I pull the last two straps of Aiden’s vest a little too tightly and whisper, “I’ll get it out of you eventually. I have ways.” I pick up the paddle—the next part of the demonstration—and smack it into my palm. Finally Aiden cracks a smile, and I win. I almost always win. Except for the time Aiden covertly tickled me while putting on my life jacket. That was cheating.
AIDEN
It’s one of the few days Olivia and I don’t work together. Ellis almost always schedules us together, but today it’s just Beth and me working the dock, and a crapload of boaters. Olivia stopped by for lunch at The Grill, and after work I’m headed to her house to do some prep work for my next project. The final hour of my shift goes by as slowly as the river.
“Hey, Emerson!”
I’m just leaving River Depot, walking from the gift shop entrance to my bike, when I hear him. His voice takes me back to every baseball field I’ve stood on since I was ten. He’s wearing a baseball t-shirt and hat. I’m half surprised he didn’t show up in his cleats and pads, just to rub it in a little more. I slow down as I cross onto the grass, and he steps out of the parking lot. Is Zander here to see me, or Olivia? Has word finally gotten around about us? Obviously it was going to happen, I just hoped we’d have a few more weeks before we had to worry about going back to school and dealing with everyone. Maybe I secretly hoped Zander would just stay up north indefinitely.
“Hey, man.” I’m hoping if I pretend he doesn’t hate my guts, that maybe he won’t. “If you’re looking for Liv, she’s not working today.”
He comes to a full stop in front of me and his brows quirk up. “Liv?”
I can tell by the surprise in his voice that this isn’t why he came. But now I’ve opened the door, and it feels like I might as well just swing it wide open and pray that the hurricane doesn’t take the whole house with it.
“Listen, we’ve never been friends, but I don’t want it to turn into a thing, so…” I’m not sure why I feel like I’m doing something wrong. She’s his ex-girlfriend. And in a small town, if no one dated anyone’s ex, everyone would be single after fifth grade. “… We’re together. Just so you know.”
“Together?” He shakes his head at me as if I’ve said something ridiculous.
“You know what the word means, Zander.” I’m not sticking around to hash out the details of our relationship, so I turn back toward the little picnic area where my bike is still waiting for me. I let out a deep breath and a certain lightness comes over me. It feels good to say it out loud. Together. I pull out my phone so I can give Liv a heads up before I get to her house, just in case Zander is planning to turn this into some sort of drama.
Behind me, Zander’s voice cuts through the parking lot, low and biting. “You think a summer hookup is going to last long distance?” He lets out an indignant huff. “We were together for two years and I wasn’t sure it would work.”
Long distance. The words rub around in my brain and make everything hurt.
“Don’t you have enough to worry about, Emerson?” Zander’s face twists with pity, like I’ve lost a limb and it’s lying right next to me on the gravel, and I’m bleeding out as I watch. Like my life is such a mess. “Let me worry about Olivia.”
“Your ex-girlfriend?” I want to tell him Olivia can worry about herself. That she doesn’t need a babysitter, or a dad, or a shitty boyfriend. But I’m not going to get into it with Zander; not here. Not when Olivia is waiting for me, and we—apparently—have things to talk about. “Whatever.”
“There’s no way she picks you,” he says as I walk away.
In my head, I just keep going. Or maybe I calmly tell him that it isn’t a competition, because he’s out of the picture. He and Olivia are old news. But in real life, I mutter fuck you, and throw my middle finger up over my head as I walk away. By the time I reach my bike my face is hot and my chest is tight. It’s a twenty-minute ride to Olivia’s house, and I’m torn between pedaling faster than I ever have and just cruising along. Because I don’t think good things are happening when I get there.
Long distance.
The two words are on an endless loop in my head, and there’s nothing to distract me. There’s also no way to put those two words into any sort of scenario that sounds good. By the time I get to her house, they barely sound like words anymore, they’re just a buzz in my brain like the whir of my gears. Olivia is sitting on the cement step of her porch in her paint-streaked yoga pants, and her hair is up in a messy ponytail. Sometimes it’s hard to remember she’s even the same girl I saw around school with Zander. My car is parked on the street, left from yesterday.
She’s looking down at her phone and when she sees me a smile spreads across her face. She bounces upright, and then two steps forward, until I come to a stop in front of her. I stand, but don’t get off of my bike.
I don’t know how to make small talk right now, so I just spit it out. “You’re leaving?”
She looks down at her feet and chews on her lip. “Not until the end of August.”
“That’s in a few weeks, Olivia.”
“The summer’s gone by really fast.” Her voice is soft and sad but I’m too mad to let it slow me down.
“Were you going to tell me? Or were you just going to disappear into the night?” I think about what she told me about Zander, about their sudden breakup and his escape up north for the summer. Has this whole thing with us just been some sort of weird revenge? She can’t do it to Zander, so I’m a good enough substitute? Any guy’s broken heart will do?
“I was, I just didn’t know when. Or how.” She touches my handlebars and leaves her hand there.
