I'm re-energized when I wake up the next morning, both from the incredible ten-hour sleep I had and the buzz of something to look forward to. There hasn't been much of that recently, more like things to dread and things to worry about. But my two favorite cousins coming to see me in nine days? That fills me with a newfound lust for life, something to get hyped about. I love being excited. There's nothing better than having plans on the horizon, especially the type of plans that give me jittery anticipation as though electricity is coursing through me. This is what I have craved. I literally haven't felt like this since I was here before; there's something in the air, I swear. Nothing bad can happen in Fisher.

There's a pep in my step when I leave the hotel and swing by Cafe Au Late. Riley isn't behind the counter this morning but I recognize the woman in the baby blue apron, who bears such a striking resemblance to Riley that I'm sure it's her mother I'm being served by. I try their peanut butter iced coffee, two things I would never choose to put together but it works so well. Takeout cup in hand, I head to the grocery store and stock up on snacks for a day of exploring. I fill my tote bag with grapes and strawberries and raspberries and try not to wince at how much fruit costs, especially compared to the sleeve of cookies and the chips and dip. A couple of tinned iced coffees and a bottle of water, a bag of trail mix, and my total comes to over thirty-five dollars. I will not survive two weeks here.

Our old lake house is a little over a mile from the center of town, along a path through the pines. Each one is set on a half acre plot of land with its own dock and its own patch of beach, the trees affording privacy from the road that leads to the state park north of the cabins and shade from the sun that beats down on the lake all day. Some are spread out and some are cozied up next to the neighbors' cabins; ours was half and half. To the south of Uncle Harry's old property is a thicket of trees, a hundred meters separating it from the next cabin. The other side is a shared fence, joining it at the hip to the cabin next door.

I'm sweating by the time I reach the dusty road leading to the secluded line of homes. Most of my water is already gone and my tank top is sticking to my back, my checked shirt long since tied around my waist, and I've only been out of the air conditioning for thirty minutes. The weather here has nothing on the heat of Austin, where it's easily fifteen degrees hotter, but I don't usually spend so much time outside. Probably the reason behind the funk I've been in recently. The last couple of years have been spent traveling between my job and my apartment, not walking a mile in the height of summer, and I've grown unaccustomed to the sun on my face, uneven ground beneath my feet. I run, but that's either on the treadmill (Gaby's gym never realized we were sharing her membership code) or before the sun has reached its full heat. I can't believe I used to live in dollar store flip-flops: this terrain is killing me in sneakers. Granted, I've had them virtually since I last saw this place and the soles are so worn that if I step on slightly damp ground, I get a wet sock.

I have no game plan. There could be a family in the cabin. They might see me through the window and call the cops and I'll get hauled away for trespassing because I got a bit nostalgic. The new owners could have changed the place. Could have knocked it down entirely and started fresh, building their own memories from the foundation up and erasing any trace of the years my family spent here.

But then I'm there. Number 3, Ponderosa Way. The lights are off, no car in the driveway. The place locked up for the end of the season, the porch brushed down. My stomach squeezes tight, a desperate ache in my heart because I should be able to walk up to the front door and open a portal to the past. I want to step inside and step back in time, back to three happy families before we became eighteen distant beings, spread out across the country without even a group chat tying us all together.

The place looks small. The last six years have shrunk it. It doesn't look big enough for our three families, all eighteen of us spilling out of the doors, crammed into a six-bed cabin and making it work. The couples got a room each, leaving three for the twelve of us kids to fight over, plus the attic. Ashley and I always ended up there, the best deal of the lot of them, a poky little room with two single beds shoved against the sloping wall and the best view of the lake. When we were younger, Connor would sleep on the trundle bed until we grew up and learned self-awareness and made him share with Grayson and Cole instead.

"Home sweet home," I say to myself. The thing about properties like this, out in the sticks, is there's very little security, hardly any boundaries. Nothing separates the track from the garden behind the house that meets the lake. I double check that no-one is in. The house is definitely deserted. It's wrong. It shouldn't be that way. Schools don't go back for another couple weeks; this place should be buzzing with life. If the owners can't use it, they should rent it out, let people enjoy it the way we used to.

From the bottom of the garden, I can see the window to the attic room. Nostalgia floods me, twisting itself into my gut as memory overlays the scene in front of me. I can hear the shrieks of the twins, Francesca and Sophia, launching into the water hand in hand; I can hear Oliver's petulant cries because he was too small to ride the inflatable tied to the back of Uncle Harry's boat. I can hear the notes of the adults' music floating out of the open patio doors: Fleetwood Mac and Simon & Garfunkel; Otis Redding and Hall & Oates, the soundtrack to our summers. I smell petrol fumes and the end of summer, the thick aroma of greenery and heat and lake water.

