Chapter 10: I Can’t Quit You, Babe

Just like that, it was time to go to Montauk. We would be staying at Beth and Hans’s house for three weeks, as usual. I was both anxious and excited about what the trip would bring. I was taking my guitar, of course, but I was also going to learn to use one of my dad’s old cameras. Melissa had helped me put together a small kit consisting of a Nikon camera body and three lenses. My dad had acquired this SLR system to be his main photographic tool. My mom said it would be a suitable setup to learn about taking pictures with ‘real cameras’, as she put it. She promised to show me how to work them when we got to my aunt’s place.

As we pulled up to the weathered house on the beach, a wave of feelings rushed over me. It was going to be hard seeing the places where Julie and I used to hang out, since our time together in Montauk itself had been good. The bad stuff mostly started after I left.

After we settled in and ate dinner the first night, Lara and I went for a walk on the beach.

“Ah, it’s good to be here,” she said grandly, sweeping an arm toward the low waves. “The water looks great.”

“Yeah, I never look forward to seeing the ocean, but when we get here, it is nice.”

“Mm hmm. So ... What are you going to do about Julie?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking maybe I should just talk to her, so we can, like, put things to rest. But then again, I don’t know. Seeing her might be a bit awkward.”

“You think?” she asked sarcastically.

“Okay, yeah, I know. A lot awkward. But I really should talk to her I think.”

“You’d probably feel better clearing the air,” she agreed.

“I guess. What about you?” I asked.

“And James?”

“Or Julie,” I prodded.

“I don’t know. If things are weird between Julie and you, then I don’t think the three of us should get together.” Lara giggled impulsively.

“Lara! What’s this obsession all about?”

Since our swim a few weeks ago, Lara’s newest tease was suggesting a threesome with Julie. It was still weird, no matter how many times she joked about it. There would be no getting used to intimations of me, my sister, and my ex getting together.

“I just meant hanging out! What did you think I meant?” Lara grinned at me.

“Oh. I thought you meant something else. Forget it.”

“Is that all you ever think about?”

“Excuse me? That’s rather strange, coming from you.”

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“Nothing. That’s all you talk about lately, though.”

“All I talk about? I’ve joked about it maybe four times. Sometimes I just like to see you squirm,” she said with a laugh.

“Well, it’s still weird. I don’t see why you can’t pick something else to joke about.”

Lara didn’t say anything. She just shrugged and smiled.

“You are kidding when you say it, right?” I asked.

“Yes...” Her tone seemed to leave the word dangling in the night, though.

“But?”

“That is kind of a fantasy of mine,” she confessed with reined excitement.

I started protesting. “Lara! I thought you said—”

“I just mean being with both a guy and girl at the same time, not with you! Chill.”

“Oh, all right.” I relaxed again.

“Would you do it?” she asked. “I don’t mean with Julie and me, just with two girls,” she added quickly when she saw my scolding look.

“Well ... I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t, but it seems like a total mess. It’s hard enough figuring out one girl at a time. I don’t know that two would work out at all.”

“Well, our parents did it,” Lara pointed out.

I thought for a bit. “I guess it would have to be something everyone was committed to ... Anyway, are you going to call James then?” I asked, shaking off the graphic images that were filling my head.

“Sure. What about you?”

“I’m going to try to find Heather tomorrow. I don’t know what to do about Julie though.”

“Well, you’ll figure something out,” she said confidently.

“Glad you think so, at least.” I wasn’t so sure.

The next morning I awoke early and gathered up my fishing gear. I hadn’t slept much. I was imagining meeting Heather and wondering what to say to her. Will she even remember me?

When light started seeping through the cracks of the blinds, I decided to go wait on the pier instead of tossing and turning on the bed. As I walked there, I felt quite nervous. The chances of seeing her there were slim, but it wasn’t impossible. It had been a long time since last summer. Who knew what happened to her since then? I’d been through some interesting times, for sure.

