Okay idea for Sammy: there’s a girl that he works with at the summer camp and there’s always been like flirty vibes every summer but then they run into each other over the holidays and confess to eachother!! Could be super fun if you did like little snippets from them going to camp together each year!
summer after summer | s. clauster
synopsis: a holiday story about the crush that never quite expired, featuring bench tacos, and the mortifying ordeal of being known.
Ah, right. The first summer.
You are both nineteen and already bone-tired before the first sunburned child even tumbles out of a minivan. You find him perched on the splintered edge of the main dock, sneakers discarded like forgotten promises. He’s submerging his feet in the algae-kissed lake water with a reverence usually reserved for holy water, or a really good slice of pizza.
You approach. He glances up, squinting not with recognition, but with the raw, unprocessed dismay of a man interrupted during a spiritual foot-cooling ceremony.
“Uh— hey.” It escapes him softly, a sound meant only for the frogs. Then his brain catches up, and he deploys a louder, more socially acceptable version. “You’re… new, right?”
You drop onto the warm wood beside him, close enough that your shadows touch. “You said that yesterday too.”
His mouth performs a fascinating, aborted twitch—a smile that tried to launch and was hastily recalled. He directs his confession to the murky water. “Right. Sorry. My facial recognition software malfunctions in direct sunlight.”
But then you laugh. Not a polite chuckle, but a real one. And his head snaps back to you. That’s when it happens: the Look. You’ve seen it in his movies—that fleeting, hyper-detailed scan, like he’s a camera capturing a reference shot for later. He’s noting the flyaway hair stuck to your temple, the chip in your nail polish, the exact curve of your smirk. He completes the scan, realizes his internal hard drive just whirred audibly, and looks away a fraction of a second too late.
—
By week two, you’re sentenced to a shared canoe under a sun that feels personally vindictive. The air is 90% humidity and child-screams. You are a damp, miserable ecosystem.
You drag your paddle through the water and send a casual arc of lake directly into his shirt.
He jolts as if electrocuted. “What the hell was that for?” he sputters, droplets clinging to his eyelashes.
“You looked like you were falling asleep.” You shrug.
“I was not—” He pauses. He absolutely was. The 5:45 AM wake-up calls are his annual kryptonite. “Okay, fine. But that was a war crime.”
You do it again.
He attempts retaliation with the grace of a wounded moose, missing you entirely and rocking the canoe so violently a nine-year-old named Tyler shrieks that we’re all gonna die. He mutters something under his breath—a beautiful, creative string of grievances—but the corner of his mouth is doing that thing again. The thing that betrays him. It’s a tiny, reluctant uprising against his own attempted scowl.
—
By the time August limps in, smelling of bug spray and nostalgia, the entire camp operates on a single assumption. The kitchen staff slips you extra cookies. The littlest campers ask with terrifying bluntness.
The answer, you tell them all, is no. Obviously not.
You are not dating.
You are simply a study in strategic lingering. He is the guy who always finds a reason to be near the water fountain when you’re there, who listens to your stories with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb. And you? You are the curator of his almost-smiles. You’ve developed a specialty in crafting jokes designed solely to witness that specific, delightful conflict: the press of his teeth against the inside of his cheek, the way his lips tense into a tight, quivering line, fighting a losing battle against a full-blown grin.
It’s not a romance. It’s a meticulously quiet, sun-bleached, mosquito-bitten stalemate. And it’s the entire point of the summer.
—
The second time around, the hair is the first thing. It’s longer—not dramatically, but with a certain intent. Just enough that when the humidity climbs, dark curls escape and cling to his forehead. You notice. He notices you noticing, and a small, private calculation happens behind his eyes.
It’s the second day. You’re in the same cabin again, a familiar wooden box that smells of pine resin and dust. You’re unpacking a box of pipe cleaners when the door clicks shut. He’s balancing a case of sports drink packets, using his foot.
“Missed this,” he says, voice low, almost to himself.
You pause, a neon orange pipe cleaner in your hand. “Camp?”
He’s already shaking his head, setting the box down with a thud. “No. You.”
