For the Summer

by Shey Stahl

  It was obvious I was way too concerned about everything else around me to worry about losing my virginity. That much was clear.

  Struggling not to fall, gripping your shoulders harder, I tried to sneak a peek at your face as you came, but I couldn’t. For some reason I really wanted to see your face.

  You groaned, your body shaking as you let go, strangled words fell from your lips.

  My first thought, the very first one before you even pulled out was that I couldn’t believe we just had sex.

  For my first time, it was okay. For me in general, it was awful. But it was with you.

  Probably not what you wanted to hear, but hey buddy, at least your junk didn’t get ripped off and you got pleasure.

  I, on the other hand, was trying to wish the blood back into my appendages and wondering how, at eighteen, I feared back problems from the weird angle my body had just been in.

  And then I was wondering what you were going to say to me. There were two paths we could take. Two hearts, two decisions, one outcome.

  Your face said a lot. Your actions said even more.

  I let a hand drift up to the side of your face, running my fingertips along the edge of your cheek, and for a split second, you opened your eyes to me. I wanted to see warmth and the connection reach your eyes. And when I didn’t see it, I felt a hint of fear as I realized all I saw was sadness. Your lids fell shut again, and you began kissing me harder.

  Under that sadness—the vulnerability and the emotion—was something in the way you looked at me, like I was all you’d ever wanted. I felt beautiful in the harsh light, alive, consumed. I could honestly say of all the times I had been this way with you, I’d never felt like that around you.

  There was a sting as you slid out of me, both on body and my heart. My breathing evened out, you were gasping, hands in your hair, confused, swallowing over and over again trying to gain control. “Fuck …” you breathed out, reality sinking in.

  You pulled your head back and looked at me, almost confused, as you continued breathing heavily, trying to keep your lips closed, but eventually you gave up and gasped for air.

  You were quiet, still holding onto me, until you dropped my legs and stared at the ground, allowing me to move away. I didn’t want to lose this because if I did, all of this, everything would be lost. Outside of this, around us, didn’t mean anything.

  Your head slumped forward as you panted in harsh breaths. Reality slowly returned, and the weight of the alcohol set in as you looked at me nervously. “Fuck … what the fuck have I done?” you asked so low I had to strain to hear you.

  You weren’t looking for an answer. At least not the one I had for you. I wasn’t looking at it from that angle.

  My cheeks broke out into a fire, waiting to see what you’d say. Finally, you drew in a deep breath and looked over your shoulder at the gathering of people in the distance, the party had moved completely to the lake, and I was surprised to see no one had noticed us yet.

  You smiled. “Well …”

  “Yeah.” I bit my bottom lip, relaxing slightly. “Well.”

  Your brow went up, and you smiled, planting a gentler kiss on my cheek, your damp hair fell against my face. “Sorry,” you whispered, for what I had no idea at the time, leaning your forehead against mine. “That wasn’t exactly what I—”

  “Bensen!” Robbie yelled, standing on the deck assuming you were with the others on Jesser’s boat.

  You glanced over your shoulder at him in the distance, shouting from his place in the driveway.

  Moving back, you shifted away completely, righting your shorts. Your eyes moved to mine, glassy, before looking away. “I’ll be back later.” You leaned in, your lips pressed to my forehead, staying there for what seemed like forever. When you pulled back, your brows knitted, your eyes focused on mine. “Meet down by the lake?”

  Nodding, I knew, I just knew there was a part of you pulling back even before your body was.

  But I waited by the lake for you to return, heard the commotion upstairs, and then saw you standing in the driveway, yelling at Grayden and your dad.

  When our eyes finally caught, you stood there staring at me for a moment, the rush of reality sinking in. My pulse would have been pounding, but it was struggling to even be. With the way you were looking at me, it was dying. How could it pound? It was giving up, or maybe, giving in.

