This Summer Will Be Different(42)

“I’m fine,” she says, stating the not-at-all obvious.

“Bridget,” I try. “I want to do this with you. For old times’ sake.”

She peers up at me. “I can’t right now. You guys go without me.”

“Really?” Felix says. “I’m not sure I’ll appreciate Lucy’s argument about why no performance of Gilbert Blythe will ever be better than Jonathan Crombie’s as much as you do.”

“Jonathan Crombie was magic,” Bridget says.

“Come on, Bridget,” I plead. “It’ll be fun. We can do our favorite Anne and Diana lines. I’ll let you take Anne.” I read Anne of Green Gables so many times when I was a kid, I know the best quotes from memory.

She laughs, and for a moment I think I have her, but then she shakes her head.

“We’ll watch the movie later,” Bridget says. “The DVD is kicking around somewhere.”

“The shucking competition is later,” I say.

“We’ll watch it another time, then.” A text lights up her phone, and Bridget glances at the screen. “I need to take care of this. You two go.”

So we do.





20





Now





Felix is quiet on the drive except for the tap, tap, tap of his fingers on the steering wheel. He isn’t usually fidgety.

“So Bridget was being weird, right?”

I glance at him, but I don’t think he’s heard me.

“Felix?”

His eyes flick to mine. “Sorry, I missed that.”

“I said, Bridget was being weird.”

“With the texting?”

“Yeah, with the texting. But she didn’t seem upset. Do you think they’re working it out?”

Felix shrugs. His tapping resumes.

“Is everything okay?” I say when we’re pulling into the parking lot.

His brow furrows. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Tap, tap, tap.

“You seem nervous.”

In seconds, the tips of his ears blush rose.

“I hope it’s not me.”

Felix shuts off the engine and turns to face me. His eyes are hooked on mine. “You don’t make me nervous, Lucy.”

“Okay,” I say. I know there’s something else coming. I want to drop his gaze, but it’s impossible to look away. That speck of brown isn’t just brown, I notice. There’s a little green in it. That speck is hazel.

He leans in. “You make me a lot of things, but nervous isn’t one of them.”

My jaw drops, but then Felix pulls back with a one-sided grin and says, “I do get a little anxious on competition day, though.”

“So,” I say, regrouping. “I don’t make you nervous, but oysters do.”

He laughs and opens his door. “Exactly. Never underestimate a bivalve.”



* * *



? ? ?

Green Gables Heritage Place is a white farmhouse with a green roof and shutters, sitting atop a grassy hill. There’s a barn and a little trail that runs through the trees, and the rooms of the home are done up to look like they would have in the late 1800s, with flourishes inspired by the Anne books. The house was owned by Lucy Maud Montgomery’s cousins. When she wrote Anne of Green Gables in 1905, Lucy was only thirty-one, just two years older than me. She drew on her childhood visits here for the setting.

You enter the property through a visitors’ center, and Felix and I take our time wandering around, reading the placards about the author’s early life. Her mother died of tuberculosis before Lucy was two and she was raised mostly by her grandparents.

“I forgot how sad her story is,” I say to Felix as we leave the building and step into the sun. Lucy’s best friend, her cousin Frederica, died of pneumonia at age thirty-five, and Lucy’s marriage to a Presbyterian minister was a challenging one—both struggled with their mental health and addictions to prescription drugs. Lucy is believed to have taken her own life.

“But look at this,” Felix says. We gaze over at the farmhouse. There are people everywhere—picnic tables where families stop for snacks, a couple taking turns posing in front of the building, and a stream of people waiting for a turn to walk through the home. Felix nods toward a lanky teenage girl. She’s holding a periwinkle blue hardcover of Anne of Green Gables to her chest and openly weeping. “Look at how many lives she touched. This is a happy ending.”

It’s so bright, I have to cup my hand over my forehead so I can see Felix properly. “You’re right,” I say. “I like your way of looking at it better.”

He grins. A big one. A single, perfect dimple one. “Let’s go explore.”

Still, I’m feeling a little blue. I’ve seen the eighties CBC film and its sequel at least twenty times, half of them with Bridget. It would have been nice to have come together. I miss her. I’ve been missing her since she moved out of our apartment. But as we shuffle through the house, Felix whispers into my ear, “?‘Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it.’?”

I look at him, surprised.

“I’ve read the book,” he says. “And when we were kids, Bridget made me watch the movies a thousand times.”