“But you told Zander.”
“Zander told you I was leaving?” I don’t love how she seems to be thinking about this fact, like she wants to ask me something but can’t find the words.
“I just saw him at River Depot,” I offer up, before she asks.
“What was he doing at River Depot?”
“I don’t know, Olivia, that isn’t the point. The point is that he knew you were leaving and I didn’t.”
She shakes her head. “I told him right after it happened. When we were still together. That’s the only reason he knows.” She’s looking at me like that’s a good excuse. Like it’s obvious, and how could I have missed it. I hate that the word that made me feel so hopeful—together—now feels weaponized.
“So why didn’t you tell me, now that we’re together?” Even as I say it, it’s dawning on me that maybe we’re not actually together. Maybe that’s the whole problem here. And the look of surprise on her face tells me that I’m probably right. How did I get this all so wrong?
“I was going to tell you. Time sort of got away from me, I guess, and then I was trying to figure out how to fix it.”
“You didn’t think I’d want to help with that?”
Her face is blank, like it wasn’t a thought she ever entertained. And even though I feel like everything I thought about this relationship is now wrong, I still can’t help but try to fix this. “What about Emma?”
“Her parents don’t want another teenager in the house.”
“Do you have any other friends who would let you stay?”
“I tried,” she says.
“Maybe we could change their minds?”
“I don’t think you actually want that.” She raises her eyebrows and twists her mouth up, like I should know why. And then I remember who her other friend is.
“Zander?”
“We never actually asked his parents … that’s when we broke up,” she says. “Of course, I don’t think that option is on the table now, anyway.”
Hell, no. “Could you stay with your mom?”
She shakes her head. “She’s just helping Aunt Sarah out for the summer, she doesn’t live here.”
“But maybe she could stay—you said she’s pretty flighty anyway…”
“Yes, but…”
“You’ll at least try?”
She doesn’t say anythin
g, just looks to the side, to the row of bushes that run between her garage and the next, and sighs.
OLIVIA
I’ll talk to her. Maybe I should have just said it. But I’m not going to stay with my mom. I get that Aiden wants to fix this, but I’ve exhausted all of my options. My stuff is already half-packed—my books line a wall, stacked in boxes and wrapped in old clothes I should have thrown out but used as packing peanuts instead. There’s a note lying on my dresser about my scheduled orientation at my new high school, three weeks from today. Two days before my senior year starts. But Aiden looked so sad, and if I had just said it, maybe he would have stayed. Maybe he wouldn’t have stormed off and left.
Or maybe he would have; maybe he was always going to. I try to shake away the thought, but it won’t leave. It pokes at me all afternoon and into the evening. And at nine o’clock when I get the text from Zander asking if he can see me tomorrow, I can’t think of a reason to say no.
* * *
I have weeks before I leave, but everything in my room is already sectioned off into areas. Under my window, clothes are in stacks, and in a box next to my bathroom door my lotions and flat-iron and every bottle of hotel shampoo I’ve ever taken greet me each morning. It’s not that I want to leave now—I’m not in any kind of rush—I just don’t want to be packing this stuff last minute. I don’t want to forget anything either. And it gives me something to do when I’m at home, other than just sitting here, thinking about what I can’t change. Because leaving is inevitable.
When Emma plops down onto the old beanbag in the corner of my room after her shift, she isn’t amused by the prospect of my seeing Zander. “It’s a horrible idea, Liv.”
She’s right, that’s what I’ve been thinking ever since he texted me. What a dumb idea it is to meet Zander. But at the same time, it seems ridiculous not to see him before I leave. We’ve been friends since we were kids, and I’m just going to move cross-country without giving us a chance to talk? So I decided it’s only fair that I treat this decision like I have the rest of the summer.
“I’m going to decide the same way I decide everything,” I say.
“With logic and reason?” Emma is curled up on the beanbag in her Cherry Pit dress, and she looks like she might just take a nap.
I pull the coin out of my pocket. Coin flips have started to feel like my thing with Aiden, and it feels weird to use one for this.
“Sorry, I was thinking of someone else.” Emma shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “With a coin flip. Obviously.”
“Heads, I meet him tomorrow,” I say.
“And tails, you find Aiden and you fix this.”
“He left.” I flip the coin on my thumb and catch it in my hand. “I’m not chasing after him.” The words send a little ache through me. Another boy to chase; another person walking away.
“I mean,” Emma shoves a hand into the beanbag, pushing it under her butt, “you sort of gave him a reason.”
“You were the one who pitched the summer fling idea!” I launch a bed pillow at her. “No strings! Nothing but fun!” I throw her words back at her. “Now I’m the bad guy?”
“That’s when I didn’t know Aiden Emerson was totally into you. Like in it to win it into you.”
I smash my face into the bed and pretend to scream. It doesn’t matter if I want Aiden, because I can’t have him now. I never could. This is pointless to debate because it’s already over, anyway. He’s gone, I’m leaving, and according to the shiny president in my palm, tomorrow I’ll talk to Zander.
