“My parents have condoms. I’ll get one.”
“Get several,” she replied with a mischievous smile.
“I have a confession,” Bryce said quietly. “I’ve never actually done it. I don’t know why I said I had. I wanted to look cool.”
“Then we get to look cool together tomorrow. Thank you for telling me.”
“I never want to lie to you.”
They kissed, boarded their boats, and headed home to prepare for tomorrow.
In the morning, Bryce’s father needed help with the water filtration system, which put him thirty minutes behind his departure plan.
When he set sail, the winds were light, making his speed almost negligible. Even the river’s current, which tends to be minimal, felt like it was pushing him away from his goal. But nothing Dad or Nature could throw at him would stop him.
As he approached the island, he saw Summer’s outboard. From the woods, he could see light gray smoke. Summer had no doubt started the fire for warmth before the morning sun heated the area.
He approached the campsite and saw Summer stoking the fire.
“Hey, babe. I’m here.”
Summer didn’t turn around.
“I got the condoms.”
Summer turned around, but it wasn’t Summer but an older woman in her mid-forties who looked a hell of lot like her.
“Did you, Bryce? Did you? Did you bring the condoms to fuck my daughter with?”
Bryce froze in his tracks.
Not Summer. It was Summer’s mother.
She had Summer’s art pad in her hand and was pulling out page after page of nude drawings of Bryce and throwing them in the fire.
“You’re more handsome than how she drew you,” the woman continued.
“Where’s Summer?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone back to school. Gone from this place, gone from you.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because she’s pure. She is not about to let you defile her.”
“You can’t burn her drawings. That’s her art.”
“It’s filth. You put her up to this, and you brought her down to your filthy level.”
“She’s an adult; she can do whatever she wants. You can’t keep her away.”
“When she can pay for college or her rent, she can lay with whomever she wants. But until she graduates and is married, we control her.”
The wind carried a partially burned drawing of Bryce into the air. He grabbed it and quickly snuffed out the burning edges.
“Why couldn’t you find some whore to fool around with in Alexandria Bay. Why my daughter?”
“We found each other.”
“And now you’ve lost each other.”
“I love her,” Bryce said. Even as the words left his mouth, they rang true. He did love her. He knew it with every fiber of his being.
“So do I, which is why you won’t see her again.”
Bryce was unsure what to do. Their island had been invaded. Their kingdom had fallen.
He returned to the boat with the semi-burned drawing and pushed off. He could see Summer’s mother come out of the woods, giving him a cold, hard look.
The winds picked up, and his sails caught the air. Full of sadness and anger, he let the sails billow and took off to nowhere. All he wanted at the moment was to feel the wind on his face. Summer was gone and summer was over.
_____________________________________________________________
BRYCE
It had been three months since I lost Summer. Two weeks later, our family left the river, and school resumed. I had space in my schedule and decided to add an art course: life drawing. The professor was a hippie who slept with Jimmy Hendrix at Woodstock. She was free to be you and me and an excellent artist. The class featured nude models as we tried to capture the human body as best we could.
I was late to class, and when I walked in, the model was undressed on the small stage in the center of the room, reclined on some chairs. She was tall, lean, and blond, and my heart raced. I rushed to my seat and saw it was not Summer, and laughed at myself.
“Nothing funny about the human body,” Roberta said.
“No, my apologies, I just was remembering something,”
I shut up and went to work. My freehand drawing had been adequate to this point. Roberta said I was doing fine for a new artist, but I knew my proportions were off. Still, I tried. I wanted to make this work.
Roberta circled the room, looking at each student’s work, sometimes whispering a suggestion. I was lost in the attractive blonde model’s body. For whatever reason, I found her curves easy to recreate on paper. Shadows made sense to me. I captured her eyes, and the rest followed.
Roberta stood behind me, looking at me and then the model.
“Wonderful work, Bryce. If I weren’t watching you do this, I would swear it was someone else’s work.”
“She’s a great model,” I replied.
“She is. But you haven’t drawn her.”
“Of course I have,” I replied, then stopped to compare my work to the blond model.
My drawing was of Summer. From her face to her toes, it was all Summer and none of the model. I even drew her inverted nipples.
“Who is she?” Roberta asked.
“No one,” I replied
“She’s someone. That woman is someone whose soul you have seen. She is your muse.”
“She’s gone. She’s not in my life.”
“Her choice?”
“No.”
“Your choice?”
“No.”
Roberta stopped asking questions, sensing I was getting uncomfortable.
