Sam leans forward like he didn’t hear me correctly. “Deserved it?” he repeats, his eyes ferocious. “What are you talking about? You didn’t deserve it, Percy. Just like I didn’t deserve what happened with Charlie. Betrayals don’t cancel each other out. They just hurt more.” He takes my hands and rubs them with his thumbs. “I thought about telling you,” he says. “I should have told you. I got all the emails you sent, and I even tried writing back, but I blamed you for a long time. And I thought maybe you’d keep writing if you still cared about me, but eventually you stopped.”
His head is bent, and he’s looking at me through his lashes. “When I found that video store with the horror section in fourth year, I almost reached out to you. But it felt too late by then. I figured you would have moved on.” I shake my head forcefully. Of everything he’s just told me, this is what hurts the most.
“I didn’t move on,” I croak. I squeeze his fingers, and we stare at each other for several long seconds. And then they come to me—three words from yesterday, echoing in my head in tentative bursts of happiness.
I love you.
Sam has known about Charlie and me for years, for the entire time I’ve been back. He broke up with his girlfriend despite what I’d done.
I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped.
The words didn’t break through my panic before, but now they stick to my ribs like molasses.
“I still haven’t,” I whisper. He’s perfectly still, but his eyes dance frantically across my face, his head tilted slightly, like what I’ve said doesn’t make sense. Now that it’s getting lighter, I can see how red his eyes are. He can’t have slept much last night.
“I thought I’d never see you again.” My voice hitches, and I swallow. “I would have given anything to sit on this dock with you, to hear your voice, to touch you.” I run my fingers over the stubble on his cheek, and he puts his hand over mine, holding it there. “I fell in love with you when I was thirteen, and I never stopped. You’re it for me.” Sam closes his eyes for three long seconds, and when he opens them, they are glittering pools under a starry sky.
“Swear on it?” he asks. And before I can answer, he puts his hands on my cheeks and brings his lips to mine, tender and forgiving and thoroughly Sam. He takes them away all too soon, and rests his forehead against mine.
“You can forgive me?” I whisper.
“I forgave you years ago, Percy.”
He looks at me for a long time, not speaking, our eyes locked.
“I have something for you,” he says. He shifts and reaches for something in his pocket. I look down when I feel him fiddling with something at my hand.
It’s not as bright as it once was, the orange and pink have faded and the white has turned gray, and it’s too big for me. But there it is, after all these years, Sam’s friendship bracelet tied around my wrist.
“I told you I’d give you something if you swam across the lake. I figured you earned a consolation prize,” he says, tugging on the band.
“Friends again?” I ask, feeling the smile spreading across my cheeks.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Can we have sleepovers as friends?”
“I seem to remember sleepovers being part of the deal,” I say, and then add, “I don’t want to mess this up again, Sam.”
“I think messing it up is part of the deal,” he replies, giving my waist a little squeeze. “But I think we might be better at cleaning it up the next time.”
“I want that,” I tell him.
“Good,” he says. “Because I want that, too.”
He pulls me onto his lap, and I run my hands through his hair. We kiss until the sun has risen high above the hill, wrapping us in a blanket of bright morning heat. When we eventually part, we’re both wearing big, dorky grins.
“So what do we do now?” Sam says in a gravelly voice, running his finger over the freckles on my nose.
I’m supposed to check out of the motel later this morning, and I have no idea what will happen after that. But right now? I know exactly what we’re going to do.
I pull his shirt off over his head and run my hands down his shoulders and smile.
“I think we should go for a swim.”
EPILOGUE
One Year Later
We spread Sue’s ashes on a Friday evening in July. It’s taken a full year for Sam and Charlie to work themselves up to letting her go. We choose this time of day because on the extraordinarily rare occasion that Sue was home with the boys on a summer evening, she’d serve dinner on the deck, right as the sun began to cast its light on the far side of the lake, and sigh in weary delight.