Summer Girl (Summer Girl #1)

by S. Love

  He looks ready to break into a smile. “I’m not going to attack you in front of your mom, if that’s what you’re worried about. I can keep my hands to myself.”

  I’m calling bullshit on that.

  “Can you? Since when?”

  Ozzie stares at me before facing the windshield. “Fine. Maybe I need to work on that.”

  “Thanks for the ride, but—”

  I jump at the unexpected rap of knuckles at my window, twisting my neck at the invasion.

  “Are you two coming in, or what?” my mom says through the glass, taking the decision into her own hands and out of mine.

  “Best behavior,” Ozzie says, his sly smile saying something entirely different.

  Despite the rough start to coming home, it’s made significantly brighter when I see my sister’s face on my mom’s laptop on the kitchen bar, and I run over to it, climbing onto the stool and letting a huge smile take over my face.

  “Happy Birthday, sis.” Talia’s smile rivals my own, and I wish I could transport myself through the laptop screen and into her dorm room.

  Ozzie must have entered the kitchen, because Talia’s eyes flicker to whatever’s behind me, registering who’s there. Her eyes narrow slightly as she looks at me, and I say, “That’s just Ozzie. Cindy’s son. You know Cindy? My boss,” I emphasize, indicating not to badmouth any of her children while one’s standing in the same room as me and put my job in jeopardy.

  “Oh,” she says, then, “Hi!” The less than perfect connection slows and distorts her finger wave, and I lean to one side so Ozzie can see the screen.

  “Hey,” he says back. He could at least smile or look even remotely happy.

  After telling each other a hundred times how much we miss each other, and Talia filling me in on what her new school’s like and who she’s made friends with, we start our goodbyes, my eyes watering over the significance of today and how we’re apart for it. It’s not what we say, it’s what we don’t say. There’s no joy here, not when you look deep enough and see all the way to the bottom.

  “There’s something different about you,” I point out. “You’re glowing. Or did you go and buy yourself a ring light?”

  Talia laughs, flipping her highlighted hair over her shoulder. It curls around her face, framing her right eye. “What can I say? The air’s pure out here. Dorm life suits me.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t stay out there too long.” I frown, and it isn’t all playful.

  When I get off the call, I should have expected the fudgy heap of homemade chocolate cake that Mom brings in from the living room. Pink striped candles protrude from the chocolate frosting that’s been slathered over the top and sides, and most of the cake stand. My heart sinks into my stomach from embarrassment when Ozzie joins in Mom’s abomination of Happy Birthday, and this is exactly the reason I didn’t want him here.

  I’m pleased when the serenade’s over, and I waste no time blowing out my candles and getting this part of my birthday over with.

  Mom wipes tears from her eyes with a piece of paper towel, then pulls me into a hug I couldn’t get out of even if I wanted to.

  “Happy birthday, baby,” she says into my hair.

  A lump forms in my throat as I hug her back. I swallow over it, but it doesn’t budge.

  “Oh, look at me,” Mom says, sniffling. She pulls back and laughs. “Let me go fix myself and then we can cut the cake. Barbera and Mitchell are coming over from next door with their daughter Remi, and I invited a few of the other neighbors. No use all this food I bought going to waste.” She excuses herself to freshen up in the bathroom.

  I glance at Ozzie hanging back by the living room, openly reading me with his eyes. He doesn’t vocalize whatever’s running through his head, and I busy myself with plucking the seventeen candles from the cake and wiping off the frosting so my mom can use them again. We don’t believe in waste in this house, and I’ll see these same candles again next year. If not for my birthday, then for Talia’s. They’ll be reused until they’re nothing but blackened wick.

  “Mitch and Barbera, huh?” Ozzie’s tone drips with humor. “Sounds like it’s going to be a wild one.”

  Laughter hurtles over that lump in my throat, and the change in pace is almost enough to make me cry. I’m unhinged today, unsure whether I’m coming or going. Happy or upset.

  “So…” His humor fades. “Your sister looks just like you.”

  I place the candles in the drawer that’s mainly lined with junk. “That’s what I’m told.”

