We-ll Always Have Summer File

I laughed, because that was what we did. We laughed to keep the thing at bay. “You want me to stay for a plum ?”

“I don’t know what we’re doing,” he said. “I only know I’ve never been more myself than I am with you, in this place, in July. And I think that has to count for something. Even if it doesn’t have a name.”

He was quiet for a long time. Then he reached across the table and took my hand—not desperately, not romantically. Just held it, like a fact. We-ll Always Have Summer

“She never married,” Leo said.

Ten summers ago, we were nineteen and stupid, lying on this same dock with our ankles in the water. He’d said, What if we never tried to make this anything? What if we just… came back here? And I’d said, That’s the dumbest smart thing I’ve ever heard. And we’d shaken on it, like children sealing a pact with bloody thumbs. I laughed, because that was what we did

He nodded. He did know. That was the worst part. He knew about the job in Portland, the lease I’d signed, the life I’d built eight months of the year that did not include him. He knew because I had told him, every summer, over and over, like a prayer or a warning.

“I’m always thinking it.”

“Leo.”