Once Upon a Summer

by Brooke Moss

  “I’m surprised.” I propped my bare feet up on the rails. “I did.”

  Preston’s face turned in my direction. “You did? With who?”

  My stomach hurtled at the hint of jealousy in his voice. It wasn’t that I wanted him to be envious, it was just that… okay, maybe I was playing the game, too. “Actually, no,” I admitted, “I just met a friend for pancakes at the end of his shift.”

  I hadn’t told anyone—not even Liza—about sharing a short stack with Gavin, a high school friend at the end of his shift at the IHOP downtown. We were just friends, maybe tiptoeing around something more since it seemed like he and I were the only two from our graduating class that weren’t leaving for college soon. I hadn’t shared any details with Liza because he was the type of guy she wouldn’t have approved of. He was what she called, sub par social potential. But in a few short weeks, summer would come to a close, and I was going to be left here while Liza—and now Preston—went off to pursue higher learning. Gavin made me feel like maybe I wasn’t going to be completely alone.

  “Maybe I know him,” Preston offered with over-exaggerated casualness. “I know everybody.”

  “No, you don’t.” I pointed my fork at him. “You didn’t know me.”

  “Okay, you got me.” He chewed another bite. “Being shipped off to private school didn’t help. I didn’t get to know very many people here until after I graduated.”

  “Do you ever eat at IHOP?” When he nodded, I added, “He’s a busboy there.”

  “Of course I eat at IHOP.” When I giggled, he held out his box of curry for me to take a bite. “I’m a twenty-year-old college student, and they’re open twenty-four hours. Which one’s your friend? The long haired guy who works the night shift?”

  My mouth dropped and I took another scoop from his box. “How did you do that? Were you stalking me?”

  “No. Otherwise I would’ve already known about the Zac Efron poster, and ran for the hills.” He grinned, forking a bite of the Pad Thai. “Actually I just guessed. He looked like he would match you more than…”

  “More than you would?”

  “Well, yeah. But…” Preston paused to chew and swallow a bite. “Aren’t opposites supposed to attract?”

  “Yes.” I stirred the noodles around a bit. “Gavin and I do match, I suppose. We’re just friends, though.”

  “Good.”

  My head snapped in his direction. “What does that mean?”

  He brought his eyes to mine, a smile tickling at his full lips. “It means I have a shot.”

  “Oh, you think so, do you?” I peeled my eyes from his lips—they were so soft, I couldn’t help but wonder what they would feel like on my mouth again—and met his gaze. “What if I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling?”

  I waited for the predictable Preston retort. Oh, I know you’re interested, Snow White. But instead, he just blinked those warm mahogany eyes at me. “Did you know the first time I came into your flower shop, it was for flowers to take to Elizabeth’s grave?”

  “No.” I poked at the remaining curry in his box. “They were for a girl you met boating. You said so, right after you told me the Range Rover outside was yours.”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “Such a douche.”

  “Right!?” Snorting, I put my takeout box and fork down on the makeshift table. “Do you see why I was such a witch to you every time you came in?”

  Preston put his own food down. “I was young. I didn’t know any better.”

  I laughed. “It was like a month and a half ago.”

  “I know, but…” Sighing, he laced his fingers behind his head. “That was the method that worked for me prior to now.”

  “Bragging about your car and trying to make yourself look like a pimp?”

  “Well, yeah.” Sniggering, he stared up at the stars and went quiet. The sound of crickets and frogs out beyond the pines in the darkness seemed to grow louder as we rested in amiable silence.

  I wondered what Preston was thinking about. So much had happened since he’d asked me out at Petal Pushers, it felt like it was a lifetime ago. He was so much more than I’d presumed. Kind, warm, emotional—everything I looked for in a guy. Being with Preston felt as comfortable as hanging with Liza, but with the added bonus of my heart stuttering every time he touched me.

  I wanted more nights like these. I wanted every evening from now until Preston left to go back to school to be exactly like this one. Swimming, talking, eating, laughing, affable silence. Repeat. I wanted him to reach between our chairs and take my hand. I wanted him to pull me onto his lap, tangle his fingers in my hair, and kiss me until I couldn’t feel my toes, and my brain went all fuzzy.