The words hang in the air, simple and unadorned. They seem to register with him a full second later. His eyes snap to yours, wide with the kind of pure, unscripted alarm you’ve seen on screen—the Oh-God-I’ve-just-said-the-quiet-part-at-full-volume panic. He looks like he wants to reach out and physically snatch the sentence back.
“I mean— like— the vibe,” he stammers, his hands conducting an invisible, frantic orchestra. “Not you specifically. I mean, you’re— you’re cool. I just… phrasing. My phrasing is a disaster zone.”
You bite the inside of your lip, but the smile escapes anyway. He sees it. A visible, pinkish flush climbs from his neck to his ears. The evidence is now in the record.
That summer, it crystallised into a Thing. Not a discussed thing. An orbital thing…. Kind of..??
You become the curator of small, pointless aggressions. You flick lake water at the back of his neck. He swipes your granola bar from the staff table and consumes it with theatrical innocence. When he dozes off during mandatory rest hour, slumped in a tiny chair, you press a single finger into his side just to watch him jolt awake, disoriented and muttering.
Once, walking a trail, he pitches a pinecone. It hits your shoulder with a soft thwump. He looks immediately, genuinely horrified, as if he’d lobbed a grenade. “Sorry. I’m sorry. That was aggressive. Are you okay? That was stupid.”
But the moment that fossilizes in your memory happens in the blue hour.
You’re walking back from the evening campfire, the path dark and soft underfoot. The sky is the color of a fading bruise, humming with crickets. You say something entirely forgettable—a joke about the sing-along, something silly. He doesn’t just huff or smirk. He laughs. A real, warm, surprised laugh that seems to come from a different place than his usual cautious amusement.
Then he does two things at once: he pushes the fallen curl back from his forehead, and he looks at you. It’s not the assessing glance from the dock. More like.. confused. It’s the look of someone who has just discovered a new, pleasant, and mildly inconvenient room in a house they’ve lived in for years. He holds the look for a breath too long, as if waiting for the feeling to translate itself into words.
But It doesn’t. And he never finds the words.
That summer ends. On the last morning, he hugs you. It’s brisk, professional-adjacent. His hand lands on your upper back, then hovers uncertainly, as if afraid to commit to a full pat. He smells like cheap sunscreen and deep, clean lake water. “See you next summer,’’ He mutters, reluctantly pulling away from you. And your heart does gymnastics for some reasons you just can’t explain why. Why?
You think about that for the entire two-hour drive home.
—
The summer between nineteen and twenty-one, you don't come back.
Life gets loud in all the wrong ways. The kind of loud that isn't laughter or campfire songs, but the hum of a photocopier during a thankless internship, the relentless ping of a low-balance alert on your bank app, the quiet, heavy silence in a car driving to yet another medical appointment for a relative you love. It's real, boring, necessary adult stuff that leaves no room for lake water or the particular scent of bug spray on sun-warmed skin.
You think about camp, of course. In stolen moments. The smell of rain on a warped cabin floorboard. Sammy’s signature, dramatic sigh when he was exhausted—a full-body performance. The way he’d wrestle with the hopelessly crooked flagpole every morning with a solemn focus usually reserved for defusing bombs, only to make it lean at a more precarious angle.
You don't expect him to care that you were gone. Your absence was just a quiet vacancy in a place full of them.
But when you return at twenty-two, duffel bag digging into your shoulder, he notices you within seconds. It’s as if his internal radar, tuned to a frequency you didn’t know you broadcast on, just pinged violently.
He’s by the equipment shed, looking… different. Older in a way that has nothing to do with birthdays. His hair is longer, curling defiantly at his nape. His shoulders have filled out, but so has the quiet in his eyes—a new, solid weight resting behind them. He’s chewing a piece of gum with the aggressive focus of a man solving a complex equation.
Then he sees you.
He freezes mid-chew.
“You’re—” He stops, swallows the word and the gum together. “You’re here.”
You offer a soft laugh, a peace offering. “I’m back, yeah.”
He walks toward you with a gait that’s both hesitant and hurried, like someone approaching a familiar house they’re no longer sure they have the key for. His hands lift slightly at his sides, aborted gestures of a hug he doesn’t permit himself to complete. He lets them fall.
