The Summer of Possibilities

Summers always made me think of her. Her cherry flavored lip balm and royal blue bikini she wore religiously on every beach trip because it was reliable and even the harsh New England waves couldn’t undo its ties.

Summer was easy. It was when we fell in love. It was when my life finally seemed to start. There are little details of her in everything and every summer her memory awakens like the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

It seemed like an ordinary summer the day we met. It was the first summer I wasn’t going back to school. I had just graduated from college and I was working at the local pizza shop by the beach to make some extra cash while I applied for my first “real” job.

The “Summer of Possibilities,” my mother declared the day she saw me in my cap and gown and moved back home.

It was just a regular Tuesday—or so I thought—when my alarm rang at 8am. I hastily got out of bed, not wanting to be late for work. I showered quickly, washing away the sweat that clung to my skin after another sweltering night of sleeping in the hottest room of our beach house.

Nothing felt different as I made the ten-minute trek down the boardwalk to Sal’s Pizza Shop. I liked working at Sal’s. It was simple, predictable. I fell into a comfortable routine making pizzas and taking orders of our regulars who loved our no-frills menu.

I was throwing a pepperoni pie into the brick pizza oven around one o’clock when I heard the door-bell chime. I was so busy, but something deep within me told me to look up from what I was doing.

That’s when I saw her.

She was anything, but ordinary. A few inches over five feet, dark brown hair in loose waves, and cherry-red lips. She walked past the customers patiently waiting for their orders and approached me at the counter. I lost all sense of how to speak as she stared back at me.

“How can I help you?” I finally asked,

She smiled brightly. “What do you recommend?”

“Uh… our pepperoni pie is really good.”

“One slice of pepperoni and a cherry coke, please, Theo,” she said, my name on her lips making me shiver as I saw her glance at my nametag.

“Coming right up,” I said, sliding a hefty slice into the oven.

“That’ll be $3.99,” I added placing the chilled bottle of cherry coke on the counter. She dug her hands into her tote bag rummaging around before coming up empty.

“Shoot,” she muttered to herself, “This is what happens when you don’t set an alarm.”

She looked ready to walk away, but I stopped her. “It’s on the house,”

Her dazzling smile returned. “You’re so kind, Theo. I’ll find a way to make it up to you.”

Before I could even ask her name, she had grabbed her cherry-coke and her slice and was bounding out the door clearly late for something. I didn’t know it yet, but she’d more than repay me that $3.99 for her lunch—and then some. But what I also didn’t know is that this would be just the beginning of what this mysterious, yet charming woman would cost me.

The rest of the week after meeting her was uneventful. I found myself looking up every time I heard the bell ring signaling the arrival of a new customer, but she never showed. Not until one night I was cleaning up for the night working a closing-shift at Sal’s alone.

The wind was howling loudly indicating a storm was about to break through any moment. I was wiping the counters when the rain finally let loose and thunder boomed loudly from the angry sky.

That was until I heard some commotion coming from outside the shop. I stopped what I was doing hearing nothing but the booming thunder and what sounded like a string of curses coming from the boardwalk outside.

I made my way to the front door, the rain fogging up the glass making it impossible to see who it was that was outside. I opened the front door to see her and her cherry-red lips down-turned into a frown. Her dark-brown hair turned darker from the rain that had her completely soaked. She was shivering as I saw beads of rain dripping from her button nose. She looked up at me sheepishly through her lashes.

“Sorry, Theo,” she rushed out, my heart skipping a beat once I heard that she remembered my name, “I have seemed to forget my umbrella.”

“Come in,” I couldn’t help myself from saying, “You can wait out the storm here, I’m just closing up.” I held the door open wider for her ushering her inside. She smiled at the invitation and walked in, rain drops dripping from her soaked body.

She sat at the table directly in front of the counter placing her tote bag down beside her. I disappeared into the back grabbing a sweatshirt I keep here for the chilly summer nights and a clean towel.

I brought them back to her and her brown eyes lit up with appreciation as she carefully patted her face and arms dry before bringing my sweatshirt over her head.

“Much better,” she spoke, her shivering subsiding, “thank you.”

I nodded, finding myself completely enamored by this girl, despite her apparent forgetfulness. My sweatshirt seemed to swallow her whole, but she still looked like the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

“You always seem to come to my rescue,” she beams up at me, “I’ve been working on ways I could thank you for last time.” Then she grabs her tote bag and pulls out what appears to be a sketch book.

