Summer's place, continued, part 1

July 2082 (part 1 of 2) - Micah Phoenix is 59, Sophie is 60, Hayden is 32, Summer is 17, Ryanne is 11. (Tyler Jackson is 18). Last update, November 2079.

*** notes: Just a warning, this first part is sad, but the second part made me bawl like the sappy dork that I am, so, if you're that way inclined, maybe don't read these in public ;) ***

*** optional soundtrack, "Not As We," by Alanis Morissette ***

The shop has been closed for almost three years. Summer hasn't even stepped foot inside except for once or twice in that time, and she finds herself surprised at how much it still smells like woodchips, and a little bit like dust. The shelves are still stocked with stuffed teddy bears, and a wooden toy firetruck remains on the front counter, right where her mother left it. She doesn't know what she thought would have happened to them in her absence.

And she doesn't know why she expected to magically find the light switches she was never able to find before, because she doesn't. Not at first. It's a lot to take in all at once, and she finds herself stalled here as the last evening light fades from the day. This front store room is a place stopped in time.

She does find the lights eventually, before the night falls, and so she'll begin.

There is a lot to learn before she can even open the doors. Of course, her mother never had the foresight to leave notes on how to do any of it. So she picks at it from scratch, with some badly written manuals and some instructions she found online.

It will take time, of course, but she's making progress.

The money she won from the Lake County Metro Business Award is essential, as is her grandmother. There are some things about running a business that are universal. How to work a cash register, the logic of supply and demand, the basics of customer service. These things she can be taught.

She's been a sales assistant for her grandmother's catering business for a few years now, and she's become quite good at what she does. Though in some cases she wonders if it's just her smile that's doing the work.

She doesn't pretend not to notice them too, all the handsome young men, in so many varieties, and so interesting and unique in different ways. Some of them are smart or athletic or funny, and each with their own personal style and charms. There are infinite reiterations in the scope of young men. She doesn't know what makes some more appealing than others.

Or some of them simply unmatched by any others in the world. Like her boyfriend, who is inclined to say hello by sneaking up behind her and grabbing a handful of boob. He's lucky she knows the smell of his cologne, and his voice snickering quietly behind her, or else she'd be likely to spin around and clock him in the head. Or maybe the familiar snickering he does on purpose, so that he doesn't get clocked in the head.

"I hope the shop's closed," he says.

"My grandma is upstairs," she says, and he moves his hand down to her hip. She remembers a time when he wouldn't even hold her hand in front of her grandmother.

She turns around to tickle him senseless. They might have outgrown noogies, but they'll never be too old for tickling.

She helped him move into his dorm room last week, but she hasn't seen any less of him. He calls her to come out to the city to visit. She's tired often this summer, driving twenty minutes out to Bluewater for this shop, and she doesn't want to turn around and drive another forty minutes in the opposite direction, so he drives out instead, just to see her. He has plenty of free time still before his classes start this fall, but she doesn't figure he'll be around any less then either. Tyler was always more devoted to being a boyfriend than a scholar.

But that's what Tyler is is devotion. Maybe he isn't tender, or sweet, maybe he's crude sometimes, or silly, but charming and devoted still.

She wondered at one time if he would ever really fall in love like he has. She never even expected they would date so long, but they grew on each other. She watched him grow into a man and maybe even helped shape him. She knows that he's shaped her. They grew into each other, as love tends to do.

And she does love him, very much. Part of her knows how unmatched he is, and she doesn't know how to explain the other part of her, that while knowing so, is still curious.

***

She walks next door to her grandparents house some mornings to use the treadmill and eat her grandmother's amazing weekend omelettes. Summer will be eighteen in just three days and while most of her friends are starting college this year, she will be finishing up her senior year of high school.

Her grandfather tries to give her a pep talk. He says, "Are you worried about Tyler going off to college? Don't worry, your grandmother went off to college a year ahead of me and we turned out just fine. I think she might have kissed a couple of them while we were apart, but we turned out okay."

Sophie says, "I did no such thing!" She's being mostly truthful. But there was one she did a little more than kissing with, but she won't call it a regret. Even though it wasn't exactly a fulfilling experience, at least now she knows she isn't missing anything.

Sophie says, "Don't look so gloomy, honey. You guys are going to be just fine."

Though Summer doesn't know how to explain that it's not Tyler she's worried about. She knows him well, and she knows he would never cheat on her, even with as much as he liked to spout off when he was younger that he wanted to date a bunch of people, or as much as his eyes tend to stray, or even when he often forgets that she is his girlfriend and not one of his buddies, and makes some remark about a nice pair of legs, or a great rack.

He hasn't had many experiences either, just a kiss on the cheek from Stephanie Nova. He told her about that finally. They weren't even a real couple at the time, but he confessed it like a traitor.

Hayden and Ryanne stop over for breakfast on the weekends too. Hayden thinks buying the condo right next to his parents was one of the best decisions ever, at least for a being single dad. They've been such a big help to him, and his mother's cooking doesn't hurt either. Even Summer manages better in the kitchen than he does now, and Ryanne is catching up too. When Hayden is cooking, the girls eat spaghetti and cold cereal.

Ryanne is starting junior high in the fall, and Summer says, "You're lucky you don't have to ride the school bus this year. Next year when I go to college, you'll have to ride with all the little kiddies."

"Going to college next year," Sophie says. "Your mother would be so proud. Just look at what a beautiful young woman you've grown into."

To be honest, Summer hates it when she says that, but she says, "Thanks, Grandma."

How do they know her mother would be so proud? It's not something anybody can really say for sure. Maybe she wouldn't be proud at all, since Summer is hardly even proud of herself much lately.

