This changes things. Doesn't it? We've had a bit of a rough start, it's true...but maybe that's because of how unhappy I am that I'm here. That, immediately, a piece of my past, of Tiffany's past, confronted me by the lake. I didn't expect Summer when I planned for this week, but now she's here in front of me. Unplanned, but solid and real.
The rocky start we got off to is because of me, I know. Because of my inner turmoil, my unresolved grief. I take a deep breath.
“How about you?” asks Summer then, her voice back to its assured, warm inflection. “Are you married?” She glances up through her eyelashes, and even in the dark, I can see her warm brown eyes flashing. “Are you involved?” she asks, tilting her head to the side, a little like an inquisitive bird.
I lift the beer to my lips, but I pause for a long moment, watching her.
Her shoulders are curled toward me as she leans forward. Her legs are crossed, taut, well-toned, and my eyes are drawn to every line and curve of her, yes, but there seems to be something crackling between us in this moment.
Does she suspect who I am? What I am? That I'm gay, too?
Does she remember what happened that night, long ago? Twenty years ago now? No—she couldn't possibly remember. She was ten years old. It was a night that's irremovable from your memory, true, the night when her best friend died... But there was too much going on. Surely she doesn't remember anything about me.
Still, I feel a shift between us. Like a secret, shared.
I never could have predicted that Summer would like women. Honestly, I don't remember much about her, other than the fact that she and my sister were close. It was a long time ago, all of this.
But some things are important enough to remember.
“No,” I finally tell her, then down the rest of my beer. That no covers everything, doesn't it? When that single word comes between us, the tension seems to dissolve into the air as Summer nods once, twice, setting her now-empty beer can on the porch railing beside her.
“Well,” she says, pushing off from the railing and standing easily. She stretches overhead, rolling her head on her shoulders and then placing her hands on her hips. “It's late... You probably need your rest,” she says, matter-of-factly.
That's it? It had seemed like she wanted to say so much more a moment ago, like we were starting to have an intimate, deep conversation, but now, just like that, our interaction is over. I don't know why I wish she'd stay, but I do—so much. Yes, I wish she'd stay. The admission that she's attracted to women is something I could have never expected. She's single, I'm single...
I'm horrified as I stand, as I reach out between us and extend my hand. I can't believe I'm thinking these thoughts. Not now. Not during this week, the twentieth anniversary of my sister's death. I am highly aware that there's no room for anything but sadness. I know that.
But as Summer reaches out, too, and clasps my hand, we don't shake. Instead, we stand together, our hands pressed tight, her warm fingers tingling against my skin as we touch. A shiver runs through me so sharply that my shoulders actually shake for a heartbeat. Her warmth, the softness of her skin, the way that she's holding my gaze in the dark... It's sensual, but there's something more...
“Good night, Mandy,” says Summer then, her mouth turning up at the corners as she lets go of my hand, as she turns and trots down the steps leading away from my cabin porch.
I watch her go, stunned. I don't want her to go.
“You...you forgot the rest of your beer,” I call after her, my voice cracking as I glance down at the six-pack on the floor of the porch.
“Keep them!” Summer tells me then, turning around. Her bright white teeth seem to flash in the dark as she smiles at me. “Consider it my welcome gift to you. A welcome home,” she says, sliding her hands easily into her cutoff jeans pockets. She walks backward for two steps, keeping me in her sights, and then she turns, walking away into the dark.
The fireflies shine and shimmer around her, a net of lights that keep blinking in the dark. I watch them for a long moment, turning the cold can of beer in my hands until I hear a rumble in the far distance.
I lift my eyes to the surface of the lake. Beyond the lake, beyond the mountains, there's a flicker of lightning that seems to dance over the surface of the earth.
I take a deep breath.
It's been obvious for a long time that a storm is coming.
---
The storm explodes into being overhead as I try to start a fire in my cabin's wood stove. There's a crack of thunder so unexpected and so loud that the entire cabin—its foundation, floor, walls and windows—shake and rattle, and I'm so surprised by the sound that I stand bolt upright, holding tightly to one of the slim logs of wood I was just trying to jam into the stove's mouth.