She places it on the table and she begins flipping through pages until she lands on what she is looking for. She smiles and pushes the book to the edge of the table urging me to look at it.

It's the start of the drawing of a face, with wispy hair and lips that look a lot like mine.

“Is that-?” I begin to ask her. She smiles and nods.

“I haven’t been able to get the eyes just right,” she frowns tapping her pencil furiously against the paper within the sketchbook.

“They’re just eyes,” I start to say, but she shakes her head and looks up at me.

“Your eyes hold a lot of emotion, Theo. I’m just trying to capture them right, but it’s been hard without having them right in front of me,” she looks at me taking her bottom lip into her mouth biting it gingerly.

“What’s your name?” I finally ask her needing to know the name of the girl that I can’t seem to stop thinking about.

“It’s Eden,” her deep brown eyes met my green ones. Eden. What a fitting name for a girl as beautiful and memorizing as her invoking the imagery of a lush paradise only, but a few got to experience.

“What a beautiful name,” I admitted watching her eyebrows furrow with focus and determination as her pencil delicately danced upon her sketchbook paper. Her eyes flitted up from where she sketched to look up at me, smiling while she did so.

“It means paradise or delight, yet I don’t think my mother has had one serene moment since I made my debut in this world” she laughs, flipping the pencil over and erasing something I couldn’t quite see.

“You seem… like someone who can turn chaos into calm,” I reply finally giving up on cleaning the countertop that I’ve been wiping away at since she got here. She looks up at me then abandoning her work for a moment, eyes meeting mine with a fire lit in them I couldn’t quite begin to describe.

“Chaos into calm… I like that,” she whispers, eyes still locked on mine, “Most people see me as a force of destruction, barreling my way through like a bull in a china shop.” She laughs, but I can tell there’s some hurt within those words, like she’s been told one too many times that she’s too much or too reckless. What she doesn’t know is that she isn’t too much, she’s everything.

“It’s true. You have this way about you, turning every head in the room making it your own,” I say a little too honestly, but she doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, my words seem to melt away her hard exterior and she relaxes a bit more.

She peers outside through the fogged-up glass and the silence between us makes the heavy rain pelting the roof of Sal’s the only sound to be heard.

“Looks like the rain isn’t stopping anytime soon,” she announces, “Let’s play a game and maybe I can finally finish my drawing!” She smiles up at me again still hard at work, delicately moving her pencil across the paper.

I leave my position behind the counter and make my way to take a seat across from her getting a better view of what she has been working on. She’s concentrating so intently as her petite fingers clutch the pencil leaving magic behind in their wake.

She’s working on my eyes, and although I don’t know much about art and being the subject matter makes me feel a bit anxious, I can tell how talented she is. It makes me smile at the thought that she wanted to draw me, like maybe she couldn’t quite get me out of her head either.

“What kind of game?” I question finally mustering the strength to break the comfortable silence between us, taking her away from her work for a moment.

“How about a game of Truth? We ask each other questions, but we have to be completely honest with each other?” she asks me, placing her pencil down for a moment excitedly clapping her hands together thrilled with her idea.

“Okay,” I say almost instantly, too enamored by this girl and my need to uncover more about her. “You go first.” She smiles at me and thinks for a moment with a puzzled expression as she tries to come up with a question she wants to ask.

“What’s one thing you’d do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?” she finally asked seemingly pleased with her choice of question. I think for a moment, but I already know my answer. It’s something I’ve been dreaming of ever since my mom taught me how to cook.

“I would open up my own restaurant. It’s always been a dream, but those things are hard, not always practical. I got my degree in business so I’ll probably just go into finance like my dad, but if I knew it would be successful, I’d open up my very own Italian restaurant,” I can’t help but smile talking about it. As a child I used to look up at my mom while she cooked away, and as I got older she began to teach me. I loved how time seemed to escape me when I was cooking and the possibilities were endless with what I could create.

“Chef Theo, I like it,” she muses going back to her drawing, “It doesn’t just have to be a dream, you can do anything your passionate about. I truly believe that. What’s the purpose of a passion if not to drive us to what we’re really meant to do?” I let her words truly sink in.

