I couldn’t stop watching Taran, who looked like he was about to explode. He had only met my dad a few times so far, and he clearly had no idea whether to suppress his laughter or not.
Patrick, on the other hand, was already practically losing it.
“So,” Dad continued, ignoring Patrick, “this year there are more than a few sea turtles on Pearlview Beach. Richard said we might see them, especially in the mornings and evenings, crawling near the reefs or where the sand meets the water. They’re tiny little guys—about the size of a tennis ball—so we’ve got to make sure we don’t crush them.”
“So really, all this talk of sea turtle orgies was a long warning for us not to accidentally murder the little guys?” I asked, grinning.
“Isn’t turtle soup something people eat?” Mom asked, turning to my dad.
“Mom!” Patrick said, finally breathing long enough in between his laughter. “We aren’t going to eat the poor little things! It’s not their fault their parents had too many orgies last season.”
Taran finally lost his composure, collapsing against Patrick’s shoulder and laughing.
“I promise, Taran, the trip will be good. Pearlview is gorgeous. It’s not just a sea turtle sex club.”
“I think you’ll love it, Taran,” Mom said, smiling over at him.
“But—you’re also going to have to learn how fierce our sandcastle competition is,” Patrick said, giving Taran a very serious look. “I know you’re my boyfriend, but Owen and I are not going to go easy on you.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you should probably start preparing now.”
“The trip isn’t for another week!”
I shrugged, grinning at Taran. “My brother and I don’t mess around.”
Taran grinned his megawatt smile. I’d never really been into guys, but I could see why my brother had fallen for him. “I’ll be sure to find the best bucket I have.”
“Buckets? Oh, that’s kid’s stuff. We literally bring carving tools and paintbrushes with us,” I said, lifting an eyebrow. “I’ve made a sandcastle with an archway in it. Patrick tried, but he couldn’t quite swing that.”
Patrick reached over and swatted me on the shoulder. “Shut up. Taran is just being modest. He’s keeping his cards close to his chest. We’re gonna have a killer castle.”
“Megan took at least three sculpture classes in college,” I said, leaning back in my chair and shrugging. “You and Taran can try, but you won’t beat us.”
“Is Megan coming for sure?” my mom asked, her face brightening instantly.
I nodded, smiling. “She texted me ten minutes ago saying that her boss told her it was fine.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Mom said, clapping her hands together once. “Oh, Megan seemed like the nicest girl when we visited you in the city. She’s really got her head on straight.”
“That’s the kind of girl I could see you being with, Owen,” my dad said, giving me a nod. He really must have been relaxed because relationships weren’t usually his topic of choice. And for once I found myself wishing he wasn’t quite so relaxed.
“I completely agree,” my mom said, nodding emphatically. “Such a kind young woman.”
“Megan’s just a good friend; I’ve told you guys that before,” I said. I looked down at my plate, grabbing a watermelon rind and biting the last little sliver of red off.
“Max didn’t want to come along too?” my mom asked as she picked up her water glass.
Patrick cut me a sympathetic glance—I’d told him about my falling out with Max, but hadn’t ever explained it fully to my parents.
“Max has to work,” I said, shaking my head and staring down at the table. “You know how tech companies are. They pay him well, but he basically has no life.”
“What a shame,” Mom said. “Well, if his boss decides to let up, you know he’s always welcome, too. If not, Megan is more than enough. Maybe it’s better if you two can spend some time together alone, huh?”
“Mom, please,” I protested, standing up. “I’m taking these dishes inside. Anyone need more water? Lemonade?”
When I got into the kitchen and was finally alone, I tossed the dishes into the sink and pulled in a long breath. I squeezed my eyes closed, leaning against the kitchen counter, wondering how I’d gone from laughing about sea turtles to feeling like my world was crumbling within the span of ten minutes.
But I knew why.
My mom wasn’t capable of hiding the fact that she thought I should get together with Megan, and it had always irritated me. Megan was a friend, and that was that. And something about Mom’s insinuation that it might be better without Max there had pissed me off. Nothing was ever better without Max. If anything, he and I needed time alone together more than I needed it with Megan.
For the rest of the night, my mind kept drifting back to him, like a song I couldn’t get unstuck from my head. For three months, we hadn’t talked. And before tonight, part of me thought that all I would need to do was reach out and things would be normal again.
But now I had reached out. And Max had said no. There wasn’t really any arguing with that; there was no way I could convince myself that we could pick up right where we’d left off.
And God, how I’d taken our friendship for granted. Sure, Max had taken care of me every time I drank too much, but he really shined in the quiet, everyday moments. If I fell asleep on the couch for an afternoon nap, he would always put the big, fluffy purple throw blanket over me. When I dropped out of college and started working in a cheap frozen yogurt shop, he’d often take a twenty-minute walk on his lunch break to see me, bringing bring me a hot dog or a slice of pizza. Any time he saw a pug on the street, he’d text me a photo, knowing it was my favorite dog breed.
Max and I were different in a lot of ways: he studied computer science, and I had studied psychology before I dropped out. He had a stable job at a tech company now, and I had worked odd jobs in between partying and drinking too much over the past six years. He was tall; I was average. He was gay; I wasn’t.
