The Summers

by Iva-Marie Palmer

  Becca threw up her hands in an I don’t know gesture. At least she was looking at me again. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, he was so sweet. It was his first time, too,” she said. “It was short. But then we did it again and it was longer. And nicer. His hands were freezing, though.”

  I laughed. It was surreal, talking to my little sister about this. Even though she was the one who’d taken a big step, it made me feel more grown-up, too. “He was probably nervous,” I said. “Where did it happen?”

  “We went to his friend’s house. The family is out of town and Garrett’s been getting their mail,” she said. Color rose to her cheeks. “We used the parents’ bed.”

  “Wow, was that weird?” I was happy at least to hear that Garrett had looked for a private place for them. It meant he must have respected Becca and cared for her.

  “Not until after, when we decided to wash the sheets. Then we just sat there listening to the laundry machine and, like, talking about work. And that was the weirdest part,” she said. “After.”

  A sense of sisterly protection warmed the blood in my veins. “He didn’t blow you off, did he?”

  Becca shook her head. “No, no, it was just while we waited for the washing machine. I think we felt like intruders, or like they might come home any second or something,” she said, smiling. “After we put the clothes in the dryer, it was totally different. We put on a movie and cuddled on the couch. It was nice. I felt really close to him.”

  I nodded at her cell phone on the counter. “And has he called?”

  “Geez, are you going to go kick his ass?”

  “Maybe! I just want to make sure he’s a gentleman.”

  “He called early this morning. And sent two texts today.” She raised an eyebrow. “Is that good enough for you?”

  “Yes,” I laughed, relieved. “Just so he knows not to mess with my little sister.”

  “Oh, you think being all protective is going to make me like you again?” Becca grinned.

  “No, I’ll be protective even if you don’t like me,” I said. “But why, it is working?”

  “Yes,” she said with a smile. “In fact, it gives me an idea.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes. A double date tomorrow. Dinner.” Becca pulled up Yelp on her iPhone, starting to search. “Not Landrys’, but somewhere kind of nice, with cloth napkins.”

  “What, you lost your virginity and now you think you get to be all fancy?”

  “Hey, if there’s ever a time to be fancy . . .”

  We found a place with cloth napkins. It was two towns over, in Ribbon Cove, and situated on the end of the pier. The Sneaky Pelican was a lot like Landrys’—nice but still a place where you could dress fairly casual. Becca and I had on sundresses, and Ryan had worn a nice button-down over khaki shorts. Garrett, however, had worn pants and a tie. He looked stiff and nervous in the clothes. He couldn’t have looked less comfortable than if he’d been forced to carry around a ventriloquist dummy. He kept blushing every time I looked in his direction. He was so red, I could detect the hue even beneath his close-cropped light blond hair.

  It was a little cool outside that night, so we asked for a table in the main dining room. It was filled with families and older people finishing their early suppers. We’d beaten the rush, though, and were taken to our seats by a young hostess. Garrett helped my sister into her chair, but as he sat down, he knocked over his water glass, right into Becca’s lap. She shrieked at the cold but waved it off, and started to laugh. Meanwhile, Garrett fetched napkins with the intensity of an EMT saving a life.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, almost more to me than to her. Did he think I was going to beat him up for spilling water on my sister?

  I looked at Ryan and smiled. He was grinning, too. It felt like an oddly mature smile exchange for us, like we both felt older and wiser than the two newbie daters across from us. It was a nice relief after the intensity of our conversation two days before. We were fine, but I kept replaying the entire conversation in my head, wondering if there was a different way it could have gone—if there was an alternate path our relationship could have taken. I was sure Ryan was, too.

  “It’s just water, little brother,” Ryan said over the top of his menu. “Are you okay, Becca?”

  My sister giggled. I could tell she was enjoying Garrett’s sweet apologetic-ness. “Yeah, of course.”

  “Okay, Gar, she’s fine. Look at your menu.” Ryan gestured for him to sit. “Can’t take you anywhere.”

