Page 8 of Cruel Summer

THREE

In high school, she could remember the promise of summer feeling like the promise of endless possibilities. The beginning of something amazing.

The beginning of this philosophical summer did not feel that way.

It felt like a death march.

The past week had been the thorniest and worst of her whole life.

They’d talked about the logistics of leaving the house empty for three months—it wasn’t ideal. Elysia offered to get the mail once a week if Sam and Will were both out of town, and Will had made it very clear he intended to spend the time traveling.

He’d booked a month in Hawaii, and had asked Sam all kinds of questions about the places they had gone last time they’d been there on a family vacation, and it had been all she could do to not smother him with a couch cushion, because did he really expect her to plan his vacation during their separation?

She’d finally groused at him, and he hadn’t asked again.

Sam figured she should make some plans. She just felt…listless about it. She’d only gone as far as to book the next week in a vacation rental in town so she could make her plans without Will looming around her.

She was usually so good at planning.

Will had spent years building his real estate business, but he’d started out working for a larger group. Sam had done freelance writing for different online platforms, usually focusing on meal plans, budgets, organization, parenting, vacationing with children. That was her entire life, after all.

She felt like she needed to pull up one of her own articles on the subject to remind herself that she did know how to get a vacation together.

She and Will had planned the scaffolding of this “summer,” and it had felt so absurd to open up their phone calendars and synchronize a marital separation.

They’d landed on the third week of May, all the way to the second week of September, when Ethan would be back for a week before classes started up again.

She could have laughed. It was so much the same and so much different all at the same time. Planning summer holidays around the kids.

Right now she was circling her bedroom—their bedroom that they wouldn’t share for nearly the next four months—like she didn’t remember how to do anything.

What clothes did you take with you into an extended vacation from your marriage?

She was glad they’d decided to make the house neutral ground. She couldn’t have Will using it as a home base for…dates.

She might be willing to let him have his freedom for the summer, but by God, it would not be on her mattress. She wouldn’t be able to get past that.

She’d discovered a lot of interesting things about herself in the last forty-eight hours.

That was one of them. That it made her want to gag to imagine sleeping in a bed her husband had made love to someone else in.

Bleh.

Add the thought of her husband making love to anyone else to that list.

She had to think of it as a new…hobby for him. Like the time he played pickleball for a few months and then stopped. Nothing emotional, all just physical. Something he’d get over.

Reduce it to body parts, but not involve emotions.

She didn’t like it. But she could cope.

She took another circle around the room. Will had taken his clothes out already.

He was finalizing a sale and then preparing to just…not take new clients on for the next few months. What a great life they had that he could even do that. That they could both afford this.

It was ironic, she thought. They’d built this beautiful, stable life, and she’d thought it was so they could enjoy it together, but it was actually the very thing that was allowing them to do this separation.

With Will out of the house, she decided to play the kind of very loud pop punk she had loved since high school that he thought was annoying. She’d keep it on when he got back too. Because they’d done the together part of this, and now they were separate. Not a couple. Two different people.

Not the same page. They might as well be in two totally different books.

She hated it.

So she started singing as loudly and tunelessly as possible, trying to drown out all the confusion inside of her. She opened up the kitchen trash and jerked the bag up, so hard and fast it strained her muscles, and she welcomed it because she kind of wanted to hurt herself right now.

She walked to the front door and opened it, and nearly ran into a human being.

She screeched and dropped the bag, stepping back from the doorway, the wall of musical sound still behind her and Logan right in front of her.

Of course it was Logan.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you.”

Oh.

“I’ll get this.” He bent down and picked the trash bag up. Before she could say anything, he walked down to the edge of the driveway, putting it in the bin there before walking back to the house.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Yeah. Can I come in?”

He looked so…severe. Which wasn’t necessarily uncommon for him. “Will isn’t here.”

“I’m not looking for Will.”

Anxiety made her stomach tight. God. Why would he come to see her?

“Well. Come in.”

She stepped away from the door, and he moved past her, too tall and broad even for their rather spacious entryway.

They’d spent a ton of time with Logan. Here, on family vacations, and yet she could never escape that feeling that he was too much for any space he was in.

“Will and I went out for beer last night, and he told me that you’re separating.” Direct as ever.

She’d already talked to her friends about this. In theory, Logan was her friend. Kind of. So it shouldn’t be weird to talk to him about it, but it was. It was.

“Yeah, I…”

“He also told me about his open marriage bullshit.”

That shocked her. The directness. The disdain. Her friends had been upset, but even they’d been…well, they’d asked her to consider it.

Logan was just flat-out calling it bullshit.

“Oh.”

“I told him he’s lost his mind.”

She looked around. Were there hidden cameras? What was happening?

“You did?”

“Why does that surprise you?”

“Well, because he said you inspired him.”

The hard breath he let out sounded like it had teeth. “Good thing he didn’t say that to me. I’d have punched the shit out of him.”

She didn’t have to ask why, and she felt overcome by guilt. It really was a cruel thing to say. That he envied Logan’s freedom. Logan hadn’t chosen his “freedom.”

Becca had died .

She’d left a motherless little girl, and Sam would never, ever forget the way Logan had looked that day. Like a monster had savaged his soul and left nothing behind.

“This may come as a shock to you,” Sam said. “But I don’t think he’s thinking clearly.”

Logan laughed then, but it sounded hard. “Yeah. Obviously.”

“I said immediately , no ,” she told him. “Okay, that isn’t true. I said no like twelve hours later, because I…you have to think about it, right?”

“I didn’t require any thinking time to come to the conclusion he’s being a dick.”

