What happened between me and Tracy happened only once, and we never spoke of it after. But I thought about it. I sure did. With a mix of longing and maybe-love and bright shame. The ingredient emotions never melded together, each retaining its own distinct tang and sting down the years.

When I saw her at the airport in March, I was 16 again. Everything was fresh again. All the old feelings. All the old hurts. Old friends are a time machine, aren’t they?

***

That first summer after we lost Mom, everything was a mess for Dad and me. We went through the motions of life, but it was all drained of animation and color. I learned later that Dad wasn’t much use at work, spending long hours staring out the window. But his boss was a patient and good man, who waited faithfully for my father’s vitality to return.

I wasn’t a top student anymore, and not one of my teachers said a thing. In fact, the whole town pretty much sighed and shook its head, and cared for us by giving us the space we needed, and the time.

When school wrapped up, Dad told me I was going to Maine for the summer. I would work on his brother’s fishing boat. My uncle and aunt would take good care of me. The work would make me strong, and occupy my mind, too.

“Are you sure about this, Dad? I mean… don’t you want me here?”

“Not right now, son. Not for a little while. We’re not doing each other any good right now. You go help your aunt and uncle. Have a good summer. Have some adventures. And tell me all about them when you get back. Alright?”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Get my balance back. And you will, too. You call me any time you want to talk.”

On the drive to the bus stop, he had words of heft to share, about pride and love. They were the kind of words you know, in the very instant, that you’ll remember verbatim and forever. I watched the road ahead blur, and my shoulders shook just a little.

We stood together at the roadside while, with a hiss of brakes and a cloud of diesel exhaust, the bus arrived. The first of the Greyhounds that would carry me to Bangor, where I’d be picked up by kin. Dad hugged me fiercely and told me again what I’d never doubted.

***

I liked Maine, and I liked the work. The men on the boat treated me well, because I kept my mouth shut, did what I was told, and learned quickly. I didn’t get seasick, and I didn’t mind the smells one bit. If I’d slip and open a gash on my arm, one of the crew would clean it, tape on a bandage and call me a knucklehead.

At 16, I was tall and rangy. I stood out among the short, strong fishermen. They told me hard work and my Aunt Marjorie’s food would fill me out, and they were right. That was the summer my muscles came in.

Uncle Lou didn’t talk much on the boat, or anywhere else for that matter. But he was a pleasant and content man, and as we’d tie up at the wharf, he’d always offer a slap on the shoulder and a “Good job today.”

Then his face would crease into a wide smile for the slim girl who liked to meet the boat. “Hiya, Sweetheart!” he’d call to her. Tracy was actually Marjorie’s daughter from an early marriage that didn’t take. But Lou had been Tracy’s Dad for 13 of her 15 years, and the other man was long gone.

Tracy was my cousin, and I really wished she wasn’t. Because she was smart and pretty and fantastic, and she made me feel all kinds of things I wasn’t supposed to.

***

I had arrived at Boston Logan from Europe, wearing jeans, a sweater and a black leather jacket. Having found the gate for my connection to Miami, I stopped at a coffee shop, bought a cup of fuel and sat to check email.

Small hands covered my eyes from behind. “You won’t ever guess,” said a soft voice by my ear.

“Why won’t I guess?” I asked, smiling and not turning around.

“Because it’s been a long, long time.”

Not long enough to make me forget. I knew that voice. “Hello, Tracy.”

I stood and we hugged. Then we held each other at arm’s length for the up-and-down examination that’s mandatory when so much time has passed.

She spoke first. “Well, well. You turned out just fine, didn’t you?”

“And you look exactly the same,” I said.

“And that’s exactly the right lie to tell,” she replied, grinning and pushing her brown hair back behind her ear.

If it was a lie, it wasn’t much of one. Tracy looked wonderful. She wasn’t a girl of 15 anymore, but she was every bit the grown-up version. The same proud dark eyebrows, the same twinkle in her eye, and the same impudent smile.

A little breathless with surprise and other things, we caught up. I told her about my life, the good and the bad of it. She told me about hers. She had been home to Maine, and now was headed back via Dallas to San Antonio. That’s where she lived and worked, and where her young daughters were. She shared custody with her ex-husband, an Air Force trainer.

While we talked, without asking, she helped herself to sips of my coffee. I watched and chuckled to myself, remembering how teenage Tracy had always felt free to steal my milk, my lemonade, or my hot chocolate.

On her phone, she showed me photos of her little girls in softball uniforms.