  The air changed, and I felt it. It was in the confused expression of your brow and the way you ran your hand over the back of your neck. You hesitated, as if you couldn’t decide if you were coming down to the lake or not. That was when I saw my dad standing by the deck, leaned against the side with his arms crossed over his chest, talking to you in hushed tones.

  It was like tasting bile, my skin covered in needles, my heart sinking. It seemed like the moment our eyes actually met we were back to being miles away from each other, distanced by what neither of us wanted or could say.

  Placing my hand over my chest, I felt the slow beat, wondering when it would end. Surely to feel this way and still be alive wasn’t possible. It continued its slow descend. I wanted it to stop because if it did, this feeling would end.

  Instead, I had to see what our for-the-summer love had become.

  Our eyes caught again. You were normally so sure of yourself, but right now you looked so uncertain, and you couldn’t see my eyes to know what I wanted. No gray-blue for you to feed from.

  Something flickered in your eyes, though, a realization I could see. Of what, I didn’t know. Rejection maybe.

  This wasn’t going to work.

  You gave me a fleeting look and then turned around and left, slamming the door to your truck. Sometimes to hear something, no words needed to be said. That was your goodbye. I could feel it.

  I wanted to cry, but found that I was numb. I was shocked and appalled at myself, and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to go so entirely all the way without thinking about it. Had I pushed you to leave? Was sex all you ever wanted from me?

  That feeling, the one I couldn’t shake, became a pulse and my heart beat for it, fed my fears.

  I gave you a part of myself I would never get back, but it was a part I could never imagine giving to anyone else.

  You took that part and made me feel like it was precious. A gift to you, to make you love me. Something you didn’t deserve but took anyway. I’d have given my lungs. I didn’t need them anyway; it hurt too badly to breathe.

  I knew enough to know that this image would burn forever. You leaving. And just when I thought I would forget, the wind would pick up and the fire would spread.

  I learned something, though. I learned something valuable—falling in love. But the thing was, the scariest part about falling in love was giving yourself, face-to-face with who you are and letting someone else see that.

  Not knowing what just happened, I walked up to Ivey watching Wyatt and Chase fighting over a raft. Instead, they both fell off the dock. Water splashed up around Ivey causing her to scream. I watched my bare feet on the planks, remembering just how many times I’d actually walked down this very dock barefoot.

  Tears started rolling. Sometimes it took a little while for tears to come. It happened when I least wanted it to. It happened as I was walking down that dock, knowing after tonight, nothing was ever going to be the same. Ever.

  When I reached Ivey, I sat down and leaned my head against her shoulder. “Do you know where Bensen went?”

  She took a drink from the bottle of Fireball and handed it back to me. “He and Dad just got into a fight. He left. What was his problem? He was all kinds of pissed off. He and Grayden even got into a fight.”

  Then she noticed my tears. “What’s wrong?”

  “I had sex with him,” I admitted, sniffling and wiping my tears away with my hands. The more I wiped, the quicker they came.

  “Who … Grayden?” Ivey sat up, all serious and demanding. “That’s disgusting, Sophie.” She sighed, scrunching her nose up. “Go clean yourself up.
Grayden is nasty.”

  “I didn’t have sex with Grayden, Ivey.”

  “But—” I had to stop her. The idea of sleeping with Grayden repulsed me.

  “Bensen.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s about time.” Then she frowned. “But still … go clean yourself up!”

  But I didn’t move and neither did my best girl. She held me, and my broken heart sank a little more. As much as I wanted this night with you, I had it, and now it was gone. And so were you.

  “Hey … Sophie …” When Ivey noticed how hard I was crying, her arms wrapped around me. “Come here.” We collided and rocked and cried.

  With the palms of her hands on my face, Ivey looked at me, her own tears present because she was my friend. If I was hurting, so was she.

  “I’m sorry …”

  Closing my eyes, I hid my face in her neck and cried harder, embracing the only friend I had.

  September 2008

  I tried to move on.

  Two days later, Ivy and I left that lake, headed for Athens.