  But instead, we just sat.

  After about five minutes, Preston drew a deep breath and faced me. “It was the anniversary of the accident. My dad went to an AA meeting, and then was going fishing with his sponsor, and my mom was out of town seeing my grandma. So I was on my own for the day.”

  I nodded, encouraging him to say more.

  “I was going to do what I usually did with my mom on the anniversary, and take flowers to Elizabeth’s gravestone. Then, afterward, I planned to take out the kayak and get grotesquely sunburned on the lake. So as I was driving to find a flower shop, because the one my mom usually used—”

  “Viola’s Garden?” I scoffed. “They’re trash. They hike up their prices to pay for the owner’s gambling problem.”

  “You serious?” I nodded and Preston threw up his hands. “I don’t know any of the dirt on people here.”

  “It pays to be a local.”

  “I am a local. Sort of.”

  I supposed he was right. How much time had we wasted not knowing each other? Would we even have noticed each other in school?

  “So when I got there, it was closed. I was pissed off I had to drive clear over to the other side of town.” He fixed his gaze on the black sky dotted with stars. “But while I was going there, I started talking to my sister—I do that sometimes, it totally weirded out my first roommate in the dorms, by the way—and I asked her to send me a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  Shrugging, Preston put his feet up, too. “I was ticked my parents made me come back here for the summer. I wanted to stay in Boise and do summer quarter, get to graduation sooner, but my parents wanted me home. My cousin got married in June, and then my dad won some award at work, and they said I needed to be here for that stuff.

  “So I asked my sister for a sign this whole summer wasn’t a waste. That my dad being so distant and rude all the time wasn’t a sign he was drinking again, or thinking about drinking again. That my mom being desperate to have me home wasn’t a sign she was starting to unravel. That this town wasn’t just a dead end, and I wasn’t wasting my time by coming home for the summer, and I wasn’t just here to keep my parents from falling apart. I wanted to know there was a reason I came back.”

  The sound of a motor revving far off in the distance rang out, then faded away. I watched Preston’s jaw flex as he pondered his next words.

  “Well?” I prodded gently, reaching across the gap between our chairs and placing my hand over his. “Did she answer?”

  He released a long breath. “I walked into your shop, I saw you, and zap.”

  “Zap?” I giggled, feeling a strange tightness forming in my middle. “What’s zap?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” One corner of his mouth pricked upward, and he turned his hand around to lace our fingers together. “Like an electric jolt, or something. You were there working on an arrangement—a casket thingy, ironically—and you had headphones on. You were swaying to the music as you arranged the flowers, and your hair was hanging across your eyes. You kept blowing it out of the way, and holy hell… I thought I was going to pass out.”

  My skin scalded. I opened my mouth to say something, but words escaped me.

  He leaned closer. “You were my sign.”

  A nervous giggle escaped the b
ack of my throat. “Preston…”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  I felt drunk on the moment. I never wanted it to end. I was his sign, and I was starting to think Preston was mine. “Okay.”

  “The bus boy isn’t good enough for you.”

  “How do you know?”

  His smile dropped. “I just hope, I guess. All I want from you is a chance to take you out.”

  My mind spun. He’d infiltrated my brain, and made me want him more and more and more. I was tired of fighting it. “We’re out right now.”

  “I want to take you out on a proper date. You know, dinner and a movie or something.”

  “Or a party at a fancy cabin in the woods?”

  He grinned, the moonlight shining on his straight, white teeth. “Like I said, I was young and stupid. Can you come over here, Aubrey?”

  For a moment I didn’t care that Liza would be nursing a wounded ego when I confessed I’d broken Girl Code. All I cared about was the fact that Preston’s hand was pulling, and I’d slid from my chair, onto his lap where I seemed to fit perfectly.

  “This is new for me,” he whispered, his breath dancing across my cheek. “I’ve never fallen for a girl so fast. So hard. My friends think I’m a freak.”