“I thought—” He pushes the curls from his forehead, a gesture you remember. “I thought you’d graduated from this place. For good.”
“It wasn’t that,” you say. “Life just… happened.”
He nods. Not dramatic, not sad. Just a quiet, deep understanding. Of course he gets it. He’s always been better at reading the subtext than the script.
You fall into the old rhythms with an ease that is almost disorienting. He still complains about the feel of sunscreen. You still liberate his bag of pretzels when he’s not looking. He still fights that tiny, betraying grin when you tease him about his inability to start a fire.
But there’s a new calibration to him. A slight hesitation. A distance he’ll bridge with a shared look or a quiet joke, only to remember some unspoken rule and pull carefully back.
You notice.
On the third day, during the chaotic tie-dye session, you escape to the lake’s edge. He finds you there. He sits, knees pulled up, and begins methodically shredding a blade of grass. The silence isn’t empty; it’s full of something he’s trying to shape into words.
“So… I should probably mention,” he starts, not looking at you. “I’m— uh. Seeing someone.”
You keep your face a placid lake. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” A throat clear. A tactical maneuver. “Her name’s Mae-bell.”
The name hangs in the humid air. Mae-bell. It doesn’t match his vibe at all. It sounds like someone who owns linen sets and knows the difference between all the oat milks. You almost smile.
He talks faster, a preemptive strike against awkwardness. “She’s cool. Lives in the city. We met through a friend.” A pause. A correction. “I mean— it’s not super serious or anything.”
He delivers this last part to a duck paddling near the shore, as if seeking its aquatic approval.
You nod. “That’s great, Sammy.”
Your voice is steady. You’re impressed with it.
His eyes flick to yours, just for a second—a quick, searching scan. When he finds no obvious landmark, no map to your reaction, he returns to demolishing the grass.
“I wasn’t sure if I should even bring it up,” he admits, voice low. “Just… felt weird not saying anything.”
“It’s okay,” you say. The script writes itself. “We’re friends.”
He huffs a sound; not a laugh, but the ghost of one, acknowledging an inside joke the universe is playing on him. “Right,” he says, quieter than the lapping water. “Friends.”
The air between you crackles, but not with romance. It’s the static of unspoken history. A tiny, specific ache, like a bone that remembers an old break when the weather changes. You both feel it. You both decide, silently, to pretend you don’t. The language for it hasn't been invented yet.
He nudges your sneaker with his. A gentle, casual tap.
“I’m glad you’re here, though,” he says. The words escape, raw and unedited.
You bump his knee back. A silent echo. “Yeah. Me too.”
He smiles then—that soft, full Sammy smile he can never quite hide before he turns it down toward the earth.
And that’s how the summer unfolds. A new shape. A different orbit.
But it isn't a bad thing.
If anything, it’s necessary. It’s the careful laying of track. It’s the deep breath before the plunge.
—
The thing about the holidays is they have a way of magnifying everything. The cheer feels brighter, the quiet feels heavier. This year, the thought of staying in your hometown—with its familiar streets and even more familiar, well-meaning questions—felt like wearing a sweater two sizes too small. You needed space to breathe air that wasn't saturated with memory.
So you mentioned it offhand to Liz. A casual, “Might skip town this year, just need a change of scenery.”
It was a mistake of catastrophic generosity.
“Oh, perfect!” she’d exclaimed on the November call, her voice tinny through the speaker. “You’re coming here! Mom would kill me if I let you spend it alone. Seriously, it’s decided.”
You’d tried the polite refusals, the “I couldn’t possibly impose,” but Liz had the diplomatic tenacity of a wartime negotiator. She’d even looped in her mom, Jeanne, who got on the line, her voice warm and firm. “It’s not an imposition, it’s a delight. We’d love to have you. Liz’s room has plenty of space.”
And that’s how you find yourself here, on a frost-tinged afternoon, standing on the doorstep of the Wang-Wasserman household. Your duffel bag is at your feet, a little heavier with the weight of your own uncertainty. The house is beautiful—strings of tasteful, warm white lights framing the doorway, a wreath of eucalyptus and dried citrus on the door that smells faintly of pine and clementine when you lean in to ring the bell.
You press the button. Somewhere inside, a melodic chime echoes.