  “Yes, you can,” Garrett said defensively. The poor kid. I knew he had a sense of humor, but tonight he was so tightly wound he looked permanently hurt.

  “It’s an expression.” Ryan laughed. He looked at Becca. “Sorry, Becs. I think my little brother is trying to impress you and I’m probably making it harder for him.”

  “Yeah, you are,” Garrett said with a half smile toward Becca.

  Becca looked at him—was he her boyfriend? I supposed so—then and said, “This is a nice place, Garrett. Thanks for picking it.”

  “No problem.” Once again, Garrett looked at me and Ryan. “Is everyone okay with it?”

  “Yes, it’s great,” I said. I looked at my menu. “They have a macadamia-crusted sea bass. That might be good.”

  “It’s no Landrys’, but it’ll do,” Ryan teased. I squeezed his hand under the table, hoping to convey that he needed to ease up on his brother. I’d never seen a sixteen-year-old have a coronary and I didn’t want tonight to be my first time.

  The waiter came to take our orders.

  “My date would like some more water, and an iced tea. Iced tea for me, too, please,” Garrett asked, looking pleased with himself for ordering on Becca’s behalf. My sister, I noted, seemed happy with the development, too. Ryan ordered a beer and I ordered a Diet Coke.

  “And how about an order of clams for the table, and your crab cakes,” Ryan asked. “Do you do anything special with your remoulade?” I grinned, now used to Ryan’s many inquiries about how food was prepared.

  “I think it’s traditional,” the waiter said.

  “Okay, then, just some extra lemons with it,” Ryan said.

  Across the table, Garrett piped up. “And can you also bring us a shrimp cocktail?”

  “As you like, sir.” The waiter wrote everything down and left to place our order.

  “Sir, wow,” Ryan said. “It must be the tie.”

  “Come on, Ryan, so I want to look nice,” Garrett said. Becca shot me a look across the table that indicated that though she was fine with Ryan’s joshing, Garrett had maybe had enough.

  “So, Garrett, how has your summer been?” I asked, to change the subject.

  “Good, good,” he said, nodding like a bobblehead. “I’ve been working a lot and, you know, getting ready for the school year, trying to do some summer reading.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” I said. “What are you reading?”

  “Uh . . . what was that book you said Kate likes?” Garrett looked at Becca.

  “Cat’s Cradle?”

  “Yeah, that one,” he said. “Cat’s Cradle was really cool.”

  “So you like Vonnegut, then?”

  Garrett twisted his cloth napkin at the ends. “I mean, I didn’t finish it yet, but I’m going to.”

  He was talking a mile a minute, until my sister put her hand over his. She leaned in close. “Garrett, it’s okay. Kate knows,” she said quietly, so quiet I could barely hear. “Like knows knows.”

  “You told?” But Garrett wasn’t being quiet at all. He stood up from the table, this time rattling all the drinks on it.

  “You didn’t?”

  I looked sideways at Ryan, whose brow was creased in a question. I wobbled my head from side to side in a not-universal-but-somehow-understood-by-Ryan gesture that meant, your brother and my sister had sex.

>   His eyes widened and his mouth formed an “oh” but then he grinned like the whole thing was comical, which it was, a little.

  “Told what?” Ryan asked innocently.

  Becca’s eyes went wide now and I shook my head so she’d know it was just Ryan being a tease.

  “Nothing,” Garrett said. “Private stuff. I need some air.”

  As he got up and headed to the door, I saw Becca looked concerned. I didn’t want her to worry, so I rose and followed Garrett as he left the table. I found him outside, leaning on the pier railing and taking deep gulps of the sea air. He looked panicked when he saw me.

  “I really like your sister,” he said before I could get a word out. “I mean, I think I love her. I don’t want you to think . . .”

  I patted Garrett’s shoulder. “I don’t,” I said. “She just told me about you guys because she was happy.” I didn’t hint that she’d talked about his cold hands or their abbreviated first time. That was TMI and probably would be heart attack-inducing. “Don’t let Ryan get to you. He’s just messing around.”

  “Okay.” Garrett breathed out.

