The Hottest Summer I Can Remember

He looked like his father, that day in the grocery store.

"Okay," I say, softly, "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry," he glances at me quickly, and then turns back down the load road, "You just--can't, okay?"

"Okay."

I haven't cried the way I cried that night, before or since. Folded double on the bed that I'd outgrown a couple of years previously, a pillow hugged to my chest, gasping wet, open-mouthed breaths through the clean-smelling fabric. After a few minutes, my mother had come in. Sitting on the edge of my bed, she didn't say a word. She only put her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder as I cried. She'd never asked what it was about, but I think she knows. I think she always knew. Right from the very first moment. I'm lying in bed sobbing, thinking about the fight my mother and father had been having in the back yard, thinking about the kiss and how perfect it had been, thinking about his words on the dark road.

The next day I got up and went to school. From everything I've ever read, I've heard that everything's supposed to change after something like this. That the friendship either peeters out to strained silences, or comes together in the crashing crescendo of an ultimatum. I saw Gareth in the white and black painted music hall. I smiled at him; he smiled at me, that lopsided grin that made me feel as if all the world were tilted in the wrong direction, rather than his mouth.

He and Alice Silverton dated from a week after that day, until the very last day of high school. Gareth and I still met up at the river every weekend, though most days we didn't race sticks. We just sat on the bank of the river, sometimes drinking wine or whatever off-brand liquor we managed to sneak out of our parents' liquor cabinets, chatting. We got together to study, to go through University courses and pick out dorm-room setups. We went to parties, and slept on the floor in one anothers' rooms, and went to swim-meets together. But now there were two things we didn't discuss--his mother, and the kiss.

Listen, I could tell you everything. It would be a hundred pages, if I did that. How I worked at the Stanford grill through five years of a BA and a pre-law degree at the University of Phoenix; how he went to the West Liberty University an hour outside of Columbus, Ohio. How he still worked construction, during the summers. But I can't. So here, you'll get the Cliff-notes. We talked over text for a couple of years, almost every day. We talked a bit less, for a couple of years; weekly reach-outs, bi-monthly check-ins. Then we just... didn't.

I wish I could say that there was some kind of all-powerful reason for it, but there simply wasn't. It had nothing to do with the kiss, or the distance, or anything else. We were just two people who had moved in opposite directions. I didn't check his social media pages, because the pictures hurt me in some way that's difficult to describe. Pictures of him and his girlfriend, Alexis, on a beach in Cabo. A picture of them at a white-linen table celebrating some anniversary or the other. I never looked at the pictures for more than a second when they came up, before clicking off my phone and throwing it across the room of my apartment.

It's been seven months since I've gone back to visit my parents in Arden-on-the-Severn. I work as a junior associate lawyer for Cornerstone Law Firm LLC, in Pennsylvania. I'm good at my job. I rent a small house on the south-west side of Evansville; own a two-seat silver convertible, and a cat named Dagger who spends most of his time prowling in the small forest that separates my house from Ontelaunee Lake and only joins me for food in the mornings and the occasional evening on the couch. I've dated a couple of guys in the years since I last saw Gareth; one of them was even semi-serious. An investment advisor named Ron, a couple of years older than I was. We'd gone to Italy together, moved in, discussed futures--and then I broke up with him. No reason. Well, there was a reason. I just didn't admit it to him, because I could barely admit it to myself. A reason which I refused to put a name or a face to.

Now, what if I told you that everything I've told you so far has been preamble? What if I told you that I was twenty-nine years old, sitting on my living-room couch, watching the rain coming down over the small uncovered veranda and break apart in small, winding rivers between the bricks? Because that's where I was. I was sitting on the well-used leather, my feet pulled up on the couch beside me, my eyes tracking the long trails of water that snaked down the flat glass and disappeared beneath the white plastic frame of the walk-out doorway. Low thunder rolled overhead. Hozier played from the small speaker in the kitchen. I thought about getting up and pouring myself a glass of wine, but I simply couldn't find the strength to make my body move. Resting my head against the backrest of the couch, I closed my eyes.

Now we're there. We're back where we first started this whole story. We've come full-circle. Everything that comes after this... That's something else.