For a moment, there’s only the crisp silence of suburban winter, the distant laughter of kids playing somewhere down the street. Then, the sound of quick, solid footsteps approaching from within—not the frantic run of a dog, but the purposeful stride of someone coming to greet a guest.
The deadbolt clicks. The door swings inward, and a wave of warmth, rich with the scents of roasting spices and something like fresh ginger, washes over you. Your best friend, Liz, appears with a wide smile on her face. “Finally!”
“Hey, Liz!” You greet her with a hug.
“Wow, your house is… festive.” You say as your eyes survey around the place, it’s the whitest Christmas you’ve ever laid eyes on. Literally.
“That’s my mom’s ‘Winter Zen’ phase,” Liz grins, pulling you inside and kicking the door shut with her heel. “Last year it was ‘Maximalist Victorian Nutcracker.’ This is… calmer. I think she read an article.”
You step in, letting your bag slump by the console table. She’s not wrong. The entryway is a study in creams and ivories. A minimalist garland of frosted eucalyptus trails down the staircase. The tree in the living room, visible through an archway, is flocked with what looks like actual snow and decorated solely with white glass ornaments and strings of clear lights. It’s stunning, and slightly intimidating, like a museum exhibit titled Domestic Serenity, Volume XII.
“It’s beautiful,” you say, and mean it, even as you feel acutely aware that your socks might be leaving footprints on the pristine rug.
“It’s a no-spill zone,” Liz whispers conspiratorially, following your gaze. “But don’t worry, we can defile the kitchen. Mom’s in a gingerbread architecture mode. You’ll see.”
Just then, Jeanne Wang-Wasserman emerges from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a flour-dusted apron that is the single most colorful object in the house. Her face lights up.
“You made it!” she says, opening her arms for a hug that smells of cinnamon and genuine welcome. “Liz, take her bag upstairs. Get settled. Then come down—I need a second opinion on my structural integrity.”
“Structural—?” you begin to ask.
“The gingerbread. The second-story addition might be a bridge too far,” Jeanne says, her eyes sparkling with the thrill of culinary engineering. “Welcome home for the holidays, sweetheart. Make yourself at home. Just… maybe take your shoes off first.”
—
After settling, you and Liz still had time to catch up before her mom’s tradition of greeting the neighboring family just across the street. She mentioned something about women becoming crazy when they get old, and you can’t wait to see what kind of bitch you turn into when you’re older. Kidding.
“So, about that boy from camp, any news?” Liz asks, flopping on her bed.
You sigh, and you tell her everything that happened.
—
Later, Jeanne orchestrated a festive diplomatic mission: greeting the neighbors. You all bundled up and emerged from the white-on-white serenity into the crisp evening, a little platoon of holiday cheer led by Jeanne’s effortless grace.
You fell into step beside Liz, hands buried deep in your coat pockets. “Merry Christmas!” Jeanne called out, her voice carrying across two neatly manicured lawns.
What you did not expect, standing on the neighbor’s porch, was a familiar figure drowning in an oversized black coat, a collar so sharp it could puncture the festive mood, and the solemn expression of a junior undertaker. It was Sammy. Dressed, for reasons known only to him and perhaps a stylist with a very specific vision, like he was on his way to a funeral at the Addams Family mansion.
“You remember my kids, right?” Jeanne was saying, her smile luminous. “Astrid, Elizabeth, and her dear friend,” she added, gracefully speaking your name to the small cluster of people you now understood were the Clausters.
His family.
Of course they were the neighbors. The world had a quiet, conspiratorial sense of humor.
“Uh—hi, everyone,” you managed, your voice a notch too high. The words felt inadequate, a tiny life raft in a sea of surreal recognition.
Jeanne finished the introductions: “Marcus, Gar, and his sweetheart, Diane.”
“Of course! Hello! So lovely to see you all,” Mrs. Clauster beamed back.
But the entire polite scene seemed to happen in a tunnel. Because Sammy’s eyes—wide, a little stunned, and completely locked onto you—were the only thing in focus. You tried to look at the wreath, at his father’s festive sweater, at a distant streetlight. Every time your gaze skittered away, it was pulled back, magnetized. Each accidental connection sparked a tiny, frantic smile from you—a silent, panicked transmission that meant This is weird, right? Act normal. What even is normal?
