“They are,” Sam said. “We talked about how that song keeps the same tempo, right?” He tapped one finger against his knee, counting out the beat of the song. “The words slow down, but that beat stays the same. It’s tricky, but you did great.”
“Is that who you’re gonna ask to marry?” Marcus asked, glancing over at me. I hadn’t even clocked that the kid was aware I was standing there, and I was startled to be drawn into the conversation. “We can do the dance again. This time I’ll do the count right, promise.”
Sam turned his head to look at me. “Someday,” he said, his gaze still on mine. Then he was focused on the kid again, holding out his fist for a bump. “I really appreciate you coming out, Marcus. You excited about fourth grade?”
They talked a little more, before eventually the kid ran off to go back to playing, and Sam stood up. He started to clean up some of the leftover food and trash from the picnic table, and I joined in to help. He’d even thought to bring little lime green plates and napkins for the kids’ snacks, a detail I would’ve one hundred percent forgotten.
“What did you mean by that?” I asked. “Someday?”
He didn’t even look up, he was so casual about it. Just kept on picking up flattened Capri Sun pouches. “I meansomeday,” hesaid. “Sure, I could see proposing to you. Not like this—something tells me you wouldn’t appreciate the public spectacle. Somewhere quiet, just us. I’d go down on one knee and tell you how I feel about you. I know that’s a ways off, but it’s nice to think about.”
I felt like I was missing about a thousand pieces to this conversation to make it make sense. “I don’t even know if I want to get married. Ever.”
Sam shrugged, like that was no big deal, either. “Then we don’t.”
Behind me was a cacophony of children’s voices, raised in high-pitched squeals and screams of excitement, the occasional cry of a toddler who must’ve fallen down, the yell of a parent telling a kid tostop putting mulch in your mouthorlet go of your brother. “I don’t know if I want kids, either.”
He did look up then, and I tried to read anything behind his expression when he said, “That’s okay. I could go either way myself.”
That couldn’t be how he really felt. He taught elementary school, for fuck’s sake. He would obviously make a great father. He came from a big family. I made those points to him, but his expression didn’t change.
“Look, I like kids,” he said. “Obviously, or I wouldn’t do what I do. But like you said, I’m around kids all day. I already have four nieces and nephews and am the designated uncle to buy drum sets for each, which my siblings will be thrilled by. I’m open to talking through all this stuff—somedaydoesn’t have to meantoday.”
I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said.
That seemed to be Sam’s first sign that I was serious, that we weren’t just idly talking about the future. I didn’t even know how to do that. Any projection into even months from now sent me spinning into doubt about whether my dissertation would get done on time, whether it would be enough to earn my degree, whether Sam and I would be able to last through a separation we both knew was coming.
He dropped the crumpled napkins he’d been holding, wiping his hands on his jeans before leading me away from the pavilion, under a couple of shady oak trees where we could have more privacy.
“You shouldn’t leave all your equipment there,” I said. “It looks expensive.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sam said.
“There’s a kid standing close to it with a ‘Baby Shark’ gleam in his eye. I’m telling you.”
“Phoebe,” Sam said, a little impatient. “It doesn’t matter. Talk to me. Tell me why you’re freaking out.”
“This whole thing feels like it’s moving so fast,” I said. “What are we even doing? It was supposed to be a summer fling, and now we’re talking about marriage and kids? It’s too much, Sam. I can’t do it.”
He stepped back, running his hand through his hair. The sweat had dried by now, and his agitated hands made the hair stick up around his ears. I could see from his face that the wordssummer flinghad hurt him, and a part of me wanted to take them back. He’d told me multiple times that this wasn’t casual for him, and the truth was that it hadn’t felt casual to me, either, since after that first night. Since maybe before then, I didn’t know.
But I also felt stupid and naive for thinking this could ever work out long-term. His life was here, and mine wasn’t. He was made for a picket fence future—hedeservedthat future—and I didn’t know where I fit into that at all.
“The kid asked me a question,” Sam said. “And I answered it. What was I supposed to say—nah, kid, that’s just my neighbor, we fuck sometimes?”
I flinched at his language, although I knew I’d asked for it, by rewinding us back to that first morning after, rewriting the rules of what we called whatever this was between us. “At least it would’ve been more honest,” I muttered.
For a moment Sam just stared at me, like he didn’t know me at all. I barely recognized myself, the things I was saying. I wanted to stuff them all back in my mouth and start over. I would’ve begged off, said I had a headache or wasn’t feeling well, that I needed to focus on my dissertation for a bit and would talk to him later. This may have ended—it seemed inevitable to me, suddenly, that it was all going to end, any hope otherwise no more real than the fantasies I’d had as a kid about living in an apartment with a view of the skyline. But it didn’t need to end like this.
“Honest,” he said, almost more to himself than to me. “You’re right, I haven’t been honest. I’m falling for you, Phoebe. I’ve wanted to tell you that a million times. But I always worried I’d scare you off—that we’d end up having a conversation a lot like this one, actually—and so I held back. I know you may not feel the same way yet. I know the idea of being in a relationship terrifies you. I know it’s complicated, with you only being here for the summer. But my feelings for you—that part’s not complicated.”
The shrieks of the playing children around us were anincongruous backdrop to this conversation. I wished we could somehow be transported back to his house, or mine. I wished I could be in a headspace where his wordsdidn’tfreak me out, because he was right, they terrified me.Fallingfor me? Even the word choice implied pain, loss of control. He couldn’t be falling for me, any more than I could be for him.
“It’s been an intense few weeks,” I said. “Hell, an intenseday. It’s been a concentrated incubation period, like when people meet at summer camp, or like Keanu and Sandra inSpeed. But we barely know each other, when you get down to it.”
“So tell me,” Sam said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me something big about you that I don’t already know, something that would change my mind about the way I feel.”
“You don’t even know my middle name.”