Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter twenty-five

Saying goodbye to my cousins doesn't hurt so much after our talk last night, knowing that there are so many ways and places we can see each other again. I do have a lump in my throat when I see them off, though, when I hug them both so tight that I can't fill my lungs and I stand at the end of the driveway until I can't see the car anymore. I send a text to The Three Musketeers: miss you already! After a minute or two, Ashley sends a list of all the places we brought up last night, a mix of cities and national parks, and she says: which one first?

Reckon we can make it to west yellowstone before the airport closes for the next nine months?? I text.

Hmmm i could probs take a long weekend in september... Ashley texts. I sit on the front porch and text back and forth for a while, until she and Connor have been on the road for twenty minutes and the cell service starts to get patchy and Ashley starts to get carsick on the long, winding road. I tuck my cell phone into the back pocket of my shorts and walk down to the dock. It's so quiet again. Gone is Ashley's wild laugh. Connor's murmured comments; her high voice and his droll tones. The only noise is the creak of the wood as I walk to the end, the squeak of the chair as I sit down, the air in my lungs as I suck in the crisp early morning air and blow it out as slowly as I can. Somewhere overhead, a handful of birds are tweeting a pretty chorus at each other; there's a splash as something drops from a branch into the water.

I watch every step Lou takes as she walks down the dock to me, a mug in each hand. She sets one down in front of me and cups the other in both hands, lifting it to her lips and breathing in the sweet scent of her honey-infused chamomile tea. I love knowing these little details about her. The way she takes her tea; the constellation of freckles at the nape of her neck; the shape of her thighs beneath the long skirts she favors.

It's early enough in the day and late enough in the summer that there's no activity on the lake. There's a pair of binoculars on the table. When I lift them to my eyes and adjust the focus, I see one old man on the other side of the water, sitting on his dock with a fishing rod in his hand and an open magazine draped over his thigh. The epitome of living on the lake. It's a different pace of life.

Lou sips her tea. I sip my coffee. She makes it perfectly. She only had to ask me once how I take it — milk, more milk than you think necessary, yes I really do like it that pale; a dash of vanilla syrup or a sprinkle of sugar. Last week she didn't have any syrup. She does now.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Mmm." I hold my mug up to my mouth, inhaling the scent of rich coffee that overpowers everything else. "Yeah, I am, I'm good. It was great to see them."

"You seemed happier with them. Less..."

"Anxious?" I offer with a wry smile. She nods once, her head tilted at me. "I never used to be anxious. Never when we were here. There was always so much going on and real life was so far away, I don't think I knew how to be anxious until college."

"I get that. It's a big life change."

"How's Issy handling it?"

Lou quietly laughs and says, "She's in her element. She was counting down the days to college from the moment she turned fifteen. The day I moved her into her dorm, it hit me that she really has spread her wings."

"Has she been home since she started?"

"Twice." She holds up two fingers. "She came home for Christmas and Spring Break."

"Not Thanksgiving?"

Lou shakes her head, shading her eyes from the sun. "She has a job out there — out of want, rather than need — so I don't get to see her much."