  My body had to move on whether my heart wanted to.

  The truth was, I couldn’t just move on. I felt empty. Full of pain, but still so empty.

  It was a love that couldn’t be duplicated. Maybe I would experience love again but never like that.

  Why?

  First love. It was the first piece you willingly gave to someone else. It was a part you never got back.

  I wondered what you were doing. I wondered if you regretted what you did. Part of me knew, to a certain extent, you regretted it. Why else would you have left?

  So some might ask why I gave up that easily? Call him! Hunt him down! Okay, maybe that was mostly what ran through my head. I mean, after all, you did take my virginity and then left town like a villain—Virgin Stealing Outlaw.

  Of course I tried calling you. I did. It rang a few times, each one longer than the last. And then it’d beep. You always picked up when I called. Until now. “It’s Bensen, leave a message, or don’t.”

  I hung up and immediately redialed. All my attempts went to voicemail, which meant you knew I was calling. You were avoiding me, purposely. You didn’t want to talk to me so I tried to move on. After two days straight of calling you, your phone had been disconnected. I tried Grayden, but he hadn’t seen you.

  I called Austin, no word. I called your parents, Brady, and a few of your other boys, all nothing. No one knew where you were. It was if you had completely vanished.

  I confronted my dad about it, to which he told me it was best; I decided I would just leave you alone.

  Apparently I didn’t know what was best for me.

  I Googled you. Nothing. Like Google could search for you. Even thought about calling the police. Ivey talked me out of that one. Probably for the better.

  What would I have said?

  Yeah, 911, hey, so this guy fucked me against a speaker the other night. Then he took off and I haven’t heard from him since. Can you find him?

  Despite all my efforts to find you, time went on without me.

  The weather, though still technically summer, looked like autumn, but felt like fall, with the high sun immersing everything in gold. Seasons were changing but I was not. I walked around campus, grass crunching under my feet. My lungs felt like they were burning with every inhale, torched with every exhale.

  That was just me.

  “I’m so pissed at him right now, Ivey,” I told her as we unpacked in our dorm a week before school started. “I’m so mad because I feel like everything I’ve ever felt and said didn’t mean shit to him.”

  We were living together in a two-bedroom apartment in Busbee Hall with another student, Kendal Murphy. What a fucking mess that girl was.

  Ivey moved away, smiling, a sympathetic one that made me believe I was wrong. “Don’t. You were his friend, and he loved you in his own weird, unstable ways. I say that because I knew.”

  If I was going to believe anyone, it was Ivey.

  “Have you heard from him?” I knew she hadn’t because she would have told me.

  “No, he called Brady I guess to wish him happy birthday, but he moved out of his apartment in Atlanta, and no one really knows where he went. He’s always been like that.”

  “He has?” I sat down on the bed, holding a picture of all of us at the lake. It was the one taken right before the graduation party just as the sun dipped below the trees. It was the one of our silhouettes, beer in hand. My favorite picture of us.

  “He ran away when he was ten to the basement. Mom and Dad called the police and everything and never knew he was down there. He decided to come back when CPS got involved.” Ivey scrunched her eyebrows, looking confused. “Or maybe it was the FBI … hell, I have no idea. I just know that if he doesn’t want to be bothered, you’ll never find him.”

  “He’s such a jerk.” I sighed, letting out the heavy breath. “I mean who does he really think he is besides a controlling, jerky bastard with epic commitment issues?” It felt good to say all that.

  Ivey looked over at me, handing me a beer she stuffed in her suitcase. “You could say that, yes, but that’s a mouth full. I just prefer asshole.”

  I sat down on the bed beside her. “Thanks.”

  “Do you want me to kick his ass? Doubt that,” she answered herself. “Too predictable.” She thought for about half a second. “I know … how about I set his truck on fire?”

  “That won’t work. We can’t find him, remember?”

