Page 45 of Cruel Summer

TWENTY-FIVE

She had Whitney and Elysia over to her apartment when she got back home. She didn’t know yet if she and Logan were taking a breather until the next road trip or if she should just invite him over after they left.

She just didn’t know yet. But that was a hallmark of the whole experience.

“So how was this trip?” Whitney asked, bringing a plate of cheese over to the table and having a seat.

“Good,” she said. “Jude is great, and his girlfriend is darling.”

“Did you tell him about you and Will?”

Will?

She couldn’t even think about…about what she needed to tell her kids about Will for a full thirty seconds. All she could think about was Logan.

“I… No. I just told him Will was working.”

She hesitated. But she felt like she needed to share this, not so much out of the friendship obligation or anything like that, but because she was at a loss, and tired of finding wisdom in herself to the best of her ability.

Sometimes she needed a little bit of help. That was another step forward.

Because she didn’t like to admit uncertainty any more than she liked to expose cracks in her life.

But she had kept so much of her messiness to herself, even hidden from herself, and she felt like this was an opportunity to put it out there. On the table.

“I… Things are changing between me and Logan,” she said slowly. “I… I slept with him.”

She wanted to give thanks that Elysia and Whitney didn’t squeal or act excited, or even look at each other in a knowing way. Or owe each other money like there was some kind of secret bet, like they both knew things about her that she didn’t, because that would’ve been unbearable.

“Oh,” Elysia said. “You… Well.”

“Yes. Well. I mean, I slept with him more than once. To be clear. I slept with him a lot of times. That was basically the whole trip, and then also the whole extra week in Miami.”

“What about Will?” Elysia asked.

“I don’t… I don’t know. I mean, I do know. I’m not getting back with him.”

She had said that to Logan, the only other person. It felt good to say it again. “That was starting to become clear to me before, but really, once I was with him, I knew.”

“Samantha…” Whitney looked deeply concerned.

“Look,” Elysia said, her tone pragmatic. “The ho phase is necessary. Believe me. You have to kind of sort out what you’ve been missing, and how sex works these days, and all of that.”

“I don’t think it’s a ho phase,” Sam said.

Elysia winced. “Sam, it’s not… He’s Will’s friend, and you’ve known him a thousand years, and he was married to Becca…”

“I am actually very clear on his biography,” she said. “But I have feelings for him.”

As soon as she said that, she knew how true it was.

“I don’t know what that means. I get why you’re looking at me like I’ve committed a cardinal sin.

Because believe me, I know. I want to be very, very sure that I’m not just leaping into this because I’m afraid of being alone.

I don’t want to do anything because I’m afraid.

I married Will because I was afraid. I have never examined any of the issues in our marriage because I was afraid.

I don’t want to do things out of fear, not anymore. ”

“It is actually fair to do things because the man is hot,” Whitney said. “Will did put all that on the table…”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. The rules, or anything like that.

I haven’t talked to Will for almost three months.

You know what, I don’t miss him like I should.

He was a habit. Like brushing my teeth. I mean, that’s not fair, because that makes it sound like I don’t feel anything for him, and that isn’t true either.

We were happy in many ways. But we were more comfortable than we were anything else.

I just needed to tell you…even though I don’t have it all figured out.

I’m going to have to…deal with my marriage and tell the kids and… ”

“Oof,” said Elysia, putting her hand to her chest.

“Yes. Exactly.”

She realized her friends didn’t wholly approve either.

She was going to have to be her own barometer.

Like trying on a dress and not asking someone else’s opinion.

Because actually nobody else knew. She wasn’t going to tell them.

She couldn’t dig into all the ways that she and Logan weren’t a cliché, the ways that he wasn’t just a ho phase, though he had certainly done a lot for her inner ho.

But all the clarity, all the certainty, was going to have to come from inside her. No one was going to fulfill everything for her, or give her the answers. She had to fulfill herself. She had to find the answers in herself.