Tyler has only been away at college a week, but he's been back to see Summer every day. His family is nearby too - he misses his parents and he's still upset that the dorm adviser said he couldn't bring his dog, Mary Jane with him to college.

It seems like he misses her family as well. He often ends up talking to her dad, and the two of them sit on the floor like college buddies and talk about all kinds of things. The weirdest thing is that they actually are something like buddies. But it means a lot that her father likes him, even though she doesn't normally put much stock in her father's advice. Not that she doesn't respect him, but Hayden has always felt like more of an older brother than a dad.

But Hayden is really proud of Tyler for getting into college, especially since he never went himself. And maybe this is something men do when they have only daughters. She's never even seen Tyler talk about school to anyone but Hayden.

Maybe they even forget for a moment who Tyler is actually here to visit? Hayden is about to find out that there are just some games you shouldn't play with Tyler, because he tends to forget his own strength, and that he's training to be a professional athlete.


Of course, Tyler knows he isn't there to see Hayden. And he would never be rough with Summer like that - or at least never in any way she didn't like.

They spend some time cuddling in the hot tub, but eventually warm skin on skin puts ideas in their heads that Summer simply will not carry out at her grandmother's house.

"I have an idea," he says, and he leans into her ear to whisper, "What we do is you come out to the city with me, and then later you call your dad and say you're too tired to drive home."

"Okay," she says. The sneaky little booger! Tyler knows Hayden is sketchy about her driving, when she's tired, or in the rain, or when she's upset, and he would have a breakdown if he ever found her driving in the snow. Maybe this is taking advantage a little. If it is, they'll just push that to the back of their consciences.

Later that evening, Hayden walks into his mother's living room, and hears his mother talking about Piper. The two of them fall silent when they see him, and Hayden says, "What're you guys talking about?"

Micah says, "I didn't say anything."

"I was just wondering, that's all. No pressure, honey," Sophie says. "She's such a nice girl, you know."

Hayden wonders if maybe there is no magical age where your parents cease to make you feel like a helpless child.

Micah gets up to feed the dog.

"I just don't know," Hayden says. "I feel like I'm still in love with Rhianna."

"Well, of course you are," she says.

"What do you mean, of course? I thought it would fade, or something."

"I don't know how it's possible that I love them both at the same time, but I do. I feel like it's not fair to her - to Piper."

Sophie says, "Well I'm sure you love them differently."

"Yeah," he says. "I guess."

"I know she's waiting for something to happen," he says. "For something to change so we can move forward like a real couple. I just don't know if it will ever happen. What if I don't ever feel ready to get married again? God, what if I don't want more kids? Summer is eighteen now, can I do it all over again?"

"Some people are only just starting at your age," she says.

"I don't feel my age," he says. "And what if she doesn't want to wait for me to figure it out?"

Sophie says, "That's up to her, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's up to her, that's the problem! I'm going to lose her."

Sophie says, "Or if she means so much to you, then maybe that's an answer in itself."

"You think I should marry her anyway?"

Sophie says, "You'll have to decide that one yourself, honey."

***

So Summer and Tyler wanted a little privacy, and Tyler's dorm room will do just fine. There is a lock on the door to keep wandering students from using his bathroom, and otherwise, it's not very much different than his bedroom at home. He says, "Wait, Are you hungry? There's vending machines in the hallway."

"No," she says. "We just ate at my grandma's, remember?"

"Okay," he says. "Well, come here then, beautiful."

He tells her she's enough, and she believes he means it. But she also wonders how he knows it, when all he's seen is the student population of Lakeside Heights Public High School? She doesn't know it herself even. She hasn't been fair to him, getting angry and accusing him when she is the one unsure. He's dealt with their situation and decided it was enough, and he's entitled to that. She wonders if she's equally entitled to decide that it's not?

So what he doesn't know is that this is an exercise in memory, though maybe he is something she could never possibly forget. She's been kissing Tyler Jackson since she was thirteen years-old, and she knows every move of his lips, every touch of his tongue, the brush of his stubble against her cheek, she knows the feel of him like she knows her own body.

She knows how he'll wait as she climbs over his lap, until she leans down to kiss him. She knows she'll undress him much faster than he'll undress her, which is slow and decisive because he likes the tease of it. They aren't new to lovemaking either. They aren't awkward and fumbling as they were in the beginning. She knows the weight of him on top of her, or the rhythm of him underneath her. She knows him inside and out, and he does make her very happy.

Which is why the thought of leaving him makes her feel physically ill, and which is why she's been tangled in knots for months. How many times has she backed off of this, and decided that maybe it didn't need to be done, only to have it crop back up again? Like she does tonight, where she takes yet another night of committing him to memory.

They lay on his bed, drenched in summer sweat, flushed and spent. He's talking about all the new places they'll see together. They haven't ever spent much time in the city and there are so many things to explore.

"I want to take you to see the soccer field in the morning," he says. "And hey, do you think you'll come out to see my games some time?"

"Of course," she promises.

She could just lay here and listen to him talk, in this far off way she does, wishing above everything that she'd never even met him. She would take back everything, all the way to that perfect first kiss in the snow. Then they would be free to get what they needed from life and find each other all over again, when they were ready for it, when it wouldn't be doomed from the very start.

But she knows that isn't possible either. They've shaped each other. Any other version of him she would find, the pulp matter that makes up Tyler but shaped by a world without her, wouldn't be the one she loves.

*** to be continued ***

notes: Part 2 should follow in a day or two.


This whole family really does still talk about death ALL the time! They've been traumatized :(