The Summer that Stayed in Boxes

I wasn’t supposed to be here in July. That was the first thing I told myself every morning while brushing my teeth with the taste of cardboard still stuck on the roof of my mouth.

We had plans, Anthony and I. Big ones. There was a printed map on our fridge with fluorescent orange circles around campsites and lakes I’d never been to but felt like I already missed. His construction shifts were light that season, and I had just quit the night job that was turning my neck into one solid knot. We’d saved just enough for gas, groceries, and one of those vintage canvas tents from Craigslist that still smelled like someone else’s memories.

The plan was simple: two weeks upstate, three cities after that, and at least one day in the woods with no cell reception and no talking; just to see if we could. Anthony said if we survived that, we could probably survive anything.

But that summer never arrived. Not really.

It started with the broken fan in our duplex or maybe with the cracked tiles in the bathroom. Maybe earlier than that? Like when his sister showed up at his dad’s house in a panic saying something about her heart beating weird and her throat closing up; that spiraled into an ER visit and a weeklong stay in the guest room that was supposed to be ours for the Fourth of July.

The fireworks came and went. I watched them from our fifth-story window while Anthony called urgent care and tried to explain the situation to a nurse who didn’t really care. I didn’t blame her. It all sounded made up when you said it out loud “She faked a reaction. She’s fine. No, she said she saw a light. No, she’s not suicidal…well, maybe.” Anthony has his reservations about that night and has only mildly spoken of it; my job was to support him and check him if he was in the wrong.

The truth is some people hold a whole season hostage without even knowing they’re doing it.

By mid-July, the box fan still hadn’t been fixed. The tent we ordered sat in our hallway unopened and the fridge map had curled at the corners. We kept stepping around things literal and metaphorical.

And I felt weirdly trapped by the sunshine.

You know that feeling? When it’s too bright for the mood you’re in? Like the weather didn’t get the memo that everything’s a little off-kilter inside you?

That’s what that whole summer felt like. Like the sun just wouldn’t shut up.

Anthony tried. I’ll give him that. He offered to do a mini version of the trip instead just one lake; just one night. But I said no. I didn’t want a diluted version of what we’d planned. I didn’t want to settle for an echo of a thing we’d promised ourselves. I wasn’t angry, exactly. Just tired. Hollow in a very specific way.

I didn’t say this out loud but I was also afraid. My back had been acting up again. The stairs made it worse and the idea of sleeping on uneven ground sounded less like adventure and more like a flare-up waiting to happen.

I told him it was the heat and that I just couldn’t think straight when everything felt sticky; I’d rather stay inside until August.

He nodded and then stopped mentioning the trip at all.

*********** AUGUST ********

I started painting tiny boxes. Yes, it sounds ridiculous but it helped. Created little resin altar drawers, one per goddess Hecate, Lilith and Nyx. Mythology has always been a passion of mine. I lined them up along the windowsill where the sun hit just right at 6:42 p.m. I filled them with garlic cloves, old pennies, bits of broken tourmaline from that bracelet I wore the night everything went wrong two years ago. Sometimes I added a few drops of castor oil or a tear I wouldn’t admit to.

Anthony would come home, see them, and say something like, “You making homes for spirits again?” And I’d tell him, “No. Just giving the ones inside me somewhere to sit down.” He always chuckled softly.

One night, when the air was thick and my body was stiff and nothing on TV felt real enough, I asked him “Do you think we missed something? Like…something we were supposed to do this summer?”

He shrugged. “I think we did what we could. I think it’s just… one of those years.”

I hated that. One of those years. Like time was something you could throw out when it didn’t work. Like there’d be another one just like it waiting around the corner.

I wanted that summer. The one we planned. I wanted the version of us that got in the car, rolled the windows down and drove away from all this noise. I wanted silence. I wanted freedom. I wanted the smell of pine and bug spray and something cooking over a fire that was just barely legal.

Instead, I had grocery store rotisserie chicken and muted arguments and half-finished sentences and cold Advil at 3 a.m. with a tent that still stayed in the hallway; unopened.

I started sleeping with it next to me on the floor. Not because I was going to use it but because it made me feel like I still might; that it wasn’t too late. Maybe we’d unzip it in September or October, or some mythical moment where everything lined up again.

That was the summer I learned disappointment can feel like silence. Not the kind that hurts. The kind that waits. The kind that sits next to you at dinner and doesn’t ask for anything but makes your throat ache anyway.

One evening near the end, Anthony brought home a tiny peach pie from the deli. It was warm, and the box had a handwritten note from the woman behind the counter: “Hope it’s sweet enough this time :)”

We ate it on the floor with our fingers, and I almost cried when I realized it tasted like real fruit, not syrup. I said, “This pie makes me want to cry,” and Anthony just nodded as he leaned in to wipe my chin with a smile.

He always got me.

That was the closest we came to a golden moment. One bite of peach and a quiet apartment that, for once, didn’t feel like a cage.

I don’t know what I’ll remember about that summer ten years from now. Maybe the map with the orange circles. Maybe the unopened tent. Maybe the pie; probably the pie a little bit. But I’ll remember the ache of it. That strange space between plans and reality. That sharp little knowing that some summers just… don’t happen.

And it’s not your fault. And it’s not his fault. And it’s not the weather. And it’s not anyone’s grand design.

It just is.

A summer that never started. A season left unfinished.

A moment in time that waited for us…but we never came.