No one was on the pier when I arrived, so I walked to the end and went about setting up my rod. As I settled in against the railing to fish, I couldn’t help turning around every few minutes to check the length of planks. I caught several fish right away, which was nice. Maybe my luck would be good this year. Last year, every time I fished with Heather she’d caught five times as many as I had.

A few hours passed. Families and couples came and went. A number of people were now fishing along the railing. Every time I saw a lone person walking down the pier, my heart jumped. But it never was Heather.

Eventually the sun was getting high and hot, so I decided to head back home. Despite catching a great deal of fish, I was disappointed that Heather hadn’t come down. But then again, there were hundreds of fishing places in Montauk, so it was unlikely that I would just run into her again by chance. I knew I had to take matters into my own hands if I wanted to see her.

Still, a part of me had been fantasizing that she’d been coming to the pier every morning since the beginning of summer, just to see if I was back in town. Obviously not.

That afternoon, I extracted one of the bikes from Hans’s garage and pedaled into town. It was a moderate ride to get to the group of shops where Martin’s fish market sat on the waterfront. As I leaned the orange bike up against the weathered green clapboards, I tried to compose myself. Here goes nothing.

I walked in and scanned the store. Two guys were working behind the counter, tending to the customers waiting to get fish. I got in line, anxiously looking around as people came and went. Finally, it was my turn to step up.

“Help you?”

“Yeah, um, I was wondering if Heather was here today?”

“Which Heather?”

“Uh, Heather, uh, Martin.” My voice sounded rather uneasy at saying her name aloud.

“No, they all went on vacation.”

“Oh. Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Um, let me check. Hey, Jimmy, when is Angus coming back?”

“Next week sometime.”

“Next week sometime,” the guy repeated to me, even though Jimmy was only ten feet away.

“All right, thanks.”

“No problem. Next!”

As I took to the bike again, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. What was I going to do for a week?

“Why don’t you call her?” asked Lara, as we sat on the porch late that night.

“Call her?”

“Well, she gave you her number in Idaho. Maybe she went back there.”

“Ohio.”

“Whatever. Do you still have it?”

“Of course I do,” I said, a little too enthusiastically.

Lara laughed. “‘Of course I do!’” she mimicked. “Do you sleep with it under your pillow, too?”

“Fuck off.”

I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of calling. That would look desperate, which I wasn’t ... yet. I’d just have to wait it out.

In the meantime, Lara had convinced me to try to work things out with Julie. I didn’t really want to open up those old feelings again, since I’d somewhat moved on. But Lara was being rather persistent about it. I wondered whether she had my interests in mind, or maybe she wanted to see Julie again herself and was holding back because of my unresolved issues. Either way, she was probably right; speaking with Julie would be good in the long run. If I was going to call her at all, it was best to get it out of the way now, so I didn’t have to deal with it later when Heather was back.

“So I think I’m going to call Julie tomorrow,” I told Lara.

She patted my leg. “Cool. I think that’s great, Matt.”

“We’ll see. Did you talk to James today?” I asked, eager to find out how her summer fling was shaping up.

“Yeah, he’s coming over tomorrow evening to swim and eat dinner.”

“Are you going to pick up right where you left off?”

“Nah, I think we’ll take it slow,” she replied, her tone nonchalant. “We’re here for three weeks. There’s plenty of time to see where things go.” Her eyes implied otherwise, though.

I laughed. “Whatever. I predict three days.”

“Three days what?”

“That you’ll be screwing at the tennis courts in three days.”

She laughed. “Doubt it.”

“Loser does dishes for the rest of the trip,” I challenged.

She pursed her lips at me, impressed. “Wow, you’re confident!”

“Deal?” I asked.

Lara appraised me for a moment. “Fine, deal!”

The next morning I called Julie. I only dialed and quickly hung up once. The second time, I let it ring.

“Hello?” came the response. I was pretty sure the voice was not Julie’s, but I seemed to remember her mother’s being much more craggy and depressing.

“Yeah, hi, is Julie there?”

“Who’s calling?”

