Summer buried her head in her hands, and her entire chest heaved with thundering sobs. I pulled her body to my side and folded two arms around her, holding her tightly, as if compression would heal the swelling wound of deep loss.
We sat side by side as the sun rose atop our bodies, until Summer inhaled and shook her head. She wiped the tears from below her eyes.
“I need to move out. I can’t…I can’t live there anymore. I mean, it’s our place, but technically, it’s her place.”
“You can stay in my apartment. I’m hardly ever there.”
“Your little shithole? Oh God, I’d rather die.”
Summer started sobbing again. Apparently, for Summer Groves, the thought of existing in a peeling two-hundred-square-foot studio apartment with faulty window AC was just as horrifying as losing the woman she loved. I rubbed her back as Summer slowly swallowed her emotions back in.
“I’m going to fly home. I booked a flight on the way over here. I leave tonight.”
My eyes widened in alarm. “To Florida? Really?”
Summer nodded.
Summer hadn’t been home to see her dad in nearly a decade. Summer and her divorce-attorney father had a historically prickly relationship, one that she couldn’t bring herself to mend, even as her dad desperately tried. When Summer was a teenager, her father had buried himself in work and younger women to escape his wife’s untimely death. Along with not being crowned Single Father of the Year, her dad didn’t exactly embrace Summer’s coming out with open arms. Instead, he brushed off Summer’s “I’m gay!” as “just a New Age phase.” It didn’t help that these two events occurred during Summer’s sophomore year of high school. So by the time she left for college, Summer held on to a rightful grudge—one she could never let go of.
“He keeps begging me to visit. Apparently, I’ll love his new wife because she’s ‘a bisexual,’” Summer said, rolling her eyes as she quoted her father.
His new wife was forty, just five years older than Summer—which we counted as a blessing—the previous one had been a year younger than us.
“What is Luca? Wife number four?”
“My dad says three, because Britney’s ended in an annulment.”
“He can help with the legal stuff at least. Right?” I said, trying to find a silver lining amid the pile of shit.
“We have a prenup. So…it should be easy. Like—” Summer snapped her fingers. “Like it never happened,” she said quietly, her voice growing small under such a huge blow.
“What can I do? Want me to go to your place and pack up a suitcase for you?”
Summer shook her head. “No, Valeria’s going to stay at her parents’ place while I grab my things.”
“I’m coming with you to help you pack.”
“That’s stupid,” she said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Be honest. You never really liked her anyway.”
I went to agree, but I hesitated with my mouth slightly ajar. I knew better than to bash a soon-to-be ex. As easily as a relationship could end, it could begin again. Unfortunately, the mud you hurl at your best friend’s ex can never be un-hurled—words are forever.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked.
“Say how horrible she is. I mean, she can’t cook worth shit. And Valeria…she does this annoying throat-clearing thing when she’s nervous. Drives me nuts. And she never cleans up after her messes. How hard is it to put gum wrappers in the trash? And she’s so loud when she walks—she walks like a giant, like there’s lead inside her shoes.…”
Summer stopped speaking, tears back in her throat with a realization that all the little things that annoyed her about her wife would become things she’d miss. The spaces that were obnoxiously loud and messy would become even worse: quiet and empty.
“I’m a failure,” Summer whispered. “I’m thirty-five, and I’m getting divorced.”
She said “divorced” like it was a dirty word.
“You’re not a failure. You met Valeria, and you learned how to love someone with your whole heart. I had never seen you love someone before her. You might have a divorce to show for it, but I think…I think you’re going to make someone else so happy one day with all the love you learned how to give and take. And it’ll be the right person, who wants the kind of life you want, because now you know who you are. We can’t be bashed for growing up and changing. Summer, most importantly, you love yourself enough not to sacrifice your future just to hold on to someone else. We see divorce as a failure, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes we have to wave a white flag in order to save ourselves, or be ourselves. You love Valeria too much to hold her back from a life she deserves, and you love yourself too much to fold into a life you don’t want.”
I thought of my own mother, who filed for divorce from my father when I was just learning how to form words. I had grown up clinging to the fantasy that they would find their way back to each other, but as I got older, I couldn’t comprehend how they even withstood existing in the same room together. My mother knew that there would be success in letting go of my father. She knew that tethering herself to him would end in wild disappointment. He would only ever let her down. I knew this to be true because I was his daughter, and he let me down every time I thought he would prove my mother wrong.
I felt a newfound heaviness tug at my heart. Guilt. I felt the urge to vomit and call my mother. Summer thankfully put a stop to both.
“I just wish I could be like everyone else. I wish I could want what most people want, and hold on to the person I love,” Summer said.
I slung my arm back around her.
“Summer Groves, you know what? This is probably the first time in your entire life where you’re just like everyone else. You’ve always known exactly who you are, unapologetically. And this time, it took you a moment to figure out that something you thought was for you, isn’t. Don’t apologize for being human. And don’t you dare apologize for not wanting to be a mother. Ever. If you had decided to disappoint yourself in order to make someone else happy, then you’d have something to be sorry about—then you can apologize.”
Flashes of Garrett entered my brain—the man who folded into other people’s vision of what his life should be, just so he could pacify them, all the while failing himself.
A spark of wild energy shot through my veins, and I sat up straighter. All at once, I realized why Summer and I were so close. She was authentically herself, in every way. It was why I loved her. It was why our relationship felt more like a soulmate connection than a friendship. Summer was a rock and I was a kite, but most importantly, we were both unabashedly ourselves. Maybe, when it came to love, I had it all wrong. I thought I would end up with a kite—with a creative who was a wild dreamer, who could light up my nights. Really, it wasn’t about who was practical and whose head lived in the clouds. It was about finding another soul who was unapologetically himself. I needed a man who was confident enough to play his own music, regardless of what the critics threw at him.
I stared directly into Summer’s teary eyes. “You’re my kite, and my rock,” I said to my best friend.