When you’re a kid everyone always says how you can do anything you want, but when you grow up it’s all about being practical. What’s the option that will bring you the most stable future without fear of failure? Eden’s words stirred something in me that night, that maybe I didn’t need to follow through with the most practical option. That the most practical option might bring security, but what about happiness and fulfillment. Those were important too right?

“What’s something you never told anyone?” I ask her finally escaping my thoughts and continuing our game. She stops drawing for a moment, my question leaving her puzzled. She takes a deep breath and adds some light strokes of charcoal to the page mulling over her answer.

“Art is the only thing I want to do with my life. The only thing that holds any meaning. I can’t imagine sitting in a cubicle my whole life hating every moment and constantly living for the weekend. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it. I applied for this internship for an art museum in Florence. I haven’t told a soul. My mom told me to get a real job and isn’t that supportive of my art, but I don’t need anyone’s approval,” she says matter-of-factly and I admire her for it. It takes a lot of courage to go against what others deem acceptable for us, and Eden just wants to be happy doing what she loves.

We spend the rest of the night asking questions and confessing secrets in Sal’s Pizza Shop that neither of us have ever spoken aloud. I learn that night that she has an obsession with anything cherry flavored and she is the most afraid of being forgotten, of leaving this Earth without having done anything meaningful. She doesn’t have a most embarrassing moment because she believes it’s a choice to be embarrassed and she thinks everything happens for a reason. People make mistakes and should never have to feel bad for anything that is deemed embarrassing.

We sip on cherry-cokes late into the evening, laughing and talking about our dreams for the future. She is here staying with her aunt while she figures out her next move. She wants to draw and paint and create things that make people feel something. The rain finally begins to let up and it’s then she finally reveals the drawing of me she finished during our game of questions.

It’s breath-taking the amount of detail she was able to capture with a simple charcoal pencil and piece of sketchbook paper. I’m in awe of her talent and ability to translate a realistic image to a pencil drawing.

“You got the eyes just right,” I compliment smiling back at her taking in the realistic set of eyes that seemed to tell a story right there on the page. She grins, pleased with herself and the compliment.

She tears the page out of her sketchbook and hands it to me in thanks. We walk to the door of Sal’s and make our way outside now that the rain has stopped. I am locking up the shop, when I hear her voice again.

“One more question?” she asks biting her cherry-red lips. I smile and nod at her as we stand outside the pizza shop.

“If I dared you to kiss me, would you do it?” she asks brown eyes burning into mine.

Before I can overthink it, I take two steps toward her and press my lips to hers. This isn’t my first kiss, but it’s the first kiss that means something, the first kiss where I really feel a spark of something come to life.

Our lips part and meld together as I cradle a hand against the soft skin of her face. Moments later, we both pull away big smiles glued to our faces. That moment changed something in me that night. It was when I first started to believe that life doesn’t always go according to plan and that the most ordinary days can turn into something extraordinary.

That summer was the best one of my life. I spent nearly every day with Eden after that, going on many beach trips and learning about her and what made her beam with excitement. I found myself going out of my way trying to make her happy, because that’s what made me feel alive. Being with her felt like we were two kids with our whole lives ahead of us. I saw a future filled with surprises, excitement, and cherry-cokes.

It was when she approached me one day late in July with sorrow held in her eyes that things seemed to end before they truly began. She told me she got the internship in Florence and would be leaving the next day. I’ll never forget that feeling, when I finally realized the girl of my dreams was about to slip through my fingertips. All of the what-ifs and plans we had talked about just disappeared into thin air. I knew I had to let her go and follow her dreams, but it didn’t make losing her any less painful. A relationship between two people just figuring their lives out oceans apart would never survive.

I haven’t forgotten about Eden. I don’t think I ever could. She came into my life when I least expected it, but truly when I needed her most. I haven’t heard from her since that last day, but I like to imagine she’s somewhere in Italy drawing and living out her artist dreams.

Some loves aren’t meant to last forever. Some loves burn so bright they burn out too fast. Some loves come into our lives for a short time and teach us things. Even though she’s gone there are pieces of her in everything. When I see a beautiful piece of art I see her spirit, when I have sand stuck in my shoes I think of the late nights we spent talking on the beach, and when of course when I see anything cherry-red, her lips come to mind. I will never regret falling for Eden, never regret the love we shared, and when I sip on a cherry-coke I like to imagine a world where we got to live out our dreams together.