This was my kingdom. This is where we ran riot, where we felt like we ruled the world. I wasn't the oldest cousin, nowhere close — I'm number four out of twelve — but we all took on roles the minute we got to Fisher and mine was the rowdy, shame-free wild child, always first to run headlong into the lake and lie about how cold it was so everyone would follow. My brother Grayson, the oldest, was the slightly detached one. The one who acted like he was above our games while he paddled down the lake in search of girls his age. Mia came next, Uncle Edward's daughter, and she was the typical oldest sister. Organized and hyper-aware and putting herself in charge of the little ones, even when she was eleven: she hated danger, loved rules, always made sure we were where we needed to be. Then Cole, who only ever wanted to impress Grayson and trailed after him all summer long. Which left me, the leader of the pack. I became the de facto boss of the eight cousins beneath me, with Ashley and Connor as my deputies. Back then, the three of us came as a set. We were all born within seven months of each other and that tied us together. Of course we were best friends: we were cousins of a similar age who saw each other every summer, some Thanksgivings, the occasional Christmas. There's no stronger bond.

Our old tire swing is still there even after two broken wrists and a mild concussion. Aunt Jessica threatened to cut it down after the first broken wrist (her son, Hudson, when he was eight and I was ten) but the rest of us petitioned for it to remain. Hudson had, after all, been standing on the tire. The second broken wrist (Connor, when he was eleven and I was twelve) happened when Aunt Jessica wasn't around, when Mom and Uncle Edward were in charge, so as a group we lied to her. To this day I don't think she knows what really happened, which is crazy because we were terrible liars. I remember being so exhilarated by the adults being in on the deception: I was a kid, it was hilarious that my mother was the one encouraging us to lie like it was a funny game. Now that I know better, I wonder if it's because she'd had a drink or two, maybe she wasn't keeping as close an eye on us as she was supposed to and she feared the wrath of her brother's wife. Aunt Jessica's attitude to parenting was to be on it at all times. Mom's was to let us do our own thing, to fuck up and learn from it. I think Uncle Edward was probably working with headphones clamped over his ears the whole time we were wreaking havoc.

It's quiet here. Quieter than I've ever known it to be. I can hear the birds and the distant rumble of boats on the lake, the gentle slap of the waves they create against the dock. I've lost the boldness I had as a kid — teenage me would've tried the back door, would've found a way to wriggle through the doggy door and explore what once was mine — but I do let my bag drop from my shoulder to the porch and, after testing the rope with a few rough tugs, I clamber into the tire swing. It's easier said than done. When we were kids, we helped each other. There was always a bigger kid around to lift me up. Now, I have to hook my arm through the tire and drag it to the tree trunk, where there's a low branch I can balance on to then climb into the center of the tire.

And then I'm swinging. A laugh of pure joy escapes me, a gleeful noise I haven't heard from myself in a long time. The wind in my hair and dappled sunlight on my face and the creak of the rope against the wood above me. I kick my sneakers off and stick my legs out straight in front of me, the twenty-year-old rope burning my palms as I spin and grin and pray it won't give out on me. My phone's sticking out of the too small pocket of my too tight shorts. I manage to wriggle it out to take a selfie, which I send to The Three Musketeers.

if a trespasser swings on a tire when no-one's around, did the tree make a sound? I text. Connor's online. He starts typing immediately, but I don't get to see his response.

"Excuse me?"

I freeze. My phone drops and I almost do too, jumping so hard I lose my grip on the tire swing. The voice comes from behind me but I can't control the sway of the tire. It slowly swings around to face whoever has found me, my cheeks growing hotter and redder with every second.

"I'm pretty sure you're not one of the Takahashi kids," the voice says. When I'm finally facing her, I see that it's the neighbor. She's standing on her side of the fence with her arms crossed, her face shaded by a wide brimmed hat, and she is vaguely familiar. Like I knew her in another lifetime. She's tall and slender, wearing a ribbed teal t-shirt tucked into a white maxi skirt that bustles around her ankles in the breeze, and her posture is excellent. I stand straight, subconsciously trying to mirror her poise.

"Um. No," I say, my words meek and pathetic. I slither out of the tire swing and gather my shoes and meet her eye. I do know her. She moved next door a couple years before my last summer here. She came over sometimes, drank and laughed with my parents. I don't remember her name but I remember her face. My cheeks burn even hotter now. At seventeen, I thought she was hot in an abstract kind of way and I didn't know what to do with that feeling because I didn't even recognize it as a crush, so I pushed it aside and that was easy enough because summer was for hanging out with my cousins and putting real life to one side. Now I'm twenty-four and I know she is hot and she is staring right at me and I'm withering.

She doesn't say anything more. Just stares. Head tilted, like she's trying to figure me out. The brim of her hat flops to one side, letting the sun shine on her auburn hair. Under the direct beam it's the color of a warm sunset. I open my mouth to apologize, to explain myself, but she beats me to it.