This had been the hottest summer I could remember. One for the record-books. Even now, in my air-conditioned house with the rain coming down almost biblically over the roof and lawn, I could feel the touch of the heat. Fans and air-conditioners had flown off of shelves. Now, summer was coming to an end, leaves going golden-red in the forest behind my house, but the heat still hadn't let up. It almost felt as if it intended to carry right on through until the snow began to fly.

I wasn't eighteen years old, any more--but I was back on the couch again.

My hair had finally decided that it wanted to be brown; but when the light touched it, a few golden threads still stood out amongst the light brown waves. Two rows of black eyelashes curled upward from a pair of eyes that I'd heard described as hawk-like; but which I knew from seeing myself in mirrors and windows were gentle. Now I was slender. Probably at the perfect time, but what felt to me to be a couple of years--or a decade--too late. A pair of long arms led down to small, newly-manicured hands. My breasts, under a white blouse tucked into the top of a pair of black dress pants and a stiff-bottomed bra of the same color, were round in a way that faintly resembled two loaves of artisan-made bread. Round, without protruding too far from my chest. Even the small stretch marks over their fronts kind of resembled dough-lines. I liked them, most days. I liked everything about my life, most days. Nobody had said that I couldn't kiss them, for the last eleven years. Sitting with my eyes closed, I felt myself start slightly as somebody knocked on the door.

If I were to tell you I knew who it was, by the knock alone, you wouldn't believe me. But I did. My eyes opened, staring at the patio door. The knock came again, from the other side of the room; three taps, and then silence. Uncurling from the couch, I lifted myself to meet feet and made my way through the living room. Pausing at the front door, I slide the chain-lock off and pulled it open.

And there he was.

For a moment, I couldn't believe my eyes. To tell you the truth, for a moment I mistook him for his father--though he would have been close to seventy, by this point. It was the man from the grocery store. It was everything that his body had promised it would be, from the very first moment I saw him.

His black hair was pulled back from a wide, faintly lined forehead; a couple of lines between his nose and mouth, which had made him look old at eighteen, and now young at twenty-nine, were caught between a pair of shaven, grey-shaded cheeks. A long-sleeve shirt, which had been rolled up past his elbows, was plastered to his body by the rain. A pair of grey jeans were held around his waist by a belt. They might have been light grey once, but they were dark now. He was dripping wet. I could see a couple of dark spots on the concrete slab of my front porch, beneath his boot-covered feet. I was speechless. Maybe I opened my mouth, and maybe not, but there wasn't a single word coming out of me. I saw his dark eyes, which may have held a touch of initial surprise, focus on mine.

Then he grinned. That grin, at least, I knew--better than the back of my hand. Better than my own smile. An easy, lopsided grin. Nothing's changed, that grin said--while everything else had changed.

"Hey, Gie-gee."

"Hey-now," I couldn't help it. I grinned back.

Maybe it was because I hadn't seen him in person in nearly four years, but I was suddenly struck by the fact that I was taller than him. An inch taller, if I had to guess.

Even while he stood wearing his heavy-bottomed work boots and I stood barefoot, we were exactly the same height. It didn't bother me. He looked exactly the way a man should look, in my opinion--his arms wide, his forearms faintly haired where they appeared from the bottom of his rolled-up shirtsleeves. His body held the hard fitness of youth, without looking overwhelmingly muscular. I saw all of this, but it was his eyes that really grabbed me. Even after the grin slipped away from his lips, they just kept on shining--like a flashlight pointed into two pools of black liquid.

"What are you doing... here?" In Pennsylvania, I meant, more so than at my house, "How did you even know--?"

"I was in Red Rock for a building contract a couple of weeks ago, and I got to thinking... doesn't somebody I know live in Pennsylvania? Didn't she used to be my best friend? I wonder what ever happened to her--" he trails off, "So I took a cab into Allentown and I..." he blinks, "I just kind of kept walking. I called your firm--amazing, by the way--and they gave me your address."

"You--walked," I stare at him, "from Allentown?"

"Macungie, technically," he grinned again, "but... yeah."

