Same Time Next Summer

“In the drawer of the desk is a sketch pad that contains early versions of the drawing I did of Wyatt. I don’t need to take it out; I see them perfectly in my mind. It was a super-alive summer, when all of my senses were on a delicious high alert. It was the summer I noticed everything—the way the salt dried on my skin, the way sand settled between my toes. The way Wyatt smiled at me while he was composing a song. We hung the final version of my drawing on a rusty nail on the treehouse wall, back before we knew how easily precious things could disintegrate in the salt air.”

Monaghan positions Sam’s childhood bedroom on Long Island as a symbolic portal into her past, introducing the novel’s thematic interest in The Challenges of Navigating Past and Present Relationships. Sam can describe her sketches of Wyatt in the present without even opening her sketch pad and looking at them. For her, the room represents a gateway into her memories and foreshadows the ways in which the Long Island environment will help Sam rediscover her old self.

“The ocean is reaching out to me and I’m afraid it’s going to crack me right open, and there I’ll be like a Russian doll, with layers falling off until I’m so small that a seagull could just pluck me out of the sand and swallow me. I remember my body in the ocean, unburdened and strong. I remember the feel of Wyatt’s skin on mine for the first time, just where the waves break. I remember standing under the linden tree and willing my hands not to touch his stomach. I haven’t thought about that in a long time and the memory of it makes me smile. I close my eyes and remember the kiss that came next. I can feel the breeze off the ocean, I can hear Wyatt’s guitar.”

Monaghan’s use of metaphor, figurative language, and sensory detail in this passage captures Sam’s deep relationship with Long Island’s oceanic setting. Sam is afraid to reacquaint herself with the place because she knows how connected she feels to this environment. The use of words like “unburdened,” “strong,” “willing,” and “breeze” capture Sam’s emotional and physiological reaction to the beach. The Russian doll metaphor captures Sam’s determination to hide her youthful self behind a carefully constructed adult facade.

“It smelled of sand and salt and wet. They couldn’t fit shoulder to shoulder so he had to turn sideways toward her to fit, his knees at his chest. Maybe that had made all the difference, being that close to her and having to look. She smiled at him and her face opened up. He’d seen this smile before, when she found a particularly good haul of shells or when he caught a firefly in a jar and finally agreed to let it go.”

The storage cabinet setting provides a symbol of the intimacy between Sam and Wyatt. As children, the two curl into the small space, and their proximity brings them together physically and emotionally, foreshadowing the ways in which their relationship will develop as teens and later, as adults.

“She was a strong swimmer in the pool, but in the ocean she could just let her body go without having to remember to turn around every fifty meters. It seemed like, at the beach, her body knew exactly what to do. The bottoms of her feet toughened as the sand heated up each week. Her body temperature knew how to acclimate as she placed her feet and then her shins in the icy Atlantic. By the time she was fully submerged, she felt indistinguishable from the ocean.”

The narrator’s physical and sensory details in this passage underscore the ocean’s symbolic significance to Sam’s character. Words including “go,” “toughened,” “heated,” “acclimate,” “icy,” and “submerged” capture the ways in which Sam’s body naturally responds to this setting and thus conveys the healing, transformative, and rejuvenating powers of the natural world and its role in her Journeys of Self-Discovery and Personal Growth throughout the novel.

“Jack doesn’t look up from his book, but I squeeze in next to him on the lounge chair, arranging his arm around me and resting my head on his chest. Jack’s body feels solid, like a house that’s well cared for and overly insured.”

Sam’s use of metaphor when describing Jack reveals her fear and insecurity. Sam likens Jack to an insured house because she is desperate for stability, order, and predictability. This description contrasts with Sam’s surrounding descriptions of Wyatt, and the way she consistently compares Wyatt to the ocean air and waves. Jack is therefore fixed and unbending where Wyatt is more malleable.

“They lay facedown on their boards, and Wyatt reached out to hold Sam’s board so they wouldn’t float apart. There was an intimacy in this huge expanse of space, even more so than when they’d been hiding in that storage cabinet, or that time he’d passed her on the narrow stairs on his way to Travis’s room. They weren’t as close, but they were intensely alone. There were no waves, so they just floated.”

The water imagery in this scene captures the way in which Wyatt’s presence has the same rejuvenating and healing effects for Sam as the ocean, reinforcing the association between Wyatt and the water in her mind. The characters are able to occupy this vast, oceanic setting in a way that feels safe and intimate. The water brings them together while allowing them to be free.

“There were small waves breaking in front of her house and she figured she had nothing to lose. She wanted to feel what it was like to glide along the curl of a wave, staying steady but open enough to let it take her wherever it was going. Something was happening to her, and it scared her, mostly the fact that her body acted of its own accord around Wyatt. She wanted to be open enough to let that take her, too.”

The narrator inhabits Sam’s consciousness to reveal her free-spirited way of engaging with the world as a young girl. She wants to enjoy herself and to learn something new. Despite her fears, she throws herself into surfing: a bold quality that defines her character in her youth.

