When Summer Ends
Page 21
“Man,” I say, trying to sound like I’m not nervous as I approach the dugout. “The whole team is concerned about Olivia and me.” I shove my hands down into my pockets.
Mani’s head pops up from where he’s standing by third. “No way,” he mutters.
Zander looks annoyed that I said her name, but quickly softens his face. “Not about her.” He tosses me the ball he’s holding. “We’re here to help.”
I clench the ball in my fist, and instinctually, I start rolling it around, feeling the laces under my fingertips. “With what?”
Zander throws a hand behind him and clangs the dugout fence. “Throw it out here,” he says. A helmet hurdles over the fence, and I realize for the first time that Zander’s wearing his shin guards. It’s what I expect to see him in on the baseball field, but this isn’t a game, or a practice. He picks up the helmet and thrusts it in my direction. It’s not actually a helmet though, it’s a face mask. I’ve seen them online before but never in person. It’s like a wire cage that goes over your face, with straps that wrap behind your head. It looks a little like something a killer would be wearing in a horror movie, and they’re mostly used for players recovering from some sort of facial injury.
I shake my head as Zander thrusts it at me again. “I don’t need this,” I say, irritated. “Give it to your pitcher.” I look at the bench where Callahan, my backup, must be feeling like total crap right about now.
“You don’t have to let one hit ruin everything,” Zander says, the mask still in his hand. “Get up there.” He nods to the mound behind me. “And let us help.”
“You can’t help me with this.”
“We can, just let us practice with you, help you shake it off. We’ll have you back in no—”
“I don’t want you to help with this,” I say, leveling him with a stare I hope will shut him up.
He looks confused. “But Olivia made it sound like—”
“Like what?” I spit at him. “When did you talk to Olivia?”
Zander rolls his eyes. “Relax. She turned down my offer to move in, so don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
I’m not sure when I tune Zander out, but before he decides to drag me back onto the mound, I practically run back to my bike. And as I leave, my friends are shouting my name like it’s a curse word, and it feels like the last day of school all over. Like I’m back to square one.
OLIVIA
We don’t usually spend time at my house, but when I see Aiden from my window I text him to just come in. He hasn’t been to my house since that first time a few weeks ago, and he wasn’t in my room then. But my mom’s gone for the day and Aiden knows I’m leaving, so when I poke my head out of the door and wave him back, I’m not as nervous about it.
“Hey,” I say, from my desk chair. Usually I’d sit on my bed, but the last talk I had with a guy while on a bed didn’t turn out that well.
Aiden’s eyes scan the room, stopping on my piles of boxes and little piles of clothes and picture frames that are in the process of being packed, and then they land on me. “Why were you talking to Zander about me?”
I’m caught off guard by the question. I didn’t expect to talk about Zander. “I—I was just trying to help.”
“By going out with your ex?”
“No, of course not. That’s not what happened. We didn’t go out.” But even as I say it, I’m not entirely sure it’s the truth. I was mad that Aiden left, and anyone who saw us definitely would have assumed it was a date. “I was just trying to help.”
“By telling him my problems? Problems I would tell people myself, if I wanted to?”
It doesn’t sound great when he says it like that, but it’s also not how it actually went down. “That’s not what happened, Aiden.”
“I don’t believe you, Olivia.”
I want to tell him that he can, that he should, but I’m not sure that it’s true. I’m not sure what is true anymore.
“You’ve kept me at arm’s length from the start,” he says, his voice tight. “I’ve never met Emma.”
“You’re in the same class; you’ve met Emma.” I say it gently.
He shakes his head at me, his eyes squinted in disbelief. “I’ve never met Emma as your best friend. We’ve never hung out with her. You’ve never introduced me to your aunt, or anyone.”
“You met my mom.”
Aiden snorts. “Under duress. While I was helping you do housework.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I never made you do that. I told you you didn’t have to.”
“But I wanted to, Olivia. That’s the difference. I wanted to be with you.”
“I haven’t met your family either.” But as soon as the excuse slips past my lips I wish I could yank it back.
“Not because you weren’t invited.”
I want an excuse but I don’t have one. He’s right, I was only half into this. He showed me every nook and cranny of himself.
“I get it; you went into this knowing it wasn’t going to last. You were planning on quitting this before it even started.”
I swallow back the guilt rising up in my throat.
He turns away from me and takes two steps toward the door. But instead of leaving, he turns back. “You’re not the only one who lost something. You’re not the only one who needed an escape this summer.” He pushes a hand through his hair. “And you took one more thing from me.” He shakes his head and his eyes squint at me like I’m too bright to look at. “It was so fucking selfish.”
I look down at my hands, at the pile of papers they’re sitting on. I didn’t feel selfish this summer. Aiden felt like something I was owed, like my reward for all of the crap. And I never once considered that he wanted me this way. That he’d be this upset about my leaving.
“Did you ever think this could work?”
I can hear us ending. This is the explosion I always expected. “I don’t know.” He looks disgusted with me, but it’s true. And when he walks out of my room, I know it’s over.