I did some quick mental calculation. Macungie was a small community about ten minutes outside of Allentown, but that still made the drive--twenty-five miles? He must have been walking all day, I realized. I would have taken him eight hours, on the low end. I stared at him, unable to do anything other than blink.

"Mind if I come in?" He asks, indicating the rain that still poured down over the small roof of the porch, "A bit wet out here."

"Yes!" I exclaim, suddenly remembering where we were and what it was I was supposed to do in this situation, "God--yes, I'm sorry. Come in."

There were a couple of minutes while he took of his boots and left them beside the door, and while I fetched a towel from the cupboard in the bathroom. He stood at the front door, toweling his hair dry and then hanging it over his shoulders. I stared at the man in my entranceway; someone I'd known for two decades, who'd been the closest thing I'd ever had to a best friend, and yet someone who was a stranger to me. Drawing the towel down over the back of his neck, he pulled off his wet socks and dropped them into his boots.

"Way better," he nodded.

"Gareth," the tone of my voice must have caught his attention, because suddenly he was looking at me--straight at me, "Why are you here?"

"I had to explain," he said, simply.

"Explain what?"

"Alice Silverton's. That night."

A stab of pain still went through my chest, all these years later. I shook my head, slightly tilted, "No--you don't."

"Yes," he looked at me seriously, "I do."

It was the same as that first day, I thought. That very first day, on the road. The words came tumbling out of him, like rocks from the back of a tipped-up dump truck; he didn't seem able to stop them.

"It's been all I can think about, for the last eleven years. Every time I kiss someone, I'm right back in that basement and you're kissing me and I'm--I'm terrified. I'm so scared. That I'm not good at it, that I'm not good enough, that you're showing off and that it doesn't mean anything and--and it was supposed to just be for us, god-dammit."

I open my mouth, but he goes on speaking right over top of what I might have said--might have said, because I had absolutely no idea what the words that would have come out of me might have been.

"I'm working on this construction site in Red Rock, and the guys are all talking about their ex-girlfriends and whatever, and all I can think about is you. I know we never dated. I know, but.. it was always you. So the sun is beating down on us, every day, and I feel like I'm melting and the rocks are so hot they're almost glowing, but I can't even concentrate on that. I felt like I was burning up from the inside out. I've felt that way for years, but this week... I fucked up the molding completely, because I just kept thinking about your face. How you looked when we were walking home and--and what I said. So, I need to explain."

"Okay," I say, softly.

"I love you," he says the words very simply. There's a moment of silence between us before he continues. He's not rushing, now. The words come out of him slowly and deliberately--I can tell that the words themselves aren't planned, but only that they've been turning over and over in his mind. This was what he was thinking about while he was walking, I think.

"I've loved you since we were eight years old, and you beat me stick-racing twenty times in a row and were not gracious in victory," he smiles.

He's not smiling at me, I know. He's smiling at a memory. Then his eyes shift slightly, and he is smiling at me,

"I loved you that day in Alice's basement, and I loved you on the walk home. You'd always been the most beautiful person I'd every seen, but that night.. I knew I'd never meet anybody more beautiful. Not if I searched the entire world. And I was so afraid, because--what if you didn't feel the same way? What if you did? You can't tell your father at eighteen that you've found the woman you want to marry. You can't tell your friends that your best friend's smile makes your heart stop, and the sun feel useless. You can't tell her that she's everything you've ever wanted, everything you'll ever want--because what if it's not true?" He pauses, "But it is. It is true. All of it. I love you. I love you, Mary, and I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry," I say. I know what we're doing, now. What we're doing here. We're redoing a conversation that had happened eleven years previously. This time, we're doing it right. You don't have to be sorry, I say--not because he has nothing to be sorry for, but because I know he's paid for it. He's been paying every moment, of every day, of every year, since that night on the road. I say it, because there's nothing to be sorry about any longer.