Chapter
Seventeen
OLIVIA
I regret the results of the coin flip almost immediately, but now I’m here, and Zander is walking toward me, almost jogging across the dirt parking lot. He’s tan. Maybe more tan than I’ve ever seen him, his skin a deep brown thanks to the last six weeks on the lake. His hair is a little fluffy, the way he lets it get in the summer, when it’s growing out from the late winter buzzcut he kicks off every baseball season with. I hate his hair buzzed, but he hates the way long hair feels under his helmet. I don’t feel the anger I thought I would. The hurt is back. The little jab of pain under my ribs that reminds me that one of my best friends is gone.
Zander nods behind me and squints, as if something’s hurting his eyes. “Is that Emerson’s?”
“Hi to you too.” Until this morning, I’d completely forgotten that my only option to get here on time was driving Aiden’s car. I’ll take it back tonight, after his shift at River Depot; it seems sort of questionable to have it when I’m pretty sure he’s done with me.
Zander raises his brows at me, like he’s waiting.
“Yeah. I’m borrowing it.”
“It’s that serious? That you’re driving his car around?”
I don’t answer. I don’t even know the answer. I told myself it wasn’t serious, that I wouldn’t let it be, because I was leaving, but it felt serious when he left yesterday. It felt like I hurt him—badly. But then he left, and he hurt me, too.
“To get back at me?” Zander asks.
I laugh. This isn’t how I thought our first meeting was going to go. I should be the one grilling him. “I didn’t even tell you about it, so how would it be getting back at you?”
He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “I need to talk to you. Leave your bag in the car?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m taking you fishing,” he says.
For the first time, I notice that Zander has his dad’s truck. The little metal fishing boat they haven’t used in a million years is on the trailer behind it.
“Zander, if this is about that stupid text I sent you—”
“Just come, Liv. I want to talk to you. The worms and fish and shit will just make it less awful. For both of us.”
* * *
Zander dumps the little boat into the water, and while he parks the truck I hold onto the shiny yellow rope and make sure it doesn’t float off. I tie the rope to the dock and get into the boat so that I’m ready to go when Zander returns. When he steps down into the boat he’s smiling, but we don’t talk. He pushes us off from the dock and starts up the little black motor, kicking up a dark cloud of dirt that plumes out around the boat, like we’re floating on a billowy brown cloud. Soon, we’re at the center of the little lake, the only spot deep enough that you can’t see clear to the bottom. My seat is so close to the front that I have no choice but to sit facing Zander. He’s looping a wriggling brown worm around a hook, and we still aren’t talking. I used to think that meant something about us; that being able to sit in silence was somehow evidence of our close relationship, but now it feels awkward. When he has the worm twisted and knotted around the sharp metal, he holds the handle out to me.
I shake my head. “You can do it.”
“I can show you how.”
Realization smacks me in the head, the way I wish I could smack Zander with the pole he’s holding out to me. “Zander, I don’t actually want to fish.”
“But you said—”
“It was just an example. A dumb example,” I say.
“It made me feel like shit.”
That was sort of the point. “Breaking up isn’t supposed to be fun. Losing your best friend doesn’t feel great either.”
“I didn’t think you hating me would hurt this bad,” he says, his eyes dropping from me to the bottom of the boat.
“Did you think it would be a good time? Were you looking forward to it?”
“I thought you were leaving, Olivia. We’re seventeen, you think a cross-country long-distance relationship in our senior year was going to work?”
I don’t say anything, because it’s clear that he didn’t, and I did. If he had asked me two months ago, I would have said absolutely. Absolutely, Zander and I could survive a long-distance relationship for one year. That’s all it would have been, one year until college. One year until all of our plans would kick into gear. How could two people who’d known each other as long as we had not mak
e it work? And if we couldn’t, then how could anyone?
“I didn’t tell my parents right away,” he says.
What? “Why not?”
“At first I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it. They would have had a million questions, you know?”
“You didn’t want to tell your mom what an ass you were?”
“I mean … yeah. I felt really guilty at first. Because I wanted to have a good senior year, I didn’t want to be missing my girlfriend who was a thousand miles away.”
I want to be mad, but I get this. I get not wanting to be attached to someone who is clear across the country. Except unlike Aiden and I, Zander and I were already attached.
“But then once I was up north, it felt like a normal summer. You’re not usually up there, you know?” He shrugs. “And every time someone would ask me about senior year, I’d imagine you there. I couldn’t think of senior year without you, Liv.”
“But I’m not going to be there, Zander. I’m going to be in Arizona, across the country, just like you didn’t want.”
“What if you weren’t moving to Arizona?” he asks.
“Then none of this would have happened?” I say, exasperated.
“I love you, and—”
I shake my head. “No.”
“No?”
“No, you don’t love me.” My skin is hot, and I swear to god, I’m about to dive out of this boat and swim back to shore. If I thought I had any chance of making it, I would.
When Summer Ends Page 19