“It’s, uh ... Matt.” Well, there’s no going back now.

“Okay, Uh-Matt, let me get her.”

After a long time, Julie’s bubbly voice came through the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

A brief pause. “Who is this?”

I guess her mom hadn’t told her. I could still hang up.

“It’s Matt.”

A longer pause. “Matt?”

“Yeah.” What, you don’t even remember me?

“Wow ... Um, how are you? Where are you?”

“At my aunt’s. Back in town for a few weeks.”

Julie didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, I was just calling to see what’s up,” I said quickly, to fill the gap.

“Not much ... What about you?”

Flowing below this simple and polite conversation was a thunderous torrent of unspoken words. I didn’t feel like beating around the bush with her much longer, so I got to the point.

“What are you doing tonight?” I asked.

“I’m, uh, not sure.”

“Do you want to come by the house? Lara is here, obviously, and James will be hanging out too.”

“I ... I don’t know.”

“I just thought we could talk,” I offered.

Some silence. “All right. What time?”

“Like around seven. I should be done with dinner by then.”

I didn’t really want to invite her to eat. I knew that would be a total bug-in-the-box moment, with my aunt and two mothers watching Julie and me interacting like some social experiment gone wrong.

“All right. I’ll see you then,” she said.

I hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Things were in motion now.

After dinner, James and Lara went out for a swim, asking if I wanted to join them. I didn’t want to be in the water when Julie arrived, so I just sat on the beach and watched them reconnect. I was pretty sure I’d be right about my prediction, seeing the way they were flirting in the sea.

I wondered how they made it so easy. As far as I knew, they hadn’t communicated much since the previous summer, if at all. There had been no effort to keep up with what the other was doing. Yet here they were, making eyes at each other just like the year before ... Just as if Lara had never left. I was starting to ponder what lesson there was in that, when I heard Julie approaching.

“Hi,” she murmured.

I stood up quickly, brushing the sand from my shorts. “Hey.” There was an awkward moment as I wondered what to do. My heart said to give her a hug, but my head said not to. I decided against the embrace. “Want to walk?” I asked, pointing down the beach.

We started off toward the pier, the sun just starting to turn red behind us. She looks good ... Really good. Older, and more ... developed. Despite her meek demeanor, there was something lovely there and it pained me to think of how I’d lost her. I was expecting to be angry when I saw her, but all I felt was sadness and longing. I should’ve made more of an effort to keep her, I thought sorrowfully. All those times I couldn’t even manage a couple of pathetic paragraphs to her? No wonder she started looking elsewhere.

“I guess you didn’t know I was coming this summer?” I asked.

“No, I knew,” she admitted. “I saw your aunt the other day at the store and she told me that you and Lara were coming.”

“But you seemed surprised when I called.”

Julie glanced at me, her eyes flashing with pain. “I ... I didn’t think you’d ever want to talk to me again.”

“Oh. Well, you know, a few months ago I guess I thought the same thing.”

Julie was silent.

“But Lara convinced me to talk to you,” I added.

“How is she doing? I guess she and James are picking up where they left off, huh?”

I followed her gaze to peer back at the two distant figures floating in the sunset-tinged water. It looked more like one figure. Three days, I reminded myself, almost grinning.

“Yeah, just like old times,” I said.

“Just like old times,” she echoed quietly.

We walked for a while in silence. Surprising nostalgia coursed through me as I remembered happier walks with Julie on the beach.

“How are you doing?” she asked at last.

I shrugged. “Better,” I admitted.

The closer we got to the issue we were skirting, the more awkward the silence became.

“I guess you got my letter,” she said, all in a rush.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not with Brian anymore.”

Why is she telling me that?

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I asked.

“I don’t know ... No, I was just ... telling you.”

“All right,” I said simply.

Julie abruptly stopped walking and looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “Aren’t you going to yell at me or something?”

“Yell at you?” I suddenly felt bad. Was that why she thought I called?

“Well, I thought you invited me over so you could tell me what a bitch I am.”

