Once Upon a Summer

by Brooke Moss

  He flinched. “Well—”

  “And furthermore,” I went on, glancing over my shoulder to see if Liza was listening to our conversation. If she was listening in, she was doing one helluva job at pretending to be asleep. I made sure that all of the windows were still open so she would get some of the summer breeze, before dropping my voice to a whisper. “Asking out the best friend when the girl you’re interested in doesn’t take the bait, is a bad idea.”

  We shut the car doors as quietly as possible, before meeting around the front bumper.

  “Fine.” Preston hung his head, looking genuinely apologetic. “I should’ve just asked you out a month ago.”

  I kicked at some pebbles on the ground. “Nah. I would’ve said no, anyway.”

  “What?” His eyes were wide like he’d never been told no before. He probably hadn’t. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t like you,” I replied simply. “Or… I didn’t.”

  One side of his mouth quirked upward. “But you do now?”

  “No.” Looking away, I admired the way the light of the rising moon reflected on the still lake water. “Yes. A little. I guess you’re not a total jerk.”

  “Just a semi-jerk?”

  “Exactly.” I nodded. “A semi-jerk whose date is passed out in the back seat.”

  Preston chuckled awkwardly. “I can’t talk my way out of that.”

  “No, you can’t. I don’t feel right being here with you.”

  That was a lie. It felt inexplicably right about hanging out with Preston, and I didn’t want it to end. There was an ease between us I rarely felt with anyone, even Liza—who had a tendency to make me nervous with all of her unpredictable energy. I also felt the suffocating cloud of guilt looming in the back of my mind. Preston was technically Liza’s date, not mine. If she woke up and caught us getting along famously, she would undoubtedly be hurt. Ferociously so.

  “But you are here with me.” He held out his hand. “Come on.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you going to drown me?”

  “And taint the water in my lake?” He wriggled his fingers. “No way.”

  I groaned, giving him my hand. “Your lake? Try my lake. I’m the one who lives here, even when the weather is crappy, remember?”

  Preston led me down the crest to the water. He used his spare hand to point directly across the lake, where there were lights all along the darkened beach. I followed the path he was directing, and noticed a massive A-frame home four times the size of most the other structures along that strip. Warm light, more yellow than the bluish glow from the rising moon, beamed out from its uncovered windows. “That’s where I grew up.”

  “Oh. That’s… palatial.”

  “It’s ostentatious.” Preston smiled down at me, the last bits of light casting shadows from the trees across his face. “My mom likes to make a statement.”

  I laughed despite myself. “Well, give her my congratulations.”

  “You got it.” He guided me to the water’s edge, not releasing my hand. “Put your feet in.”

  “Fine.” I slid my sandals off and kicked them into some nearby grass. Stepping into the water, a happy groan escaped my lips. The water was warm enough to lure someone in, but cool enough to refresh. “Feels amazing.”

  “Yup.” He pulled off his Nike’s and socks, then stepped in next to me. “When I was in eighth grade, my sister and I stacked all these rocks around this area to make our own swimming hole.”

  Snorting, I gestured across the lake. “What? The groomed sandy beach at Chateau Wallingford wasn’t enough for you?”

  Preston chuckled wryly. “Elizabeth and I made it because we kept getting yelled at by our mom for splashing. What’s the fun in swimming, if you’re not splashing?”

  I bowed my head. “Agreed.”

  His smile dropped and he fixed his warm brown eyes across the lake. “We found this place one afternoon after my dad and mom had a big fight. He was still drinking then, and they would get in these awful screaming matches. So Elizabeth and I stole the car, she only had her driver’s permit at the time, and we took off. Made our way over here, parked, and started wandering around. When we found out how warm the water got in this little cove, we built the rock wall. For some reason, nobody’s torn it down over the years.”

  “Ah, sounds familiar.” I wandered even deeper, soaking the hem on my shorts. “Only not with my dad. He never stayed in Idaho, was only ever passing through. It was usually my mom and one of her boyfriends. She had a lot of boyfriends when she was drinking.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “My dad had lots of girlfriends when he was drinking.”