  The change in subject gives me a minute to compose myself and gather my emotions into check. The most I can ask out of today is to get through it, and Ozzie being here with me is either going to make it easier, or completely impossible.

  Chapter 30

  We sit around the stone firepit in the backyard. Mom stands from her canvas chair and asks for everyone’s attention. I drop my head into my hand and give Ozzie a sidelong look. He smirks back at me from his chair beside mine.

  Before Mom can utter a word, a car horn goes off. When it blares a second, then a third time, she huffs out air and says, “Let me just see who’s making all the noise.” She picks her way through the chairs and hurries inside.

  “Lyla,” she says shortly after.

  Dreading what I’ll find behind me, possibly an adult-sized clown or Dora and Boots characters, I take my time turning around. The grave look on Ozzie’s face makes me reconsider the party entertainment theory.

  My first glimpse of camo and I rise out of my seat, hardly believing my eyes. Mom clings to his arm like he’ll go up in a puff of smoke if she releases him for even a moment.

  “Happy Birthday, Lyla,” he says in that deep timbre.

  I stumble over my speech, all six-foot-five of Sean Rhys the last person I was expecting to see today.

  “How…” I break off and let him wrap me in his big, strong arms. It doesn’t matter how he’s here. I don’t care if he drop-landed by spaceship steered by moon people.

  Mom makes introductions, but most everyone here is already familiar with my dad’s best friend. Whenever they were on military leave from their unit in the U.S. army, Sean would stay with us, and those weeks had a way of feeling endless and too short.

  For the second year, Sean’s made the return to St. Charlotte on his own.

  “Are you staying?” I look up and ask him. There’s still daylight, but the sky’s clear of the sun. The burnished horizon silhouettes his handsome features.

  Talia drooled the first time she copped an eyeful of the soldier with the buzzed haircut and piercing green eyes from the same squad as our dad. “Biceps you could hang off,” she’d whisper to me only every time she was around him. And as she got older, her comments only got worse—cruder. She’s embarrassed me so many times I’ve blocked all instances out.

  If it wasn’t for Sean and my dad being as close as they were, like brothers, Tal would have made a move as soon as her period came in, sixteen-year age gap be damned. That May-December taboo probably added to the appeal for her, but she wouldn’t upset my dad like that, and he never would’ve allowed it anyway, so it really wasn’t her choice to make.

  “I’m flying out in the morning.” Sean sticks his hand in the pocket of his army jacket over his chest. “Got you this.”

  I open the small black box. A slinky silver necklace lies draped over the velvet cushion, the heart-shaped diamond at the end of it reflecting the last of the sherbet light before dusk dims the sky completely. “It’s beautiful, I love it. Thank you.”

  Sean lifts it from the box and fastens it at the back of my neck as I bunch my hair over my shoulder.

  This is no Osborne blowout, but Mom brings out Talia’s and my old boombox and plays one of her UB40 tapes, hurtling me right back to my childhood as the adults drink beer and Ozzie and I sit like good children with our Minute Maids.

  While my mom’s distracted with Sean, reminiscing about what used to be, I take Ozzie’s plastic tumbler from him to get him
a refill.

  “Ah… think I’m good on the juice,” he says, unwilling to hand over his cup. “Sugar decay and all that.”

  I make a face to let him know he isn’t in the least bit funny. “Just gimme the damn cup, Clayton.”

  Channeling my inner Cindy does the trick like I thought it would, and Ozzie gives it up.

  In the kitchen, I pimp his drink with all the handles of liquor I can get my hands on, even pouring out some of the juice so I can fit more of the good stuff in.

  It’s Ozzie’s own fault he’s now stuck here, but his suffering isn’t pleasurable to watch. I don’t believe for a minute he’s having a good time with my elderly neighbors and the rest of the stragglers from the street. This is my crowd, my familiar, and I live life at a low simmer compared to Ozzie. I play by the rules and rarely venture outside of them. At least, I did before I left home for the summer and somehow managed to let myself be corrupted.