The rumble of thunder goes on for such a long moment that I wonder if it's even thunder at all. The sound of it reminds me of cement trucks or construction vehicles, but then I see a flash of splintering lightning flickering outside the front window, and I walk over to the pane, holding my breath as I count: one one-thousand, two one-thousand—
The thunder this time shakes the cabin so hard that I drop the log onto the floor.
And then, right on cue, the skies open up, letting loose a deluge.
I grew up here; I know how bad the storms coming down from the mountains can be. But this one? This one's extraordinary. Maybe it's made more extraordinary by the fact that I haven't experienced a storm like this in two decades, but, regardless, I know it's a powerful one. The rain falling outside is being driven against the outside walls of my cabin in a constant roar. The water pours so quickly and completely that I can't see the light from the main office cabin, just a few cabins down from me. I can't see anything at all, actually, because in that moment, the overhead light in my cabin goes out.
Half of the cabins in Lazy Days Campground have electricity, and the other half don't. When I booked my cabin, I opted for one that had electricity because, while I'm all for roughing it (and I've missed camping in a tent; camping in a cabin is a luxury), I wanted to be able to charge my smart phone and be on my laptop occasionally while I was here, in case my company needed me. I was trying my best not to give in and use the rest of the electricity, and I'd intended to switch to my battery-operated lantern and turn off the overhead light the moment I lit the fire. Now it's disconcerting and, again, wholly unexpected as I'm plunged into absolute darkness.
My battery-operated lantern and my flashlight are still packed away in my suitcase.
I sigh, then try to make my way toward my suitcase and the sources of light I brought with me. I turn, immediately stubbing my toe on the corner of the wrought-iron cot in the corner as I try to feel my way back across this unfamiliar room toward the suitcase that I left in the corner by the door.
That's when I walk into the downpour.
I start, shocked by the cold water falling down on my head. I know for a fact that I haven't opened the front door, and I certainly haven't gone outside. So what the hell? Where could this water possibly be coming from? I take a quick step back and then hold out my hand in front of me, and the cold water torrents down into my palm.
Apparently, my cabin has a leak. And a pretty big one, too, judging from how much water is running down onto my hand and how much water doused me as I walked right into it. I pull my hand back, shake it off, then run my fingers through my hair, trying to slick back my soaking head.
I take another step backward, and I run into another leak. As the cold water shocks me, pouring over my head and down the back of my neck, I begin to realize that I'm going to need a little help here. I grope around in the dark, trying to find my suitcase, and I manage to find it and pry it open, but there's a leak above the suitcase, too, and when I finally sort through my layers of clothes and reach my lantern and flashlight, I'm pretty dismayed to find that they've both been soaked through. The lantern won't turn on, and the flashlight does after I take the batteries out and wipe them on the dry part of my pants
, but it's a very low beam of light that comes out of it. I've had this flashlight for years and never needed to change the batteries. Great. I wasn't thinking.
I cast the weak flashlight beam around the room of the cabin, and my heart sinks. I count at least ten major leaks, water pouring down out of the ceiling and onto the cabin floor, my cot, the wood stove...pretty much everywhere, and I'm inwardly cursing to myself as I stand. My very first, irrational thought is why would Summer stick me—or anyone—in this super leaky cabin? But then I wonder if she knew how very leaky this roof was...
Either way, I need her help. I probably could survive the night in a flooding cabin, but I really shouldn't have to.
Still, some small part of me wants to stay in the cabin, anyway...because if I go outside, making my way toward the main office, it'll mean I have to talk to Summer again...
And things were pretty strange between us such a short while ago.
Another leak begins to pour down onto my head, starting with a few drops, then gradually reverting to a mini downpour, so I groan and get a grip on all of my trepidations. And then I'm out the front door, staring out at the onslaught the storm is inflicting on the campground. I'm a little bit sheltered under the overhang of the porch, but that's not going to last for long.