“There was an image of Wyatt in her mind from earlier that night, sitting on the edge of the treehouse playing the guitar. It was a song she hadn’t heard before, and she’d followed it through the dunes and to the rope ladder. She wondered if she should turn back and leave him alone with his song, but she’d wanted to see him. When she was on the third rung of the rope ladder, he looked up at her but continued to play. It was a split second when he was fully immersed in his music and smiling at her at the same time. It was like he’d let her all the way in.”

Monaghan’s detailed description of Wyatt playing his guitar captures Wyatt’s emotional relationship to music. Monaghan conveys the scene from Sam’s perspective in a third-person limited point of view in this passage to emphasize the way Sam feels about Wyatt. The descriptive language used to describe the memory conveys the emotional effect that Wyatt’s music has on Sam all these years later, emphasizing The Enduring Impact of First Love.

“So Wyatt works at a gas station. It tugs on me a little bit to think he’s so far away from where he wanted to be. I never imagined Wyatt doing anything besides playing the guitar. And now here he is, still looking out over the ocean trying to come up with something that will sell. But, whatever. I build productivity graphs, and it’s not like that was my dream. When we were kids, my dream was to be at the beach, with Wyatt, forever.”

Sam’s use of fragmentation and colloquial diction offers an organic entryway to her private thoughts and feelings. Although she and Wyatt haven’t made amends yet, Sam thinks about him in an intimate way because she still feels connected to him. Her linguistic stylings in this passage convey the complexity of her feelings for him in the past and present.

“When we get to the cove, I am shocked by the beauty of the linden tree. I haven’t been down here in years, and it’s the same, if bent slightly more by the wind.”

Here Monaghan draws a metaphoric parallel between Sam’s character and the linden tree. The tree is still standing in the place Sam remembers it. However, it has changed slightly because of time and the elements. The same is true of Sam’s character. She is still the same person at heart, even though her experiences have compelled her to grow.

“It’s Thursday, and I can’t believe I’ve stayed here for nearly a week. I also can’t believe I am starting to come around to the idea of having my wedding out here. I imagine my friends from the city coming out and seeing this other part of me, suntanned and easy. I don’t know where I’ve been keeping her, this other Sam, but I want to think they’d like her.”

Sam’s return to Long Island challenges her to grapple with her past and present relationships, catalyzing the novel’s central romantic arc. As Sam toggles between the real and the hypothetical in this passage, her use of negation captures her complicated emotional state and continued worries about how to reconcile who she once was with who she thinks she is now.

“When Wyatt pulled into his driveway, Sam went right into her house without saying a word. He tried to imagine what she’d find in there. Would Travis be home? Would they all just talk about it? Wyatt was overcome with jealousy at the thought. His dad had just gotten up and left, and the Holloways were probably already in group therapy. Thanks, Bill, for blowing up my family.”

Monaghan uses a series of rhetorical questions in italics to capture Wyatt’s harried inner thoughts and anxious state of mind. Wyatt feels worried about how Bill Holloway’s and his mom’s affair will impact him, his family, and Sam. The punctuation and formal choices enact his concerns.

“She found relief in the water. She swam at the YMCA in the evenings, letting the ice-cold water shock her skin into feeling a different kind of pain. She wanted to tell Wyatt that her stamina had improved, that there would be no more breaks when they swam to the cove. She imagined his dramatic groan over this fact, and she ached all over again. With each push off the wall, she welcomed the throbbing of her muscles. If she could swim a full mile, Wyatt would call. If Wyatt would call, she would sleep a full night. If she slept a full night, she would be Sam again.”

In this passage, Monaghan uses repetition, anaphora, and the conditional to depict Sam’s attempts to comfort herself in the wake of heartbreak. Here, her response to feeling helpless is an attempt to affect order in her thoughts and actions to regain control, foreshadowing the way she structures her safe and stable career, relationship and life as an adult. The narrator’s linguistic stylings capture and convey these facets of Sam’s internal experience.

“I don’t know how to break it to you, Wyatt, but I’ve also needed someone to talk to. You see, my boyfriend, who said he loved me, who was my whole fucking life, just kind of dropped off the face of the earth. Not really sure who I was supposed to call to get through that. It’s not like you were picking up the phone when I needed you.”

Sam’s use of direct, blunt language captures her desire to stand up for herself and to set boundaries with Wyatt. In telling Wyatt how she feels for the first time since their breakup, she doesn’t disguise her hurt and upset—an attempt to claim her experience and use her voice, reflecting her personal growth.

“I reach over and take his hand in mine. It’s not like I’m holding his hand but more like I’m examining it. I run my fingers over the back of it and then trace them over his palm. I know immediately that this was a horrible mistake, because I can feel my skin melting into his, exactly the way I remember it. I cannot take my hand away, but I am afraid. This thing, this childhood madness, left me so broken. It’s taken me a decade to create a life that feels safe. Touching Wyatt makes me afraid I’m going to rip the seams out of everything I’ve sewn.”

Sam’s use of sensory detail in this passage captures her sustained attraction to and connection with Wyatt. Words like “holding,” “examining,” “trace,” “palm,” “melting,” and “madness” capture the intensity of Sam’s experience when she touches Wyatt. At the same time, her use of punctuation throughout these lines conveys the ways in which her physiological excitement exists alongside her fear and hesitation.

