Then Summer Came

by C. R. Jennings

  I flew to Wilshire. Well, I drove…but I sped. A few hours before, I’d been speeding to Derek to tell him that I chose him, but now I was speeding to Beck to tell him that I didn’t want him to go and that I’d realized on the way to Oxnard that I wanted him, not Derek. Maybe I’d not actually known it until I talked to Emily, but I’d known that something was wrong, and I couldn’t be with Derek anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I peeked through the doorway of Beck's room. The lights were off, and he was standing in the center of the room staring blankly out the window. There was something about the way he looked: calm, serene. It was raw, like he was stripped down to just…Beck. He looked more gorgeous than he ever had before. The light coming through the window just lit up the front of his face. His features were somber and sent an ache through me. His short, brown hair was messy; I could tell he'd been nervously running his fingers through it. He looked ready to go, his bags at his feet and one slung over his shoulder.

  I was so nervous to speak to him. I was certain he hated me, but he needed to know that I'd never want to hurt him. He needed to know how I felt.

  "Beck," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. His eyes lit up when he turned his head toward me, and a subtle smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "You're leaving…"

  He nodded.

  "Beck…I'm sorry…"

  "Don't be," he said blinking away and reaching for his bags. "You don't have to apologize, Lissa."

  “Beck, when I left here, I felt awful. Like I’d lost something…it…I…” I searched until I found the words. Already, I could hardly talk to him. "I only went to Derek because I felt guilty…what we did to him…I felt so guilty." I needed him to understand why I'd gone to Derek. "If you'd have heard the things he said to me, Beck, if you'd have been there to see how we'd broken him, you would understand. I never felt like he even cared about what we were doing. He seemed to be jealous, but not hurt. But this time was different. This time, he looked so…broken."

  "I get it, Lissa. You don't have to do this." He grabbed his bags and made his way toward the door, where I stood.

  "Beck," I said, trying to get him to stay, just long enough to hear me out. "I felt guilty for leading you on. You look at me in ways Derek never has. You know things about me that Derek had never taken the time to know. You cared about me, when it felt like Derek never did. I mostly felt guilty about that. I felt guilty for letting you fill that role when I could never return any of it to you because I was engaged to your brother. It wasn't fair to you…and… that is why chose Derek. I chose him because I'd made a promise to him, and I couldn't keep you anymore. You weren't mine to keep."

  “Well, you don’t have to feel guilty anymore.” His words were ice cold.

  "I don’t!” I yelled, and he paused in the doorway. “On my way to Derek, I kept feeling like something was wrong. I just couldn’t go back to him, and I knew that. We were done, and we both knew it. And when I got there he was…he was with his assistant. He…cheated on me…"

  I watched Beck's face fall, and he regarded me apologetically. "I'm really sorry, Lissa, but can you really be angry?"

  “No, I wasn’t angry at all because I knew before it’d happened that I was going there to end our relationship. I forgave him for what he did, but it didn’t matter. We were too tainted, too jaded, too poisoned, too gone." I stopped to catch my breath, and then I began to ramble, not knowing what to say or how to say it. "And then I went to Emily and she asked me if I'd ever cheat on you, and I thought she was crazy because it was impossible for me to cheat on you, but she said if I were engaged to you, instead of Derek, would I cheat on you? I said that I wouldn't. I don’t know why, but I said that I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t…I couldn’t ever hurt you, and I needed you to know that. I…"

  We stood in silence, and I prayed for him to say something, anything, but he just stared at me vacantly.

  "Is that what you came to say?" he finally asked. My heart dropped into my stomach, and I felt my chin shiver. "Well, like you said: that's impossible," was all he said.

  I brought a shaking hand to my mouth and chewed on my fingernails, trying to contain the sobs that were about to bust out of me.

  He looked away and sighed and then he looked back to me and asked, "Is there anything else you wanted to say?"

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. I pressed my fingers into my lips until it hurt and shook my head.

  He smiled a sad sort of smile and moved passed me, through the doorway. He stopped just as he passed me and sucked in a deep breath. "Bye, Lissa," he said.

  I listened to him walk down the stairs, and I heard the front door close. I busted into tears and fell to my knees. I felt stupid for even going there. Why would he care if I “wouldn't hurt him?” I’d made my choice, and he had made his own plans around those choices. I was a fool to think that telling him that I wouldn't want to hurt him would make any difference. What did that even mean?

  The more I said the words in my head, the dumber they sounded. I allowed myself to cry, but I told myself that I was crying because of how stupid I was, not because of Beck leaving. He deserved to leave, if that's what he wanted, and I had no right to be upset by it. I'd basically made the decision for him.

  I cried in the floor of Beck's empty room for the better half of an hour. I wiped my face clean and told myself to suck it up and live with the choices I'd made.