“Julie—”

“No, go ahead, I deserve it...”

“I’m not—”

“ ... because I really liked you, Matt, and then I went and did something really stupid...”

“Julie, can—”

“ ... so if you want to yell at me, just do it now and—”

“JULIE!”

She finally stopped talking.

“Sorry, but that’s all the yelling you’re going to hear from me, all right?” I said quietly.

All I wanted to do was hug her. But she cheated on you, a voice in my head reminded me, again preventing the embrace.

“All right. I guess you want to talk about what happened,” I said quietly. “Fine. Just tell me one thing then. Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, staring down at the sand. “I really missed you.”

“You missed me, so you went and cheated on me? That’s a fucked up way of showing it!”

“I know!” she whimpered, her eyes full of shame. “It was a mistake, Matt! I was drunk, and it was so long since you left, and it—” She stopped, shaking her head and picking at a chip of driftwood with her shoe.

“And Brian was available?”

“He was wanting to go out with me for so long, but I always told him I was with you. But that night I couldn’t keep him away. He kept giving me more beers, and then shots.”

“How old is he?” I asked.

“Like eighteen. He just graduated in June.”

I took a deep breath. What is it with her and older guys?

“So that’s why you’re not with him?” I asked.

“No! He’s still around, but I just don’t want to be with him.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t be with him anymore.” She seemed to be evading the question, but I didn’t press her.

“What pisses me off the most is that you didn’t tell me right away,” I said. There was no heat in my voice, though, as I looked at her big, shiny, brown eyes.

“I know, I should’ve told you right after it happened, but I was scared,” she said. “Brian just assumed we were together after that night, and I couldn’t tell you it was a one-time mistake if I was still with him. But ... then I was stuck, and he was really possessive and everything, and I just kept thinking somehow things would—would work out.”

“Work out? What does that even mean, after you cheat?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I was so stupid.”

“Well, I’ve kind of moved on, so...” I said stoically.

“Oh.” Julie was quiet. “So you have a girlfriend back home, then?”

I hesitated for a moment. “No, it’s just that I’ve moved on about what happened.”

“Why did you call me then?”

“I don’t know. I just thought we could, you know, tie up the loose ends.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

I wasn’t too sure myself. I was making this up as I went along. In the abstract, calling Julie had seemed like the reasonable thing to do. In practice, I had no idea why, though. The time for figuring that out was past. I had to say something, since I had invited her out.

“I didn’t want to leave things hanging between us,” I said slowly. “Despite what happened, last summer was something I’ll never forget. Yeah, I wasn’t real happy when I found out about Brian, but it’s in the past now. So I can either hate you, or ... I can forgive you and move on.”

I wasn’t sure where that had come from, but it sounded good.

Julie was looking at me with wet eyes. “S-So you don’t hate me?” she asked softly.

“No, Julie, I don’t hate you.”

“Can we still be friends?”

I considered her request, trying to filter through the presentation of contrasting images and voices in my brain. Finally I squashed the warning sounds in my head away for good.

“Yeah, of course we can.”

She stood there like she was balancing on the edge of a cliff. We looked in each other’s eyes for a long time. Then my heart won and I took her into an embrace. She hugged me like I’d saved her life.

For a long time, we held each other, swaying gently to the sound of the surf. I felt oddly conflicted. It was unexpectedly nice to hold Julie in my arms, considering that I never thought it would happen again. On the other hand, the whole talk we’d just had seemed surreal. There was no mention of her relationship with Lara, nor any talk of John, although admittedly that was not directly part of our problem.

Yet as I held her, I remembered those great summer evenings with her the previous year. The time when we went to Becky’s house and first fooled around seriously. And the second time at Becky’s, that night when we first had sex, sort of, and Becky’s family had unexpectedly come home early from vacation while we were nude on their couch. A crazy evening!

Then I remembered that Becky had known we were there that night. Butterflies fluttered inside my middle and then landed again. I’d never told Julie about that. I wondered if she’d ever found out about it from Becky. Then there was Becky kissing me that last day ... I realized I had secrets of my own.

