The Two Summers

The lake house had belonged to June's grandparents for as long as she could remember. So had the summer she spent there at thirteen. That was the one where she and Milo had built an entire private language out of inside jokes and a shared inability to admit either of them liked the other. Nothing had happened that summer, not really — a near-miss at the end of a dock, a held glance that neither of them acted on. Then her family had stopped renting the place, and five years had passed without a single message between them. Had they kept renting it even one more year, she sometimes thought, that near-miss on the dock might have become something neither of them would have waited half a decade to say.

从茱恩记事起，那座湖边小屋就属于她的外祖父母。她十三岁时在那里度过的那个夏天也是。那个夏天，她和米洛用只有两人懂的玩笑话和谁都不肯承认喜欢对方的默契，造出了一整套属于他们的私密语言。那个夏天其实什么也没发生——只有在码头尽头一次擦肩而过的错失，一次谁都没有付诸行动的对视。后来她家不再租那个地方，之后五年里，两人之间一条消息也没有。她有时会想，要是他们哪怕再多租一年，码头上那次错失也许就会变成一句他们谁都不会等上五年才说出口的话。

Rarely had a summer returned to her so completely uninvited. She hadn't expected to see him again, let alone here, let alone three weeks before she moved across the country for good. But the lake house was back in the family's rotation for one final August. There he was on the same dock, taller and quieter than the boy she remembered, holding two coffees as though he'd somehow known she'd arrive at exactly that hour.

很少有哪个夏天，这样完全不请自来地回到她身边。她没想到还会再见到他，更没想到会在这里，而且是在她永远搬到全国另一头的三周之前。可那座湖边小屋又回到了家里的使用轮换中，只为最后一个八月。他就在同一座码头上，比她记忆里的那个男孩更高、更安静，手里端着两杯咖啡，仿佛他不知怎么就知道她会在恰好那个钟点到。

"I got you one on the chance you still take it black," he said. "I wasn't sure. It's been a while."

“我给你买了一杯，万一你还是喝黑咖啡呢，”他说，“我不太确定。已经过去好久了。”

"Five years," June said. "You remembered how I take my coffee from five years ago?"

“五年了，”茱恩说，“你记得我五年前怎么喝咖啡？”

"I remember a lot from five years ago," he said, and didn't elaborate, which struck her as exactly the kind of thing thirteen-year-old Milo would have said and then panicked about immediately afterward.

“五年前的很多事我都记得，”他说，没有再多说，这让她觉得，正是十三岁的米洛会说的那种话，而且说完立刻就会慌张起来。

What followed was not, either of them silently agreed without ever discussing it, a summer meant to repeat the first one. It couldn't be. She was leaving in three weeks, a fact that sat under every conversation they had like a stone under still water — visible if you looked but easy enough to ignore if you didn't. They spent most evenings on that same dock anyway, talking about nothing that mattered and everything that did, both of them aware that whatever this was had an ending built into it from the start.

接下来的日子，他们两个都在心里默认、却从没谈起过的是，这并不是一个要重演第一个夏天的夏天。也不可能是。她三周后就要走了，这个事实像静水底下的一块石头，压在他们每一次谈话之下——你看就看得见，不看也很容易忽略。他们依然把大多数傍晚都花在那座码头上，聊着无关紧要的一切和至关重要的一切，两个人都清楚，不管这是什么，它从一开始就带着一个结局。

On her last night, he finally said the thing neither of them had managed at thirteen. "I liked you," he said, plainly, the way he seemed to say everything now. "Then, and apparently now too, which is inconvenient, given the whole other-side-of-the-country situation."

在她的最后一晚，他终于说出了十三岁时他们谁都没能说出口的话。“我喜欢你，”他平淡地说，就像他现在说什么似乎都是这样，“那时候喜欢，显然现在也是，这很不方便，毕竟还有一个在全国另一头的问题。”

"You waited five years and three weeks to tell me that."

“你等了五年零三周才告诉我这个。”

"Would it have helped, five years ago?"

“五年前说，有用吗？”

She thought about it honestly, which he seemed to want more than a quick answer. "Probably not. We were thirteen."

她老老实实地想了想，而他似乎想要的就是这个，胜过一个快速的回答。“大概没有。我们那时才十三岁。”

"Right. So this is actually good timing, comparatively."

“对。所以这其实算是相对好的时机了。”

She laughed, and didn't say it back exactly, though she didn't need to. She reached over and took his hand instead, and they sat there until the dock lights came on automatically, neither of them making any promises about what a coast and a calendar couldn't keep.

她笑了，没有把那句话原样说回去，不过她也不需要。她伸过手去握住了他的手，他们就那样坐着，直到码头的灯自动亮了起来，他们谁也没有对海岸线和日历留不住的东西许下任何承诺。