This Summer Will Be Different(43)

It’s amazing how small the rooms are, how outlandish the wallpaper. Even though I know the movies weren’t filmed here, I picture Megan Follows as Anne and Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla, churning butter in the dairy porch.

“?‘I’m in the depths of despair,’?” I say as we tour the kitchen.

“?‘My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes,’?” he replies.

Soon my cheeks begin to hurt from smiling.

“Would you rather be ‘divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good’?” I ask Felix as we head upstairs.

He chuckles, then says quietly, “?‘Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think.’?”

The bedrooms are decorated to make you feel like you’re snooping through the Cuthbert home—a man’s vest and hat in one room, a dress with puffed sleeves hanging in the closet of another.

Outside, Felix and I trek down the slope, down Lover’s Lane, and over the wooden foot bridge through the Haunted Wood. We don’t speak, but the silence is comfortable. The path is narrow enough that, every so often, our shoulders brush, but Felix doesn’t jump back at the contact and neither do I.

The feeling of wanting to hold his hand seems to come from nowhere. It startles me how strong it is. It’s almost all I can think about as we meander through the forest. It’s like I’m twelve all over again, that summer at camp when I had an epic crush on a sixteen-year-old counselor. He sat beside me on the bus that took us to the river for swimming, and I put my hand on my knee, making it available for him. When we got off the bus, my hand still unheld, he said, “Nice riding with you, Lisa.”

Seventeen years later, I’m attracted to a guy I probably shouldn’t be attracted to, wondering how disastrous it would be if I reached out and took his hand. He held mine so briefly last night, and I want to twine our fingers together, feel his large palm in my small one. But this is never happening. Holding hands with Felix would be bigger than anything we’ve done. Holding hands is for boyfriends, not former lovers.

By the time we’re climbing the knoll to the house, my left foot is throwing a tantrum. My right isn’t great, either. In a moment of style rebellion, I decided not to put my running shoes in my suitcase—I’m so sick of wearing them every day at work.

“Do you mind if we rest for a bit?” I gesture to a patch of lawn beneath a tree.

We sit, legs stretched in front of us. Felix is in jeans, per usual, and I’m wearing a yellow spaghetti strap sundress with buttons down the front and gloriously generous pockets.

“Tired?” he asks.

“My feet are.” I lift an ankle and point to my strappy silver sandals. “I love them, but they don’t feel the same about me. Horrible, beautiful shoes.”

Felix tips his head, studying them. “They’re very pretty,” he says. “The pink buckles are a nice touch, and they look good with your dress. But they’re probably not worth losing a foot over.”

There’s something about Felix assessing my footwear that’s deeply funny.

“What?” he asks as I’m laughing. His smile is mystified.

“Felix Clark, fashion critic—I had no idea.”

“I’m full of surprises.” He motions to my foot. “Let me see it.”

“You want to check the quality of the craftsmanship?” I ask, shifting so that I’m facing him, my knees folded up and my feet next to his thigh.

“Something like that.” His hand wraps around my ankle, and he brings my left foot onto his lap. He unfastens the buckle, fingers grazing my skin. When I shiver, he lifts his eyes to mine.

“That was involuntary,” I tell him, and he smirks.

He takes off the shoe, setting it on the grass. When his hands close around my foot and begin rubbing the arch with his thumbs, I tell him my feet are gross. They’re dirty from our little hike.

“Shush,” he says.

So I shush. I lean back on my elbows, and let Felix have his way with my toes. I close my eyes, and tilt my face to the sun, because Felix is about to give my foot an orgasm, and I can’t look at him or what his hands are doing.

“Other one,” he says eventually, taking hold of my right ankle, unbuckling the strap. Both feet are in Felix’s lap, and even though I’m consciously making an effort not to shudder, I haven’t felt this relaxed in a long time. I haven’t had such a fun day since . . . since the day I spent with Felix on the beach a year ago. My bones are liquid gold. The tightness in my chest, gone. It can’t just be the coastal air. Or the massage.

“This is nice,” I say, prying an eye open to gaze at Felix. And even though I know I shouldn’t, I picture another, impossible world, where Felix and I belong to each other. His useful hands. Oysters on ice. Nights in his solid embrace.

He looks at me curiously. “Prince Edward Island?”

Umm. “Prince Edward Island,” I repeat. Sure. “And resting for a minute. I’m probably working too much.”

“So why don’t you rest for a minute?”

I look at the sky, squinting. “I can’t. It’s not the time. I feel like I’ve been running a marathon at a sprinter’s pace, only there’s no finish line.” There are hardly any clouds today. Just a few wisps of white in the distance. “We have this huge opportunity at work—a contract that would mean big things for us. Getting everything set up so we can pull it off is going to be . . . a lot.”