This Summer Will Be Different(44)

“You can do it.”

I meet Felix’s gaze. So steady. So sure. So like his sister in that way. “I can.”

“But you’re not sure you want to.”

“How can you tell?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “I know you, Lucy. I know what you sound like when you’re excited about something.”

“You know what I sound like when I’m excited.”

He laughs. “I know both those things. I know more than that, too.”

Felix holds my eyes with his for a moment. “What would it feel like if you said no to the contract?”

“Terrible,” I tell him. “Impossible. I’d feel like I’d failed the business, failed Farah—she’s really excited about it. I’ve always wanted to prove myself with In Bloom. I’ve always wanted it to be a success, but it felt so much more important after my aunt died. Like if I lose it, I’ll lose her altogether.” I feel myself getting choked up, so I smile. Sometimes the act alone can make me more cheerful. “But I won’t lose it. I’ve got Bridget in my corner, and she’d never let that happen.”

A flicker of something crosses Felix’s eyes. “You’ll never let that happen. I’m sure Bridget has been a huge help, but you don’t need her.”

I’m about to protest, but he picks up my left foot again. “I had no idea you were so good at this,” I say, closing my eyes once more.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Lucy,” I hear.

On our way out, we walk past a display of small white cards with messages from visitors, standing in metal holders. English. French. Japanese. German. Childish scribbles. I pause when I come to the one that reads, I am here now, and everything is okay.

It feels like it’s written just for me.

From the corner of my eye, I see Felix pick up a pen and write something on a blank card. He sets it in an empty holder.

This is Lucy’s happy ending.

I look at him, and then at the dozens and dozens of messages.

I am here now, and everything is okay.





21





Autumn, Two Years Ago





Bridget moved into Miles’s condo that fall, and the transition was harder than I’d expected. As roommates, we spent countless nights dancing in our socks in the kitchen, talking until our voices grew hoarse and our eyelids drooped. I made hot toddies and mashed bananas on toast when she was sick; she held my hand while I cried. But now she had her big job and her live-in boyfriend. As the future sprawled before us, a tendril of fear curled around my spine. We were getting older. We were growing up. The day had come when we wouldn’t dance in our socks in the kitchen anymore.

I decided to cut back on takeout and fancy coffees and manicures and keep the apartment. It would be tight, but I could make it work. I convinced myself I’d enjoy living alone. I could turn the spare room into an office. But when Bridget and Miles pulled away in the moving van, I lay on the floor of her empty bedroom and sobbed.

I was so lonely with her gone. I wanted someone to fill the emptiness she’d left behind. Until that point, I had approached my dating life like a buffet, never committing to one dish, never settling down with one person. Carter was a friend of Miles’s, and we’d been on a few dates that year, but after Bridget moved out, we started seeing each other more often.

He was a few years older than me and worked in sales for a tech company, a job he mildly detested but earned him a hefty enough salary that he didn’t complain. He had good manners, a nice watch, and a financial advisor. And he was handsome, in that tall, slim, and smacking of success type of way. My mother approved of him, which pleased me more than it should have.

Stacy was confused about why we were spending so much time together, and she told me so over spaghetti and meatballs with Bridget. We were sitting in our regular spots around my aunt’s kitchen table when she, out of nowhere, said she hadn’t pictured me with someone so drab.

“He’s not drab,” I argued. “He’s fine.”

“He’s a little drab,” Bridget said, her mouth full of pasta. “He kind of reminds me of your dad.”

“Not helping,” I told her. “And gross.”

“Lucy, you deserve so much more than fine,” Stacy said. “You should have a partner who sets you on fire.”

I pictured Felix instantly.

“I don’t need fire right now,” I told her. “I need company.”

“They make vibrators for that,” Bridget said.

“Ha. That’s not what I mean.”

Stacy kissed my forehead. “I know.”

For the rest of that evening, I couldn’t seem to push Felix from my mind. I fell asleep, thinking about the way he kissed me last Thanksgiving, hearing him whisper, You’re a goddamn wonder.

And then the storm came.



* * *



? ? ?

As Hurricane Fiona prepared to ravage Prince Edward Island that September, I tracked it on my phone, my fear growing with every article that predicted it would be the worst that Atlantic Canada had ever faced. Power outages. Rainfall warnings. Wind warnings. Surge warnings. Potential shoreline erosion.

Because Summer Wind was on the coast, Ken and Christine were leaving the house to stay with Bridget and Felix’s grandparents. But the eastern side of the island, where Felix lived, was supposed to get the worst, and even Bridget seemed fretful. Carter and I had tickets for the symphony the evening Fiona hit. Roy Thomson Hall was a large venue, but I felt trapped. The music sounded ominous, the performers’ black clothing, funereal.