The person pulls the door the rest of the way open, and it takes my eyes a second to adjust to the light. A mirage in the form of a tall figure glints in and out of focus.
“It’s fi…” he starts, but his words stumble to a stop when his stunned eyes fix on me.
Miles?
CHAPTER EIGHT
SUMMER, FIVE YEARS AGO
It’s been one thousand three hundred and forty days since I’ve seen Bear Lake. I’ve kept track of every day that has passed in the back of my sketchbook. An endless row of tally marks signifies the distance between me and my summer best friend.
I’ve thought about Miles a million times since that first summer at the cabin, wondering how he was doing, where he went during the other three seasons of the year, and if he even remembered me. I never gave up hope that one day I’d see him again. But the more time that passed, the more unsure I became that I’d ever make it back there, or if I’d even be the same person who left.
I’ve been living a life so far from the summer I shared with Miles Bishop that just the thought of seeing him again has a bundle of nerves coiling in my stomach.
The five-hour drive drags on longer than I remembered it. A fleet of butterflies take off in my stomach as we round the bend at the end of the byway. The shimmering lake comes into view, and it feels like stepping out of a time machine and seeing it with pair of ten-year-old eyes for the first time.
As my dad pulls the car down the sparse driveway, Miles’s trailer is the first thing I fixate on. It’s parked in the same spot where the wheels have worn the grass clean down to the dirt from the weight. The startling difference is the cropped grass where a field of dandelions once grew in its place.
We take a collective deep breath with the windows rolled down.
“Well, we made it. I missed this place,” my dad says.
I want to say “me too,” but I’ve never had the heart to admit how much it meant to me after what we went through with Mom.
He rounds the front bumper as she steps out from her side of the car. He grabs on to her, hugging her shoulders as she becomes a blubbering mess.
I haven’t moved from the back seat, but I can still hear her let out a sigh and stutter, “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again.”
He hugs her a little tighter.
When I work up the nerve to open the door, the surrounding view has me cataloguing all the ways it looks the same and yet feels so completely different. I hadn’t expected that, and I’m not sure I can put a name to those feelings.
I cough and choke when I step into the cabin. The same stuffy grandma smell we worked so hard to get rid of that first summer returned.
“You remember the drill, people,” my mom sings. “Let’s open the windows.”
She’s beaming. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her this happy. I know the cabin does something to me, but it’s like it makes her come alive in a way we all need.
We unload a new summer’s worth of belongings, and when I’m sure everything is settled, I leave my parents for the dock. I make it a couple of feet when I see him, standing on the edge facing the water.
My heart thunders in my chest. It takes every fiber of my being to work my way closer and closer to him.
Even from behind, he’s changed. His hair is lighter than I recall. Curlier too. Of course, he’s taller and broader, but that’s to be expected. It’s been four years. Even my four-foot eleven-inch frame has made some progress in that department.
I step on a plank, then a few more, until a loose one creaks under my weight, and he starts to turn around. As his face comes into view, a smile stretches wide across most of it. His eyebrows elevate in surprise. Mine do too.
He’s… not Miles.
My smile drops, and a knot the size of a golf ball lodges in my throat.
I came back.
I finally came back, and you aren’t here, my heart tells him.
What if he’s gone and it was goodbye forever? I didn’t prepare myself for that possibility. I shouldn’t cry in front of this stranger, but I can’t help it. I swallow as tears prick my vision.
“You’re not…” I start to say, the wind on my face making me feel buoyant enough that it could carry me away with it.