  I gulped. “You are a freak.”

  Preston rested his forehead against mine, and he drew a shuddering breath. “Why do you make me so damn nervous?”

  “Because I’m Snow White.” I trembled. Not because it was cold. The night air was warm and thick. I shook because pure adrenaline coursed through my veins. I wanted him to kiss me again. I wanted him to do it so bad, I could have punched a hole in the sliding glass door behind us. “And you’re Prince Charming, remember?”

  “No, I’m not.” He brushed my lips with his own, and a hundred-watt spark jolted between our mouths. “Can I kiss you again?”

  Before I could process another thought, Preston’s mouth was on mine, and his tongue glided along the inside of my lower lip. His head tilted against mine, widening the kiss, and causing explosions of bright, blinding lights to burst behind my closed eyelids.

  His palms spread along the small of my back, and glided underneath the hem of my shirt so they were against my bare skin. I slid my fingers around his neck and up into the back of his hair. When I gripped it in my fists, a low, approving groan bubbled up in the back of Preston’s throat, and his teeth nipped anxiously at my lower lip.

  I moved in for more, letting my tongue dance with his. I pressed my body closer, arching my back into his middle. I could feel Preston’s heart pounding through his t-shirt against my chest. My heart thrummed at the same pace as he moved his mouth down my jawline to my earlobe, which he brushed with his tongue before returning to my mouth with a fervency that rattled my insides. More explosions of light. The sound of my pulse filled my ears as we moved like two people who’d been starving for each other for days…months…maybe even years.

  I blazed a trail of heat from his mouth down his jawline to his earlobe, which I nipped at before covering it with my lips. Preston’s hands drifted up my back, halting just below the thin strap of my bra. My breath caught in the back of my throat, and I dragged my mouth back to his with a feverish intensity which created sparks of electricity in the air around us. His nails scraped my skin before skidding down to my backside and lifting me in one fluid motion. We landed upright against the railing, which arced beneath our weight as I gasped, pulling him as close as he could be without becoming one.

  I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t hear the crickets and frogs now. Only our ragged breathing in my ears as Preston slowly lowered me back down to the balcony floor. When we broke apart—after what felt like half an hour, but couldn’t have been more than thirty or forty seconds—we were both panting and cross-eyed, our skin hot and tight like we were on the verge of breaking through it and melting into each other. Brushing a lock of my dark hair out of my eyes, Preston ran his thumb across my swollen lips.

  “Whoa,” he said, breathlessly. I could feel his heart leaping out of his chest against my own. “I don’t… I just…”

  I nodded shakily, feeling like a downed power wire. His hands were still on my backside, causing my skin to scorch beneath his touch. “Me, too.”

  “Can—” His words broke off, and that cocky grin returned. “Can I call you tomorrow, Aubrey?”

  “Wow. Just… wow.”

  My heart dropped down into my feet, and my blood ran shockingly cold. There, in the open sliding glass doorway, stood Liza. Her hair was still a mess, and there was lipstick smeared on her chin, but I could tell by her eyes she’d woken up a whole hell of a lot more sober than she’d been an hour ago.

  Preston and I slid away from each other, both of us a bit wobbly on our feet.

  I looked down, ashamed. “Liza, I didn’t hear you.”

  “Clearly.” Her voice was flat, and frigidly cold. “I got up to puke again. Managed to hit your trashcan this time. Wish I would’ve hit your pillow now. Guess you don’t find him that repugnant after all, do you?”

  My head snapped back up. “No, I—”

  “Save it.” She put up a hand to steady herself on the wall. “I hope he was worth it.”

  My mouth opened and closed a couple times before I squeaked, “I’m so sorry.”

  Preston cleared his throat, smoothing down his rumpled shirt. “Listen, let me explain—”

  “Nope!” Liza pushed herself off of the wall and stomped over to the couch. She threw herself down with more force than necessary, and it thumped against the wall. She raised both middle fingers in our direction. “You clearly don’t care who you hook up with, eh, Preston?”