“Okay! We’d better let you all get to your dinner,” Jeanne said, slicing through a silence that had, to your ears, become deafening.
“Bye!” Liz chirped, too brightly, followed by a nervous little chuckle.
“Blessings!” Jeanne added, serene as ever.
You found your voice, soft and a little rushed. “Happy holidays.” You offered a small wave, a generic gesture meant for the whole group. But as you began to turn, you let your eyes settle on him one last time. The awkwardness fell away, replaced by a quiet, genuine warmth. This was Sammy, after all. Pinecone-thrower. Failed flagpole engineer.
“Nice seeing you again, Sammy,” you said, the words simple and true.
Then you retreated, falling back into the fold of the Wang-Wassermans, the cold air feeling suddenly charged.
Back on the porch, as the door began to close, a voice—young, curious—carried through the crack of winter air.
“You know her…?”
You didn’t hear the answer.
—
The day after the frostbitten doorstep encounter, Houston felt less like a sprawling Texas metropolis and more like a very large, very quiet room where you might accidentally bump into the same piece of furniture twice. You needed air that wasn’t scented by Jeanne’s impeccable “Winter Zen.”
You found a street lined with old bungalows turned into boutiques and coffee shops, the December sun weak but bright. You were peering into a window display of absurdly elegant ceramic cacti when a reflection in the glass shifted, solidifying into a familiar shape behind you.
You turned.
There he was. No Wednesday Addams funeral wear today. Just Sammy in a worn, olive-green jacket, hands shoved in his jeans pockets, looking as surprised as you felt. The winter sunlight caught the unruly curl of his hair.
“Hey,” he said, the word a soft puff of condensation in the cool air.
“Hey,” you echoed. A beat of silence, filled with the distant hum of traffic. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yeah. I, uh… needed a break from the… familial… energy.” He gave a vague gesture that seemed to encompass all of holiday cheer itself. “You exploring?”
“Trying to.” You nodded toward the ceramic cacti. “Considering a very fragile, very expensive piece of the Southwest to commemorate my trip.”
He stepped closer, following your gaze to the display. A small, familiar smile touched his lips—the one that always seemed to arrive before he could stop it. “It’s a statement piece.”
Another pause, easier this time, but threaded with everything unspoken from the summer, from the porch. The orbit pulled tight again here on this anonymous sidewalk.
“So,” you started, leaning a shoulder against the cool window. “How’s Mae-bell?” You kept your tone light, genuinely curious. The name still felt foreign in the air between you.
He didn’t look at you. Instead, he studied the faux-sand at the base of the display cacti with deep concentration. He cleared his throat.
“We’re not… that’s not a thing anymore.”
You blinked. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He finally glanced at you, a quick scan to gauge your reaction. “It was… it wasn’t super serious. Like I said.” He shrugged, but it was a tense, deliberate motion. “Turns out, she really hated the smell of bug spray. Like, ethically opposed to it. A dealbreaker, really.”
The deadpan delivery was so perfectly, dryly him. A laugh burst out of you, unexpected and relieving.
He smiled fully then, the real one that softened his whole face. “Yeah. Also, she thought my camp stories were, and I quote, ‘concerningly rustic.’”
“Rustic,” you repeated, grinning. “That’s one word for it.”
“She preferred things a little more… curated.” He said the word like it was a mildly unpleasant flavor. “Anyway. It’s been over for a couple months. It’s fine.” He said fine in a way that meant it genuinely was, and also that he didn’t really want to talk about her anymore. His focus had settled on you, steady and present. “How’s… Houston treating you? Besides the aggressive pottery.”
The question was simple, but the space around it felt immense. He was here. She wasn’t. The last barrier of that strange summer had quietly dissolved, leaving you both on this sidewalk in the pale winter sun.
“It’s good,” you said, feeling a smile of your own start to form. “But I could use a tour guide who isn’t afraid of a little rusticity. Know any?”
