Meet Me at the Lake

TW: mild transphobia

I lay on my back gazing at the stars, dreaming about how comforting it must be to never move. Every night, they come alive standing in the same place, twinkling and shining bright with families that need them and never disappear. Fuck them.

Stars. Just another name on the long list of betrayal.

A warm summer breeze blows in the soothing smells of an impending thunderstorm, but I’m not in the mood to go wait it out inside the stuffy tent. Closing my eyes, I wait impatiently, longing for the cold water to splash across my face. But the rain never comes. Might as well add thunderstorm to that list, too. Another misdirection, false promise, and knife in the back.

After a while of lying there, I give up and defeatedly open my eyes again and see that, though the rain never came, a dense fog has started to settle on top of the lake. Far above, the fog peeters out and the stars still shine.

I’ve always been happiest when surrounded by nature. Gardening, fishing, hiking, really any form of being in the open air, free to run and roam and explore has grounded me, but nothing brought me a greater peace than camping. Year after year, we came to this lake, camped in the woods, fished in this lake, and laid on this dock to watch the same stars. Every year. Just Dad and me.

One year, we caught a meteor shower. “Daddy, look!” I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the end of the dock, “The stars are falling!” I couldn’t have been more than seven years old and I was terrified.

He chuckled and put his arm around me, “They’re called shooting stars, Mellie. They bring good luck.”

“Really?”

“Swear it,” he stuck out his pinky and we shook on it, “Now make your wish.”

“I wish,” I started.

“In your head, Mellie. If you say it out loud it won’t come true.”

Later that night, as he tucked me into my sleeping bag, I whispered to him, “I wished that we could do this forever.”

“You didn’t need to use your wish for that.” He laughed and kissed my forehead, “I’ll take you here every year if it makes you happy.”

He was right about two things that night: 1) Saying a wish means it won't come true and 2) I shouldn’t have wasted my wish.

Once I stopped being Daddy’s little girl the trips got shorter. When I cut off all my hair and told him I was changing my name to Miles, the trips stopped all together. The change from Mellie to Miles was easy enough for my friends and younger brothers, even Mom came around to it eventually. But not him. He hasn’t spoken to me since.

These days, I only hear about him through my brothers and infrequent texts from Mom since he doesn’t allow her to see me in person. I’ve never understood how she can love him so much that she can look past his blatant red flags, but she just tells me that I don’t know him the way she does . In the past 8 years, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen her in person.

Even still, I send Dad a text every year saying the exact same; Meet me at the lake. I’ll be there the first week of August. Love you.

Sometimes he opens the message immediately, sometimes it sits untouched for weeks or months. No matter what, he doesn’t respond.

I look down at my phone and look at the text. Sent 2 weeks ago. Opened 2 weeks ago. No response. I put the phone back down and sat on the end of the dock, dangling my feet in the water. The fog’s started to clear up and campfires across the lake cut through what remains. All around me I hear echoes of memories being made. Part of me wants to beg them to treasure the good and not take things for granted. The other part of me wants to storm over to them and tell them to quiet down and face the reality that nothing lasts forever and that one day they’ll be the one waiting for someone that’s never coming back.

As tempting as it is, I’ve been trying to be the bigger person, per my therapist's request, so instead I strip down to my underwear and dive into the lake. For just a moment, I swear the world stops. The weight washes off my shoulders and I feel like a kid again. The euphoric high that I haven’t felt in 8 years comes back and I feel invincible. Then my head breaks the surface and reality sinks its talons back into my shoulders and threatens to drag me back under.

The air feels much colder when I begrudgingly pull myself out of the water and sit back on the dock. The cold cuts through me and chills me to the bone, so I pull my feet out and hug them close to my chest. It’s a simple enough fix, I have a towel back in my tent, but I can’t seem to make my legs move. All I do is stare up at the stars, searching for my chance for a new wish.

It isn’t until I hear a twig snap behind me that I make myself move at all. I turn just in time to see two shadowy figures walking towards me. Fear stricken, I watch them intensely as they get closer and closer. This is it. This is how I die isn’t it? Waiting for a loving reunion that was never going to happen. My jaw clenches and I hold my breath, but once they get close enough that my lantern light starts to reach them, I see that it’s Jace and Logan.

“Mom told us we’d find you here.” Jace says as he sets down a cooler behind me and takes out three beers. After kicking off his shoes, Logan sits down next to me.

“Why are you guys here?” I ask them. They never came here with me and Dad. As far as I’m aware, they didn’t even know where “here” was.

Neither of them answer immediately. Jace takes his time taking his shoes off and folding his socks before sitting down on my other side. He passes a beer down to each of us before chugging his own. Setting down the empty can, he finally says, “It’s about Dad.”

