Page 37 of The Summer You Were Mine

“This is not relaxing. This is us not preparing for the interview, which is one of the most important things we will ever do.” Ellie held her forehead in her hand. “We shouldn’t have drunk so much. We should have left and come back later.”

“Will you stop, please? You’re torturing yourself.

” Cris pulled her hand off her forehead and placed it on her belly.

“Would you have missed out on that lunch? The beautiful food and wine and new friends? I know this is important to you, but why are you killing yourself over this show? You’re already so successful. It’s me who should be freaking out!”

“That’s funny. I feel like it’s the complete opposite.

I’m not successful—not in the way you think,” she said.

She couldn’t look at him, but suddenly became very focused on the eucalyptus leaves waving in the breeze overhead.

She sighed. “I kind of can’t get over something I screwed up and I don’t know what to think about it anymore. ”

“Is this still about what happened on the last show?”

“No. I mean, yes, that’s one screwup. But there’s another.”

“You’re trying to decide whether or not you should tell me, I’m guessing.”

“It’s not about telling you or not telling you.

All of the facts are out there. I just never lined them up all together in one place for you,” she said, drawing lines with her fingers in the air.

Cris reached up and laced his fingers between hers, like he already knew how they fit.

He rested their clasped hands on his thigh.

“How about you don’t worry about lining things up for once? Talk.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a breath. “I never hid it from anyone, but I never did my clinical internship when I got my PhD.” She paused, possibly waiting for a crack of lightning to slam down and split the tree in two, but all she heard was rustling leaves and a particularly chatty finch.

“I never matched. I had just gotten an offer to sell the show to Magniv, and I couldn’t say no.

At that moment it seemed like it wasn’t a big deal to skip the clinical training, as weird as that sounds.

I thought that I was just choosing a different path, but I didn’t realize how it would plant this seed of insecurity in me.

I didn’t notice it at first because I didn’t think of myself as a clinician on the show.

We were having fun, and the psychology part was more like a nice bonus on my résumé, you know?

I wasn’t trying to be taken seriously. The whole shtick of the show is that I am a snarky sports-hater paired up with athletes to burn them to the ground.

Which I was more than willing to do, given my experience, but then it started to get personal.

People were telling me things, real things about themselves, and I began to feel responsible for them.

It was impossible to just write them off as self-centered jerks.

The whole act started to feel gross and disingenuous.

Given my family history, I wasn’t prepared to feel that level of empathy.

So, I got insecure about the purpose of the show and my role in it—was I good enough to help these people?

Of course, it didn’t come out like that when I opened my mouth and stuck my foot directly in it during a live recording.

” She exhaled. “And then there’s one more thing.

” If she wanted Cris to understand her, she was going to have to tell him everything.

Whatever happened after that was not under her control. It was time to take a risk.

“El, you can take all the time you need, but I am listening.”

“About a year ago, I was feeling really tired. It was this exhaustion that didn’t really feel physical, but it still became overwhelming.

There were all of these things about my life that I thought were insignificant—how I’m pretty rigid about certain things, I can’t deal with a lot of sensory stuff, and I kind of have a hard time regulating my reactions to some situations.

I don’t know, there are a lot of things.

I went to a new psychiatrist because I started to suspect that it wasn’t only anxiety, you know? ”

“Are you sick? Is there something wrong?” Cris turned to face her, his eyes growing wide.

“No.” She turned to look back at him and smiled. “I’m not sick. I’m autistic.”

“Oh, thank God,” he said, the color returning to his face. He pulled their hands to his chest. “I thought you were going to say something terrible.”

Ellie laughed. It wasn’t the reaction she expected.

It was so much better. She looked down at their fingers knotted between them—something that would have been unthinkable two days ago.

“It’s not terrible, no. But it has been pretty life-changing to discover that I am not just weird, socially awkward, cold, arrogant—let’s see…

what else have people said about me along the way? ”

“Why would anyone say those things about you? I don’t see any of that.”

“Well, you knew me when we were kids, Cris. And you didn’t see any of that because you just knew me as me .

My parents didn’t notice, either. There’s so little understanding of autism in girls, let alone grown women.

I started to research and when I read the signs and symptoms list, I knew. The list was me.”

“And you feel good.”

“I do.”

“Thank you for telling me about this. I mean it,” he said. She believed him. “Can I ask a question?”

