“What are you doing?” I ask Asher.
He doesn’t speak, just opens a compartment next to him and starts digging around.
“Are you going to kill me out here?”
Asher pulls out a tangle of silver metal and rope and shakes his head at me. “Stop it.” He starts pulling on the rope until he has it bundled in one hand. He tosses the anchor out toward the deeper water and pulls on the rope until it’s taut, and the stern of the boat swings toward the shore. Then he slumps back into his seat. “I don’t feel like going back yet.”
“We’re just going to sit here?”
“Yeah, do you think we can manage that?” He sounds angry, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Our usual banter is teasing and snarky, but it’s really never felt mean or angry. I’m not sure what I did. It’s not like this wasallmy fault. Our pranks are tit for tat, and he’s done just as many of them as I have.
I don’t say anything, just look at him from under my lashes, and shrug with a mutteredwhatever.I look at the shoreline. At the two little white houses sitting like mirror images above the water, Nadine’s house looming twice as high behind them. And it finally sinks in that whether we find new houses or not, we’re never coming backhere.My chest tightens and I can feel the tears threatening. It’s too much—too many things ending. High school, and friendships, and summer vacations. These two stupid, tacky little houses.
The tear escapes before I can stop it, trailing down my cheek like a silent good-bye. I keep my eyes focused on the shoreline, avoiding the boy whose eyes I can feel on me.
“I kind of thought we’d come here forever.” Asher’s voice sounds as sad as I feel.
“Forever?”
He shrugs. “Forever-adjacent,I guess.”
“Yeah, me, too.” And I mean it. I had told myself that this was going to be the last year, that once I was in college I’d be too busy to go on family vacations, too old to hang out with my parents. But deep down, I think I knew I’d be back here. Maybe not for two months, but for a week or two, at least. Escaping summer classes or a demanding job. Taking a break before swim practices start each fall. The sadness is welling up again, and another tear falls and splashes against my bare leg. This time I wipe it away; there’s no way Asher didn’t see it.
“Mom said you made the team at Oakwood.”
I take a deep breath to steady my voice. “Yeah.” I can’t help but smile. “I found out a few months ago.”
“Weird that we’ll be on the same team for once, huh?”
I shouldn’t be surprised we’ll be teammates, because Oakwood has a great Division II swim program and it’s where our parents went, where our moms swam. It’s been at the top of both of our lists for a long time. But I am surprised, because I always thought Asher would go Division I. “Your mom never said anything until yesterday morning. I had no idea,” I admit.
Asher shrugs. “Maybe she thought it would be funny if we just ran into each other in the pool.”
He looks as nervous as I feel when he says, “On the bright side, you’ll have easy access to terrorize me.”
“Ditto.”
“We can go in now if you want.” Asher stands up and puts a hand on the anchor’s rope.
“Maybe just a little longer.”
He smiles, and I can’t remember the last time I saw him smile at me. But then the memory of our kiss hits me like a wave—the curve of his mouth before he kissed me, the softness of his lips, the look in his eyes. His smile now doesn’t hold the promise it did that night; it’s small, inconsequential, but I return it. “We can stay as long as you want,” he says. But we both know it isn’t true.
DAY 9
Asher
The parents spend the next day feverishly house hunting. They sit around the kitchen table in the morning, huddled together like some sort of war council, and we don’t see them again until midafternoon when they come home during a gap in their showings.
“How’s it going?” I ask my dad anxiously. He’s sitting on our deck with a bottle of beer. The way he’s looking out at the lake longingly, like he might be saying good-bye soon, isn’t making me very optimistic.
“It’s… going,” he says, taking a drink and setting his bottle on the white plastic table beside him.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I feel like I need to. “You guys must know the shit me and Sid do every summer, and I don’t know what happened this time. Things just…” He’s still looking out at the lake. “I’m sorry we screwed this all up.”
“Not that I want to condone this weird feud you and Sidney have going on”—Dad takes a sip and puts his bottle back down—“but I don’t think that’s what this was really about.”
“But Nadine said—”