It was cathartic to hear someone else say that, because as much as she was on a whole emotional roller coaster—where she was sad, mad and wistful or some combination of all of it with every new breath—she felt like she had to be fair.

Because he had shared with her. Because he loved her. Because she loved him.

“It’s just, I felt like… I had to actually try and see if I felt anything more than that. Or if I could give him what he wanted. But I can’t. I mean, I can’t hate him for being honest with me.”

“So he asked you for an open marriage, because he wants to sleep around but he doesn’t want to risk losing you. He wants things to change, but he also wants to keep things the same. That’s what I got out of talking to him.”

“Well… I guess.”

“I can’t respect it,” Logan said. “If you want to do something big, do it, but to put it on your wife like he did to you…that I can’t respect. If you said no, you were denying him. If you said yes, you were denying yourself.”

Was Logan actually…taking her side? “I did say yes. Well. Kind of.” She cleared her throat, but it still felt tight.

“The thing is, I don’t want to lose him.

I don’t want things to change, either. What I want is for him to get this stupid fucking lunacy out of his system where I can’t see it.

Then I want to come back here, and I want to go on with our lives like this summer didn’t happen.

I know he’ll want this back,” she said. “We have a good marriage.”

“Do you?” he asked.

She hated him for saying it like that. It wasn’t fair. “Yes. I’m committed to him. To us.”

“I know.”

Silence fell between them. “He told me he’s planning to travel,” Logan continued.

“Yes.”

“He said you didn’t have your plans made yet.”

“No. Not all of them. Though I know… I’m not going to be sleeping with anyone else. Because I took marriage vows.” She felt instantly hot over having said that in front of him. Really, it was only then she realized how personal all this was.

She’d been cushioned by her rage, and in part by her certainty that he actually knew something about what Will was thinking.

That he seemed as blindsided as she’d been was comforting at first, but now she was just standing in her living room raving at her husband’s best friend about their sex life. So there was that.

“’Kay,” he said, short and tight, his mouth set into a firm line.

“If I wanted to mess around, he and I could just do it together, mutually, high-five on our way to the bedroom with our new partners. But I don’t .

I just want my life to go back to the way it was before.

So I’m just… I want to wait it out away from him.

I didn’t ask for this. I just want… I want to be happy again. Like I was.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Well. That I can understand.”

She knew he could. He hadn’t asked to lose Becca. The love of his life. The mother of his child. Not that this was the same, really. Will was still alive. She had hope of being with him again.

Logan cleared his throat. “So other than being a beacon of purity, you have no plans for the summer?” he asked.

“I want to travel,” she said. “We were supposed to… But you know, I was pregnant. Before all that, we’d planned to take this big cross-country road trip. Do all the cheesy things. Then we couldn’t. Then we had more kids…”

“But you don’t have plans yet.”

“No. I just…feel defeated whenever I try to make them.”

“That’s actually why I’m here. You said you wanted to go with me on one of my car delivery trips.”

She blinked. “I did?”

She was sure she had said that once, but she hadn’t been serious. Especially now…well, she was just shocked he’d asked her.

“Yeah. Like five years ago you mentioned it.”

He remembered that?

“Well, you always make it seem really interesting.”

“It is. I have four jobs scheduled for the next four months. Three major restorations, and I have to drive the cars to their respective buyers when all is said and done. It was all easy to do it myself when I was in my twenties. The last few times, Chloe helped. But now she’s in Santa Clara, and she has a job so she isn’t coming back for the summer.

If you want to travel, you can travel with me.

Not only will it pay your way, I’ll pay you. ”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. The first car is a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. I’m taking it out on Route 66 next week, and heading to Chicago.

The trip will probably take two weeks. I get paid a lot to drive them over, and I don’t bother to rush through it.

It’s one of the perks of the job. I get to enjoy the car, and I get to enjoy being on the road. ”

Will told her that Logan made a ton of money on these kinds of cars. Rare vehicles that could sell for millions at auction. A restored car would never be worth what a mint car would be, but it made those sorts of cars more accessible to collectors.

People that certainly had more disposable income than Will and Sam did, but less than, say, Bruce Wayne.

She had a feeling that those were the kinds of circles that were actually quite small, so if you didn’t have a pristine reputation, you wouldn’t be getting business.

It didn’t surprise her to hear that Logan took that seriously.

“How much time between jobs?”

“A couple of weeks at most. It’s going to be a really intense schedule. Delivery, come back, finishing touches on the next car, and then out again.”

She could imagine this. Riding in classic cars with the top down. Seeing new places.

She could ignore that it was going to be with Logan. That she had no idea what they would say to each other. That she had no idea…

Well, she would just make that future Sam’s problem. Because present Sam had enough problems.

She’d been having such a hard time looking ahead past the next week. She hadn’t managed to make any plans or herself.

Logan was offering her a lifeline. The chance to do something she’d been wanting to do anyway. “You’re an extremely unlikely ally,” she said.

“Am I?”

“Well. Yes. It’s not like we’re historically… I didn’t expect you to take my side.”

“Sam, you were there for me and for Chloe when we needed you most. If I can help you out now… I… Fuck him.”

For the first time, life past the next week seemed possible.

For the first time, the summer felt like it could be bearable. The chance to stay moving, stay busy and not think about Will?

Yes.

She was going to take it.

“Yes. Thank you, I… Yes, let’s do it.”

He almost smiled, and she felt her heart get tight. “It’ll be like all those family vacations we took back in the day.”

Oh, all those vacations. Some of which she chose never to think about now.

But life was different.

This summer, she was… Sam. Not Samantha and Will. Just Sam.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just like that.”