“Jesus,” Sam whispered at the same time I asked, “Entertain?” We blinked at each other. I shifted my weight on my feet, not sure what to say. It had been months since I’d offended Delilah Mason so fantastically that I no longer had any friends, months since I’d spent time with someone my age, but the last thing I wanted was for Sam to be forced to hang out with me. Before I could say so, he spoke up.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want.” He sounded apologetic. “He’s just trying to get rid of me because Mom’s not home.” Charlie belted him across the chest.
The truth was I wanted a friend more than I wanted my bangs to behave. If Sam was willing, I could use the company.
“I don’t mind,” I told him, adding with false confidence, “I mean, it is a huge imposition. So you can show me how to do one of those somersaults off the raft as payback.” He gave me a lopsided grin. It was a quiet smile, but it was a great smile, his blue eyes glinting like sea glass against his sunny skin.
I did that, I thought, a thrill running through me. I wanted to do it again.
3
Now
My teenage self wouldn’t believe it, but I don’t own a car. Back then, I was determined to have my own set of wheels so I could head north every weekend possible. These days, my life is confined to a leafy area in Toronto’s west end, where I live, and the city’s downtown core, where I work. I can get to the office, the gym, and my parents’ condo by either walking or public transit.
I have friends who haven’t ever bothered getting their license; they’re the kind of people who brag about never going north of Bloor Street. Their whole world is confined to a stylish little urban bubble, and they’re proud of it. Mine is, too, but sometimes I feel like I’m suffocating.
The truth is, the city hasn’t really felt like home since I was thirteen and fell in love with the lake and the cottage and the bush. Most of the time, though, I don’t let myself think about that. I don’t have time to. The world I’ve built for myself bursts with the trappings of urban busyness—the late hours at the office, the spin classes, and the many brunches. It’s how I like it. An overstuffed calendar brings me joy. But every so often I catch myself fantasizing about leaving the city—finding a small place on the water to write, working at a restaurant on the side to pay the bills—and my skin starts feeling too tight, like my life doesn’t fit.
This would surprise pretty much everyone I know. I’m a thirty-year-old woman who mostly has her shit together. My apartment is the top floor of a big house in Roncesvalles, a Polish neighborhood where you can still find a decent enough pierogi. The space is striking, with exposed beams and slanting ceilings, and, sure, it’s tiny, but a full one-bedroom in this part of the city doesn’t come cheap, and my salary at Shelter magazine is . . . modest. Okay, it’s crap. But that’s typical of media jobs, and while my pay may be small, my job is a big one.
I’ve worked at Shelter for four years, climbing steadily up the ranks from lowly editorial assistant to senior editor. That puts me in a position of power, assigning stories and overseeing photo shoots at the country’s biggest decor magazine. Thanks in large part to my efforts, we have amassed a dedicated following on social media and a huge online audience. It’s work that I love and that I’m good at, and at Shelter’s fortieth-anniversary bash, the magazine’s editor in chief, Brenda, credited me with bringing the publication into the digital era. It was a career highlight.
Being an editor is the kind of job that people think is extremely glamorous. It looks fast and flashy, though if I’m being honest, it mostly involves sitting in a cubicle all day, googling synonyms for minimalist. But there are product launches to attend and lunches to be shared with up-and-coming designers. It’s also the kind of job that hotshot corporate lawyers and social-climbing bankers swipe right on, which has proved useful in finding dates to join me on the cocktail party circuit. And there are perks, like press trips and open champagne bars, and an obscene amount of free stuff. There’s also an endless flow of industry gossip for Chantal and me to chew over, our favorite way to pass a Thursday evening. (And my mom never tires of seeing Persephone Fraser in print on the magazine’s masthead.)
Charlie’s phone call is an ax through my bubble, and I’m so anxious to get north that as soon as I hang up, I book a car and a motel room for tomorrow, even though the funeral is a few days from now. It’s like I’ve woken from a twelve-year coma, and my head throbs in anticipation and terror.
I’m going to see Sam.
* * *
I SIT DOWN to write an email to my parents to tell them about Sue. They haven’t been regularly checking their messages on this European vacation of theirs, so I don’t know when they’ll get it. I also don’t know whether they were still in contact with Sue. Mom kept in touch with her for at least a few years after Sam and I “broke up,” but each time she’d mention any one of the Floreks, my eyes would well up. Eventually she stopped giving me updates.
I keep the note short and when I’m done, I throw some clothes into the Rimowa suitcase I couldn’t afford but bought anyway. It’s now well after midnight, and I have an interview for work in the morning and then a long drive, so I change into pj’s, lie down, and shut my eyes. But I’m too wired to sleep.
There are these moments I come back to when I’m at my most nostalgic, when all I want to do is curl up in the past with Sam. I can play them in my mind as if they’re old home videos. I used to watch them all the time in university, a bedtime routine as familiar as the pilled Hudson’s Bay blanket I’d taken from the cottage. But the memories and the regrets they carried with them chafed like the blanket’s wool, and I would lose nights imagining where Sam was at that precise moment, wondering if there’s a chance he might be thinking of me. Sometimes I felt sure he was—like there was an invisible, unbreakable string that ran between us, stretching vast distances and keeping us joined. Other times, I dozed off in the midst of a movie only to wake in the middle of the night, my lungs feeling like they were on the verge of collapse, and I’d have to breathe my way through the panic attack.
Eventually, by the end of school, I’d managed to shut off the nightly broadcasts, filling my brain instead with looming exams and article deadlines and internship applications, and the panic attacks began to subside.
Tonight I have no such restraint. I cue up our firsts—the first time we met, our first kiss, the first time Sam told me he loved me—until the reality of seeing him starts to sink in, and my thoughts become a swirl of questions I don’t have answers for. How will he react to my showing up? How much has he changed? Is he single? Or, fuck, is he married?