  “No, it’s not like that.” His eyes flicked to mine and back. “I… I wanted to ask Aubrey out first, but when she turned me down, I—”

  Liza glowered at me from the couch. “He asked you out first!? Are you joking?”

  I grimaced. “No, but—”

  “You!” She pointed one finger at me, and one at Preston. “Are a shitty friend. And you! Are a total scum bag.” Her watery gaze fixed itself back on me. “We’re done, Aubrey. I’ll be glad when I leave you behind this fall. You’re obviously not the friend I thought you were.”

  My mouth dropped and hot tears stung the backs of my eyes. “Liza, listen—”

  “Go to hell,” she mumbled curling into the couch and closing her eyes. She drew a jagged breath, and choked on a sloppy sob. “Leave my keys on the counter, and I’ll be out of here before you even wake up tomorrow.”

  “That’s not what I want,” I said feebly. This was all spinning out of control. What was I thinking? Shame churned in my belly. “I… we’ll talk in the morning, we’ll—”

  “I should go.” Preston’s mouth stretched into a line. “I went too far. I should’ve backed off.”

  “No.” I raked my hands through my hair, exasperated. “It’s my fault. This is all my fault. I’ll take you home.”

  He put Liza’s keys down. “I’ll call an Uber. You stay.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, my voice low with shame.

  “Sorry?” He looked up from his phone where he was pinging for a ride. “Sorry for what?”

  I felt my whole body sag, guilt weighing on me like a heavy, wet blanket. “I led you on. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Preston’s forehead wrinkled, and he reached for me. “I don’t regret it. Listen, I’m going to call you tomorrow, and we’ll talk about this.”

  “No, don’t.” Moving away from his touch, I jutted my chin out at him. Liza had fallen back asleep on the couch, wet tear streaks down her cheeks. “Don’t call me. I won’t answer.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  True to her word, Liza was gone before I woke up. When my alarm went off at seven am, I’d shot out of bed and charged to the living room to find no friend in sight. Plopping down on the cushions myself, I dropped my face into my hands and started to cry. I didn’t want Liza to go away to college mad at me. Flaws or not, sh
e was my oldest friend.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked from the kitchen.

  I looked up and saw her through my tears. She was in her bathrobe, making coffee, just like every other morning. “Liza’s gone.”

  She poured herself a cup and leaned against the counter to observe me. “She left when I came in at five. Said she had to go.” Mom paused long enough to blow on her coffee and raise one eyebrow at me. “She was sober but looked a little worse for wear.”

  “Dammit.” I wiped my eyes with the hem of my tee shirt. “I wanted to talk to her before she left.”

  Mom nodded knowingly. “Liza seemed upset. Clearly she was drinking last night.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s why I let her stay here, I—”

  “I’m not mad, Aubrey. It was the smart choice.” Mom took a slow sip. “Were you drinking, too?”

  “No. Of course not.” I swallowed thickly. “I know it’s a trigger for you, and I know it’s tough to be around, and—”

  “I think I need to make something clear.” Mom came to sit next to me on the couch. “I owe you an apology.”

  “What?” I blinked at her, a few more tears spilling from my eyes. “Why?”

  She looked at me thoughtfully. “I’ve been using you as a life preserver for a long time. I think it’s time you went back to just being my daughter.”

  I sniffled. “I don’t understand.”

  She smiled. Her mouth the exact same shape as mine. When I compared our baby pictures, they were interchangeable. “When I first got sober, I let you become the parent. You told me when to go places, when to come home for dinner, and what bills needed to be paid on what days. I put a lot of weight on your shoulders to be there for me the way a husband, or a best friend would’ve been.”

  I sat up straighter, drawing a deep breath. “I don’t mind. I like it.”

  “Come on.” She laughed wryly. “Nobody likes being a parent when they’re eighteen. You should be running around town having a blast with your friends before they all leave town, not worrying about what might trigger me. It’s my job to take care of me, not yours. You did the right thing by bringing Liza here. I would rather you did, than leave her somewhere dangerous. You don’t have to apologize for doing that. I’m just glad you’re making better choices than she is.”