  “So why don’t we go back inside?” I said. “And take off your tie, maybe, so you’ll be more comfortable.”

  Garrett looked relieved. “I thought it would seem more professional, or something.”

  “Just keep being nice to my sister and we’re fine,” I said. Garrett smiled and undid the tie, shoving it in his pocket. As we neared our seats, I could see Becca smiling at the fact that me and her boyfriend were getting along.

  “Oh, and if you really want to get back at your brother,” I whispered out the corner of my mouth with a quick glimpse at Ryan, who was tasting the remoulade and squeezing in extra lemon, “just tell him how much you like the food here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A “REAL” DATE was what I’d been told to prepare for.

  The double date with Becca and Garrett—which got progressively more comfortable once we’d eaten dinner and then actually became fun when we went out for ice cream afterward—didn’t count, I was told, cloth napkins or not. Ever since our trip up the Cape to Ryan’s future restaurant, he’d been saying we needed to go on a “real” date, even as I told him I was perfectly happy with our usual Harborville haunts. I liked playing Skee-Ball at Surf Arcade. I liked bonfires with Jessica and Aaron (her now boyfriend, or “summer boyfling” as she had taken to calling him, perhaps a little stung that he’d be leaving for Syracuse). I didn’t say it, but in just a few weeks, I’d be leaving the boardwalk and beach behind, and I knew I would miss it.

  Ryan was insistent, so a real date was what I put in my mind. Defining what a “real date” was, though, eluded me. The evening took shape in my mind like some lump of gray clay, formless and nondescript. I figured I couldn’t go wrong by dressing up. I got my nails done again, for the first time since going with Eliza. The manicurist had regarded my chipped polish with disdain. I bought a new dress—mint green and several inches above my knee, with a tied halter top. After our trip to Lucy’s studio, I tried playing up my legs and shoulders more. My tan looked amazing against the light wash of color and, seeing myself in the mirror, I felt somehow older than when the summer began. Not in a bad way; I looked ready for whatever was next in my life.

  Ryan told me he wanted to pick me up at the main house so he could say hi to my dad. Once I was dressed, I joined my family in the kitchen. Becca and Tea were working, and my dad was camped out in front of a ball game in the living room. Eliza was hunched over her iPad, inspecting photos on Pinterest as she picked at some food at the counter.

  “I’m calling it,” she said, without looking up. “We don’t need favors. No one keeps them, no one wants them. If they don’t remember a wedding, some chocolate-covered almonds are not going to help. And I am done doing last-minute stuff. Devin keeps saying weddings are an easy problem to throw money at, and I know he’s being supportive and trying to de-stress me, but I think it’s wasteful.”

  She was in Eliza monologue mode. It didn’t matter if anyone was listening. Sometimes, Eliza just liked to unravel detail after detail to break things down to their necessary parts. It was her process, and I hoped it meant some of her tension was lifting.

  “I think that’s fair,” I said. “But if you change your mind, there’s still time to do something, if you want my help.”

  Eliza looked up. “Thanks, but let’s pass . . . Wow. What are you doing tonight? Dad, look at Kate.”

  My father actually stood up and came into the kitchen. “You look really nice, Katiekins,” he said, using a nickname I hadn’t heard in years. “What are you doing tonight?”

  As if to answer, a knock came at the door. Ryan. I got a sudden case of stage fright as I answered the door.

  Ryan was wearing a light gray shirt, a few buttons beneath his neck unbuttoned, and dark gray dress pants. Besides my mom’s funeral, when he’d looked stiff in his black suit, I’d never seen him so dressed up. It struck me that he was someone I could imagine on a red carpet or People’s Sexiest Man Alive issue. They were cheesy comparisons, but he really did make me feel like my skeleton was useless in holding up my body. That he liked me just added to the knees-into-jelly effect.

  He had a jacket over his arm and a bouquet of dahlias in his hand. “These are for you,” he said, looking right into my eyes. “Two-color hybrids. Science and magic.” I smiled. He’d remembered my babbling from the first time we kissed.