“Do you remember when you hit me in the face with a softball?” she asked, poking me in the chest.

I did, vividly.

***

Tracy was a lot more fun to hang out with than a lot of girls, because she was a genuine tomboy. I don’t think I ever saw her in a dress that summer, and she was just as happy as I was getting scratched up and dirty climbing a trail.

I played baseball, and she played softball, so we spent many happy hours with pitch and catch and easy talk.

“I’m going to be a marine biologist,” she said, one day in July, firing the softball back to me. She didn’t throw like a girl. She threw with authority, in a nice, smooth motion. She’d twist her slender shoulders around, snap her arm forward, and the ball would smack nicely into my glove. Her ponytail would sway side to side behind her.

“You mean like Jacques Cousteau?” I asked, tossing her an overhand curve.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I want to see what’s under the surface, you know? There’s a whole world under the ocean, and I want to see it. I’ve been reading a lot about it.”

Pitch and catch. Pitch and catch. Alone on a dusty diamond under the hot sun, sweat trickling down our backs.

“What about you?” she asked. “What do you want to do?”

I thought about it.  “Beats me. I’ve been thinking about the Army. They’ll pay for college. I know I want to travel some. A lot, actually. I want to go everywhere.”

I tried a knuckleball, but I could never throw one of those, even with a baseball. My feeble pitch landed in the dirt three feet from her, and she scooped it up. “That was pathetic!” she laughed, tossing it back. “Show me some heat, willya?”

“You can’t handle my heat,” I bragged.

She took a few steps back. “Yes I can,” she said. “Bring it on, cousin.”

“Alright,” I said, nodding. “Okay, here it comes.” I was a fielder, and fielders have the right to bear arms. I had a gun, and I wasn’t afraid to use it. I cocked and fired. Hard, straight and true. Flat trajectory. Right on target.

Tracy got her glove up fast, but not fast enough. The ball deflected off the webbing, hit her above the eye, then spun off behind her.

She yelped and dropped to the ground, hands to her face. “Tracy!” I screamed, tossing away my glove and running to her. “Tracy, omigod, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

I knelt beside her. “Tracy, let me see. Let me look.”

I peeled her hands slowly from her face, and she squinted up at me. A few tears rolled down her cheeks, but to my surprise she wore a half smile. “I’m okay. I’m fine.” She wiped her nose and gave a small chuckle. “It’s just a flesh wound, Sarge.”

I had one hand on her cheek, the other under her chin. There was an angry red spot on her forehead over her right eye, and it was starting to swell. Her skin felt hot on my fingertips. I wiped her tears away and felt like I was destroying evidence of a crime. I noticed the freckles sprinkled across her nose.

We were inches apart, and her blue eyes were watching mine. I could feel her breath on my skin. I held her face in my hands. My heart was hammering. I felt things I couldn’t name, heard a composition building in crescendo.

It was so quiet in that short moment that lasted so long. Just the sweet sibilant breeze in the trees around the diamond. And the deep breaths of a girl and a boy.

“God, Tracy…” I whispered. And then reason and responsibility reasserted themselves. How I hated them. I leaned forward and placed a quick kiss on her livid forehead. “We... better get some ice on that.”

I helped her up. We began the walk home, and our fingers remained entwined longer than they should have.

***

“Your daughters are simply beautiful,” I said, placing two more coffees on the table and sitting back down. “No surprise, since they look so much like their Mom.”

She tilted her head to the side and regarded me like an odd specimen. “Why aren’t you married by now?” she asked. I snorted, leaned back and prepared to deliver some boilerplate, but she forestalled me.

“No, really,” she continued. “Why not?”

She deserved a decent response. An honest one. “There’s no short answer. I’ve come close a couple of times, Tracy. And, I guess, when you come close and it doesn’t quite happen… you get discouraged for awhile. But it’ll happen. It’s what I want.”

Tracy dropped her eyes. “Well, I think you’ll be good at it,” she said, and put her soft hand on top of mine.

***

It was August, and the summer had been magnificent. Dad had been right, as he always was. The work and the change of place had been good for me. I felt more at peace with things. And I felt strong and grown up.

Tracy's absolute favorite pastime was kayaking. I didn’t know much about sea kayaks, but I knew canoes. I knew how to paddle, and I could paddle hard for a long time.

It took a bit of adjustment and practice, but with Tracy’s mostly patient (and occasionally mocking) tutelage, as the weeks flew by, she turned me into a reasonably proficient kayaker.

