white boys (river phoenix)

62

Chapter Sixty Two

Summer. The word itself was like lemonade dancing on the tip of Robin's tongue, sugary and sticky and a bit of an inconvenience, but fun. That summer, summer of 1989, was the best summer of Robin's life. She had spent the whole time doing what she wanted, her life finally going in the direction she had always dreamed of, but never thought she would be able to achieve. Summer was like going outside in a downpour of rain, or in the monsoons, and running around until your clothes soaked through and everything bad, everything that was latched onto her soul, was thrown into the sun's fiery rays and left to burn.

In the course of the summer, they'd been on road trips, gone to concerts, went to parties and even held their own, and did exactly what every other teenager was doing with their friends. But for some reason for them, it just seemed so much more magical, so much more alive. In their friend group, there was no reason for drama or complications. Even Amandla had started hanging around them again- she was not with Dennis anymore and was good friends with Corey and Elizabeth, and of course the whole crew. There were never any problems and if there were, they were minor. No one resented anyone for things they didn't communicate because they always made sure to communicate.

Robin had known these people since August but now she felt like she had known them for years prior, that no connection she'd ever felt with anyone was ever so deep or real. The summer had brought them all together, bonded them so close it was like they were a chain, like DNA, one and the same in all their cryptic differences in every nook and cranny of themselves they had hidden. Every nook and cranny was getting dusted and aired out, then the dust was replaced with smiles and laughter and reassuring words and thoughts.

The whole summer, Robin had been focusing on her career, which didn't even feel like work, because it was the work of her dreams and she had as much flexibility as he wanted. She'd spent it with her friends, with her family, her new brother, and of course River, just one on one. She had documented the whole summer in her journal, and Feldman and Heather recorded the whole thing on some camera they repaired on their own. They claimed that it could wipe out all the videos and data at any time, but nobody had seemed too concerned with that. As long as they had lived it with each other, they didn't need visual proof or nostalgia later.

Robin was doing meetings and interviews to talk about her tour and her new book and everything else surrounding it. People in Boston had come to her at work (she still worked at the library) and told her how much they were rooting for her, a fellow Bostonian. There were no racist undertones or regret that a young black girl was doing such big things instead of someone people might deem "more fit" for the job. It was all love, and that summer Robin's whole heart swelled with love.

Of course, there was that afterthought of where she and River would end up. With River working until the summer, which he would spend traveling, and Robin going on her tour, then to school, they would find themselves in a bit of a mixup. It'd be hard to see each other, they realized, hard to communicate fluently. It would all just be so hard.

Even harder were the long, hot nights they spent talking about these things, on the hammock outside on Robin's balcony that extruded from her bedroom. In quiet, hushed tones they exhausted their worries to one another about their relationship, not because anything was wrong, but because it all seemed to be getting lost in one another's confusion. Still, after every conversation, they knew what it had to come to, but simply shushed the other to sleep and lay together, enjoying these last few moments. 

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