  “You look gorgeous,” he said, and his eyes didn’t leave me. They didn’t go to Eliza, who I could feel watching us. She was in the spot I used to occupy: the person on the outside of the relationship, looking in. Granted, she wasn’t looking in with a fifteen-year-old’s admiring sense of longing, but there was an odd symmetry to the situation.

  My dad came into the foyer. “Ryan, good to see you,” he said, extending his hand to shake.

  “Nice to see you, too, sir,” Ryan said, a twinge of nerves in his voice. Now he knew how I felt at his parents’.

  “Where are you two headed?” Eliza’s voice broke through.

  “Nantucket,” Ryan said, his expression sheepish, like he had to get Eliza’s permission. “But that’s all I want to tell Kate for now. The rest is a surprise. Mostly because she’ll try to argue against it.”

  “Me, argue? Never.” I grinned.

  “Just don’t forget, we have our final dress fittings in the morning,” Eliza called out behind me.

  “Be careful, you two,” my dad said as he turned back to the game. I smiled to myself. My dad had never really sent me off on a date before. With Matt, things had always been so casual.

  “I won’t keep her out too late,” Ryan promised both of them as he took my hand and walked me to the car.

  We took the ferry to Nantucket. The light spray of water on my face and the feeling of going somewhere totally new with Ryan built into excitement, and I pulled him toward me, kissing him as I ran my hands under his jacket and up his chest. He pulled me tight, his grip on my hips, but as our kissing grew intense, he let go and stepped back a bit. “I don’t want to mess up your dress,” he said. “You look so gorgeous.”

  “After, then?” I asked, feeling like I didn’t want after to be too long from now.

  “Yes,” Ryan said with one last little kiss.

  We leaned out over the railing, watching as the island expanded on the horizon, our fingers interlinked. Some dense-looking clouds built in the distance, and I could see Ryan studying them, a little furrow appearing between his eyebrows, as if he could make the possibility of rain go away.

  “So, where are we going?” I asked. I had been to Nantucket restaurant few times as a kid, but not in years. Even though I loved doing simple things with Ryan, I felt a tiny thrill that we were headed somewhere special.

  “If I tell you, you’ll try to talk me into burgers and mini golf,” Ryan replied. �
�So don’t worry about it.”

  He took my hand to guide me off the ferry, and placed his palm on my back to guide me away from the pier into town. Little shops and restaurants were clustered along quaint cobblestone streets. Everything felt old, but not worn-out. More like, when you looked around, you could imagine yourself in a different era: It was the ’20s, and I was dating a sailor about to cross the Atlantic. It was the late 1800s, and I wore a big dress and anxiously awaited the breezes off the water and the salt on my face. Harborville may have screamed “fun,” but Nantucket whispered “romance.”

  I let myself lean into Ryan, partly to manage my high heels on the uneven paths and also because it was nice to feel coupled with him.

  “The restaurant’s not far,” he said. “Are you okay walking or should I get us a taxi?”

  “I like walking,” I said, adding, “I prefer it, actually.” I didn’t want him feeling like he had to bend over backward for me. He seemed so nervous, like he only cared if I was having a good time. Meanwhile, I wanted him to enjoy the night out.

  A drop of rain hit my shoulder, warm and soft. It rolled down my skin. I pretended I didn’t feel it.

  “Was that rain?” Ryan’s voice wavered and he stared heavenward skeptically.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I lied.

  “Let’s hurry,” Ryan said as a plump raindrop fell onto his cheek. He looked up at the sky, like it was a new cook of dubious talents.

  We’d only walked a few steps when the sky broke open. The resulting rain wasn’t violent, but it was more than a drizzle. Ryan held his jacket over our heads as we ran toward our destination.

  “Here, it’s here,” Ryan said, holding a door for me and urging me inside before I had a chance to protest. We were at Galley Beach, far and away the most well known of Nantucket’s esteemed restaurants. Eliza had tried to come here a few weeks ago with Devin, but they hadn’t been able to get a table. It was a favorite of celebrities and ultrarich Cape families, the kind of meal an average person didn’t expect to ever have.