Truthfully, I don't know how we met. Whether he stepped forward first, or whether I did. All I remember was that his shirt was wet, and that the front of my blouse was pressed flat against it. That his hands were grabbing at me, clutching at my waist like a man whose been drowning for a decade and has found a stretch of dry ground, and that my arms were around his shoulders, my hands tangled in the damp length of his black hair. He kissed me, in a such a way that our lips barely touched. I pushed back, letting the pressure of my lips on his tell him how much I'd wanted him, these past twenty-one years. Over the speaker in the kitchen behind us, I could hear Arsonist's Lullaby come on. I could hear the opening hums rising as we kissed, holding one another in the small entrance of my one-story house.

Then, without warning, I was being lifted. His arms wrapped around my waist, and I felt my bottom come down on the flat top of the false-granite counter that stood beside my doorway. A couple of jackets hung on hooks over my head, and I could feel the fabric of them against my back and shoulders as Gareth pressed me back, quite gently, against the wall.

He was standing between my legs, and I lifted both to wrap them around his waist, pulling him into me even as I leaned forward once more. Our mouths hadn't left one another, yet. I could feel a weight in my chest as I breathed in through my nose, feeling him doing the same against my cheeks. We stayed this way for another minute, our bodies and mouths grasping at one another. Then I felt the pressure ease back, and Gareth straightened. His breathing was slightly heavier than it had been even a moment previously.

"We can--" he said, "--go slow."

"What the hell have we been doing for twenty-one years?"

Pushing my hips forward, I knocked him back from the counter and slid down so that my bare feet were back on the ground. Without a word, I grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hallway toward my bedroom. Truthfully, I was nearly dancing. Pulling him into the bedroom, I pressed him back against the wall. My hands slid under his shirt, pulling apart the wet buttons and peeling the still-damp fabric away from his shoulders.

Honest to God--if the storm outside had decided to become one of the legendary Pennsylvania hurricanes and torn down the walls of the house around us, I don't think I could have stopped myself from grabbing at the man. He stood in front of me, his back pressed against the wall.

He was deliciously human; broad and muscular, but in a way that made me think of good meals and hard labor, rather than movie-stars or porn actors. I pressed my lips to his chest, hearing his breathing become unsteady above me as my lips worked down his stomach. Folding my legs, I went to my knees in front of the man and worked my fingers into the clasp of his belt. It slid away, and I pressed my lips against the bulge in the grey fabric of his jeans. I round feel the roundness of his penis. The fabric was still damp, and I could taste rainwater; and beneath even that, the light taste of fabric detergent and clean sweat. Working my fingers into the button over my head, I was rewarded when It slipped free. Grabbing Gareth's pants, I pulled them down. My fingers must have accidently caught his boxers as well, because suddenly his penis was in front of me. It stood out from the downward-sloping lines of his hips; like the rest of him, it was perfectly long, and wide enough that I had to stop my eyes from widening. Sturdy. That was the word. It stood in front of me, less than two inches from my lips. Hard and demanding. But as I turned my face upward, I saw a pair of gentle, dark eyes looking down at me.

"You're beautiful," he says quietly, two fingers running back through the hair above my ear, "In all the world, you're the most beautiful--"

His words cut off as my mouth slid around the head of his penis. I had to do it--not just because I wanted to, though there was that as well. I had to do it because if I heard one more word come out of his mouth, then the blowjob would be forgotten because I would be smiling too widely to continue, and then I'd be laughing, and then I'd be crying. So instead of doing any of that, I sucked his dick.

But I couldn't help it--I was laughing. Because the moment my mouth closed around the head of his penis, tasting the small well of precum that had gathered there, he rocked back on his heels and his hand immediately disappeared from my head. I heard the hard smack as it hit the wall behind him.

"Holy--shit," his voice was disbelieving, and deep with laughter, "Sorry, I lost my legs there for a second."

"Need to get on the bed?" I ask, turning my face up.

"No--" he shakes his head, "No, I'm good. I think. I'll try to let you know before I hit the ground."

I laugh, turning my attention back to what's in front of me. Opening my mouth, I roll my tongue slowly around the head of Gareth's penis. I feel the round, slightly yielding head against my tongue, and then the stiffness of the shaft beneath. Leaning forward on my knees, I place my open hands against either side of his hips and take him fully into my mouth. Overhead, he lets out a low breath. The hard length presses down slightly on my tongue as I begin moving, slowly, backward and forward.