Early one glorious Sunday morning, Tracy stole into the guest room and woke me by yanking the pillow from under my head and holding it over my face. I struggled to consciousness and flung the pillow across the room.

“What the…” I squinted at my watch, displeased by what it told me. “Get out of here!” I hissed. “I’m sleeping.”

“No way,” she whispered. “Come look at the water. I mean it. Right now.” And she slipped out of the room.

I knew where she was going. I ruffled my hair, pulled on my jeans and stalked after her, out the kitchen door, and across the grass out back. She was already at her special perch, high up in the maple tree. Her own personal crow’s nest with a view out to sea. I clambered up beside her, and she made room for me.

“Look!” she pointed, overflowing with excitement.

The ocean was a sheet of glass. I mean, not a ripple. And not a breath of wind.

“If we go right now, we can make it to the islands in two hours!” she said. “If we go fast. There are harbor seals. They’ll have pups now. Pups! Nyeahhh. Eyeahhh,” she mimicked an infant pinniped.

“I don’t know…” I said, yawning. “Maybe some breakfast…”

“Granola bars!” she proclaimed. “Mom bought a whole box. Let’s go!”

She scrambled down the tree, dropping nimbly the last eight feet to the ground, and I followed. I was actually warming to the idea. Why not?

Minutes later we were on the water, some food and kit in waterproof bags stowed in the kayaks. A note declaring our destination waited on the kitchen table for my aunt and uncle to find. We paddled hard and steady straight for the islands, a few miles offshore to the south. Our wakes were the only blemishes on the ocean surface.

We spoke little on the way, just kept paddling smoothly with long strokes, matching each other’s rhythm. And just as Tracy had said, we were met in the waters around the islands by cavorting seals. They didn’t come too close, but often sat watching us curiously, a few yards away, with their heads poking out of the water like little bald men.

One of the babies began to swim closer, but vigilant momma grunted a firm declaration. Tracy laughed and grunted back in reasonable imitation. I did, too. Some other seals joined in, and soon a cacophony of grunts was echoing off the rocky island cliffs and across the calm water.

Eventually the seals tired of us and swam away to leave us giggling alone. “I wonder if we were shouting something rude in seal language,” Tracy mused with a grin.

“Hey, Tracy, look at that,” I said, directing her attention out to sea. A ways off, a cloud of gulls and other birds were wheeling and dipping over an area of the surface that was rippled and disturbed.

“Hey, I think I know what that is,” she said. “I bet it’s a school of baitfish being chased by predators.”

“What kind of predators?”

“I don’t know. Could be tuna or billfish. Dolphins or porpoises. Maybe even blue sharks. Let’s find out,” she said and took the lead to investigate.

As we got into deeper water, a bit of a swell developed, but the kayaks rose and fell on top, and continued to cut neatly through the sea. But after about 15 minutes, it occurred to me to look back.

I called ahead. “Tracy, wait.” She looked over her shoulder and I pointed to the north.

“I think we’d better turn back,” I said. Dark, low clouds were moving in, and the wind was freshening.

Tracy brought her craft around and considered the horizon. “We won’t make it back to shore before that gets here,” she observed, frowning.

“I know,” I replied. “I saw a rock beach on the lee side of second island back. We can shelter there for awhile."

“Are you sure?” she asked, a little uncertain. “I didn’t see a beach.”

“Trust me.” We set off at a brisk pace.

The clouds moved in fast and it was definitely going to be a storm. The leading edge of the rain hit, and brought with it gusty wind and a confused, choppy sea. Still, we didn’t have that much farther to go.

By the time we rounded the first island and set course for the southern end of the second, the rain was really coming down and the waves were getting bigger. Tracy was paddling in my wake.

“Are you scared?” she hollered from behind.

I twisted and shouted back. “Nope. Not yet!”

The wind continued to rise, now blowing the rain horizontally, and pushing us off course.

“Come up beside me! Stay close!” I yelled and changed course to compensate for the crazy leeway we were making.

Tracy was a much more expert paddler than I, but she was also seven months younger and 60 pounds smaller. As we began to round the second island, and came back into the teeth of the wind, I could see she was struggling to make headway.

“We’re almost there!” I called. “Keep it up!”

“Are you sure there’s a beach?” she shouted, and I could barely hear her over the roar of the storm.

“There is a beach!” I replied.

“Cause I’m officially scared now!” she added, paddling doggedly with everything she had.

“Me too – but I have a plan!”

“What’s your plan?” she asked.

