“I drove all the way back to the dorms.” He sits down on the dock next to me, huddling his knees up to his chest like I am. It’s way too cold to be in the water. “I barely had enough time to make it back here. You lurking again? Tracking my car?”
“No, I just know you.” He said it to me once, told me all of the ways he knew me, and I wish everything after those texts had gone differently.
“Hm.”
“You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think since I’ve been at school.” My voice is soft, not nearly as confident as I wish it was. I sound scared. I am scared. “I’m still settling in with girls on the team, and getting to know people in my dorm and in my classes. You make friends everywhere you go, but—”
“But you’re lonely, and now you want to talk to me?”
I shake my head. “No, it’s not that. I mean, yes, I do want to talk to you.” God, this is already going badly. And I’m so nervous I’m just rambling. “I’m just saying … I’ve had a lot of time to think the last month or so.” I let go of my knees and sit cross-legged on the dock, twisting to face Asher. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about all of the reasons I knew we wouldn’t work, and—”
Asher drops his chin to his hands. “And you’ve got me out here in the middle of the night … freezing … so you can remind me of all of those reasons? Sidney, this isn’t—”
I put my hand on his next to me, and he looks up, as if I’ve electrocuted him. “Just let me finish?” I keep my voice soft and I don’t move my hand. “I’m not here to torture you. I swear.”
Asher bites his lip and nods.
I don’t want to move my hand, but I do, because I’m not sure I can think straight while I’m touching him. Not when his eyes are still burning with something I haven’t seen in a long time. “You liked me for so long … you showed me.” I swallow down the anxiety rising up in my throat, threatening to choke me. “You showed me the rocks, and the picture, and you told me everything. So…” I pick up the little box tucked in next to my side. “I’ve never dated anyone longer than ten days. I’ve never liked anyone longer than that. And it’s always me, not them. Me who gets bored, or annoyed, for the dumbest reasons. I screw it up every time. I’ve always been good at a lot of things, but I’m not good at this. You thought it was you I didn’t trust, but that’s not it at all. It’s me. I’m the one who would ruin us.”
“You already did that.” His voice is hard but it doesn’t feel mean. Maybe because it’s so quiet it’s practically a whisper.
“I know.” I rest my hands on the box in my lap and look out at the water. “I hate failing. And with you, it always seemed safer to just not try. What if you didn’t like me the way I liked you? What if I screwed everything up? What if you realized after ten days that you didn’t want me?” I look up at the sky and then to him. “I think we were always doomed.”
He shakes his head angrily and I charge forward, my voice in a panic. “Because I was never all in.” My voice is frantic, like I’m racing something. I think I am. “I give a hundred and ten percent to everything I do, and with you, I just gave up.” Asher turns his face toward me, and it’s hard to keep going but I do. “You, Asher Marin, are scarier than swinging on a giant wrecking ball of doom, or cracking my head open on the bottom of a pool. And I was so scared of losing you, that I lost you anyway.” His eyes are locked with mine, and I can’t remember what I was saying. I look back toward the lake to try to clear my head.
“What’s in the box?”
I had forgotten the box was on my lap, clasped between my hands now. The lid slides off with a breathy sucking sound, and I place it on the dock between us. “You showed me how much you liked me.” I turn to look at him, just for a second. “And now I’m going to show you.”
I take a piece of plastic out of the box and hold it up between two fingers. It glows bright in the darkness. “From my ceiling that first summer.”
“Your crab.”
I nod, and Asher holds his hand out. He smooths a thumb over the glowing surface.
“Your meet me at midnight note.” I pull the bright white paper out of the box and wave it in the air. “And this is my contraband picture of us.” I pull it out of the box and hand it to Asher. “Your mom sent it to me.”
“Hm.” Asher lets out a pleased grunt. It’s the same photo he had tacked to his wall.
“Mine was in my locker,” I say, my voice a little embarrassed.
I pull out the weathered paperback of Asher’s favorite book from a few summers ago. “I’ve read this four times.”
Asher takes it from my hand. “Did you love it?”
“I hated it. But you loved it—you were obsessed with it—and I wanted to know why.” I pluck the book out of Asher’s hands and put it back in the box.