  He came to stand so close to my side that I could feel the heat coming off of his sunbaked skin. I didn’t protest.

  “When my mom got sober, that all stopped.” I drew in a deep breath of the fresh air, then released it slowly. “I didn’t steal a car and find a swimming hole, though. I usually just hung out at the flower shop.”

  “How long have you worked there?”

  “Only a couple years.” Not able to resist the lure of Lake Coeur d’Alene, I tugged my phone from my pocket and tossed it on my sandals. “But my boss has known my mom forever, and she took a liking to me. Let me come hang out with her, instead of tagging along with my mom on her adventures.”

  “So that’s why you’re so good with flowers.”

  “I don’t like to brag, but…” Shrugging, I skimmed my hands across the surface of the lake. “Louise taught me what she knew, and I had a knack for it. Kept me out of trouble.”

  Preston stepped deeper in the water, too. “What does your mom do for a living?”

  “Whatever she can. Waitressing, mostly.”

  “Do you like being a florist?”

  “A lot, actually.” I faced him. “So you call this a swimming hole, but you’re just standing there. What’s up with that?”

  Preston’s eyes twinkled. “You want to swim?”

  I held my breath. If Liza woke up, she would think Preston and I were getting cozy. Which we weren’t. We were just talking. Even though every word he said made me like him more. But, whatever. “Well, I don’t want to stand here and sweat all night.”

  “Should we take a dip?” His grin widened, making an unexpected knot form in my middle. “Just to cool off?”

  “Liza usually has towels in her trunk.” When he looked at me oddly, I added, “We’re lake people.”

  “Got it.” He tugged off his t-shirt, and tossed it aside. “Let’s do it, then.”

  I diverted my eyes, because holy crap, his abs were like an ad for Muscle Milk. After hearing him dive into the water, I brought my eyes back to where his body was gliding just under the surface. After a few seconds he emerged, shaking the drops from his hair with a whoop.

  “How does it feel?” I asked, hoarsely.

  “Get in and feel for yourself.”

  I looked back at the car, looking for movement. Nothing. “It’s just a swim,” I told myself. “It’s freaking hot out. I’m not—”

  “What?” Preston called.

  “Nothing!” Sucking in a deep breath, I dove under the water and paddled out. It cooled my skin instantaneously, flooding my senses with relief. When I surfaced, I’d swam as far out as he had.

  Preston floated over to me. “Feels good, huh?”

  I nodded, knowing I should move away, but feeling locked in place. There was something about him that kept me reeled in, and it wasn’t just his stellar good looks. It was Preston’s humanity. There was a level of realness in him that I’d not seen over the course of the summer until just now, and I was drawn to him like a moth to a porch light.

  His fingers brushed my arm underneath the water, setting off goose bumps up and down my skin. “Yeah,” I answered, treading water. “Liza’s seats are going to be soaked.”

  “Totally worth it.” Preston fingers laced with mine. “Although if you’d said yes to my date, I would’ve told you to bring a swimsuit.”

  I in
stinctually squeezed his hand. “You weren’t planning to bring Liza here?”

  “No. This place is special.”

  I pulled my hand back and kicked myself away. “And Liza isn’t?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He followed me. “I meant, this is just sort of important. It was special to my sister and me. I wouldn’t just bring anybody.”

  When he caught up with me, his hand brushed my waist, sending a jolt of energy straight through me.

  “Liza isn’t just anybody,” I corrected him, breast stroking toward the beach.

  This was wrong. I was letting Liza’s date touch me. I’d broken Girl Code just by suggesting an activity that required Preston’s shirt to come off, and now I was practically drooling over him. When I got close enough to the shore to walk, I trudged out of the lake and sat down on the rock wall. Swiping underneath my eyes, I prayed my makeup wasn’t streaking down my face, as Preston leisurely paddled to the beach.

  He eventually plopped down on the boulder next to me. “I used to come here every time something in my life sucked. And for a long time, lots of things sucked. This place is sacred. You know?”