“I know this song like I know my own heartbeat. You catch your breath, and I catch your breath. We’re locked in together. Sam, I am. As he plays each line, the song sounds the way I always heard it in my head. It feels more country than pop. And it’s no longer about Missy McGee’s old boyfriend. It’s about Wyatt and me. As he finishes and the crowd is screaming, he looks right at me, and I fully understand that I know absolutely nothing about him. And that he wrote that song.”

Wyatt’s performance at the music festival compels Sam into reflection and remembrance. The song makes her feel nostalgic and in turn triggers her childhood feelings for Wyatt. Her private, internal experience during this public event reveals the facets of her identity that Sam has been burying.

“I want to teach art, is on the tip of my tongue. Jack and I are getting married, I should be able to tell him my dreams. I just don’t want to hear him tell me I can’t, that it’s impossible. That I’ve established myself as a consultant and I need to stick it out. It’s not like I want to be a trapeze artist, I just want to be doing something creative with kids.”

Sam’s internal monologue on the car ride home from Long Island captures the stark contrast between her stifled experience being with Jack and the strength of her connection to Wyatt. She doesn’t come out and tell Jack what she wants, fearing his disapproval. Her internal use of negations, including “don’t,” “can’t,” and “It’s not,” convey Sam’s halting way of interacting with her fiancé and fear of truly expressing herself.

“Well, sort of. Not directly, but you’ve been distracted. Like forgetting appointments, doodling in your little book. You’re not quite buttoned up, and I sort of assumed it was about the wedding.”

Monaghan uses Jack’s language in this scene of dialogue to emphasize how little he understands Sam. He uses the word “little” to describe her sketch pad and “doodling” to describe her sketching, affecting a condescending tone that reveals his lack of knowledge and investment in the things Sam cares about most. His use of “buttoned up” also evokes a stifled iteration of Sam that doesn’t align with her true self.

“We let ourselves in through the front door, and I allow myself to feel, maybe all the way down to the cellular level, how good it feels to be home. Everyone’s asleep, and I smell garlic roasted potatoes that were likely burned a few hours ago. On the table by the front door is the usual assortment of mason jars, now with one full of rubber bands in different colors. I smile to myself, wondering if they’re for a tie-dye experiment or for securing braids. With this crew, it could really be anything.”

Sam’s attention to detail in this passage enacts her intense emotional response to the Oak Shore beach house. She notes the burned odor in the kitchen and general disarray of the house. However, these facets of the space comfort rather than disturb her. Her altered response to the house when she returns alone, as opposed to with Jack, captures the progression of her personal growth within her character arc.

“The way we felt that summer, it changed me. Like knowing that love could make a person that happy opened up something in me. It’s why I can write songs. It gives me a lot of hope, that it’s possible to feel that way. If what we had didn’t matter, then my whole life is based on nothing.”

Wyatt’s uncalculated, honest manner of speaking reveals his openness and authenticity. He doesn’t hide how he feels about Sam, because he has no interest in lying to her or minimizing what they shared years prior. His openness in turn grants Sam the freedom and emotional safety to be open and vulnerable herself.

“Yes, it’s boring and you don’t like it that much. But you’re going to choose it because you think it’s the right cake for this life you’ve buried yourself in. And Jack just lets you disappear, maybe because he doesn’t care or maybe because he doesn’t even know who you are. If it were me—and it was me, so I know—I’d want you to be everything you could be. I wouldn’t be putting rules and constraints around you, I’d just love you and let you move through the world the way you wanted to. You’ve just given up, Sam. You’re hiding, and it’s pathetic.”

Wyatt’s blunt, direct manner of addressing Sam conveys his frustration and longing. His use of fragmentation and em dashes adds a sense of urgency to the narrative tone. He also uses the direct address, which compels Sam to reflect on who she’s become.

“I’m relaxed too. I’ve loosened my grip on this thing I’ve been holding on to and I’m so close to letting it go. I consider tossing him one more, maybe asking what he thinks about a chocolate wedding cake, but I know. I’ve known for a long time. Jack has no idea who I am, and I don’t think he wants to know.”

Sam’s use of language and metaphor in this passage conveys her altered regard for her relationship with Jack. She uses words including “relaxed,” “loosened,” “grip,” “holding on,” “letting go,” and “tossing,” which enact images of clinging onto and releasing something or someone. Her verbiage enacts her desire to move beyond this dynamic and to live in a freer, less controlled manner.

“My thumbs loop themselves into the waistline of her jean shorts, just like they always did. I am back in time and also not; we aren’t the same people we were. I can’t believe I’ve traveled so far in my hunt for a happy life, and my happy life is right here, in my treehouse.”

Wyatt’s syntax and diction enacts his disbelief and excitement over being with Sam again. Words and phrases like “always,” “back in time,” “same,” “traveled,” “hunt,” and “happy life” capture and convey the emotional journey Wyatt has been on since losing Sam and while finding his way back to her.