  I got to my feet and moped down the stairs. I looked back, once, at the place that I'd lived with my fiancé and the place I'd met Beck, but I didn't allow myself to remember any of the times I'd had with either of them. It'd be pointless and torturing. I pulled the front door closed and headed through the dark to my car, trying to get myself together enough that I could tell Em everything when I got back, without breaking into pieces. I could do it. And even if I couldn't, Em would understand.

  My fiancé had made me choose between him and the man I'd been cheating on him with, and I'd chose my fiancé, only to realize that he wasn’t what I wanted, and then I caught him cheating on me less than an hour later. And to tack onto my pain, I had the I'm-sorry-your-life-is-upside-down-but-mine's-still-going-great look from Beck to add to it.

  "You're not going to tell me, are you?" I looked over to where his voice had come from and saw a silhouetted Beck sitting on the edge of the brick wall that surrounded the bushes outside the apartments, his legs dangling off the side. He was sitting, just staring at me, a few feet up from where I stood at my car, my hand resting on the handle.

  "What?" I asked through muffled sniffles, trying not to let on at how upset I truly was; if he could walk away so could I.

  "You're so stubborn," he said, hopping from his seat and walking over to my car. "Even when you don't realize it."

  "What do you mean? I thought you were leaving?" I asked as he came to a stop in front of me.

  "I am." He nodded his head toward the waiting cab, its bright-red tail lights glowing in the dark. "I realized I needed to ask you something, so I waited for you."

  I gazed at him, trying not to enjoy his company too much because he was about to leave. I loved the way he looked in the shadows, the way the dark made him more gorgeous, somehow.

  The cool night’s wind whipped through my hair and across my face.

  “You said you wanted me to know that you would never cheat on me…if it were me you were engaged to, that is.” He spoke loudly over the wind. “You came here to tell me that, but did you say what you meant to say, did you?”

  I could feel the vacancy in my stare, but I couldn’t help it; all I could do was look at him. He just stared back, still waiting for me to say something. I’d gone mute. I wanted to say something, but it was impossible. Nothing in me would allow me to speak.

  Tears began to stream from my eyes, and he stepped into me and wiped them away. “I never wanted to make you cry, Lissa. I just wanted you to tell me everything. I wanted you to say it all.” He paused again, like he was waiting for me to say something. �
�You know, you said you love me last night, while you were sleeping?"

  I felt my mouth drop open, and I tried to conceal the dumbfounded look that I knew must've been plastered across my face.

  “That’s why I wasn’t there when you woke up. I just needed to think about it, so I went to talk to Mik. I thought maybe you were just dreaming about Derek.”

  I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were on fire, but I couldn’t breathe.

  "So, I ask you again: is there anything else you wanted to say to me?"

  I stared at him blankly. I was confused, and I was trying to put together what exactly he was asking.

  “I know you have a hard time being open with me, and I swear I have no idea why that is…”

  Because you make me nervous, I thought. You scare the shit out of me!

  "Lissa, let me help you," he said, grasping my shoulders and locking our gazes. “What Erin did to me…it was fucked up. But…I was over it in a few weeks. I realized that, in the end, it didn’t matter; Erin was just one girl. It was just a mistake, but I knew I would learn from it, so it wasn’t so bad. I just wouldn’t let it happen again.”

  I’d stared at him so long my eyes were numb.

  “I don’t know what it is, Lissa. In all honesty, you’re just an ordinary girl. But…I like ordinary. I like being around you. I like being with you. In fact, there are few things I like as much as I like being with you.”

  I begged my heart to beat…it was as if it’d stopped.

  “All I wanted was for you to tell me that I was wrong, that you wanted me and it had nothing to do with Derek, but you agreed that you were just using me, and that…killed me. Derek is my brother, and I never wanted to do this to him, but I couldn’t stop myself. I looked for every reason I could to be with you, to see you. It killed me to watch Derek ignore you, to watch him shut you out and to see how it wrecked you. But…Derek was a fool.

  “I’m sorry for freaking out when you decided that you wanted to end us, but…I just…I couldn’t let you go. That was, until I saw it in your eyes: You were hurt because Derek was hurt. You were hurt that we’d done what we’d done to him. You were even hurt that, despite those things, you still wanted to stay there with me; I could see it in your eyes. I was hurting you…”

  He chewed on his bottom lip for a second and then said, “You said you wanted to end things between us before they went somewhere we hadn’t intended, before they went somewhere we couldn’t come back from. But, Lissa, the truth is, we’d taken things much farther than you cared to admit. Shit was already deep when you decided we should stop.