  Ozzie sputters on his first sip after I hand him his drink. I sit in my seat with a satisfied smile, getting a sinus-tingling whiff of my own drink as I lean in to put my mouth on the tumbler.

  “Oh, God.” I lean away from my drink like it might reach out and slap me. “That’s horrible.”

  Seeing Ozzie’s already a quarter-way through his, chucking it back without pause for breath, I match his pace, almost gagging from the heat as it struggles down my throat and leaves a trail of fire across my chest. My eyes water when I’m finished, my stomach rolling and gurgling.

  “That was a bad idea,” I say, placing my empty cup on the ground. My head feels lighter than it did five minutes ago, the air around me noticeably warmer.

  Ozzie stacks his cup with mine, leans forward in his seat and says so only I can hear him, “Can you get out of here a little while?”

  “And go where?”

  “Just take a walk with me. I’ll buy you a candy bar at the 7-Eleven if you need an excuse.”

  “A candy bar?”

  “Fine.” A smirk lifts his mouth higher on one side, and he raises his shoulder in a careless shrug. “Chips, too.”

  I tell my mom we’re making a quick run to the grocery store. She nods with a smile, too engrossed in Sean and the Matels from across the street to try and stop me from ditching my own party.

  With nightfall comes the lower temperatures, and I grab Tal’s high school windbreaker from the cupboard under the stairs, my tank top and denim shorts not suitable for keeping the chill at bay now I’ve removed myself from the crackling heat of the firepit.

  We walk along the sidewalk, in the general direction of the local, late-night convenience store. Ozzie pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his eyes trained on the uneven paving. City Council doesn’t shell out the same big-money budget here as they do in Cape Pearl.

  I don’t know how he knows it’s there, but Ozzie veers off the sidewalk, hops a low, chain-link fence, and crosses the overgrown dog-walking path to the children’s playground. It’s set back from street-view, surrounded by uncut trees and soggy mulch.

  He climbs the steps to the metal slide and sits at the top of the activity tower, back to the wall and eyes on me as I sit on the swing set. I look at my feet when Ozzie’s intense gaze becomes too much to match, and my heart starts its own method of dealing with him.

  “I don’t hate Cindy.”

  I jerk my head at the flippant statement thrown out there like garbage in the wind.

  “I know you think I do, and we all treat her like shit, but I don’t hate her.”

  “Then why are you calling her Cindy?” I can’t help asking. Referring to a person, your mother, by their given name, isn’t a term of endearment. And definitely not the way he uses it. Another way of detaching himself from her? Possibly.

  Tension chips into Ozzie’s calmness. “Just because I don’t hate her doesn’t mean I look at her as my mom. Do you think she acts that way?”

  “I’m sure she does her best.”

  Ozzie laughs. At me.

  The swing sways, and I press my feet to the ground for full control. “You don’t agree?”

  He picks up a piece of stray mulch, turns it in his fingers, then hurls it into the trees. “Do you know what my first thought is every morning? That’s the day I’ll come home and find her dead, just like her parents. Because that’s what she does, hangs her life over our fucking heads like she’s our responsibility and not the other way around.” He talks to a spot in the distance rather than talk me.

  I look at him, though. Feel myself being entirely sucked into this side of him he’s never shown before.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He fucks other women and we’re paying the price.” Ozzie tips his head back against the tower, his shaded eyes trained downward on me. “Before you moved in, I didn’t bother coming home half the time. I’d stay out for days, for as long as I could. I love her, I guess, but I’ve got no fucking respect for her.”

  “Because of Ray?”

  “She should have left him the second she found out Mariah existed. I don’t know if she’s gotten so smoked she honestly believes he gives a fuck whose cock she sits on, or whether she just needs the attention from anyone who’ll give her it, but it’s pathetic. She’s pathetic.”

  It’s not that what Ozzie’s saying is wrong, but after living under the same roof as Cindy, and looking into small windows of her life, how can I not feel sorry for her?

  “She’s obviously hurting.” I keep my voice low, on tenterhooks around Ozzie while he’s like this.

  For a while, he says nothing. Then the bloated tension splits and overflows, contaminating everything in its path.