“A tour guide, huh?” He kicked at a crack in the sidewalk lightly with the toe of his sneaker. The casual gesture was at odds with the new intensity in his eyes—like he was trying to solve for X and you were the entire equation. “I mean, I know a spot. It’s not in any guidebook. Mostly because it’s just a bench.”
“A bench,” you repeated, playing along. “Scenic?”
“Depends on your definition. It overlooks a parking lot. But the taco truck that parks there on weekdays? Life-changing.”
“A critical detail.”
“The most critical.” He shifted his weight, and for a second, he was nineteen again on the dock, deciding whether to trust the impulse. “You hungry?”
The question hung between you. It was an offer, but it felt like a key turning in a lock. Dinner with the Wang-Wassermans was hours away. Liz would understand. Jeanne would probably, knowing her, beam with quiet, terrifying insight.
“I could eat,” you said, and it felt like the truest thing you’d said all week.
“Okay,” he said, a single nod. “It’s a few blocks away. We can walk.”
He fell into step beside you, and the rhythm of it—his stride, the comfortable space between your shoulders—was an old song you both somehow remembered. The silence wasn’t awkward anymore; it was full of the hum of the city, the clatter of your own thoughts, the sheer, quiet shock of him.
After a block, he spoke, his voice lower now, meant just for the space between the two of you. “I looked for you last summer. The first day. I kept… expecting to see you hauling canoes out of the shed.”
The confession was quiet, stripped of any performative humor. It landed softly, but with weight.
You kept your eyes on the pavement ahead. “I thought about it. A lot.”
“Yeah.” He understood. That single word held all the boring, brutal reasons you couldn’t come back—the internships, the money, the family stuff. He’d always been good at listening to the silence. “It wasn’t the same.”
You glanced at him. “The flagpole still crooked?”
A real laugh escaped him—the warm, full one from the blue-hour path. “Catastrophically. I gave up. I think it’s a permanent feature now. A modern art installation called ‘Perpetual Despair.’”
You laughed with him, and the sound mingled in the cold air. The tension that had been thrumming since the porch, since the lake, since the canoe, began to subtly rewire itself into something else. Something current.
“So, the bench,” you said, as you turned a corner onto a quieter street.
“The bench,” he confirmed, pointing ahead to a small, sad pocket park nestled between two brick buildings. True to his word, it was just a green metal bench facing a modest parking lot. But the silver taco truck parked at the edge, steam curling from its vent, did look promising.
He didn’t sit right away. He stopped in front of the bench, his hands back in his pockets, and turned to face you fully. The playful glint was still there, but beneath it was a startling directness.
“For the record,” he said, his gaze steady on yours. “The ‘seeing someone’ thing last summer… I brought it up because it felt like lying not to. But also because I wanted to see what you’d say.”
The air left your lungs for a second. He was just saying it. No stammer, no frantic explanation. Just putting the truth on the bench between you like it was another fact of the tour.
“What did you want me to say?” you asked, your own voice barely above a murmur.
He considered this, his head tilting just slightly. “I don’t know. Something that wasn’t ‘That’s great, Sammy.’” He said it without malice, just a statement of fact. “But you said it. So I figured that was that.”
“It wasn’t great,” you said quietly, the words surprising you as much as him. “It was just… the only thing I could say to my friend.”
The word friend landed differently this time. It wasn’t a shield; it was a question.
He held your look, and in his eyes, you saw the same quiet calculus you felt in your own chest—the adding up of every splash of lake water, every stolen glance, every almost-smile, every year of almost. The sum of it all was sitting right here, in this frigid, perfect moment on a sidewalk in Houston.
A slow, understanding smile touched his lips. It wasn’t the hidden one or the soft one. It was something new—resigned, hopeful, and utterly certain.
“Well,” he said, finally gesturing to the bench. “The tour includes a seating area. And if we’re lucky, some profoundly un-curated tacos.”
You sat. He sat beside you, not too close, but close enough that the heat from his arm seeped through your jacket. He was looking straight ahead at the parking lot, but his focus was entirely on the space where your shoulder almost met his.
“So,” you said, leaning back against the cold metal. “Tell me about this taco that’s going to change my life.”