  I did know what Preston meant. I’d spent hours upon hours in the back room at Petal Pushers, wrapping wire for Louise during homecoming season, to avoid going home to find my mom passed out. “I get it,” I admitted, tucking my soaked hair behind my ears. “You said you have a sister. Is this her sacred place, too?”

  His jawline twitched. “It was. Elizabeth was three years older than me.”

  “Was?”

  His brown eyes met mine, a pained expression painted across his face. “She was killed in a drunk driving accident.”

  My stomach sank. “Oh… oh, no. Was it…”

  “Yeah.” Preston pointed across the water to his family cabin. “The road to our house has a switchback, and my dad had a few while he waited for Elizabeth to finish her cello lesson. He drove off the road, and rolled the car. She was killed instantly, and he walked away without a scratch.”

  “Preston, I’m so sorry.” Instinctively I reached for his hand, covering his damp fingers with mine. “Is that what… I mean, is that why he got…”

  “Sober?” He sighed. “Yeah. That started the process. It took a long time for my mom to forgive him.”

  “But she did?”

  “Eventually.”

  “You must miss her.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I bit the insides of my cheeks. “Sorry. That was—”

  “No, it’s cool. I like talking about Elizabeth. It’s not like we sit around talking about her at home. And nobody at school knows about her.” Preston’s smile slowly returned, his white teeth flashing in the near darkness. “My sister was my best friend. We didn’t have a lot of local friends, because we went to a private school.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “You mean, you’re actually from here?”

  “Yeah. Well, sort of.” He sat up straighter. “I went to a private school. Upper Columbia Academy, about fifty miles southwest.”

  “I always wondered what it would be like to go to a private school,” I confessed. “It always sounded so glamorous.”

  “Pretty much like every other school. Just more expensive.”

  “You’ve crushed the fantasy.” Snorting, I kicked a splash of water at his leg. “I can’t believe you grew up here and I never knew you.”

  “We were never around.” He shrugged, droplets of water still streaming down his cut shoulders. “We were either at school, or on a vacation, or visiting my grandparents in Seattle. I always wanted to stay home for Christmas, but my mom said it was too damn snowy, so our whole family went to Florida every year.”

  “I would’ve given anything to spend Christmas in Florida!” Smiling, I turned my face up to the sky and drew a deep breath. “I always wondered how the other half lived.

  Preston splashed me back. “I wanted to be like everyone else.”

  My heart squeezed. We had that much in common, he and I. I drew in a long, deep breath of warm evening air and closed my eyes. This felt too good. Too familiar.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said quietly.

  “Doing what?”

  I opened my eyes. “Becoming friends.”

  Preston scoffed. “Why?”

  Clearing my throat, I smoothed down the front of my soaked shirt. “I shouldn’t be hanging out with you out of principle.”

  One of Preston’s blonde eyebrows rose. “Principle?”

  “Liza is my best friend.”

  He shrugged. “So?”

  “You might not know what that means, since you’re Mr. Popularity, but the rest of the world considers their best friend to be very important. Someone not to screw over.”

  “How are we screwing her over?” Preston’s full lips pressed together. “You’re the one I wanted to ask out.”

  “So she’s just an afterthought?”

  He smiled apologetically. “Sort of.”

  “Don’t say that.” I gawked at him. “That’s the rudest thing I’ve ever heard. Don’t turn into a jerk now. Not after the talking, and the swimming, and the story about your sister, and my story about my mom, and—”

  “Come on.” His lips pulled into his pompous grin. “Liza’s cool, and all, but… she’ll get over it. You… you’re different. You won’t get over me that fast.”

  My mouth dropped. “You’ve outdone yourself, Preston. And that’s not a compliment.” I jumped up. “I can’t believe I thought for a second that you were different.”

  “Wait, what?” He followed me as I grabbed my things and stomped toward the car. “What just happened here, Snow White?”

  “My name is Aubrey!” I whirled around, placing my hand on the hood of Liza’s car to steady myself. “You’ve got some nerve, Wallingford, you—”

  “I have a name, too.” He took my hand, pulling me close to his chest. I pretended it didn’t send a flash of electricity up my arm. “What went wrong?”