I take a deep breath and launch myself out into the storm.
The rain is so cold and so heavy that I gasp in shock as—in a single instant—the remaining dry parts of myself become as drenched as the rest of me. Rain is pouring down my face, my clothes are instantly soaked and clinging to me, and my flashlight stops working within the first ten seconds of being out in this downpour. The lightning, at least, is nice enough to crack overhead pretty frequently to lighten up the gravel driveway that's slowly turning into a network of small rivers. I stagger through the storm, trying to see through the water in my face and the darkness, aiming for the main office of Lazy Days.
There's no light on in the main office, just like there's no light on in the rest of the camp, but as I keep on making my way toward the building, I see a small blossom of light in the front window. A candle.
I knock on the front door at the exact same time that Summer opens it.
“Oh, my God, you're drenched. Come on in,” she tells me, stepping aside to let me enter. And I do, pouring a small river of myself onto the hardwood floor. I run my hands over my face, blinking away the rain, and then I shiver a little, wrapping my arms around myself as the sheer cold finally hits me.
“My cabin started to leak pretty badly,” I tell Summer, who's still wearing her tank top but no bra, her long black braid cascading over her shoulder. Her short shorts are a darker color blue than her tank top, and I can see in the dim light of the candle what I couldn't in the dark on my porch: she has a tattoo on her ankle of a dragonfly, its wings outspread.
I take this all in in a heartbeat, because then Summer is stepping forward. “Leak?” she asks me incredulously. She'd had a warm smile for me when she opened the door, but now she groans and shakes her head, raking her fingers back through her hair in frustration, pulling a few strands loose from the braid that drift down to lie against the skin of her neck. “You've got to be kidding me,” Summer mutters. “I had this roofing guy fix it just last week! Oh, my God, what a disaster.” She sighs, planting her hands on her hips. “I'm so sorry... How bad is the leak? Did your stuff get wet? Did the cot?”
“It's pretty bad. And, yeah,” I tell her softly, gazing at her. The candle gutters in the window as she opens the door again, standing in the doorway to survey the parking lot and torrential downpour, her frown deepening.
“Listen,” she tells me over her shoulder, with a shake of her head, “I'll go get your stuff, and you can stay in any other cabin you want tonight—”
I could never tell you what possesses me to open my mouth at this moment and say exactly this, but I do it, anyway: “I'll come with you,” I tell her doggedly.
Summer turns and gazes at me, her brows rising incredulously. “What? No! You're soaked to the bone,” she tells me, voice gentle. “Just stay here and warm up. There's a fire in the wood stove back in my living quarters,” she says, jerking a thumb over her shoulder and behind the wooden front desk.
I shrug, take a step toward her, my teeth clattering. “You shouldn't have to go alone. It's really bad out there, and I'm afraid the lake will flood,” I tell her.
We stand together for a long moment, the only sound the loud boom of thunder that shakes the cabin around us and the torrential downpour roaring overhead.
We've both been through the floods at Lake George. We both know how quickly the waters can rise and exactly what they can do if they catch you unprepared. An old fisherman was swept away to his death about thirty years ago, and it was all we ever heard, growing up, to have respect for that lake.
“All right,” Summer finally says, shaking her head again as she tosses her braid over her shoulder. “You don't have to come with me. But thank you,” she says, and she holds the door open for me to duck back out into the night.
And I do. I'm shaking, shivering from how violently cold the water is, pouring from the sky, but I slog through it, holding my hands above my eyes to try to see better. It doesn't help. The rain, driven sideways by the gusting winds, fills my eyes.
“Come on!” Summer yells beside me, in order to be heard over the sudden crack of lightning overhead and the earth-shaking thunder that follows. Summer is darting forward, making a beeline for the cabin, and it's easy to follow her because the lightning is now almost constant, the atmosphere above us filled with a spectacular light show that my eyes are too waterlogged to truly appreciate. My heart rises into my throat as I realize that the center of the thunderstorm must be directly above us right now.
