Summer Solstice

Sammy Yale fancied himself a pretty tough poker player. Five card draw, Texas Hold 'Em, if you named a game, Sammy could pick it up and win.

As long as he wasn't distracted.

He looked out the screen door. The black mesh hanging pathetically from the white door was a tragic framing of the boy outside.

Kit Choco, on the curb in front of the dusty asphalt. His medium length blond hair was pulled out of his face with a tattered green "Moab National Park" baseball hat. His head was in his hands, the goosepimpled upper arms trembling even in the sunbaked heat.

"I should say something to him."

Julie Morting, his card partner, looked at him from across the table. She didn't like Kit, he was loud and crass and whistled at girls on the street.

"I think you should, yeah."

"Really?"

"I don't know how, but you hurt him. And he's sad about it. It seems like it's up to you to talk to him."

It did seem that way, and Sammy knew it.

"Sammy!"

He turned back to Julie. She tossed him a golden flower.

The spark that had set everything all off.

The screen door slammed behind Sammy. Kit's face was only a blurred image as he turned, and then looked away again, but Sammy saw the tear tracks. It took a lot to make Kit cry, Sammy actually couldn't recall a time in the seven years he had known him that Kit had ever cried.

And now he was and it was Sammy who had caused it.

"Hey man."

"Hiya, Sammy. Nice little set up we've got ourselves here."

Sammy sat on the curb. It was hot and he was sweating, and he was scared and he was sweating and he didn't know what he was supposed to do because Kit wasn't the kind to get his feelings hurt, especially over some stupid flower.

Said stupid flower was dangling uselessly between Sammy's knees. Kit laughed bitterly.

"You can throw that shit out, neither of us fucking need it anymore."

Sammy held onto it.

"Where did you find it?"

"Shit, who cares where I found it? It's just a damn marigold, it's like the state flower or something."

"I don't think that's right. And I don't even think that summer is marigold season."

"Since when did you become Mr. Flower Guy?"

"I just feel like it took you a lot to get it, that's all."

Kit sniffled loudly and cleared his throat.

"So what if it did, it's just a damn stupid little flower and it's not like you even want it so like stomp on it's stupid ass head and let's be done with it."

Sammy had said something similar earlier, when the flower had first entered anyone's consciousness.

Sammy and Julie had already been well into a card game, and Sammy was cleaning up as he tended to do, when Kit threw the door against the wall. He never failed to make a dramatic entrance.

"Madame, monsieur."

He took a sweeping bow and when he straightened up, the flower was in his hand. The petals were a delicate sunshine yellow, the stem a velvety green.

Kit laid it in front of Sammy.

"Happy summer solstice, Sammy Yale."

His tone was jovial, normal joking Kit. But there was something in his blue eyes, something searching and almost desperate. His hands were shaking just the slightest bit. His breathing shallow.

And Sammy had said nothing. The card game continued on.

"So, no worries, I'll just go fuck myself."

"What's wrong, Kit?"

"Oh nothing, but nothing is right either. But who gives a shit, it's just a flower, right? Those are a dime a dozen."

"I mean, it's a nice flower-."

"Yeah I bet you think that. Thanks."

Before Sammy could comprehend what was going on, Kit was gone, and there was a flower on the table and a fissure in the air.

Kit took off his hat and messed his hair up.

"So, didya come out here to get a sunburn or shoot the shit...?"

He made a gesture, waiting for Sammy to fill in the blanks. Sammy shrugged.

There was a fractured silence.

"Where did you find the flower?"

Kit chuckled humorlessly.

"Some tiny ass flower shop outside of town, on the road to Moab. Thought it looked like sunshine and you always talk about how much you like summer and shit."

He shrugged and put his hat back on his head.

Sammy had been with Kit when Kit had got that hat. Sammy had actually been accountable for gifting the hat to Kit.

They were two kids, twelve and thirteen, touring the Moab gift shop, acting like they belonged there and weren't some leftovers from the wrong side of rich. Sammy, curly brown hair and glowing brown eyes, snatched a hat off one of the display shelves, almost knocking the whole shelf over.

He and Kit had held it up together. And then Sammy had situated the hat on Kit's head.

For years he had sought the older boy's approval. To survive in the neighborhood they lived in was to wake up every day ready to fight. Sammy hadn't understood that when his family moved in. The first day he was jumped, he was so shook up that he vowed never to go outside again. But his mother was always going out and losing herself at bars and Sammy's baby sister was crying all through the night, making her eyes a cracked, chapped red. So Sammy had to go back out there. He had to take a beating again on the way to the bar, and just when he had made up his mind to hide in a culvert and sleep there, Kit was smiling down at him.

"You ain't so bad up."

"What?"

"I seen worse around here, hell I been had worse'n you've got it."

Kit had helped him up, they had found Sammy's mom screaming at a bartender over some trivial sub charge, and when the boys walked back, Kit looked tough enough to deter anyone from sauntering over to them.

Kit had protected him, but what's more, Kit hadn't rubbed it in about Sammy's mom. It would've been in Kit's nature to give Sammy some sort of razz about it. But he never had. He never even talked about it.

The look in Kit's eyes below the brim of that Moab hat the first time it was on his head was the exact opposite of the tragic strained expression that had followed the flower.

The expression under that hat brim was unfiltered love and appreciation and pure joy at just being with his friend.

Maybe Sammy understood more about what had happened then what his mind let on.

"I think I'll keep it."

"Keep it?"

"Yeah, I mean, you must've hawked someone else's hard earned money to get this for me."

Kit smiled in spite of himself.

"Do whatever you want with it, I don't give a shit."

But he did. And so Sammy would keep it.