But none of that had ever seemed to matter. Max was just… Max, and I’d felt comfortable around him since the day I’d walked into my freshman year dorm room and saw him sitting at the edge of his bed, wearing that oversized red hoodie we’d been given at orientation, smiling nervously and waving at me. Within minutes, we’d fallen into gossip about the other people in the hallway, apprehension about our classes, excitement for the college years to come. We already were beginning to form the foundation of the best friendship I’d ever had.
Things with him had just always been easy. Natural.
Until now, I guess. Until he’d finally decided that I was more a burden than a friend, that he probably was better off without me in his life.
I wanted to believe it wasn’t true. But something inside me knew better.
My phone buzzed loudly, and I jumped as the sound shot through the silence. I was under the sheets, in the state between waking and sleeping where thoughts slowly morph into dreams. I’d been picturing the river in the woods where the wilderness guides always had us meditate: crystalline fresh water flowing over algae-covered rocks.
It was the most peaceful thing I could picture as I fell asleep lately, but now I was jarred back to reality, the four walls of my room, the glow of my phone screen in the darkness.
I pawed my hand over to the phone, still groggy, my eyes half-closed. I pushed the screen to answer the call, holding it up to my ear.
“Yeah, hello?” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Owen.”
Immediately my stomach leapt up to my throat. I lifted my head up, propping myself up on an elbow in bed.
“Max,” I said. I felt like my body had suddenly been plugged into a high-voltage outlet.
“Hi,” he said, and his voice was like honey to my nerves. Immediately the shock of hearing it was him melted away, and all I could feel was that everything was right in the world again, like the air in the room had changed, and I was no long
er so alone.
“Hey,” I said. “How the hell are you, Max?”
“Megan tells me you almost fell out of a tree earlier today,” Max said. I had forgotten what he sounded like. I’d met him as a freshman in college, and we’d both grown into young men alongside each other. But now more than ever before, I realized how comforting the deep velvet of his voice was, something I’d taken for granted far too much.
I laughed softly as I turned to my side under the covers, looking out through my window to the garden outside. “She told you, huh? Yeah, I was climbing around like an idiot on the red oak out back. Totally worth it, though.”
Max laughed softly. He paused afterward, and as I tried to wrack my brain for what to say next, I wondered if he was doing the same thing.
“Um,” he said, but the silence only stretched out again afterward. I panicked slightly, wondering if maybe we didn’t know how to talk to one another anymore, or that he’d realize that calling me had been a terrible mistake.
But then I realized: this was Max. I knew him like no one else. Why should I be nervous to talk to my best friend?
“You wanna know something weird?” I said, propping a second pillow behind my head as I relaxed back onto the bed.
“Sure.”
“I, like, forgot what your voice sounded like until just now,” I said. “I know that sounds strange, but I think it’s true. I got so used to hearing it every day that I guess my brain never tried to… memorize what you sound like. But all that is to say that it’s just… it’s really good to hear your voice, Max.”
I heard him let out a breath, maybe a ghost of a laugh. Was he nervous, too?
“It’s not that weird,” he said. “I know what you mean. It’s like when you can’t remember what the person closest to you actually looks like when they’re gone.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “I know. And it’s been a long time.”
“So long. Do you have gray hair and bifocals now?”
“Oh, of course. And I’m sure you have a few grandkids, huh?”
We laughed, and for a split second it felt like old times, like we were sitting on the couch together, sharing a greasy bag of cheap fries at night.
I settled back into the bed, cradling my phone by my ear as I reached out my feet to a cooler section under the blankets. Above me, there were still glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling from when I was a kid, though they’d long since lost their luminescence.
“Owen…” Max said, suddenly sounding more serious before trailing off. For a moment I thought he was about to tell me something horrible: that he was calling to say he never wanted to talk again, to say he regretted our whole friendship, to inform me of a restraining order.
But instead, he let out a frustrated sigh and said, “God, I missed you, Owen.”
I could have hugged the phone.
“I miss you, too,” I said, clutching it tight to my ear. “I miss you so fucking much.”
He laughed as if some tension had been broken and let out another breath. “This place is a whole lot quieter without you. It’s nice sometimes, but most of the time, it just feels… emptier.”
“You’ve got Meg!”
“Of course. But she’s my sister. At the end of the day, I can’t really tell her everything I tell you.”
“Really? Like what?”
He puffed out a laugh. “I don’t know. Can’t exactly tell my sister about the weird boner I got on my lunch break in the park, can I?”
I grinned. “Guess not.”
“Or about the awkward dates I go on with guys who expect me to go down on them immediately.”
“If I were gay, I promise I wouldn’t make you go down on me until at least the third date,” I said.
He snorted. “Never had that problem with girls you’ve dated, I assume?” he asked.
“Not yet, at least,” I said.
“God,” Max said. “You sound good, too. You’re… doing better, now that you’re in Rose Falls?”
“I’ve been doing pretty great,” I said. I bit my bottom lip. “Hey, did Megan tell you anything else about what we talked about earlier?”
