The Good Kind of Nothing

August second. We didn't plan it so much as agree to it, Simone texted the night before, some variation of 'do you have Tuesday,' and I said yes before I'd checked. An hour on the commuter rail, a fifteen-minute walk from the station, and then: a lake. Small, not crowded by mid-afternoon, a sandy bank that was neither beach nor picnic ground but somewhere between the two. We took off our shoes. We sat down.

I don't have a precise record of how long we stayed in the water. Not long. The kind of time that feels longer than a clock would say. At some point Simone sat back down on the bank and then lay down entirely, arm over her face, and I looked over and she was just, gone. Asleep in maybe four minutes. I did not wake her. I sat and looked at the water and thought about very little, which is its own kind of event.

train home. neither of us talked much.

The train home was quieter than the train out. We'd both used up the talking on the way there, things about the week, Simone's one new thing, something I'd overheard at work that I can't even fully reconstruct now. By the time we were heading back we were just two people sitting in the same direction, watching the suburbs give way to more suburbs. I had the small tired behind my eyes that only comes from being outside for a full day. The good kind.

I keep thinking about something Simone said on the bank, before she fell asleep. She said it the way she says things that are actually questions, not with a question mark at the end, just: 'This is what the whole summer should have been.' I didn't answer it. I'm not sure she expected me to. But I've been carrying it around since Tuesday, which is usually how I know a thing is worth writing down.