Summer house
I’ve been remembering Harry Waverley for as long as I can remember, since before I even knew what it meant to be attracted to someone or the difference between being loved and being desired. Harry was always just there.
He was in the old childhood photos of me—always a bit too tall for his age, always holding a cup of something with a lazy smile that was almost cute during adolescence, but eventually turned into a smirk. Sometimes he was sitting next to my father at the dinner table. Other times, he’d appear with some gorgeous, rich girl leaning on his shoulder.
I was four years old when I truly met him. Harry was eighteen, a college freshman who had just come home after his first semester away. That night, our parents had hosted a dinner, like they did at least once a month. The Waverleys and the Bennetts had been friends for a long time. There were photographs of the two couples together from decades before, trip photos, and countless stories from the Waverleys’ summer house.
Only when I grew a bit older did I realize they were far better off financially than we were, but Mr. Enrick Waverley never cared about that. He met my father, Daniel Hart, in college, where they both started dating the women who would become their wives, Jessica Waverley and Laura Bennett. Bennett was my mother’s last name, which my father took when they got married. The Waverleys had a massive house and had always lived a life of luxury. Harry Waverley grew up in that world, and I think that’s why he was always so self-assured.
My family was doing well enough to live in a nice neighborhood in town, but our house was modest. I relied on a scholarship to get into college and was always a model student, eager to stop being a financial burden on my parents as quickly as possible. My father was always somewhat absent, claiming it was because he worked so much, though I knew that wasn’t entirely true—my mother worked too and tried to be as present as she could. Still, I ended up spending a lot of time home alone, learning to fend for myself early on.
In my first clear memory of Harry, I’m hiding under the dining table. I was particularly offended because nobody seemed interested in finding out where I had hidden my doll.
It was Harry who found me.
“What are you doing down there, little girl?"
I looked up to find a young, handsome, amused face with messy brown hair and easygoing eyes. He ducked down and pulled the tablecloth aside to see me better.
“I’m not a little girl."
“No? Then what are you?"
“A princess."
He brought a hand to his chest, feigning surprise.
“My apologies, Your Highness. I had no idea I was in the presence of royalty."
Harry reached out, pulled me from under the table, placed me on his lap, and spent the next fifteen minutes helping me search for the missing doll. When we finally found it inside one of the decorative vases, he declared me the finest detective he had ever met.
The following week, he brought me a doll.
My mother was flustered.
“Harry, sweetheart, you really didn’t have to do that."
“I know, Mrs. Bennett. But she told me her collection was incomplete."
I had mentioned that during our previous search, and naturally, like any child, I adored him for paying attention to what I said when most adults didn’t.
Harry had a lot of girlfriends.
When I was six or seven, they were just pretty women who showed up at our dinners, laughed at his jokes, touched his arm when they spoke, and tilted their heads as he leaned in to whisper something. I used to wonder why he almost never brought the same girl twice.
“Harry is still figuring out what he wants," my mother answered once, while she and Harry’s mother were discussing his college girlfriends.
Back then, all I wanted was a pony, a treehouse, and permission to eat ice cream before dinner. I never imagined that, one day, I’d wish for something as ridiculous as being the girl sitting next to Harry Waverley.
Every summer, our families spent a few weeks at the Waverleys’ lakefront property. The house was a few hours from the city, surrounded by pine trees and a lawn that sloped gently down to the water. There was a wooden dock, a boat Harry had learned to drive as a teenager, and a long porch where the adults spent their evenings drinking wine while us younger ones made the most of the estate.
Harry usually spent his summers in the company of Adam, his best friend, and Patricia, his younger sister. Adam was two years younger than Harry—as rich as he was obnoxious—while Patricia, four years older than me, alternated between treating me like an adorable little sister and acting like I was a nuisance. I thought that was wildly unfair, considering I’d always been a quiet, reserved, obedient child, probably because I grew up with very little interaction with kids my own age. As I became a teenager, Patricia and I grew closer.
Harry, on the other hand, never treated me like a bother, even when he was a teenager and I was just a kid. He’d carry me when I fell asleep in the car, buy me the sweets I liked, and let me sit at the front of the boat when the others thought I was too little. Whenever I got hurt and my mother wasn’t around, he was the one I ran to for help.
On rainy days when the power went out and I refused to sleep alone in my room, Harry would spend the night with me on the sofa, watching TV until we both fell asleep right there.
The next morning, he’d make pancakes for me.
In my mind, that meant I was special. And I was, in a way. Just not in the way I grew up to crave. At eight years old, I thought he was the most handsome man in the world, standing at 6′1" with his brown hair and grayish-blue eyes. At ten, I began to understand why girls acted strange whenever he walked into a room, or why they found excuses to touch his increasingly muscular arms. At twelve, I learned it was possible to feel jealous of a person you had no claim over. At thirteen, I started to hate the summers spent near him.