Ever since the taco truck bench, your phone had developed a low-grade fever. It buzzed with a frequency that was neither frantic nor casual, but persistent—a steady, subcutaneous hum against your thigh or your palm. A question about whether gingerbread architecture counted as a STEM field. A link to a truly horrific vintage Christmas sweater with the text, Saw this and thought of you.
You’d be rinsing a mug at the Wang-Wassermans' pristine sink and feeling the vibration. A stupid, private smile would break across your face before you could school your features.
Liz, of course, had the observational skills of a CIA operative and the subtlety of a foghorn.
“Who’s got you grinning at the Keurig like it just told you a secret?” she’d ask, perched on a kitchen stool.
“No one. A meme.”
“A meme about… camping?” she’d sing-song, having glimpsed a pinecone emoji over your shoulder the day before.
You’d throw a dish towel at her. She’d catch it, grinning wider. “I’m just saying!”
On Christmas Eve, the plan was simple: one festive drink at a cozy, low-lit bar downtown Liz liked. You walked in, the air warm and smelling of old wood and cinnamon, and there he was. Sammy. He was nursing a beer and looking profoundly out of place, which was his most in-place setting.
Liz’s eyes flicked from him to you. A slow, catlike smile spread across her face. “Well,” she breathed. “Talk about a Christmas miracle.”
Before you could protest, his eyes found their way to you and Liz’s booth. Liz waved to him, ushered him over.
An hour later, the festive beverages had multiplied. Liz had expertly engaged Sammy in conversation, drawing him over, and the three of you had fallen into a comfortable, laughing triangle. The buzz of the bar and the warm glow of the drinks sanded down the last rough edges of formality.
Then, with the seamless precision of a master tactician, Liz glanced at her phone, gasped with fabricated urgency, and slid off her stool. “Oh shoot, I totally forgot—Maddie is right over there and I promised I’d say hi! You two hold down the fort. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” She was gone in a swirl of scarf before you could protest, melting into the crowd near the dartboard.
The space she left behind felt suddenly vast and intimate. You were alone with him, the noise of the bar folding around you like a private curtain.
“She’s… subtle,” Sammy said, taking a slow sip of his drink, his eyes laughing over the rim.
“The subtlest,” you agreed, your voice a little unsteady from more than the gin.
What followed was a deep, meandering dive. The conversation, loosened by alcohol and the strange magic of the night, flowed into hidden channels. You talked about the brutal honesty of camp, the weird pressure of being home, the futures that felt both terrifying and blank. The more you talked, the closer he leaned in, his forearm resting on the bar beside yours.
Then, in a lull, he just… said it.
“I had the biggest crush on you that first summer,” he confessed, the words straightforward, as if he was finally stating a long-held, simple fact. He wasn’t looking at you; he was tracing a watermark on the wood with his thumb. “Like, pathetic levels. I thought about how to tell you the entire week. Planned out, like, seven different speeches in my head.”
The admission hung in the air, bright and undeniable. Your heart did a slow, heavy roll in your chest.
“You never said anything,” you said, the words barely audible.
“I was scared you’d laugh.” He finally looked at you, his gaze clear and devastatingly earnest through the pleasant haze of the drinks. “And then you didn’t come back the next year, and I figured… okay. That’s my answer. But then you were on my walkway, and it was like my brain just… rebooted.”
The noise of the bar faded to a distant hum. There was only the heat of his arm against yours, the vulnerable curve of his mouth, the years of almost collapsing into this single, crystalline point on Christmas Eve.
“Sammy,” you started, but no other words came.
He heard everything you didn’t say in the way you said his name. His eyes dropped to your lips, then back up, a silent question.
The answer was yes. It had always been yes.
You closed the scant distance between you. His hand came up, warm and sure, to cradle the side of your face, his thumb brushing your cheekbone. The kiss wasn’t a timid campfire experiment. It was a release. It tasted of the whiskey he’d been drinking and the mint from your gin, and underneath it, the sweet, simple truth of a feeling that had finally, patiently, run out of road.
When you finally pulled back, just an inch, breathless and smiling against his lips, he let out a soft, shaky laugh, his forehead resting against yours.
“Took us long enough,” he murmured.
Outside, through the bar’s frosted window, a few stray snowflakes began to fall, glittering in the glow of the streetlights.
