What I Did This Summer by Davey Fitz Read online

extra short skirts they dared us not to peek up while making sure to give us every opportunity. She wasn’t textbook beautiful, but that made her all the more appealing. I think, if I can be sure of anything, I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. Back before she slowly began crumbling under society’s ridiculous definition of glamour and she still wore her gorgeous body with pride. With a confidence that was more perfect than any subjective standard ever could be.

  And over the past summer, when the things my friends and I did for fun expanded into moving drugs from dealer to dealer, we finally began to mix in the same social circles. But by the time I really met her, she was already dating some older guy named Dan, which, after all that time, hurt bad enough. And the guy she was with dealt drugs for some big hitters, and a few of my buddies told me he pimped her out from time to time. Only to show everyone he could, they said, because he could just as easily finalise any drug deal with a handshake or a gun. And that made me sad and angry at the same time. Because they said I could have my favourite girl now, if I still wanted her. Just like everyone else who was interested in buying whatever her boyfriend was selling. For a long time, before my friends told me that, I was convinced they were looking out for me when they talked down about her. Trying to keep me from getting my heart ripped out by some girl I was too scared to approach anyway. And, before I found out she was seeing someone steady and they told me the real deal, I honestly felt like my world was starting to fill up with things I loved. Or, at least, one thing I could love.

  I tried not to get too close to her after that, no matter how desperately I still wanted to. Even though, as the days passed and we stayed out hustling more often, I’d see her here and there. At a party or on the streets with her friends. On the rare occasion when I couldn’t run away and hide, I’d ignore my bruised and battered ego and talk to her and she was very friendly, very well spoken and proper, and also very shy. That confused me, because my friends talked about her like she was a piece of property and they told me she was like all the other girls, except easier. Yet I never felt that from her. Whenever I saw her and we’d notice each other, I felt a sadness that wasn’t coming from inside me. But my friends had poisoned my mind to a degree, and their voices were always in my head fighting with my uncle’s. Telling me she wasn’t a thing I loved. That she was just really good at seeming like one.

  Still, my uncle’s wisdom, or maybe it was insanity, always won out. Because I wanted to believe the world was a beautiful place. And I wanted to believe I was surrounded by things I loved. And love, as I understand it, has to work both ways. When it only works one way, when it’s not returned, it’s just infatuation, dependency or desperate need. I didn’t want to believe my world merely consisted of things I was addicted to. I wanted Melody to be better than the drugs her boyfriend dealt, and my friends and I helped him move. I wanted her to be something beautiful and I wanted my feelings for her to be something true. So I kept my distance, which kept me safe. Not knowing for sure if what my friends told me was true was better than having my heart broken. I thought.

  But she kept showing up in my world. Maybe it was circumstance, coincidence. Maybe it was because the universe, or God or whatever it is that makes everything the way it is, was making sure we both found out what we really meant to each other in our respective worlds.

  And I truly connected with her for the first time the last time I saw her.

  It was a late afternoon when the sun was shining more brightly than I thought it should have been, after my friends had gone home and I was heading back to my uncle’s. I only had a little while left before I had to go back to my mom’s and I was feeling down. Melody was walking on the other side of the street in the opposite direction and when she saw me, I could swear her eyes magnified the light from the sky as she stopped to wave at me and smiled. I looked back at her, my expression blank as my hand raised to return her greeting, at once totally aware of how empty the street was and how beautiful she looked painted against its backdrop. I remember she didn’t do anything in particular to make me slow my walk and stare back at her. She never did anything in particular, any of the times I’d seen her, to make my heart melt. She just was. Her smell, her skin, her hair, her strangely adorable body, her awkward social manner, the way she moved and the way she spoke. The fluidity of her features. All of those things, weaving together to form something greater than the parts, like magic.

  Then she continued to walk, the skin of her face flushing pink as she looked down at the ground with embarrassment and brought her hands back together in front of her stomach. As I watched and wondered why she had suddenly broken contact, I noticed she was wearing a fine white dress that zipped up the back and was made of a sheer fabric that seemed to show her nipples. As her gaze darted back up to meet mine and drifted away sadly again, I felt like she had seen something in me. That the way my eyes adored her made her sense I believed the things she knew my friends, and everyone, said about her. And, ironically, the look she threw my way convinced me the things my friends told me about her couldn’t possibly be true.

  I remember I crossed the street, to put myself directly in her path, very quickly but very cautiously. Like I was afraid if she saw me approaching her, she’d run. But when I said hello to her and asked her how she was, she looked up and fixed my gaze as she replied, questioning my motives or maybe questioning her assumptions. No shock, no surprise. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, covering her dress’ top, even though it wasn’t the least bit chilly out, and I asked her if she wanted to take a walk with me. My head didn’t even have time to process the fact that I was asking her to do what we were both already doing before we saw each other—or that by covering her up I’d unconsciously confirmed I had noticed her breasts—in time for me to feel appropriately ashamed and embarrassed before she said yes.

  She waited for me to lead, so I walked her in the direction I was originally heading. Back to my uncle’s. The one place in the world I didn’t want the girl of my dreams to see, ever. By the time I realised where I was guiding her, it was too late to change direction without seeming even more like a nervous little boy. But she walked with me and we talked about almost everything except what we really wanted to and, before I knew it, the sun was going down and we were standing outside my uncle’s house.

  As I tried to think of how to offer to walk her home, so she would be safe, she asked if she could come in and watch television with me. For some reason, I felt small when I explained to her that my uncle didn’t own a TV set, but she said that was fine and she would love to meet him. And, even though I didn’t want to, I agreed and walked her inside. She was quiet and strangely obedient. Much more reserved than I had thought or felt in any of our brief interactions before. And that reassured me even more, because she couldn’t be the way my friends said she was, and be the way she was around me. At least, I’d never met anyone who could act that well.

  Luckily, although it was more of a given, my uncle wasn’t home. She didn’t seem disappointed, or even nervous, as the sun continued to set and the inside of the house grew darker. Instead she asked if we could sit and talk in my room. Even though I told her we didn’t have lights and my room wasn’t really any more comfortable than the downstairs floor, she insisted. So we made our way upstairs and I showed her into my room with the dirty, lonely mattress that lay on the ground in the middle of it and a stand up mirror I’d found discarded by the roadside and propped up in the corner so I could have some idea what I looked like after I groomed myself. She hung up my jacket on the side of the mirror and sat down on the mattress, drawing her knees up to her chin, resting her hands on them after making sure her dress covered her properly, and she patted the space to her left, motioning for me to sit beside her. I could see in her eyes she knew why my uncle wasn’t there. Why he never really was. But her eyes never judged me, and I sat down beside her as the cruel fading light made it harder and harder to see her beautiful face.

  And we talked s
ome more. She was very soft spoken and kind and seemingly not at all aware of her sexual attractiveness. Perhaps she’d heard the things my friends, and everybody, said about her over all the years. Perhaps she’d heard all of those ugly words all of her life, so often and so loudly she’d given in to believing they were true. Yet in that small amount of time we spent together she’d revealed herself to be more charming and articulate than any girl I’d ever had an actual conversation with.

  I took her hand and kissed it on the top after I told her that maybe it would be best if she got home before it got too late. Not because I’m a gentleman, or I ever do that with anyone, but because I was alone with her for the first time in my life, and I wanted to taste her and smell her as deeply as possible. So I’d have something to really regret as the end of summer drew near and the beautiful blinding light existing in my universe blew out like a matchstick flame.

  She pulled me into her, then, tucking her legs under her dress, wrapping her arms around my neck and giving me a warm, comforting hug. I put my arms around her