All The Summers Between Us | TSITP

Step, Spin, Send.

The arcade's dance platform throbbed like a heartbeat under rainbow lights, arrows pulsing across the screens in time with the music.

A crowd had gathered without trying—tourists, kids with sticky hands, a couple of older teens leaning on the railing—drawn by the promise of watching other people embarrass themselves gloriously.

"Up first!" Belly announced, one foot on each platform like an emcee. "Jeremiah and Skye to an Ariana Grande classic."

Jeremiah shot finger guns. "I was born ready."

Skye rolled their shoulders, half-nervous, half-excited. "I was born indoors, but okay."

The opening bars hit—bright, fizzy, unmistakably Ariana—and the arrows started flying. Jeremiah overcommitted on the first run, legs windmilling as he tried to catch up, laughter tearing out of him.

Skye, tentative at first, found the rhythm by the second chorus; their steps went snappy, precise, wrists flicking like punctuation when they nailed a streak.

"Let's go, Skye!" Belly yelled over the beat.

"Hit those up-arrows, Jere!" Steven shouted, somehow both coach and heckler.

Final flourish: Skye slid the last combo clean, screen flashing PERFECT! while Jeremiah missed the last step and threw his head back in mock agony.

"Winner—Skye!" Taylor whooped, bouncing.

Belly and Lydia moved in for a celebratory hug. Skye lifted both hands like a traffic cop, laughing. "I don't do hugs. I don't do hugs."

"Air hug!" Taylor declared, wrapping her own arms around herself and squeezing. Skye mirrored her, and somehow it worked.

"Alright," Steven called, spinning toward the second platform pair. "Legends' bracket: Lydia vs. Conrad."

They stepped up together, side by side. The next track kicked in—quicker, cheekier—and they glanced at each other with the same stupid grin, already moving before the first arrows appeared.

They were annoyingly in sync: left-right-up, heel-tap, spin, twinkle of feet. Lydia laughed when Conrad added a goofy shoulder shimmy; Conrad laughed when Lydia threw in a tiny body roll that made the nearby fourteen-year-old boys audibly gasp.

"Get it, Lydie!" Taylor screamed, clapping to the beat.

"Come on, Connie!" Jeremiah yelled, thumping the rail.

The screen tallied in real time—Conrad a hair ahead after a perfect streak, Lydia sprinting back with a killer run of her own. On the final cascade, Conrad's footwork went surgical, hitting a precise diagonal run that edged him just over the line.

The scoreboard flashed: CONRAD — WINNER.

He threw his arms up, then turned instinctively and scooped Lydia off the platform, spinning her once,  twice. She squealed, clutching his shoulders; her head tipped back, laughing. When he set her down, they were still holding on a second too long.

They both felt it. They both let go.

Jeremiah blew a two-finger whistle. "Okay, where next?"

"Follow me," Belly said, pointing toward the exit like she had a map only she could see.

They spilled out into bright afternoon, heat wrapping around them. Belly made a beeline for a faded painted board with holes cut out for faces—mermaid tails, a pirate, a dinosaur mid-roar. She touched the wood like it was a relic.

"Here," she said softly, then louder, "Lyd, Tay—come take one with me."

Lydia tucked her giraffe under her arm and slid in; Taylor took the dinosaur because, of course she did. Belly slipped into the mermaid cutout, hair spilling over painted scales. A stranger took the picture, and they checked it, laughing at Taylor's committed roar face.

"Sending to Laurel," Belly said, thumbs flying.

————

Hundreds of miles away, fluorescent lights hummed under a vaulted convention hall ceiling.

Laurel smiled politely at a man clutching her paperback like a passport.

"You see, it's not really a book about grief at all," she was saying, pen tapping lightly against the table. "It's a book about... friendship. Love."

The man nodded like he understood and drifted off into the current of readers. Laurel exhaled, rubbing the line her necklace made at her collarbone.

A familiar voice arrived with the clink of ceramic. "Well, this is all very impressive."

"Cleveland!" Laurel's smile turned unguarded. "You look like you're having fun."

"I really hope there's wine in those coffee cups," she murmured, eyeing them.

"I mean," he said, grin widening. "there can be."

They drifted to a quiet corner behind a banner for debut authors, the world softening around the edges.

"So, how's the life of a saleswoman treating you?" he asked, offering a cup.

"Oh, you know, it's soul-destroying, deeply traumatic, making me question every decision in my life I've made up to this point."

"Sounds great, you know?" He lifted his cup. They clinked.

"Nonstop bliss," she deadpanned, sipping.

He hesitated, then: "I, um... reached out to Conrad before the funeral, but that boy isn't always easy to get ahold of."

"It's hard for him," Laurel said quietly. "For all of them."

"It's okay for it to be hard for you, too."

Laurel huffed a laugh she hadn't planned on. "Fine. It's been hard."

"You look great," he said, soft and simple.

"Well, looks can be deceiving."

They let the honesty sit between them. Cleveland leaned a shoulder against the wall. "Look, things may have fizzled between us, but... you can always talk to me."

Laurel stared into the swirl of her drink. "We had so long to prepare for this and I still have no fucking idea how to process it, let alone talk about it." She shook her head. "Belly isn't handling it well. Neither is Lydia. I don't know how to help them."

"Maybe you don't need to help them," he said gently.

"You're clearly not a parent," she countered, but there wasn't bite behind it.

"Look—something really shitty happened and you can't fix it. But... you can let them know you're feeling it too. The friends who helped me most when I had a bad depression episode weren't the ones who tried to yank me out of the hole. They were the ones who climbed down into it and sat with me." He met her eyes. "There isn't a right way to do this, Laurel."

She breathed out slowly. "I hear you, but... I can't. I'm her mom. I'm Lydia's only 'parent' figure. If they see how big my grief really is, it'll just scare them."

He nodded, took a sip, didn't push. "Then maybe you let them see a corner of it. Enough to know they're not alone."

Laurel glanced toward the signing table, the steady stream of readers. "I should get back," she lifted a brow. "I didn't see your name on the author list. Are you here for your new book?"

He smirked, feigning guilt. "Would it scare you off if I told you I was here for you?"

She couldn't help it; her mouth curved. "Depends on where you take me for dinner."

"I'll meet you back here at seven?"

"Okay," she said, and in that small word was relief, and something like hope.

Her phone buzzed. She looked down and saw three faces jammed through painted plywood—mermaid, dinosaur, pirate—Lydia's grin wide, Belly's eyes bright, Taylor mid-roar. Laurel smiled so hard it hurt and didn't try to stop herself.

"Good picture?" Cleveland asked.

"The best," she said, and for a moment the convention hall felt a little less cavernous, and summer felt a little closer.