouldn't have expected him to anyway.

Lee and I weren't exactly speaking much at that point. It's not even that we weren't getting along, it was just too hard to talk to one another. We had started out talking more at the beginning of the school year than we had the year before, our road trip at the beginning of the summer and spending all that time together at the beach house had actually made us closer than we had been in years. The problem was, it was too hard to talk to Lee without talking about her. Lee would start talking about something, then part way through he would realize he was going to mention Elle, so he would try to change the subject or awkwardly stop right in the middle of his story.  Or, I would be so paranoid that he was going to mention her that I wasn't even really paying attention to what he was saying. I was just waiting for her name and thinking about how I would feel when he said it.  At some point, it just became easier to stop talking to each other altogether.

When Christmas rolled around, I found out that Elle's family was planning to spend time with her Dad's girlfriend's family for Christmas.  It was strange to have Christmas without the Evans clan and I was shocked when Mom told me they wouldn't be around.  I had never met Linda and had no idea her relationship with Mike was serious enough for them to miss our Christmas.  Our families have been getting together for Christmas for as long as I can remember.  Not that I was complaining, I'm sure a full day of Christmas with Elle around would have been weird for both of us.  As it was, I was still in town the weekend after Christmas, and was expected to show up for a family lunch with the Evans family.  I imagine Elle had been forced to go also. I know it had been more than 5 months since the breakup, but it was still too soon.  The whole thing was extremely awkward for both of us, and we haven't seen each other since.

A few days ago, I had decided to take a last minute weekend trip to the beach house when Mom mentioned at breakfast that Lee and Elle were going to be out of town this weekend.  Apparently, they were meeting a group of friends at Comic-Con in San Diego this year, so I knew this was the one weekend I could spend at the beach house without worrying about running into either of them. I had been working my ass off all summer and decided I deserved a weekend off at the beach to unwind.  I thought I could spend my days relaxing and soaking up some sun on the beach and I would call a few buddies to come over to hang out on Saturday night. I knew I still had some things in my room there, so I didn't even need to pack much for the weekend and was able to ride my motorcycle.