30
Wyatt
Most nights, all the kids would meet on the beach as soon as it was dark. Sometimes they went to someone’s house, but in late August time was running out, and no one wanted to waste it being inside. When everyone was seated around the fire, Wyatt saw their faces at every age. They’d been little kids sneaking over to the older kids’ bonfire, they’d been thirteen, fourteen, and he’d been falling in love with Sam all along. He felt like he and Sam had always been on this stretch of sand, and he loved that they’d be there again at the same time next summer.
Wyatt wished he had his guitar, as the sound of everyone talking, mixed with the breeze coming off the ocean and the crackling of the fire, brought a tune into his mind. There was a sound to summer music, he thought. It sounded like warm air.
He wanted to be a person who could just pick up a guitar and play for people without worrying that it was no good. The stakes were pretty low with this crew, and with Sam sitting next to him, her legs draped over his, he felt more confident than he ever had. But his music was such a big, aching dream that he wasn’t ready to risk having an audience of more than one.
“I hate the end of summer,” Sam said to everyone.
“I don’t know how you two are going to survive without each other,” said Travis. Everyone kind of laughed, and Wyatt tried to keep the pain off his face. This was something they were trying not to talk about, how they were going to manage an entire nine months apart. They’d spend next summer at the beach, then he’d head out to LA. Sam would be a senior then and would apply to USC and UCLA. They never really covered more than the broad strokes of how that life was going to fall into place. Instead, they talked about what their view would look like, how strange the beach would look facing the wrong way.
“It’s going to suck,” said Sam, because the time apart was going to suck. He put his arm around her and pulled her in tight. Holding her close, he could feel the ache of not being able to touch her for so long. Everything had a flip side.
Sam unwrapped herself from his arms and stood up. “Anyone want to play Capture the Flag? Just one last time?”