I pull a concert stub from the box. “I went to a Greta Van Fleet concert last fall.” Asher’s hands are clenching either side of the dock, so I don’t hand it to him, I just let it flutter back into the box. “I told myself I was going because you played that stupid song so many times that it ruined my brain, but I think maybe I hoped you’d be there. That I could see you out in the world, being normal. Not like you are with me—the way you are with your friends.”
There are other things in the box but I can’t bring myself to pull anything else out. Asher is quiet and motionless beside me, his face still hard. And I think the only thing I’ve accomplished with my box of Asher is to make myself look a tiny bit psychotic.
“What is all this?” Asher’s voice is cautious when it finally breaks through the cold silence.
“This”—How do I even explain this to him?—“this is proof. Proof to myself, that I had hope at one point. Hope that the second summer, or third, or fourth, I’d finally work up the courage to do something.” That lump is back in my throat. “I was braver when I was fourteen, I guess.”
Asher looks at me, and his face is unreadable. “You scare me, too.”
“I’m still scared. But I’ve seen the worst-case scenario now, and … I’m ready to give a hundred and ten percent. I’m ready for morning swims, and twice-a-day training, and whatever lists and spreadsheets and goal planners it takes to make this work.”
“Spreadsheets, huh?” There’s amusement in Asher’s voice. I really do suck at the romantic stuff.
“Metaphorical spreadsheets,” I clarify. “I told you, you’re the romantic marshmallow one.” I raise my eyebrows at him and muster up a nervous smile.
His hands are still resting on top of his knees, and I put one of mine on top of his. “I like who I am with you. I like who we are together. And I’m not scared anymore, because there’s nothing worse than this.”
Asher
“How long have you been planning this?” When I smile at her, I can see the anxiety drain out of her face. “The rocks, and scamming my mom into getting me here … this is the ultimate anti-prank. How many checklists did this take you?”
She scowls at me, but it’s the good kind. The kind that tells me she still thinks I’m funny. “One.”
We sit in silence, and it’s freezing, but I’m afraid to move. If this is all some sort of weird cafeteria-food-induced dream, then I’m not ready for it to be over.
“Hey, Sidney?”
“Yeah?”
“I really really don’t hate you.”
“No?” She leans into me, presses her lips to mine, and pulls away far too quickly. “That’s good, because I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”
Sidney
There are at least five seconds of silence after I say it, and I’m half committed to plunging myself into the icy lake and waiting for unconsciousness, when Asher turns his head to me.
“Finally.” The smile he gives me feels like it could stop wars. Maybe it has. “I was running out of pranks. That’s the real reason I had to call the truce.”
“No more pranks.” Even as I say it, I’m not sure if it’s true. “Well, only the good kind.”
“No Kool-Aid show
ers?”
“And no lemonade bedsheets.” I smile, remembering one of my favorite pranks of all time.
“That’s one of the few times I was actually pissed at you. No pun intended. But that was truly twisted.”
I smile. “Yeah, but you love how twisted I am.”
“I think it’s more like I love you, and you just happen to be twisted.”
I lay my hand in the space between us on the dock. “Cease-fire?”
Asher laces his fingers through mine, and twists toward me, his face so close I know he’s going to kiss me. So close I can feel his warm breath on my cheek when he says, “Truce.”
EPILOGUE
THE NEXT SUMMER
Sidney
“How much do you hate me right now?”
Asher shakes his head against the blanket, and I don’t have to see his face to know he’s annoyed. He hates when I ask him that, when I tease him about how horrible we used to be to each other. I poke him in the side with my elbow and then prop myself up on it so I can look at him. He’s wearing an OAKWOOD SWIMMING T-shirt and his pajama pants. Even in the middle of summer it’s a little chilly at 4 a.m., so the blanket laid out under us also wraps up around our legs. Overhead, the Perseids rain down in tiny bursts of light. This is the most we’ve ever seen, the latest we’ve ever been out. It’s the peak of the shower and our last count was one hundred and four. Of course, we can never know if we’re seeing the same meteor at the same time, so we won’t be turning our numbers in to NASA or anything.
“Okay, how much do you like me right now?”
He raises his eyebrows at me and I know what he wants.
I smile, and lean down to his ear, resting my face there when I do. “How much do you love me right now?” I don’t mean for it to be a whisper, but out in the dark it’s hard to do anything but.
He looks at me and smiles. “It’s hard to quantify.”