"You're the spitting image of your mother."

That stops me in my tracks. Mom and I are similar, sure, in the sense that we're both brunettes, both slightly taller than average, both often look like we've never met a hairbrush because our indecisive hair is caught between wave and curl and usually looks unkempt.

"Really?" I don't know what else to say. I pull my sneakers back on and run a hand through my ponytail. My fingers snag on a tangle.

"Charlotte, right?"

I have never gone by Charlotte. I'm a Charlie through and through, but I love the way she says my name. Like it belongs in her mouth. I flush hotter and hotter, right down to my core. "Yeah, that's me."

I can't remember her name. I know I must have known it at some point in the past. Must have heard one of the adults mentioning the neighbor, introducing her, asking her over for drinks, but I'm pulling blanks right now. She's not as old as I thought she was back then. Certainly not my parents' age.

"It's been pretty quiet around here since your family stopped coming," she says. Her arms are still folded but she leans forward, rests her forearms on the fence. Between her elbow and the cuff of her t-shirt, I spy toned biceps and my breath hitches. "There are only five of the Takahashis."

"Is that the family who bought this place?" I look up at the lake house, all quiet and dark and sad.

"Mmhmm."

"How often are they here?"

She lifts a shoulder. "A few weeks a year. They usually come here for spring break and a couple of weeks of summer. Sometimes over Christmas."

I'm still wracking my brain for her name. It has to be there.

"I wasn't trespassing," I blurt out. And then, "Well, I guess I kind of was. I just miss this place. Wanted to see if it's still the same and it looked empty."

She gives me a wry smile. "How does it measure up?"

"Different. Exactly the same. But it's different, too." My eyes wander back to the attic window. I know the view from that window so well. I could trace it in my sleep. "I think I've grown up too much."

"Looks like the swing still works."

I don't know if it's humanly possible to blush any harder but my cheeks are rivaling the surface of the sun right now and I'm not sure what to say or do until– "Lou!"

Her eyebrows raise. "Yes?"

"Sorry. I just remembered your name. You're Lou, right?"

Her lips twitch, one corner lifting as though she's holding back a smile. "I am." Her voice is dry. Amused. I simultaneously want the ground to swallow me up and for her to never stop talking.

I try to widen the frame of my memories beyond my cousins and me. I was a selfish hedonist back then. Didn't care about much except my own happiness and having a good time, but I think hard and I can see Lou in the background; I see her laughing on the porch with my mom; I remember that dry voice and that rust-colored hair and when I really push myself, I remember a kid who didn't belong to us. A tagalong, those last couple of years, an extra with hair the color of a pumpkin.

"You have a kid." It's supposed to come out like a question but it doesn't.

"So you do remember me. I was beginning to think I'd made no impact on you at all." There's that twitch again. "Issy. She's at college now."

Shit. I can't pin her age down at all. She doesn't look old enough to have a college-aged kid but it seriously ups the MILF factor. A burst of confidence comes out of nowhere, spurred on by the fact that she remembers me, that this heaven is her home, and that she's so beautiful I can't tear my eyes away.

"Do you want to grab a drink tonight?" I ask, squashing the nerves fluttering in my belly. I try to grab my bag nonchalantly, if there's a nonchalant way to sling a tote over my shoulder. "I'm here for a couple weeks and you're the only person I vaguely know."

I wait for her to pause. To politely turn me down. But she smiles and says, "Okay. Sure. Why not?"

"Is Fisherman's Wharf still around?" It's the only slightly grown up place I can think of, where I once tried to sneak into with Connor and Ashley when I was eighteen and of course we got turned away because everyone knew everyone, so everyone knew we were underage.

She shakes her head. "They went out of business a few years back. But I know a place. Dive on the Lake. It's, well, it's in the name. Cheap drinks, great views — it's right on the lake, just along from the marina."

"Awesome. That'd be great."

Lou checks her watch. "How's seven thirty?"

"Perfect."

She allows me half a smile. I wish I could see her eyes better but between the hat and her glasses — chunky turquoise frames — they remain a mystery. "I'll see you there." As she turns to leave, she pauses with her chin to her shoulder and says, "I won't mention the trespassing next time I speak to Mr Takahashi."

"Oh. Uh, thanks."

She gestures to the eaves. "He has a camera, though. So if you come back, don't do anything you wouldn't want to watch back."

Fuck. I didn't see a camera but now that she's pointed it out, I can see the blink of a red light. "Roger that."

Lou walks away. I call after her, "See you at seven thirty!"

She doesn't break her stride, doesn't turn to look at me, but she lifts a hand in a wave and her voice is clear when she says, "Looking forward to it."

*

it's about time we met the love interest ... what do you think?