  Every five minutes she came up with another way of hurting her older brother. None to which I agreed. Some were definitely appealing, but she found my unwillingness to cause you bodily harm completely unacceptable.

  2009

  When school finally did start, I was in full-on feel-sorry-for-me mode.

  And though inside it was tough, life had a way of moving on for you, and the year brought with it a lot of changes.

  Michael Jackson died—Mom and I both cried. Farrah Fawcett died—my mom cried again. And when Patrick Swayze died—Ivey, Sadie, Stephanie, and I cried. Then we watched Dirty Dancing about twenty times when we went back for Christmas break that year.

  The Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl again, and the Yankees defeated the Phillies to clench the World Series.

  New Moon was released in theaters. I stood in line along with thousands of other screaming mothers and daughters to see that sparkling vampire. Ivey went with me and finally confirmed her secret obsession with the books, admitting to reading the entire series over Christmas break.

  The cost of gas was now $2.73. It was a good thing because most were now calling our country’s financial state the worst since the Great Depression.

  Depression.

  I was depressed. I felt like that peach that fell from the tree only to be picked up by a toddler and have my skin peeled off slowly before being used as a voodoo peach and stuck with sticks. I was peach-mush.

  I had to focus on why I was in college, though.

  Two weeks into college life, and I hated getting up in the mornings. I always hated morning, but when I enrolled in that Critical Analysis of Mass Media at eight AM, I wanted to shoot myself. Honestly, why did the manufacturers of Seale make beds so comfortable if not to enjoy them?

  Unfortunately for me, I had to get up. Every morning I would get up and stare at myself in the mirror. I stared at my freckles where you connected the dots, and my golden hair you said was a Grand Canyon sunset. My gray-blue eyes stared back at me, not completely convinced I wouldn’t ever see you again. I didn’t know what part of me hurt, or why I was feeling that way; it was just an all-consuming feeling that destroyed me, crushed my bones into dust and into you. Fuck being mush, I was dust.

  When I finally did make it to class on those mornings, I didn’t make eye contact with most people, and it wasn’t out of bitchiness. It was out of insecurity. I didn’t want anyone to know me. If they knew me, they’d see who I was. The girl stuck on a summer. I couldn’t let go because
you wouldn’t let me.

  Most nights I would lay in my bed and stare at one picture of us. The one taken just hours before our time under the deck.

  I remembered something my mom had told me the day I left for college.

  “You can’t live in the past, Sophie. You need to live for right now and what you have. A bright future ahead of you. Forget that boy and focus on your schooling. Have fun!”

  Who said you had to live for right now, though? What if you could’ve had the best thing in your life? Who was to say going back and making the past right would make you happy right now?

  And that was how this journal started.

  I realized I was halfway through my freshman year of college, hadn’t decided on a major yet, and missed you emotionally and physically. The ghost of you was haunting, and I thought it was strange to miss someone so fiercely, when I never truly had you to begin with. What I had was an idea—who we could be. Together. Memories. But did I have you? No, you were never mine. I figured the sooner I could reconcile that, the sooner I’d feel whole again. I just wanted to feel whole again.

  Over a pint of ice cream, I tried recalling our first time and tried to think if that was where it all went wrong. Was that why you left?

  So of course I thought about us having sex and wondered if it meant anything to you.

  A lot happened when I went away to college that fall. Being away from home for the first time was hard enough; also being depressed didn’t help matters at all.

  That last summer with you I had thought for sure we would have finally ended up together.

  And the fact that we didn’t was very hard for me. But the worst part was that you just left so suddenly. No explanation. Nothing. Just gone.

  Why had our friendship meant so little to you that you just walked away?

  I was at a loss as to what to do with my depressed self.

  I had all these theories as to why you left, but none made complete sense to me.

  Finally, I had the idea to write down the last conversation we had. Maybe then I would remember something you might have said, a reaction, or word I missed. A few beers into this theory, and a pint of ice cream later, I found myself opening that leather bound journal.