“I really am sorry, Matt,” Julie whispered. “I don’t know how you can even forgive me.”

“Well I’ve had a chance to work things out over the last half year. It was a difficult springtime,” I admitted almost absently.

“I can imagine.”

She had no idea, but I still said, “I’m sure you can.”

She pulled away from me. “Do you want to go to the pier?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Sure.”

We walked the last part of the beach in silence and then strolled down the weathered boards to the gazebo that sat halfway to the end. The sun was a brilliant red, bathing Julie in a warm light. She gave me a small smile as we sat on the bench. I wished I had my camera to capture her face in this light.

Could things go back to how they used to be between Julie and me, after all that had happened? It didn’t seem reasonable. Yet seeing her in person reminded me how much I liked being with her the year before. The cheating caricature I’d built up of her in the months following her letter didn’t at all resemble the soft, beautiful girl I was sitting next to. It was almost incongruous.

But what of Heather? I came to Montauk to see her. After all, it had been her note that had pulled me out of my long funk, however indirectly. I had hopes of hanging out with her. If I got back together with Julie, it would be hard to find the time to see Heather, let alone explain to Julie why I was hanging out with another girl.

I looked at Julie in the fading light. She had no makeup on and her hair was loosely done up into a ponytail, a few loose strands framing her face so wonderfully. She was so pretty. Gorgeous, really. She smiled at me when she noticed me watching her. Her face lit up and I decided I couldn’t be angry with her.

We watched the sun penetrate the sea.

Lara wasn’t home when I returned that night. I was examining the camera I’d brought, figuring out what the different parts seemed to do. Melissa was going to show me some basics the next morning, but I figured I’d take a gentle head start and play with the controls.

The screen door clattered open and Lara bounced in, smiling ear to ear. I gaped at her for a second.

“Oh my god, did you—?” I asked, my brow furrowed.

She just grinned at me and interrupted with, “No, but it’s good to be back in Montauk!”

I laughed. “Damn, I thought I was off of dish duty for the trip.”

“Let’s go swim!”

“Right now? It’s dark!”

“So what? The waves are low, the moon is out, the water’s warm!” She sounded like she was in an old movie. I half expected her to twirl around and float out the door.

“All right then, let’s go.”

I packed the camera up while Lara checked in with our parents. Soon we were strolling down the sand.

“So what happened with Julie?” she asked me, before I could ask about her night.

“It went unexpectedly well,” I admitted.

I briefly related the initial encounter as we stripped to our bathing suits. “Then we went to the pier and watched the sunset,” I continued. “It was good to see her. I felt completely different than I thought I would.”

“Wow. So are you saying you’re getting back together?” Lara asked.

“No, but by the time the sun disappeared, it started feeling like last summer just a little bit,” I admitted.

We waded in a bit and sat in the shallows. Small moon-glinted waves swirled the sand back and forth around us. The air was just right for a night swim.

“I know. Julie puts a spell on people,” Lara said. “Every time I see her after coming back, I can’t help but love her. How did you leave things?”

“I just walked her home and then she was like, ‘See you around.’ So I guess it’s up to me to call her if I want.”

“Well, that’s good, Matt! I’m glad it went well for you. Are you going to call her?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about Heather?” she asked.

I smiled. Lara had read my thoughts as usual.

“Yeah, well, there’s that too. But then again, what about Heather? If anything, I should learn something from last year, you know? When I was waiting around for Julie, I didn’t bother with Carmen, or anyone else. So now what, am I going to wait around for Heather and not be with Julie? I mean, Heather could hate me, or she could have a boyfriend, or any number of things.”

“Well, you sure have a different attitude about it, all of a sudden.”

“What do you mean?”

“The last few weeks it’s been all ‘When we get to Montauk, Heather this, Heather that,’ and now you see Julie for an hour, and it’s all changed.”

“No, not really,” I said, though I wasn’t very committed to my words.