“You know it’s weird to call your cousin ridiculously hot, right?” I said, cramming bathing suits into my overstuffed suitcase.
“It’s not weird if I’m just stating a fact,” she replied. “But you’re missing my main point, which is that I don’t want you to get hurt again. You’re too good for Sam.”
“That’s not true.” I may have spent the past ten months convincing myself that I was over him and that he was right to want to keep our relationship purely platonic, but I didn’t believe for a second that I was too good for him. “And he’s not a loser,” I added.
Sometimes I wondered if Sam called things off last summer because he didn’t want to attach himself to me when he had all these big plans to go away to school and become a doctor and never look back. He didn’t want to get stuck in Barry’s Bay, but at my most anxious I thought that maybe he didn’t want to get stuck with me, either.
I had joined the swim team, to my mother’s delight, and had distracted myself with practice, writing, and Mason’s hockey games, while Sam had spent the year studying or working to save for university. He barely took a break. I had to convince him to go to parties or spend a night playing video games with Finn and Jordie. He never mentioned girls, but I knew he wouldn’t waste time dating—not that I cared. Okay, I cared. He was still my best friend. But that was it. Best friend. Nothing more.
“I’ll be the judge of that once and for all when we come up to visit,” Delilah said, reaching into the suitcase and pulling out my team suit. “I get that you actually swim when you’re up there, but please tell me you’re packing something a little more exciting than this,” she said, holding up the navy one-piece. I smiled: Delilah was nothing if not predictable. I grabbed a gold string bikini and threw it at her.
“Happy?”
“Thank god. What’s the point of all that time you spend pickling yourself in chlorine if you aren’t going to show off the results?”
“Some people call it exercise,” I laughed. “You know, for health?”
“Pfff . . . as if you and Mason don’t lie around naked talking about how hot your hot athletic bodies are,” she scoffed.
“Again, he’s your cousin.”
Delilah and Patel started having sex a while ago and she assumed the same was true of Mason and me. To correct her would mean having a detailed conversation about exactly what was happening between us, which I preferred to keep to myself.
“I can’t help it if the Mason family gene pool is prone to extreme good looks.” Delilah tossed her hair over her shoulder. She wasn’t wrong. Even with her red hair and explosive personality, she looked softer than me, with roller-coaster curves that were irresistible to the boys in our high school, who constantly stopped by our lunch table to flirt. She dismissed them all with a flick of her wrist.
I gathered up a couple of notebooks and paperbacks and placed them on top of the piles of clothing.
“I’ll never get this zipped up,” I said, trying to shove everything down in my suitcase.
“Good, then you’ll have to stay!”
“I’ll see you in a month, D. It’ll fly by. Give me a hand here?” Delilah pushed down on the bulging case while I zipped it up.
“Is Charlie still as hot as I remember?” She wiggled her eyebrows. Delilah’s version of man hating was admittedly pretty thirsty. Charlie had started school at Western in the fall, and I hadn’t seen him since the Christmas break.
“He’s not ugly,” I told her. “But you can be the judge of that, too.” My parents had agreed to let me have Mason, Delilah, and Patel up for the Civic Holiday, which they would be spending in Prince Edward County for a second year.
Mason had stayed in Toronto for university, and we had made it official in the fall. I’d been holding out hope that Sam would change his mind about us, but when I saw him over Thanksgiving, it was like the night we spent in his bed had never happened. The next weekend, I let Mason feel me up under my skirt at the movie theater. “I hope you start calling me your boyfriend now,” he had whispered in my ear, and I agreed that I would, reveling in the feeling of being wanted.
Sam had spotted the silver bracelet around my wrist as soon as he walked through the door to the cottage on Christmas Eve. My parents had invited the Floreks for holiday cocktails, and he pulled me aside and held up my wrist that wore the friendship bracelet as well as the one Mason had given me.