Chapter
Nineteen
AIDEN
I wonder what it is about fire that’s so cathartic. If it’s the heat, or the color, or the little snaps as anything in its path is destroyed. I’ve been waiting all summer for this; to feel this way. As I strike the match, it feels like the last three months have been building up to this. The night I drove off the road. Snap. The diagnosis I initially ignored. Snap. The ball that smashed into my face. Snap. The look on Coach M’s face when I walked out of his office. Snap. Letting go of all of the plans I had made. Snap. And now Olivia. Olivia treating me like a summer project, Olivia leaving, Olivia talking to Zander. Snap. Snap. Snap.
I put the match to the soft cloth and watch it sizzle and snap, just like my life. As the fire climbs up the makeshift fuse and reaches the vinyl-coated paper, the gunpowder pops and crackles as the orange glow consumes the thin trails of powder that make up the bird’s tail, rising up to its breast and across its outstretched wings. The final flames consume the phoenix, and I feel a little better. Just a little. I still feel empty, but some of the anger is gone—captured on paper for the portfolio committee.
OLIVIA
Two weeks before we move, Aunt Sarah comes home for the weekend. There are still no offers on the house, and apparently Aunt Sarah thinks she can work some sort of real estate witchcraft that we cannot. I hope she packed all of her best candles. My mother and I are in the kitchen, drinking our tea, when she walks through the door in a hurried fluster, muttering something about goddamn toll roads as she rolls her tiny suitcase behind her.
When she sees us on either side of the little bistro table, the whirring wheels come to a stop. She lets out a sigh that sounds a lot like “Hello,” but has the tone of “What the hell.”
Aunt Sarah rolls through the kitchen and pulls out a chair, lowering herself into it as if she walked here from the airport.
“You look destroyed,” I say, taking another sip of my tea. “What time was your flight?”
Mom is stirring her coffee, watching us as if we’re a new TV show she’s heard a lot about but hasn’t seen before.
I push myself away from the table. “You want tea?” I take a teacup out of the cupboard and set it on the counter.
Aunt Sarah eyes the piece of pink-and-gold china. “We have teacups?”
“We do now,” Mom says, dipping her bag into her cup again. She looks nervous.
“We bought them at the weekend antique market downtown.” I take the yellow teapot off of the burner and pour steaming water into the little cup. “We have Berry Blossom, black…” I rummage through the little tins. “And plain old herbal.”
Aunt Sarah shakes her head. “Coffee. I need the hard stuff. Lots of it.”
“The hazelnut stuff?” I pull the canister out of the cupboard and shake it.
“You know it.” Aunt Sarah sets her head on the table, and then, as if she had forgotten she was there, her head pops up and turns toward my mother. Her voice is soft but I can still hear her. “How’s it going?”
Mom looks down at her teacup and nods her head, almost imperceptibly. “It’s good. We’re doing good.”
Aunt Sarah turns on me next. “And you? How is your summer going? I haven’t heard much from you.” She sounds disappointed and I make a mental note to text her more often with updates. I’ve just been so swept up this summer.
“It’s been good.”
“Your job is still going okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, I like it.”
Mom takes a sip of her tea and grunts.
“What?” Aunt Sarah says. “Did something happen at work?”
“No,” I say, at the same time that my mother mutters, “Ask her about her boyfriend.”
“Something happened with Zander?”
My stomach sinks. Oh my god, I completely forgot to tell her about Zander. This is awkward.
“Well…” I’m having a hard time figuring out if I start with the new boy or the old boy. The good news, or the bad news. Is it even bad news, anymore, what happened with me and Zander? Are Aiden and I even worth mentioning, now that we broke up our non-relationship? Is there anything in my life that isn’t a question anymore? It doesn’t seem like it.
I set the cup of coffee down in front of Aunt Sarah, and lean against the butcher-block island. “Zander and I broke up.”
Aunt Sarah lets out a little gasp. “Oh, Liv, I’m sorry.” She sounds like she means it.
“It’s okay. Honestly, I’m over it. It was … months ago.”
Her face twists in confusion. “Months?”
I nod. “First day of summer, when I suggested I could stay at his house senior year.”
Her face is soft and sympathetic. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“It’s fine.” And I really mean it when I say it. Zander and I weren’t right. We weren’t wrong, but there was something missing there, something I didn’t even realize until it was over. Until I could see it from the outside; all of the holes and gaps where we didn’t quite fit together. “Honestly.” I take a sip of my tea. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was going to stick at first. You know, it seemed like a fight. Then I got … distracted.”
Aunt Sarah nods.
I focus on my socks—white with little purple unicorns on them—while I figure out how to share the rest. “Then I met someone at River Depot,” I continue. “Aiden Emerson,” I say, my eyes never raising to see her expression. But I can hear it in her voice.
“Aiden Emerson … that’s … different.” I can’t tell what she means. There’s a weird edge to her voice, like she wants to say something but doesn’t.
My mom stands up from the table and walks to the sink, setting her cup inside. “Sar, he’s adorable. He’s John and Melinda’s kid. You remember them?”
Aunt Sarah nods. “I know who he is, of course.”
Of course.
I clear my throat. “We actually broke up, so…” So none of this really matters. The words hurt to say.