“Try.”
He turns his face from the sky to me. “More than all of the stars…” His lips touch mine, gently and quickly; it’s not our first kiss or our hundredth, and it’s certainly not our last. “And then some.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book wouldn’t have been possible without the last twenty-some years I spent vacationing on a beautiful lake in Northern Michigan. And for that, I owe my parents a heartfelt thank-you, for giving me so many wonderful summer memories to pull this story from.
A huge thank-you to everyone on my publishing team who has championed not only this book, but my last two as well: my amazing agent, Michelle Wolfson; my awesome editor, Melissa Frain; my cover designer, Daniela Medina; Saraciea Fennell; and the whole team at Tor Teen.
To all of the readers who picked up Love Songs & Other Lies or When Summer Ends and have come back for more, thank you! Your support means everything. Thank you for giving me space on your bookshelves, saying hello at events, and recommending my books to others. I love hearing from readers, so please don’t hesitate to reach out on social media or via my website at jesspennington.com.
Last, but far from least, I’d like to thank all of the bloggers, bookstagrammers, librarians, and voracious readers who have helped me spread the word about Love Songs & Other Lies and When Summer Ends and have continued to support me with Meet Me at Midnight. Writing is such a solitary act much of the time, and promoting a book can make you feel a little bit like a one-woman army, but having an amazing group of supporters behind me has truly made this whole experience amazing. Thank you all for using your passion (and free time!) to promote books, including mine. I could never list all of you, but if you’ve ever blogged about one of my books, posted a gorgeous photo on Instagram, recommended it to a reader at your library, told a friend about it, or tweeted a promo, then THANK YOU! And an extra-special shout-out and virtual hug to all of the amazing bookish folks on my street team:
Belle Ellrich at Belle’s Archive, JoAnne Wills at Mahkichi’s Not-So-Secret Books, Kayla at Kayla Reads and Reviews, Felicia Mathews at Bookishly Slytherclaw, Melissa Gums at Melandherbooks, Sophie at The Mind of a Book Dragon, Olivia Whetstone at The Candid Cover, Andi at Andi’s ABCs, Linda Harr, Melanie Parker @meltotheany, Sarah Longhurst at The Clever Reader, Kristi Housman at Confessions of a YA Reader, Christy Jane and Kelly at BookCrushin, Katherine Paschal at Smada’s Book Smack, Lauren Bodiford at Lala’s Book Reviews, Auburn at What She Will Read, and Nicole Hoefs at Boundless Bookaholic.
Jordan Bishop at The Heart of a Book Blogger, Melanie at TBR and Beyond, Theresa Snyder, Jaime Arkin at Fiction Fare, Astrid Pizarro at Book Lover’s Book Reviews, Victoria at Latte Nights Review, Venessa @reading_past_bedtime, Jill Hart at Radiant Lit, Courtney Kurhayez at Buried In A Bookshelf, Mina at My Fangirl Chronicles, Mir at TBR and Beyond, Justin Turczak at A Court of Coffee and Books, Liv at Liv’s Wonderful Escape, Heather Currie, Hallie @bookloaner, Karlita at Tale Out Loud, Laura at librarianlaura.com, and Kathleen P. at Travel, Books, and More … Oh MY! You all are amazing!
ALSO BY JESSICA PENNINGTON
Love Songs & Other Lies
When Summer Ends
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JESSICA PENNINGTON lives in a Michigan beach town suspiciously similar to the one in this book. When she isn’t writing, you can find her reading romance novels way past her bedtime or curating the perfect Spotify playlist. She owns more YA novels than many teens, is mildly obsessed with penguins, and probably laughs too much. Jessica is also the author of Love Songs & Other Lies and When Summer Ends.
Visit her online at jesspennington.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 30
Day 32
Day 33
Day 35
Day 36
Day 41
Day 49
Day 50
Day 52
Day 56
14 Days After
24 Days After
34 Days After
49 Days After
59 Days After
60 Days After
67 Days After
72 Days After
73 Days After
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Jessica Pennington
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
MEET ME AT MIDNIGHT
Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Pennington
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Daniela Medina
Cover photograph © Getty Images
A Tor Teen Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trade
mark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-18766-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-18765-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250187659
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: April 2020
Meet Me at Midnight Page 29