Of all the uncomfortable things.

“You need to be happy,” Whitney said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

But she knew that it was going to be up to her to decide what that looked like.

She decided that for tonight, she was going to sleep by herself, and get a feel for life in town. Life in this apartment she’d chosen for herself. Life on her own terms.

With or without the approval of the people around her.

***

She spent three days in that space. On the afternoon of that third day, she decided to go to the garage.

Logan was there, and she could see his coveralls-clad legs sticking out from underneath the silver car he was currently working on.

“Is this ours?”

He rolled out from beneath the vehicle, his eyebrows raised. “Yes. I wasn’t sure if I would see you.”

“Well, you know, you could actually come see me.”

“I’m very aware of the fact that this summer is yours,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, looking around the garage. “This summer is mine. That’s why I’m here. Because it’s where I want to be.”

He looked away for a second, then back at her. “Well, that’s nice.”

“Have you been down to see Chloe again?”

“She came up here while you were over in Vermont. Stayed with me for the weekend. I think she enjoyed being back. But I also think she was pretty ready to leave. It’s tough. When they’re just… They don’t need you anymore.”

“Oh, they need you. I know you didn’t have the same kind of relationship with either of your parents that I did with mine.

But I can tell you, as someone who had…has, parents that I felt close to, but who definitely weren’t perfect, you need them.

You feel the lack of them when they’re gone.

You don’t need to be perfect for her to need you.

I’m personally experimenting with imperfection. ”

“Yeah?”

“Have you talked to Will?”

“Oddly, sleeping with you made me feel not so keen to see what he was up to.”

“Yeah. You would think, though, that he…”

“I think he’s busy.”

“Is he just having like a second life as a frat boy?”

“Do you care?”

“I really don’t, actually.”

He smiled and stood up. He had dirty, greasy hands, and when he put them on her face, she didn’t even complain.

When he leaned in and kissed her, she kissed him back, and it felt like coming home in a way going into that apartment hadn’t.

She looked up at him, her gaze questioning, but he didn’t give her any answers.

“Come over tonight,” he said.

“Okay.” She looked back at the car. “You lied,” she said, feeling breathless.

“About?”

“This car has no back seat.”

“I didn’t think the question was about a literal back seat, but more about whether or not I was planning to satisfy you, and thoroughly, throughout the trip.”

“And that’s a yes?” she asked.

He lowered his head, his forehead pressed to hers. He saw her. She didn’t want to hide. “That’s a hell yes.”

“Good.”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

This was another change. Another shift. But she was still working out what it meant. Because now they weren’t even taking a break from each other. Now they were bringing each other into their life here.

They didn’t walk around in public like a couple. They didn’t go out to eat or anything like that. She slept alone maybe twice a week, but otherwise, they were at each other’s houses, and even if they slept separate, that didn’t mean they didn’t hook up at some point during the day.

The drive between them to be physical was intense, and it was something that she refused to minimize. It was clearly something she needed. Something she was hungry for. This passion. The way that he was with her. Like he was discovering sex for the first time all over again with her.

It meant something to her because she had only been with one other man. Her experience was limited.

It meant something that he felt the same way, because he’d been with quite a few women, and had experience with casual sex. Somehow, the blend of the two realities made her feel like it must be real.

If he could feel this with his experience, and she could feel it with her lack, well, that had to matter.

When it came time for them to head north, to take the car up over The Great Northern road and go on their final trip, they drove from his house to the garage together.

And that felt significant. It felt real.

But so did everything else. The clock was winding down, and she knew that she would have to make some decisions she didn’t necessarily want to.

But for just a little while longer, maybe she could just be lost in this. In him.

At first she’d been desperate for the summer to end, and now it felt like an execution date.

Except she wasn’t a prisoner. She was in charge of her own life. Of what she did with her time. So she supposed it was up to her to decide what to do next.

It was time to stop living in the present.

It was time to figure out what happened next.