Page 80 of Songs of Summer
“It came from in there.” She pointed to her sunken bathtuband they both listened intently for the sound of the mad scratching that she had heard.
“It stopped,” she cried. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Living here in the off-season requires a certain amount of courage.”
“I wish you’d told me that before I decided to do it.”
“That’s OK. Call me whenever you need me. I can be brave for the both of us.”
The next night at 1 a.m. he was right back there, listening for the sound, again. And again, it stopped when he arrived. Truth was, he was pretty confident that he knew what she’d been hearing. There was most likely a raccoon, or a whole family of them, living below the house and sleeping in the under basin of her tub. But the truth also was he loved this knight-in-shining-armor/damsel-in-distress thing they had going on.
“How about this?” he suggested. “I’ll just come over at midnight tomorrow and we can sit and wait for it?”
“How about I make us a late dinner and you can stay till then?”
“Sounds good. What can I bring? I have a nice bottle of Sicilian red.”
“Perfect.”
The next night they sat on Renee’s bed and waited—and waited and waited—for the sound to come from the bathroom. While waiting, they finished off the bottle of wine, reminisced about the past, and confessed to how lonely they both felt without their kids in the house. Somehow, after a while, Renee was brave enough to voice the question that she had always wanted to ask.
“Do you remember when I kissed you on the beach?”
If I close my eyes right now, I can still picture that kiss.
“Like it was yesterday. That’s what happens when you play something over and over again in your head,” Jake bravely admitted. He may not have feared raccoons, but beautiful women were a different story.
They had both blushed at his surprisingly tender confession.
“You do? I always thought you’d forgotten. I barely remember it,” she said with a small pout.
“Maybe I can remind you,” he said, in possibly the coolest comeback of his life.
And they kissed.
She never heard the raccoon again, but Jake had slept over every night since, just in case.
Initially, Jake doubted that the woman in his arms could stay aloft on the pedestal he had placed her on, but his teenage infatuation soon evolved into adult love. He envied her wild combination of vulnerability and strength, the way she could quote all threeDie Hardmovies on call but would also tear up bingeingThis Is Us. The way she took to the winter vibe on the beach, relishing the mahi-mahi sandwich at CJ’s like she was dining on pâté at a Paris café, and the way she rolled over when he woke up in the morning and kissed him gently on the lips before rolling back over to sleep some more.
For his whole life, Jake had lived for being out on the water. The sea air filled his soul and helped him breathe easy. But now he breathed easiest on land, specifically the land thatheld the house that held the bedroom that held the bed where he laid his head every night next to his beloved, Renee.
You are my port in the storm, and I will be by your side for as long as we both shall live.
A tear fell from Jake’s eye onto the paper, smudging the page. He didn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Better to get it out now than during the ceremony.
He would read it over and over until it didn’t break him.
Track 37
Wildflowers
Matt
On the morningof the wedding, Matt woke Dylan up the same way he had on hundreds of occasions growing up. When they were kids, he was always up before her and would let himself into the back door of her house, slip into her room, and jump on her bed, to the tune of her begging him to stop—no matter that he was now six foot one and had to shield his bent head with his arms to avoid a concussion.
Today was no different.
“Stop it, Matty, I’ll drown you in the Great South Bay, I swear.”