“Just one?”

“I have a million, but they can wait. Would you have told me this without a buzz?” He laughed.

“I’m not really buzzed,” she said, smiling.

“I just have a little more courage now. Also I wanted to tell you so you understand why all of this is important to me. I feel like I sold my ability to be a real clinician and my integrity along with it when I signed that contract. Now, I am afraid that the show is the only thing I have left. I don’t want to feel like this.

I don’t want to doubt myself. I admit that I have the same feeling you do about your situation—that maybe this is all I am good for. It’s so hard to not feel insecure.”

“So let me get this straight. First, you’re feeling terrible because you think you’re some Dr. Phil–level faker who might not be good at anything, and you’ve decided that saving the show that you don’t believe in is the only way to make it better because at least then you’re not also a quitter?”

“Something like that.”

“I suppose it won’t help to tell you all the ways that you are absolutely not Dr. Phil.”

“No.” Ellie turned back to the leafy green canopy and the blue sky beyond. “You would only be saying that because we’ve known each other for a long time and because I am not bald. Not good enough.”

“We’ll see about that. Second, you discovered something about yourself that makes you feel good, but you are afraid it will be interpreted as a weakness. And you think that keeping the show going is going to shield you from that.”

“I think the show is the quickest path to redemption, and that’s what I need right now.”

“I guess you have your mind made up, then.”

“I do. Which is why I’m going to do the absolute best I can for you to shine in this interview. I am committed. We are going to get you back to… well, to whatever it is that you want to get back to.” She smiled. “So you can get out of it completely.”

“I want to be honest,” he said. “That’s all I want to do. Like you, I hate how this feels, and I am afraid of being misunderstood, too.” He turned to look at her again. “By anyone.”

“Yes,” she said, sighing heavily. “I know.”

“Even though I don’t agree with you about your thought process on this, I trust you to know what’s right for you. You’re sure that you are getting what you need out of this, right?”

“Thank you. I am. You agreeing to be on the show means you are willing to look past so many of my mistakes and trust me, so other people might, too.”

“I get what you’re saying, but it might be pretty hard to explain that I’m not trusting you because I am looking past any flaw at all.

It’s because I’ve known you all my life, and nothing you just told me changes the fact that I have always thought you are an incredible person.

Even when I was too much of an idiot to show you. ”

Ellie stared at him, blinking, processing what he said.

Cris pulled her hand up to his mouth and placed a kiss across her knuckles.

Their faces were inches apart, closer than they’d been in over a decade.

And while he looked older, there was so much about him that was the same.

She stared at their hands again, looking for the scar he’d gotten across the pad of his thumb from trying to change his grandmother’s tire on her ancient Citroen Due Cavalli.

He’d needed six stitches and had to wear a plastic bag over his hand in the water for the rest of the summer.

Although she didn’t know much about the man lying next to her, she did know almost everything about the boy he’d been.

He would never need to tell her the stories he would have had to share with someone new because she knew them as well as her own.

And the more time they spent together, the more she remembered—and the more she knew he did, too.

She could tell by the way he was looking at her right there under the eucalyptus tree.

“I am not going to bring up the fact that anyone who doesn’t believe you’re amazing isn’t worth your time or stress, but you can be sure I am thinking it. Every second.”

“Thank you,” she said, not wanting to move. Their faces drew closer. Fire burned in her belly again, but this time she did not want it to stop.

“Because you are.” Their foreheads almost met and his eyes dropped to her mouth. Cris unclasped their hands and touched the side of her face, drawing a stray lock of her hair back. She could not breathe, not even a little bit. “Ellie—” he said, still staring at her mouth.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Cris dipped his head down, their mouths meeting in a soft kiss of sparks.

It was bottle rockets and roller coasters, suntan lotion and candy lip gloss, music on the radio and saltwater sunsets.

The sweetness melted into heat, kids to adults, their mouths opening deeper.

His hand cupped her face and she ran her hand around to his back.

Cris’s tongue slid over hers, smooth and perfect, tasting of wine and apples.

The kiss felt new, but her heart recognized who she shared it with.

They broke the kiss, and Cris pulled her into him.

Ellie wrapped her arms around him, too, wanting to feel his body close in a way that she almost never craved.

“I missed you,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear it. She squeezed her eyes shut and held on tighter.