  I poked Preston in the chest, then unfolded my fingers to rest my palm over his heartbeat. “You just said I’m not going to get over you. I mean… how stuck up is that? The poor townie is just so lucky to have the Golden Boy paying attention to her. If you want to slum it this summer, find someone else.”

  His expression fell. “Aubrey, that wasn’t what I meant. I—”

  “Save it.” I looked away. “You just revert back to a prick when you’re talking to a girl?”

  “I… I do.” Preston drew a deep breath, then released it slowly. He cupped my chin, tilting it upward to make me look him in the eye. “I’m only trying to impress you. Other girls, they tend to—”

  “I’m not like other girls.”

  “Believe me, I know. I’ve been buying flowers I didn’t want for a month. I can’t get you out of my head.” He leaned close to my face, head tilting. I felt the warm tickle of his breath dance across my lips, making my stomach knot with anticipation. “I like you, Aubrey.”

  I held my breath. Was Preston going to kiss me? He moved closer. Holy hell, he is going to kiss me. “You don’t even know me.”

  The end of his nose brushed mine, igniting my skin. “I’m trying to change that.”

  Next to us the car groaned and rocked as Liza shifted, jerking me out of the moment, and slam-dunking me right back into real life. Pulling away from Preston, I placed my hands on my hips to go in for the kill. Why? Because after eighteen years of having to work and scrap and fight for everything I had, I’d become adept at shooting people down before they could do it to me first.

  “You think I’m desperate to hang out with someone like you, right?” I backed even further away. My face stung with the absence of his almost-kiss. “Wrong. I don’t need friends bad enough.”

  I was being over-dramatic, and I knew it. I couldn’t help myself. He relied on cockiness and cheesy one-liners to score dates with girls, but it wasn’t like he was the Unabomber or anything. I opened my mouth to apologize, the words right on the edge of m
y lip, ready to spill out…

  Preston shook his head. “You’ve got me all wrong.”

  What was I doing? Standing in the dark with a boy I scarcely knew, arguing with him as if we were some sort of couple. We were no more a couple than he and Liza were, and she was still sawing logs in the backseat of her car. Even if I did give Preston a chance, even if we did date, and Liza didn’t stop speaking to me for it, there was no way it would last.

  Eventually he would have to go back to school. He’d become bored with the long distance thing, and move on to a pretty, blonde socialite type. They would marry at the country club and have little blonde babies. Because that’s what guys like Preston did. They fell for girls who matched. Girls who would fit in at their A-frame palace on the lake. Not girls who had never been far enough east to leave the Idaho panhandle.

  I backed away tugging the passenger side door open. “No. You’ve got me all wrong.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As we cruised along the two-lane road back to town, neither Preston nor I uttered a word. Even with Liza giggling in her sleep behind us, there was silence. She’d always talked in her sleep, and it’d been super entertaining at slumber parties. Not so much now.

  It wasn’t that I was mad at Preston. His sexist methods for getting a girl’s attention had likely been working famously for him—up until tonight—and he’d never had the need to change. I just had no interest in being the one to instigate such change. I wasn’t running a douche bag rehabilitation program.

  No matter how much talking with him felt like home, or how his eyes seemed to penetrate into my soul whenever their gaze fixed itself on me. No matter how much we seemed to have in common. And especially no matter how delicious his muscle definition was as he’d pulled his t-shirt back on over his water-slicked body. Nope. I wasn’t going to give into my lustful instincts.

  By the time we rolled down the Coeur d’Alene main drag, all traces of pink and orange were gone from the sky, and it was now a dark, deep bluish-black and speckled with stars. The streets were crowded with tourists taking in gourmet trout dinners, purchasing overpriced driftwood art, and listening to acoustical musicians singing away underneath antler chandeliers. I’d never been part of the Coeur d’Alene nightlife, mostly because by the time I was old enough to want to be, I was busy helping my mom stay sober.