“Dress for the boyfriend you want, not the boyfriend you have,” Ellen went on.
“If a guy doesn’t find me irresistibly seductive in my saggy briefs, he’s not the one for me,” Rae said.
“Get out of your own way, Rae-bae. I just have this vision of a macho lumberjack across the lake, inviting you over to cook you a steak over the fire that he’s built with his bare hands.”
Rae rolled her eyes. “We’re going to Indiana, not Alaska.”
Ellen, who’d grown up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, had never been to the Midwest, except to fly over it in an airplane, but she and Aaron were very excited, a littletooexcited, to see how people lived out there.
“I’m just saying, summer on the lake is a great backdrop for a rebound,” Ellen said.
“A rebound from what exactly?” Rae asked. It wasn’t like she was fresh out of a relationship, though it felt that way.
“A rebound from anything that’s drained your energy,” Ellen said, spreading her arms in some yoga pose.
Rae kept her arms folded closed, preferring to stay in her emotional trough, cradled in self-pity and safe from another crash. Every investor knew you couldn’t lose anything more when you were already at the bottom.
But she walked back into her room and stashed the thongs in her bag, then zipped it shut.
“Well, look who’s back,” a voice said, triggering a whole book of memories that Rae had left behind in a lidded box when she’d packed up to leave Our Little Yellow House for the last time, ten years ago now, the summer before her dad filed for divorce.
They’d landed in Indianapolis this afternoon, and after they’d stopped by for lunch with Rae’s mom and grandpa, Rae had gottenbehind the wheel of her old Ford pickup truck to drive Ellen and Aaron the sixty miles north to Lake Elmer. Fordable Francine, she’d named the truck back in high school, when she’d emptied her babysitting earnings to buy the truck fifth-hand for $1,200. Francine couldn’t reach much more than forty miles an hour anymore, but she got along just fine on the windy back roads in these parts.
During the drive, past acres and acres of brown-gold farmland dotted with green tractors and red barns, Ellen and Aaron had marveled at the vastness of the open space, the way it felt like they’d been transported back in time a hundred years. Though the landscape captivated them, they couldn’t help pointing out every sexist, racist, or homophobic thing they drove by—a catcalling truck driver, an Indian mascot painted onto the scoreboard of a high school football field, an anti-gay-marriage sign in a front lawn.
It was true that, returning here as an adult, Rae noticed how prejudice was rooted as deeply as the oldest trees. She couldn’t unsee these things and wouldn’t want to but still felt a childish tug to pull the fuzzy blanket back over her head and fall into a deep sleep, uninterrupted by horns or sirens.
They’d unpacked at the cottage, which was half the size Rae remembered, with peeling paint and broken shutters, but as lovable as ever. Now Aaron was borrowing Francine to go hunt for groceries while Rae and Ellen were pulling twin kayaks out from the shed.
The kayaks were covered in cobwebs, like they hadn’t been used since Rae and her dad had taken them out all those years ago. It made her want to preserve the white webs or put them in her pocket. Ellen, for her part, was furiously scrubbing down her kayak with sanitizing wipes. She was also wearing white shoes, the first violation of country living. Rae was barefoot, and it finally felt like she could breathe again.
They swiveled their heads to locate the voice. A guy was crossing the yard toward them, and it took only a second for Rae to see the boy right through the man. It was Stu, the hell-raising heartthrobwhose family owned the cottage next door. They’d spent many summers together growing up on this lake, and he always used to flip Rae’s tube over when their dads were pulling them behind the boat. Then, one star-sprinkled August night when she was sixteen, in the scraggly pine trees dividing the two properties, he’d been her very first kiss.
His body had filled out as much as his buzz cut had grown out. He was wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt and loose-fitting swim trunks, carrying a six-pack of beer.
Ellen let out a low whistle. “There’s your lumberjack,” she murmured, like she’d manifested him out of thin air.
Rae dropped her kayak on her foot and tried not to hop in pain. “Stu,” she said, walking closer for a better look.
Stu was more than a mirage. He pulled her in for a hug and rubbed his knuckles on the top of her head, mussing up her hair. She used to hate when he did it, but she welcomed it now, finding the old gesture wonderfully comforting. His sturdy frame gave her the notion that if a nasty wind came along, she could stand behind him and be completely sheltered.
The years between them stretched and then condensed. By the time the hug ended, it felt like they’d filled in all the gaps of the past decade, or rather, rewound to a time when there were no gaps at all.
Stu attempted a dramatic courtesy. “The queen of New York City gracing us with her presence?” he said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Knock it off, Stu-pid,” Rae said, using the very mature nickname she’d patented way back when. She briefly introduced Ellen.
Ellen had, of course, heard the story of Rae’s first kiss with the boy from the lake house, and Rae could see the dots connecting in Ellen’s brain. “What a coincidence you’re both back here at the same time,” she proclaimed.
“Well, it’s not much of a coincidence, if I’m being honest,” Stu said. “My mom told me Raelynn was gonna be here, and she madeit pretty clear I’d better haul my ass up here if I ever wanted to taste her cooking again. Not that I needed that incentive, for the record.”
Rae frowned. “How’d she know I was coming?”
“Apparently your mom told her.” Rae’s mom and Stu’s mom had stayed good friends over the years.
Rae thought back to the little smirk on her mom’s face earlier today. She’d figured her mom was just plotting ways to make Rae stay in the Midwest for good, but it all made sense now that she knew a guy was involved.
“You’re being parent-trapped,” Ellen said, looking perfectly delighted by this plot twist, like small-town life was even more quaint than she could’ve hoped. “Or kid-trapped, I guess.”