  “So that makes it okay for her to do the same to us? Every time I walk into that house, I’m braced for something I don’t want to see. Con’s clipping his tie on to go into Dad’s business in the fall, and Topher’s high on the planet Neptune most of the time. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who sees what he’s doing to her, or whether they just don’t care enough to stop and take some fucking notice.”

  I’ve been witness to Ozzie showing Cindy compassion once, and it was at the lowest point I’ve seen her. If Ozzie’s been paying her attention before then, it’s the wrong kind. If I want to get through to him, I need to do it now.

  “Ozzie, if you’re worried about your mom in that way, you have to speak up. You can’t stay quiet in case it’s too late.”

  Silence molds around us, a thick, heavy blanket of unspoken words and stray thoughts, and I can practically see Ozzie’s brain working overtime.

  He cups the back of his neck, dragging a hand over his muscles. “What if I hope it is too late?”

  I shake my head, even though he isn’t looking at me. “You don’t mean that.” I hope he doesn’t mean that.

  His gaze lifts and cuts to me. “You’re just as bad, you know.”

  I jerk my head back so hard from the accusation I almost give myself whiplash. “Me? How?”

  “Hiding behind Con rather than standing up to Jardine yourself.”

  What in the world…

  “How have I been dragged into this?”

  Ozzie’s forearms flex, one or two strained seconds stacking onto the already crippling, unbalanced power struggle between us. “Because I’m trying to get you to fucking understand. To see yourself how everyone else does.”

  “Who asked you? And since when does how other people look at me affect you? You won’t let me into your room to change a sheet, but suddenly my reputation’s one you give a shit about? Just pick a mood and stick with it, you’re exhausting me.”

  He jerks his head from the wall, sitting rod straight. “I don’t want you in my room because you shouldn’t be fucking cleaning it.”

  “You could have just said that!”

  His eyes, colorless in the shadows, focus on mine. There’s so much in that darkness that draws me in just as hard as it urges me to stay away.

  “I didn’t know how to. You were pissing me off with your stupid games, and
you should know by now I’m not like Jardine. I don’t function on that normal, human level. If I want something, then I’m taking it. No one gets in my way. Not even you.”

  I scoff, anger pulsing at my temples. “You’re getting far too comfortable with your threats to me. You can’t just take what I refuse to give you.”

  “Yeah?” Passing cloud slivers part to chalky moonlight, and Ozzie gets this look in his eyes that makes me think I should actually be afraid of him. I’ve felt that fear before, but all that got me was here. And before here, in a blacked-out laundry room with his hand in my thong. That instinctive fear wasn’t enough to keep me away, but it was enough to suck me deeper into the shark infested waters. “Says who?”

  I narrow my eyes in revulsion. “You really are sick.” His earlier candor’s sharpened to the Ozzie I’m more familiar with. I’m not buying it, though. Not that easy. “Or that’s what you want everyone to think. You aren’t opaque all the time.” Venom flows into my voice. “You’re transparent, and I can see right through you.”

  He doesn’t like that. Good.

  “And I don’t see through you?”

  I tip my chin up. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “No? Where’s your dad, Lyla? Why isn’t he here?” There might’ve been venom in my voice, but there’s pure poison in his.

  “What’s he got to do with this?” My hands shake around the swing’s chains as I dig my feet into the mulch to stop the gentle rocking of the seat.

  “Everything. One minute you’re weak, giving Jardine and Con shit neither of them deserves in ten lifetimes, and then you’re holding all your cards to your chest like some kind of impenetrable fortress. Which is it, Help? Are you as weak as you fucking act, or are you as strong as you’ve convinced yourself you are?”

  That’s it. I’m out. I don’t need this.

  “Fuck you,” I spit. I bolt off the swing in razor-sharp, sight-snatching anger. If I never saw Ozzie again for the rest of my life it wouldn’t be long enough. An eternity wouldn’t be enough.

  “You can say it, Lyla.” His voice chases me across the playground as he drops down from the top of the tower, landing hard on two feet in the mulch. “He’s dead. He isn’t going to fucking hear you.”