The Days of Summer

“Just making sure.” He took her hand again. “Okay, here we go. One, two, three …” He pulled her faster. “Four, six, eight, ten.”

“Wait!” She dug in her heels, laughing. “Now who’s cheating?”

“I’m counting, not cheating. Close your eyes.”

She crossed her arms. “You call two, four, six, eight counting? Where did you say you went to school?”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh, that explains it. You didn’t go to school.” With every comeback, she laughed a little more, their banter the spun gold of a seminal moment, words she thought she would still remember in fifty years.

“I’m a senior at Loyola.”

“Is that how they teach you to count after almost four years at a university? You should ask for your tuition back.”

“No, that’s how basketball players count. We count in goals—twos and threes.”

“Basketball. You’re so tall. I should have guessed.”

He laughed. “If you are tall, then you must be a basketball player? That’s discriminatory.”

“Oh. I see now. Loyola? You’re headed for law school.”

“No.”

“Well, we both know you sure aren’t a math major.”

“Let me count for you again. Two kidneys. Two lungs. Two hundred and six bones. I’m premed. We’re here. Now you can open your eyes.”

His face was the first thing she saw. She felt something odd looking at him, the actual weight of air on her exposed skin, hypersensitive, hypersensual.

He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her, but kept his hands there. “This is where I was taking you.”

She had to lean back to look up at him. “Me and my two hundred and six bones?”

“You and your two hundred and six bones.”

Just inches apart, they stood near the edge of the pier, where couples danced to live music. She was acutely aware of his hands on her shoulders; it felt as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to stand together that way. One minute she had been alone, and the next a stranger was quickly changing into something more. Odd, how in a mere heartbeat life could change. She closed her eyes and gently swayed to the music, then remembered this same wonderful feeling from the boat yesterday.

“I’m seventeen,” she blurted out.

He didn’t say anything.

“I thought you should know. I’ll be eighteen soon.” She turned toward him then, and his hands fell away. In the absence of his touch, she felt exposed.

His expression was unreadable. “But you’re seventeen now.”

She nodded, waiting for him to say “Nice knowing you kid.”