“If it’s that he’s not coming, I already knew that. It’s been years since”

“He had a heartattack.” Logan cuts me off and immediately turns and buries his face in my shoulder. I feel the heat from his tears rolling down my chest.

I put my arm around him and pull him close before turning to Jace, “He’s ok though, right?” My throat gets tight and I feel like I can’t suck in any air.

Jace turns to me, but he won’t meet my eyes, “Miles,”

“No.” Every muscle in my body tenses and I push Logan off my shoulder and stand up. The beer sloshes around and spills all over me. In a flash of anger, I slam the can on to the dock. “No.” I’m practically yelling at them, but they have to be lying to me, “No, he can’t be gone. We didn’t”

My knees collapse underneath me and I sink to the dock in a sobbing mess. Logan and Jace come over to me and the three of us huddle together and cry.

As the tears lessen to a sniffle, I shakily say what’s been lurking in the back of my mind for years, “He died,” I take a deep breath, “he died hating who I’ve become.”

“Come on, Miles,” Jace sighs, “he didn’t”

“He died hating me.” I say it again because it’s true. After I came out to him, he never spoke to me again. He avoided family events I’d be at and, according to Logan, he’s refused to speak of me sense. In his eyes, he has and always has had only two kids. “So why does it hurt this much?”

This time it’s Logan that passes me a beer and raises his in a toast, “ To Dad, the piece of shit that we couldn’t help from loving.”

The three of us laugh and we all raise our cans, “Cheers.”

We sat in silence for a while looking out at the lake, but something's been eating me alive inside since they got here. “Did he ever take you guys here?”

“No,” Jace says, “Never.”

“Not even after I left?”

Jace shakes his head, “It only came up once, and it was the only time I’ve heard him talk about you. He told us that it was your place and that he could never bring anyone else out here. He even put all the camping gear in storage so we couldn’t go even if we wanted.”

I look over at him in utter disbelief, “He really never came here again?”

“A couple of years ago,” Logan stares at one of the campfires across the lake, “the summer I graduated high school, I was looking for something in his office and started snooping through his things. At the bottom of his desk drawer, he kept a framed picture of you two at the lake. You were young, maybe seven or so years old, and you were holding a fish. I thought it was funny for some reason and picked it up. As I lifted it, the back of the frame fell off and more pictures fell out.” His eyes meet mine, “All of them were of the two of you out here.” He gestures broadly to the lake, “Fishing, hiking, sitting by campfires; he kept them all.”

The world swims in and out of focus and I grip the dock hard. None of this makes any sense. “Why?” is the only thought I can get out.

“The stubborn son of a bitch couldn’t man up enough to admit that he missed you.” Logan kicks at the water, sending it everywhere. “He made so many problems and was a complete asshole to you and ruined everything because he was too childish to admit that he was wrong about you.”

“That doesn’t make anything he’s done right!” Jace leans forward and yells.

“I never said it did! I was just saying that he kept the pictures!” Logan argues back.

“Will you two shut up,” I say, but they’re yelling so loud that they can’t hear me.”

“You’re trying to redeem him!”

“Am not!”

“Are too! You little…”

Suddenly it’s like we’re children again, sitting in the back seat of Mom’s car and I’m stuck in the middle. They’re reaching across me trying to hit one another and are kicking whatever their legs can reach, which is primarily my shins. I shove the two of them and yell, “Stop it!” Both of them fall into the lake with a big splash followed by a profuse amount of swearing.

“What was that about?” Jace flails around trying to keep his head above water after his surprise swim.

“I need it to be quiet so I can think.” I say looking down at the two of them.

“What do you need to think about?” Logan, who seems to have cooled off significantly, floats on his back effortlessly, says with his eyes closed.

“Quiet.” I shush him.

For once, both of them listen. One after another, they climb back out of the water and sit quietly, eyes trained down at the water.

“It doesn’t make him any better,” I start.

Immediately Jace opens his mouth, “I told you.”

I shove his shoulder, “Do you want to go back in?” I threaten him. Taking a deep breath. I continue, “but it doesn’t make things any worse. He was a piece of shit. He’s done so much damage to me and caused me so much trauma, but, apparently, he didn’t hate me.” Nothing about any of this makes sense.

I lay back on the dock and stare at the sky, “I don’t know what I think about this. Quite frankly, I’d like to forget this happened at all.”

Logan lays down next to me, “I’m sorry.”

I ruffle his hair the way I used to when he was small, “None of this is your fault.”

“Look,” Jace lays down too and points up, “It’s a shooting star.”

I watch as it flashed over us then close my eyes tight. Now’s my chance.

I take a deep breath and I make my wish.