  “Lissa, after Erin, I promised myself that I would never be fooled into loving anyone again, and if someone loved me, they’d have to do it from a distance. That was, until…you. Lissa, I’d let you fool me to an early grave. I’d let you wreck, ruin, and destroy me. I’d let you lie to me. I’d let you do whatever you wanted with me, even if it killed me, but I would never love you any less than I do right now.”

  My jaw was so tight it hurt.

  “I believed you, I believed you when you said you’d never hurt me or cheat on me. And I don’t care what you did to Derek. It doesn’t change a thing because I believed you when you said you’d never cheat on me.”

  My whole body went hot. The breeze blew across us, calmer this time, and he closed his eyes and breathed in the cool air. "Look at me,” he whispered, and his hands caressed my face. “I love you…Lissa, I swear I do. I knew the first time you were willing to watch The Evil Dead with me—even though you think it’s horrible—the first time you made me a sandwich. No one has ever made me a fuckin' sandwich! I know it sounds stupid, but you are the only person to have ever made me a sandwich. You knew James Morrison…hell you loved and sang James Morrison!

  “Lissa, I love you, and I don’t know what I meant when I said it to Erin, but when I say it to you, I know what I mean. I mean that I don’t ever want to live without you. I mean that I don’t want anyone else. I mean that if you walked away from me right now, I would miss you every day for the rest of my life. It hasn’t felt right with anyone sine the first time you kissed me. It’s only you, and it will always only be you. I will always only want you!

  “I love you, Lissa. I will always love you, and I would never hurt you. So, if you were dreaming of Derek last night, just tell me."

  He had begun to breathe heavily, his chest heaving, and I noticed my own breathing had quickened. He would never hurt me, he said…he'd never hurt me. He loved me and would never hurt me. I repeated his words to myself, and I knew they were true. I would never hurt him either…that's what I'd gone there to tell him, right? That's what the best friend I could ever ask for had made realize; that I would never hurt him, right? That'd been her point, right? But Emily Marks was sneaky, and she'd always known me better than even I knew me.

  I thought of the question she'd asked me: "Would you ever cheat on Beck?" and I thought of my response: "No, never," and I thought of what Beck had just said to me: "I love you, and I would never hurt you." I knew then that she'd made me realize much more than just that I wouldn’t cheat on him or hurt him. I'd gone there to say much more than that. There was a reason I’d never hurt him. There was something strong behind those feelings.

  “Lissa, I’m not broken…” he said, still holding my face in his hands. He’s not broken, I thought. He’s not…broken…

  Joy’s words fluttered in my mind. “Lissa, my son isn’t broken. He’s just a little lost.”

  “I’m not broken,” Beck had said. He wasn’t broken…just…a little lost. He was just a little lost. And…so was I. Joy wasn’t talking about Derek, she was talking about Beck. She’d been telling me all along that it was still my choice, that it was still my decision. I didn’t have to marry Derek if I loved someone else. It was up to me.

  Suddenly, I knew exactly what I’d gone there for. I'd gone there to tell Beck that I loved him, too. Even if I hadn't realized it before, I'd loved him for weeks, and that's what I'd gone to tell him. Maybe not at first, but that's what I was there to tell him now.

  Derek saw it, Emily saw it, Beck saw it, and even Joy saw it, when I didn’t. I was in love with Beck.

  I looked at his eyes, full of the love he'd just confessed, and I kissed him. It was all I knew to do, but it felt right. I kissed him with the love that felt new to me, but had been there for quite some time, and he kissed me back, like he knew exactly what I was saying to him. He held me tight, and I held onto him as tightly as I could.

  Our kiss calmed and his fingers traced my lips and my jaw. He just kept his face pressed close to mine, holding me, feeling me, loving me.

  The words were right there. The words I should’ve said weeks ago. I clutched him to me, and I whispered against his mouth, "I love you, Beck."

  Our eyes still closed and our faces still pressed together, he whispered back, "I know," and I felt him smile against my cheek.

  I never thought I'd enjoy hearing that response to those words, but it was perfect. Beck was perfect. We were perfect.

  He kissed me again, softer than he’d ever kissed me before, and I knew it was because he knew I was his, now. He didn’t have to fight for me. He didn’t have to try to keep me anymore. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was his, and nothing would ever change that.

  I knew without a doubt, in that moment with his lips on mine, his arms around me, that I would never feel that way about anyone else. I didn't want to, and I couldn't. I had loved Derek, and maybe even still did, but it had never been in the same way that I loved Beck. The love I felt for Beck was…different, to say the least. It was the rawest form of love. It was more than I had ever loved before and more than I ever could.

  It had been freezing winter with Derek. The worst kind of winter. It was arctic. He was absent and in his place was a stark, silent, coldness, a chill that had frozen my heart…but…then summer came.

  r>