We-ll Always Have Summer «2024»

Ten summers ago, we were nineteen and stupid, lying on this same dock with our ankles in the water. He’d said, What if we never tried to make this anything? What if we just… came back here? And I’d said, That’s the dumbest smart thing I’ve ever heard. And we’d shaken on it, like children sealing a pact with bloody thumbs.

I turned back. “Leo.”

“Same time next year?” he said. It was almost a joke. Almost. We-ll Always Have Summer

He took the wine glass from my hand, set it on the counter, and kissed me. It tasted like salt and the end of things. I let myself fall into it—the scratch of his jaw, the warm hollow of his collarbone, the way his hand found the small of my back like it had been looking for it all year. Ten summers ago, we were nineteen and stupid,

I didn’t sleep that night. I lay next to him—his breathing slow, his arm heavy across my ribs—and I watched the ceiling fan turn and turn. I thought about the word enough . I thought about how people spend their whole lives hunting for a love that fits into their existing world, and how maybe the braver thing is to let the love be the world, even if only for a week. Even if only for a season. And I’d said, That’s the dumbest smart thing

“We’ll always have summer,” he said.

So I put the bag down. I walked back into the kitchen. I took the coffee from his hand, set it on the counter, and kissed him again—not like a goodbye this time. Like a beginning.