She continued around the room; I just looked at my drawing for the rest of the class period.
The class ended, the model dressed, and the students filed out. Roberta stopped me as I was leaving.
“I don’t expect to see you at our next class.”
“I’ll be here on time. I was late today because of a thing with the registrar.”
She opened my portfolio, leafing through my numerous attempts at life drawing. Then, she pulled today’s portrait to the side.
“Find her. Find out why she brings out this purity of the soul in you.”
I smiled, put the drawing into my portfolio, and left. That night, I loaded everything I owned in my yellow Chevy van and drove west, unsure of my goal but determined never to turn around.
In Saint Louis, I used a payphone to call my parents.
“I’ve left school, heading west,” I told my dad.
“Is it a girl?”
I could never lie to him, so I admitted I was heading to Utah to find the one who got away.
He didn’t ask questions or offer judgment. He told me to be safe and then sent me a thousand dollars to the Western Union office in Kansas City.
Sleeping in the van and driving, I made it to Provo in three days. Driving onto the campus at the base of the Wasatch Mountain foothills, I parked at the football stadium. I desperately needed a shower and sleep.
The BYU campus was awash in blond, white women; almost everyone looked like my Summer. I stopped random people asking if they knew Summer Smith. Nearly everyone I spoke to knew Summer Smith; in fact, they knew several Summer Smiths. I tracked one to the Desert Tower dorm, but it was the wrong Summer. Another Summer was rumored to live in Chipman Hall, and two more were in Taylor Hall. I found six Summer Smiths, but none were my Summer.
After three days of walking around campus asking for Summer Smith and living out of my yellow van, I got the attention of the campus police, who told me to leave or get arrested for trespassing.
As I drove through campus one more time, I looked left and right on the chance I might spot her, then looked up just in time to hit the brakes hard at an intersection where dozens of students were crossing.
_____________________________________________________________
SUMMER
“That jerk almost hit us,” the guy beside me said.
I looked left, and a yellow van with New York plates was halfway through the intersection. I walked a few steps, then stopped.
The intersection cleared, leaving just me standing in front of the yellow van at the red light. My heart was racing, and then the door opened.
Bryce wore a Boston T-shirt, jeans, and Nike running shoes. I simply stared because there was no way on Earth it could be him. I must have fallen, I thought. I’m unconscious in the crosswalk. Did a car hit me? But none of that was the case. I was looking at the man I loved. The man I never got to tell that I loved him, standing before me like a soldier returned home from a prison camp.
He walked up to me with a grin.
report “Do you know how many Summer Smiths attend this school?”
“Thirty-four,” I replied.
“The local post office assigned us numbers because there were so many Summer Smiths. This year, I’m number 15.”
There were no words needed. The surreal moment became real as we moved toward each other and embraced in a passionate kiss. For most of the people, it probably looked like I was having a breakdown and started making out with a homeless man in a van.
I held him close, then pulled back.
“You smell horrible.”
I don’t think he had showered in days. I could not take him to my all-girls dorm for a shower, so we drove to a motel.
I sat on the bed, and he took off his shirt and pants. Standing before me, there was a moment of awkwardness, like we had never seen each other nude before. It felt like we had gone backward several steps. It was funny to see him shy, so I stood, took off my shirt and bra, then dropped my skirt. He smiled at me, and together, we took off our underwear until we stood nude before each other again.
He was beautiful to look at, though his summer tan had faded slightly. Having drawn him more than fifty poses, I recognized each muscle in his body like old friends. I walked up to him, gently ran my hand along his forearm, and guided him to the shower.
As the water cascaded over us, I proceeded to wash his body as if I were preparing him for a ritual. His cock was firm and erect, allowing me to run the soap up and down his length and then reach below and gently lather his balls. I knew to back off slightly as I could see he was getting ready to finish. We did not have a lot of experience with each other’s bodies, but from the few physical encounters we had, I memorized every flinch and moan.
I lifted his arms, soaping under his arms and his torso, gently rubbing my fingers on his nipples.
“Let me get your back,” I whispered.
He turned around, putting his hands on the wall like he was being frisked. I soaped his back, his lower torso then the white cheeks of his butt. Taking a hand towel, I ran it between his ass cheeks, cleaning his behind. I was surprised at how much he reacted to my touch. I was nowhere near his penis, but each time I would run the cloth across his sphincter, he shuddered. I soaped my fingers and let them slide from the area below his balls across his tight hole, and he let out a low guttural moan. A second pass, and I let my finger circle his hole, causing his knees to buckle.
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