Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter five

"It's nice. Peaceful. We're a resort town, we get it, but it's a relief when it gets to October and we can breathe out. Everyone just kind of ... does their own thing, you know? There's this huge swell in the summer and things get pretty crazy, but give it a couple of weeks and it'll be back to normal." She takes me in as she takes a large sip of her wine and pulls her lips between her teeth. "So, it's been a while since any of your family was here. Your parents were good to me, and your aunts and uncles. I should have kept in touch. What brings you back?"

I blow out a long breath. Swig my drink and relish in the crispness, the coldness, the sharpness of the lime. "It's a long story."

Lou lets one of her hands drift out to the side. "We've got all night."

It turns out not to be that long a story after all. I have no reason to lie to this woman so I tell her the truth. Okay, a slightly less unhinged version of it — I understand how ridiculous I'd sound if I told her that I'm trying to chase the happiness I last had when I was eighteen and surrounded by people who loved me. I try to sound like less of a loser but ... I am. I keep fucking losing.

When I'm done — and my drink is too, my empty glass whisked away by Mike and swiftly replaced with another of the same — Lou gives me a sympathetic smile and she says, "This is your happy place."

"It is. It really is. Literally all my good memories are tied to Fisher. Is that ridiculous? Nearly two and a half decades on this planet and all my joy is tied up in eighteen years' worth of summer vacations. I know I've had great days since then — there are bits of college I enjoyed and I've taken some pretty cool trips with my friends but if you say to me, hey, what do you think when I say happiness, this is what comes to mind."

"We do have a tendency to romanticize the past. Especially childhood. It's so far removed, and it's a time of less responsibility. Smaller fears. Less worry and anxiety. In the moment, sadness lingers but give it time and it's the good times you'll remember. "

"Damn, Lou." I choke on a laugh. "That's a bit deep."

She chuckles and looks down at her glass. "Sorry. That tends to happen a couple of drinks in." She sets the glass on the table and laces her fingers together over her stomach, leaning back in her seat. I notice how long her fingers are, a couple of delicate silver rings on each hand. None on her ring finger, not even a dent or a hint of a tan.

"Don't tell me you're a therapist," I joke. I can feel my shoulders loosening, my stomach undoing its knots. Thank god for alcohol.

"God, no." Her laugh is bright, the sound sunshine would make if I could tap into the secrets of the universe to hear its beams. "I teach piano. Most of my human interaction is with sixth graders and I do not try to apply any sort of logic to their brains."

"I always wanted to learn piano," I muse, stretching out my hands on the table. "I tried once when I was ten. Couldn't get my head around my hands doing two different things. My mind wasn't made for that kind of fuckery."

Lou rests her elbows on the table. "It's not so hard. You have to build up to it."

"Reckon I could learn in the next two weeks?"

She purses her lips. "I do like a challenge."

"Oh yeah?" I cock my head at her. "You could teach me to tickle the ivories by the time I leave?"

"Where are you going when you leave?" Her index finger taps her bottom lip, those eyes searching me as though my answers lie in my face.

"I haven't decided yet."

She leans back in her seat. "Then I suppose that deadline has some flexibility."

The fluttering is back. I swallow hard to dislodge the butterflies but they're stubborn. I resort to drowning them in vodka.