“Paddle really, really hard!” And I saw her teeth flash in laughter, even as the wind and rain and spray plastered her hair back, and forced her to squint.

And five minutes later, there it was. Just a steep little rock beach arcing from a short promontory to the north, and a couple of dozen yards down the island’s lee side. It was all we needed.

We pulled the kayaks high up the beach, beyond the high water mark, took out the waterproof bags and flipped the craft over. Then we ran, shivering, under a low overhang in the cliff face.

We were utterly soaked, and the storm front had dropped the temperature significantly. But my Dad raised a woodsman. I had a shell jacket, which I insisted Tracy put on. I had my knife, and I had matches sealed in Saran Wrap. I left to scout out some relatively dry sticks and driftwood, and cut a few pine boughs from dead tree limbs.

I returned with the scrounged fuel and said, "Let me see your map."

“Why?” she asked, handing it over.

“Because we don’t need a map,” I said, lighting it with a match and covering it with improvised kindling. Soon we had a decent fire going just under the overhang. We were sheltered from the weather, and we weren’t going to die from hypothermia.

“Now strip down to your underwear,” I said, and she did so without hesitation. We hung our shirts and shorts on sticks, on the other side of the fire.

We huddled close, luxuriating in the heat from the cheerful little blaze, while the storm raged on.

I chuckled. “Cute,” I said.

“What’s cute?”

“Apples and bananas,” I said. Her bra and panties featured tiny pictures of fruit.

“Oh,” she said. And a moment later: “You noticed.”

“Just for a second,” I clarified. Actually, I’d noticed a few times. Actually, I’d noticed repeatedly, each time she looked in another direction.

After that, we stopped talking. A couple minutes later, she shifted over closer to me. I could feel her arm against mine, and her knee against mine. My eyes were closed. I was squeezing them shut.

I felt her small hand rest upon mine. I felt her guide it up to the side of her face. I felt stray drops of water falling to my fingers from her hair. I felt her kiss the palm of my hand. My eyes were squeezed shut.

“Open your eyes,” she said. And I did. And she wiped a tear off my cheek. Erasing the evidence. I let out a shuddering breath I’d been holding for a long time.

And I lifted her into my lap. And I stroked her face with my fingertips. And I kissed Tracy.

***

By mid-afternoon, the summer storm was a memory. The waves were small and the breeze had shifted onshore. It was an easy paddle with the wind at our backs, and we were home in time for dinner.

Over pot roast, Tracy and I were full of vim and cheer, and we told our story of adventure and survival to my aunt and uncle. Tracy and I helped with the dishes, then went for a walk down to the shore. Later, we lay on the grass out back watching for falling stars.

When it was time for bed, we got up and stretched tired muscles, and I saw Aunt Marjorie watching us from the kitchen window.

The rest happened so quickly.

When the boat tied up the next day, Tracy wasn’t there to greet us. When Uncle Lou and I got home, there were sandwiches on the table.

“Where’s Tracy?” I asked.

“She had a bad headache. She’s sleeping now,” Aunt Marjorie told me.

My aunt poured me a glass of milk and told me to dig in. She and my uncle disappeared into their bedroom.

I had washed and dried my dishes when Uncle Lou returned to the kitchen.

“Your father called,” he said, pulling a beer from the fridge. “He’d like you to come home now. You’d… ah…you’d best get some sleep. We’ll be off real early for Bangor tomorrow.”

Oh, God…

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. Through the thin wall that separated our rooms, I could hear Tracy crying softly. I felt sick. It was the longest night. I was packed and sitting on my bed at dawn, when Uncle Lou knocked on the door.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to Tracy or Aunt Marjorie, and I guessed that was for the best.

Nothing was ever said. And Tracy and I never spoke again.

***

In the airport coffee shop, Tracy’s small hand lay atop mine. I shook away the memories and curled my fingers to wrap around hers.

“My flight is boarding now,” she said.

“Right…” I replied, still only halfway between my sixteenth summer and the present day.

She reached for my Blackberry and began typing. “Here’s my email and my mobile. Use them, willya?”

“I will,” I promised.

We strolled into the concourse, stopped and hugged again. She pulled back just a little, took my hand and placed it on her cheek. I looked down into her pretty blue eyes.

“Apples and bananas,” she said quietly.

I nodded. “Apples and bananas.”

We touched lips for a heartbeat, then two. We parted. We waved, awkwardly. She turned to join the boarding line. I turned to stride back into my life.

Far across the terminal, I stopped. I turned around once more. I looked back. Tracy was looking back, too. She was smiling.

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