We reach my cabin, and we both manage to get up the stairs and inside it. I left the door flapping open, because I didn't see much point in shutting and locking it behind me when I left, not when the water pouring down inside was practically equal to the downpour outside. Summer stares in disbelief as the lightning illuminates the inside of the cabin again, and I stare, too, because there are actually more leaks inside than when I left it. There must be at least thirty leaks now, in varying sizes, pouring buckets of water down into the cabin, onto the cot where I was supposed to spend the night, and onto my suitcase, utterly soaking every single possession I brought with me on this trip.
I stare, disheveled and soaked, at my suitcase and actually breathe a small sigh of relief. Thank God I put my eReader and Tiffany's diary in a Ziploc bag. The only reason I'd thought to do it is that I'd lost my first eReader to a disaster by the pool—and by disaster, I mean that some kid had taken a cannonball into the pool of the resort I was staying at with my ex, and the wave of water he created came up and over the side of the pool and covered my eReader, instantly rendering it inoperable. I'd learned from that mistake, so on every vacation I've had since, I've taken precautions against my new eReader becoming another waterlogged paperweight.
I wade across the water on the floor to grab my suitcase. I feel around inside for the Ziploc bag, and once I find it, I nod and zipper the suitcase shut, hefting it up with a wince. The water-drenched clothes inside make it so much heavier than it was when I brought it here, and it was already pretty heavy to begin with. My shoulder grumbles under the strain, but then I'm hauling the suitcase toward the door.
Summer still has her hands on her hips, staring up at the ceiling of the cabin with a perplexed, infuriated expression. “I can't believe this!” she yells to me over another crack of thunder. “I paid a couple grand to get that roof patched up, and now this? I'm going to kill that roofer!” She shakes her head again, then reaches forward and takes my suitcase away from me. I try to hold onto the handle in protest, but she maneuvers it out of my grip easily. “I'm so sorry about this!” she yells to me. “Come on back to my cabin—we'll get you dry!”
We race through the thunderstorm side by side, Summer carrying my suitcase, me with my hand
s still glued to my forehead as I blink back all of the rain driven into my eyes, trying desperately to see. But my gaze is so blurry that when we finally reach the front cabin again, Summer ushering me into the warm, dry space, everything is a nice, warm blur of golden-tan, including Summer for a long moment.
I rub at my eyes as Summer shuts the door behind us and flops her dripping wet braid over her shoulder with a sigh. “Well,” she says, lifting a single brow and appraising me, “this night's not going as planned. I really am sorry about the cabin, Amanda,” she says, her mouth folding into a frown.
“It's all right,” I tell her tiredly. And I'm telling the truth. Honestly, being rained out of my cabin isn't how I thought this night would go, either, but it happened, and there's nothing that either of us can do to combat the power of Mother Nature.
I lift my eyes to her, and she's watching me with an intense, unflickering gaze. When she sees me looking, she clears her throat, shifts her eyes away from my face, curves her shoulders forward as she shoves her hands into her shorts pockets.
“Anyway,” she says, her soft voice a little gruff now, “you need to get out of those wet clothes. You're going to catch your death. The rain was freezing.”
“It's okay. I don't have anything to change into, anyway. All of my clothes in my suitcase are wet,” I tell her, wrapping my arms even tighter around myself. I'm now shaking uncontrollably; the day was warm, but the night descended into the forties, and with the rain on top of the cool temperature, I'm freezing beyond belief. My teeth clatter together as I try my best not to look cold...and, I'm sure, fail miserably.
“Well, you'll just have to wear some of my clothes,” says Summer, her tone brooking no argument. “Come on,” she tells me, inclining her head toward the back room. “Let's see what I have that will fit you.”
We're roughly the same height, and I suppose we might be the same size, though we have very different builds. She's muscled, and I'm slightly curvy from working a desk job and not having much excuse (or, you know, time or motivation) to go to the gym.
Falling for Summer Page 3
