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You Always Fall In Love In The Summer (And They Always Leave In The Fall)
There is always that cool spot of sand under your deck chair which you can dig your hands into when they are too hot from holding your book up in the sun. You can dig down through the sand, farther and farther, until you hit that layer which feels wet and compact and almost solid. It feels like those cross-sections of the Earth’s layers from your 7th grade biology textbook, or what would happen if you reached into someone’s chest and started rooting around in the wet darkness underneath.
Sometimes, when your skin is warm enough, you let someone’s hands slip underneath and grab a hold of something. You are sweating in your bathing suit and the sun won’t stop looking at you from every angle in the sky, and every drop of human condensation on your body reflects the words “Why not?” They undo a string, it falls to the ground, and things happen. When it’s hot like that, you are always just a few flimsy pieces of cloth away from being with someone.
And because, why not, it’s hot anyway, you sleep outside. The two of you let what would have otherwise been a hasty sleep to an uncomfortable morning-after become something that lasts all night. You unwind all of the tension you had built up in those first heady moments by talking, pointing at stars, holding hands even though you usually reserve that for someone whose affections you were still in the process of courting. In the summer, there are no pretenses. There is only this sunny day, that beer, this good spot on the beach. Take it while you can, because soon it will be cold again.
Everything runs to your head. The white wine floating in the increasingly-watery bucket of ice, the feeling of someone’s hand on the small of your back, the sound of that merengue music you never usually like. It’s all a vacation, even when it’s not, and things are possible because you are stripped of all the regular concerns and insecurities you bundle yourself up with in fall. Here, you are bare skin and complete openness. Something will happen because you want it to.
But then, as you knew it would (even if you didn’t want to admit it), it gets cold. It starts to feel like you are underdressed when you go out at night with your arms uncovered. You get that feeling of cold-weather embarrassment, like you…
