The phone call comes late, long after the fourth cocktail, and the voice on the other end is one I haven't heard in more than a decade. It's Charlie Florek, the wrong brother, calling to tell me his mother is gone. Sue, who treated me like a daughter. Sue, who I once dreamed would be my mother-in-law. Her funeral is in a few days, back in Barry's Bay, and there is only one answer I can give. Of course I will come. Twelve years. It's been twelve years since I fled the lake, since I drove away from the catastrophic Thanksgiving weekend that shattered everything between Sam and me. Twelve years since I've seen him.
I don't think my parents knew when they bought the cottage that two adolescent boys lived in the house next door. At thirteen, I was awkward and friendless, and the four-hour drive north felt like an escape. The cottage smelled of pine and smoke, a scent that became home. From the dock, I first saw them - two heads bobbing in the silver water. The older one, Charlie, was all easy smiles and boy-band charm. But it was Sam, the lanky, quiet one my age, who looked at me from under a messy swoop of sandy hair and saw me. That first summer, he became my person. We spent our days on the raft, our nights watching horror movies, our wrists bound by the friendship bracelets I wove in a pattern of neon orange and peach. “I want it to be just like yours,” he'd said.
Six summers passed like that, each one a chapter in our story. We grew up on that lake, our bodies changing, the space between us shrinking until it was charged with a current I didn't understand. At fifteen, he taught me to swim across the lake, rowing beside me the entire way, his pride a sunburst when I collapsed on the far shore. At sixteen, after a storm and a scary movie left me terrified to be alone, we shared his twin bed. “I think you know,” I whispered into the darkness when he asked who I'd rather kiss. His mouth on mine was like jumping off a cliff into warm honey. It was the best night of my life.
Now, twelve years later, I find him in the back kitchen of the Tavern, the restaurant his mother ran our whole lives. His back is to me at the dishwasher, but he is as unmistakable as my own reflection. He's a man now, all broad shoulders and golden-brown skin, the edges of his face harder, the boyishness replaced by something solid and devastating. When he turns, his eyes - still the same impossible blue - find mine, and for a moment, the years between us dissolve. Three giant strides and he has his arms wrapped around me. “You came home,” he whispers into my hair, and the words are both a welcome and an accusation.
He told me he wanted to wait, that we were too young to mess up something so important. We were seventeen. “I don't want to screw it up with you,” he'd said, sitting on a mossy log deep in the woods. “I want to be everything, Percy. When we're ready.” I had a boyfriend back in the city, a handsome hockey player named Mason, but he was just a placeholder, a way to pass the months until summer, until Sam. Sam's words felt like a rejection, another sign that I wasn't enough, and the hurt curdled inside me. I didn't understand that he was trying to protect us, to build a future he was so sure we'd share.
The days leading up to the funeral are a blur of memory and shock. Sam and I fall back into our old rhythm with an ease that is both comforting and dangerous. He takes me to the lake, and when a cramp seizes my leg during a swim, he pulls me into the rowboat. Lying tangled in his arms, the air between us pulls tight. “You're still the most beautiful woman I've ever known,” he says, his voice like sandpaper. He tells me he and his girlfriend, Taylor, are no longer together, that he ended it the night I came back. We spend an evening in the basement, surrounded by the ninety-three horror movies he bought over the years because they reminded him of me but could never bring himself to watch. He falls asleep on the couch with his feet tangled in mine, and for a moment, it feels like no time has passed at all.
That last summer, after Sam left for a premed workshop he'd kept secret, the weeks stretched on, empty and silent. He barely called. His emails were short, distant. I was convinced I was losing him. Charlie, home from university, saw my heartbreak and stepped in. He took me swimming every morning. He made me laugh. One night, after he took me to the drive-in to see a horror movie, I threw myself at him. I was so desperate to be wanted, to erase the ache of Sam's absence. It was a mistake the second it was over, a betrayal so profound it left me gasping for air, hollowed out.
The morning of the funeral, in the cab of his truck, the grief and the longing and the twelve years of silence finally break. His mouth is on mine, hungry and desperate, a collision of past and present. It is more than a kiss; it's a confession. But later, back in his childhood bedroom, surrounded by the ghosts of who we used to be, the truth finally spills from my lips. “I slept with Charlie.” I wait for the explosion, for the anger, for the final door to slam shut between us. But his reaction isn't shock. It's a quiet, simmering agony that's been waiting for years. I try to run, but he follows me, his voice raw. “You slept with my brother!” he roars, and then the world tilts on its axis because I realize he isn't just finding this out. He already knew.
On the dock, in the quiet of the morning after, he tells me everything. Charlie confessed what happened that Christmas, hoping the truth would explain why I had shattered Sam's heart over Thanksgiving, turning down his proposal with flimsy excuses. He tells me about the self-destructive spiral that followed, the drinking and the girls at university, a desperate attempt to erase me that only made my absence ache more. He never replied to my messages because he was drowning in his own hurt and anger. “I forgave you years ago, Percy,” he says, his voice thick with unshed tears. He pulls a faded, worn bracelet from his pocket - the one I made for him when we were thirteen - and ties it around my wrist. “I think messing it up is part of the deal,” he says, a small smile touching his lips. “But I think we might be better at cleaning it up the next time.” He pulls me onto his lap, and with the sun rising over the far shore, I know exactly what we're going to do. I pull his shirt over his head. It's time to go for a swim.