“She told me you invited us to the beach house,” he said. I had no idea if Megan had told him about my wilderness retreat, but I was glad to bypass that conversation right now.
“So, you’re coming, right?” I asked. “To the beach?”
There was a short pause. “Ah… I’m sorry, Owen. I can’t ask for the time off.”
“What? Why not?”
“Things are so busy, and—”
“What good is a cushy, well-paying tech job if you have no free time?” I protested.
Max’s voice took on the same iron-clad tone it always did when he talked about work: he acted like it was a life-or-death situation, like asking for any time off would get him executed. “We have a big project coming up, and I just… I can’t. The timing is shitty.”
“Come on. Don’t other people in your department take summer vacations?”
He sighed. “Well, yeah. John does, and of course Marlon does too. But I’m still trying to earn my stripes, Owen. I need to prove I’ll always be there when they need me.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Okay. Max, where are you right now?”
“What?”
“I said, where are you?”
“I’m… I’m in bed….”
“Okay, perfect. I’m in bed, too. Now I want you to turn to your left side.”
He puffed out a hesitant laugh. “Why?”
“Just do it, okay?”
“Fine.” I heard faint rustling, and I pictured him turning in his light-blue sheets, the ones I’d seen every day as I walked past his room in the apartment. “Done.”
“Okay. Now pretend I’m lying there in bed next to you, looking you dead in the eye.”
“Is this supposed to be creepy, Owen? Because—”
“Hush. Pretend I’m right there. You remember what my eyes look like, right?”
“I guess. They’re… greenish.”
“Do you remember my death glare?”
I knew Max was smiling. “I remember it. You gave it to the people who would constantly leave their trash in the hallway.”
“That’s the exact death glare. Now pretend I’m giving you that, right now, in bed next to you. Scary, huh?”
“Terrifying.”
“Now listen to me: ask your boss if you can have time off. It’s two weeks of vacation, and I know you have at least a month saved up.”
He sighed. “I actually have about forty days saved up. I… haven’t taken a day off since I had the flu three years back.”
“Jesus Christ, Max.”
“I know.”
“Okay. Death glare. Focus.”
“I’m focused, I’m focused.”
I took a breath. “Just ask. I know it’s terrible timing, but it’s always going to be terrible timing at a tech start-up. That’s just how business works. But you have to take time for yourself, Max.”
“I know,” he said, his voice quiet.
“Think about the beach. Sand between your toes, salt water on your skin, trying to escape my parents when they inevitably try to tell me I should marry Megan or something….”
“And you, giving me death glares?”
“No. You’ll only get those if you don’t come.”
There was a lull. I pictured Max in his bed, holding his phone against his ear just like I was. Outside his window, there were probably the sounds of the city: taxis, drunken stumblers, maybe a couple homeless people. Outside mine, it was just shrubs and crickets, the sounds of the night in Upstate New York.
He was a world away, but hearing his voice tonight made it seem like he was right there in bed next to me. Even if Max didn’t come on the trip—and it seemed less and less likely by the minute—maybe this would be enough. Maybe if I could just get him to call me every night, to talk into my ear as I fell asleep, I might be able to start putting toget
her the pieces of my life.
It just felt so good, knowing he was there.
As I waited for him to respond, relaxation fell over me, and my eyes started to feel heavy-lidded.
“I’ll do it,” he said suddenly after what must have been at least a minute-long pause.
My eyes shot back open. “What?”
I heard Max let out a low chuckle. “Oh, Owen,” he said, letting out a sigh, “you can get me to do anything.”
My smile was back again. “I know,” I said. “I was always good at that. So, are you gonna take two weeks off or the whole forty days?” I joked.
“Shut up,” Max said. “Don’t joke about it or you’ll make me lose my confidence. God, am I really going to do this?”
“Yes,” I said, “yes, you’re absolutely going to fucking do this. I need you. I… I don’t think you even know how much I need you.”
An equal mixture of elation and fear washed over me. Because I’d done it—I’d done the impossible. I’d actually gotten Max to speak to me again, to see me again. But now the reality of being with him again stretched out in front of me.
I had a whole lot to prove to him. And it was finally time to repay him for everything he’d ever done.
How could I possibly show him how much he meant to me?
2
Max
“Is this it?” I said as we pulled up to the house. Megan was driving—she’d always insisted on keeping her old Honda, even in New York City, and this was the first time I’d ever been grateful for it.
She squinted down at her GPS and gave a quick nod. “This is definitely the address Owen texted us. So yeah, I think we’re here.”
I stared out through the window, shielding my eyes from the sun’s afternoon glare. How could this be the house Owen Davis grew up in? He had always told me that Rose Falls was a small town—“dinky” had been the word he’d been particularly fond of—but actually driving here had been a shock to the system. There were miles and miles of vast, green stretches of land between the city and Rose Falls. For a solid two hours, we had scarcely seen a town that was any bigger than a few small homes and cornfields. But then as we drove up to Rose Falls itself, things had started to change just slightly—more little shops, more cars—until we came up on Rosecrest University, and for a small radius, it seemed like we were in civilization again.
Summer Secret: Rose Falls Book 5 Page 2