I liked the house, the lake, and the boat rides, but I hated the moment Harry appeared at the top of the stairs with a new girl, announcing she’d be staying the weekend with us. I hated when he introduced me with his usual effortless casualness:
“This is Ame. My little best friend."
At thirteen, I didn’t want to be little anymore. And I definitely didn’t want to be just a friend. I was quite tall for my age and already had a bust, but I knew my face still looked too young to compete with the beautiful, wealthy girls he brought up to his room.
I wanted him to notice when I wore my hair down or when I put on a dress with a lower neckline, hoping he’d forget he’d known me since I was four. But Harry never forgot. He called me little girl, princess, rascal. He asked about my exams and sent me expensive birthday gifts.
When I turned fifteen, Harry gave me a gold choker, and I was thrilled—it was the first adult gift I’d ever received from him.
“Gold looks good on your skin," Harry explained, securing the clasp behind my neck. I had heard that before; my skin was coppery and my hair was thick and curly—a combination that, according to my mother, paired perfectly with gold and warm tones.
I spent the rest of that night touching the pendant underneath my dress. Later, I heard him laughing on the porch with a blonde girl he had met just that week. The necklace stayed tucked away in my drawer for months.
It was ridiculous, I knew that. Harry clearly saw me as a kid in the family. There would never be anything beyond the affection he’d always shown, and the whole thing was just a girl growing up and getting confused as her desires woke up. He wasn’t doing anything wrong by living his life.
I knew all of this. Still, I began to resent him. I started giving impatient retorts whenever he asked how I was, rejecting his gifts, and rolling my eyes every time he called me princess.
“What’s gotten into you, Ame?" he asked once, finding me alone in the lake house kitchen.
I was fifteen, sitting on the counter, eating strawberries straight from the package.
“Nothing."
“You’ve been mad at me."
“Maybe you’re just annoying."
He laughed. As if I had just said something cute, as if my irritation were merely another tiny quirk he had learned to tolerate.
“Alright, little girl."
He swiped a strawberry from the container, ruffled my hair, and walked out of the kitchen. I hated that so much.
The summer I turned seventeen, I made a promise to myself: I wouldn’t be the same old Ame anymore. I wouldn’t run to hug Harry, nor would I wait around for his attention. I would be polite, distant, and perfectly indifferent. I was tired of being the younger girl. That summer was going to be different.
We arrived at the Waverleys’ summer house on a Friday, just after noon. My mother drove while my father talked on the phone, and I spent the entire drive staring out the window, planning my strategy for the days ahead.
The house emerged from the trees exactly as I remembered it: light walls, a dark roof, massive windows reflecting the sky, and the lake shimmering in the background. At least I was glad I had changed. I had trimmed my hair a bit, learned to apply subtle makeup, and stopped buying such heavily printed clothes. It wasn’t a dramatic transformation—I was still 5′6" with the same face, though I had gone out with a few boys over the last few months.
“Ame!"
Harry’s voice came from the porch.
I looked up.
He was leaning against the wooden pillar, wearing a white t-shirt and dark shorts. His brown hair fell messily over his forehead, and his sunglasses were hooked onto his shirt collar.
My heart raced. It was humiliating.
Harry came down the steps toward me, wrapping his arms around me and lifting me slightly off the ground, just like he’d done since I was little.
“Look at you!" he exclaimed. “All tanned. Did you miss me?"
I offered a sarcastic, controlled smile—so controlled I almost felt proud.
“Not at all."
Harry placed a hand over his heart.
“Cruel. After everything I’ve done for you."
“You’ll survive."
“I hope so. It’d be a tragedy to die of longing."
He greeted my parents, grabbed my suitcase before I could protest, and headed up the stairs into the house.
Adam was sprawled on the couch with his feet on the coffee table while Patricia arranged some magazines in a pile by the window. They both came over to greet my parents and welcomed me with their usual enthusiasm, Patricia wrapping me in a hug.
“My God, Ame! You look gorgeous!"
“Thanks."
“Are you dating anyone?"
I almost choked on air.
“Patricia!"
She laughed, pleased with her own question.
“What? You’re seventeen now. It’s a completely normal question."
“She just walked in," Harry intervened, setting my suitcase down near the stairs. “Give her five minutes before starting the interrogation."
“You’re always protecting her," Patricia complained.
“Someone has to—you get more annoying every summer. Don’t you think, Ame?"
I looked at him. That was the exact problem. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t need protecting anymore. Instead, I grabbed my suitcase back, rolled my eyes, and walked upstairs to my room.