“What?” My mom sounds shocked. “When did that happen?”
I turn around, pressing my stomach against the edge of the island and propping up on my elbows. “A few days ago. But we weren’t together. Not really.” Even as I say it, I know it’s not true. “I mean, we were just for the summer. That’s why we broke up.”
My mom looks disgusted and a pang of guilt rips through me at the thought that she blames Aiden for any of this.
“It was me. I was the one who decided it was just for the summer.” I swallow down the lump in my throat. “He didn’t know I was leaving. It was my fault.”
The kitchen is quiet as my mother and Aunt Sarah process what I already know: that I haven’t been that great of a person this summer. I can feel my chest getting tight and a single hot tear slip out of my eye. I don’t wipe it away because I don’t want to bring attention to it. Maybe no one will notice, and I can just stop talking about this. Is it possible that I could be that lucky?
“Sweetie…” Aunt Sarah’s voice is soft and sympathetic. “I’m sorry.”
I nod, looking down at my fingertips that are drumming on the striped wood under them.
Mom leans across the counter, mirroring me. “That boy adored you.”
I’m not sure why she says it, why she has to cut me with the words when I’m already sliced through in a million spots. All I can do is nod and give a mumbled “I know.”
“So do something about this,” she says in a firm voice. “If you don’t want it to be over, don’t let it be.”
I look up at a face that looks a lot like mine, her eyes burning with excitement. “He broke it off. He’s done.” I hate hearing the words come out of my mouth.
“And that’s okay with you?” she asks.
Okay with me? It sucks. “It doesn’t really matter. I’m leaving.”
“For a year. A year isn’t that long, Olivia.” She’s looking at me like I’m missing something so obvious. “If you don’t want to, if you’re over it anyway, that’s fine. But if not, you’re being short-sighted. A year will fly by. Look how fast the summer has gone.”
She has a point. It’s already early August. The summer has flown by. It’s been three months since Zander and I broke up, and it feels like a literal lifetime ago. I don’t leave for two more weeks. Maybe I could even push that out by a week or two—and then the school year isn’t even a year. It’s nine months. Nine months sounds so much shorter than a year. Could we actually make it work?
Just as the excitement of possibility rushes over me, I tamp it down. It’s too late. Aiden didn’t break up with me because I was leaving. He never even said he had a problem with it. He broke up with me because I betrayed him. Lied to him. Not just once, but twice. Every minute of our time together was a lie, because I didn’t tell him I was leaving.
“I’m pretty sure he’s over it. I don’t think he’ll forgive me. I don’t know that I’d forgive me.”
Mom lets out an annoyed sigh. “You’re not a monster. Making a mistake doesn’t mean you can’t try to fix it. And … you’ve got nothing to lose.”
That, she’s right about. She must see that I know it too, because her voice sounds optimistic. “All you can do is try. And if he’s over it, then you’ll meet someone at your new school.”
I roll my eyes.
“Or you won’t. You’ll have an awesome senior year being single, and kissing guys for fun, and…”
“Kissing guys for fun is what got me into this.” I try to laugh but it sounds sad.
Aunt Sarah’s chair squeaks as she stands and takes the spot next to me against the counter. “I think your mom’s right.” She sounds surprised.
Mom smacks the countertop. “Finally!” She shakes her head, smiling. “I’ve waited forever to hear that.”
Aunt Sarah throws her hands up. “That’s
not my fault—all you had to do was say something that was actually right,” she says.
“I don’t know what to do.” I pick at a little spot on the countertop where I accidentally gouged it with a knife last year. “Do you think we should sand this?” I say, picking at it.
Aunt Sarah smacks my hand. “I think you need to stop picking at it, and we need to tackle one problem at a time.”
“You know what you need to do,” Mom says.
“I do?”
“What would you do if this were one of your stories?”
I laugh, thinking about the shelf of books in my room. I haven’t even read any this summer, I was so distracted by my own love story. And even as I think it, I wonder if it could be true. If love could happen so fast.
“I’d fight against the totalitarian regime taking over my country?”
Mom rolls her eyes, like I’m just being difficult, which I sort of am. “Maybe a different kind of book.”
She’s right, I know what I need to do. And just like at the start of summer, I have nothing left to lose. I’ve come full circle. Just not in the good way.
Chapter
Twenty
AIDEN
I liked family dinner better when I wasn’t the only entertainment. When I was in middle school, Chelsea and Maddie were in high school, and dinner conversations mostly covered grilling my sisters about their lives. As a middle schooler, I loved hearing Mom and Dad ask them a million questions—how they felt about their upcoming basketball games, which colleges they’d visit. Now that it’s just me, with no form of distraction, it’s not quite so appealing.
As I fill glasses with ice water and set them on the table, Mom is pulling a pan of chicken out of the oven and asking Dad a full lineup of questions about the next phase of construction on The Annex. I steal a roll from the straw basket my mom has used since I was little, and shove a chunk of it in my mouth before setting the basket on the table and sinking down into my seat.
“Saw that,” Mom mutters, and I don’t even pretend that I didn’t do it. The day I stop eating my mom’s food is the day I find her balled up in a corner somewhere, weeping about where she went wrong.