Falling for Summer

by Bridget Essex

  Falling for Summer

  by Bridget Essex

  Synopsis:

  Twenty years ago, Amanda Tedlock's life changed forever when her little sister drowned in Lake George, New York. Amanda was only seventeen at the time, but she should have been there that night, and she blames herself for her sister’s death…

  Now, on the twentieth anniversary of the drowning, Amanda goes back to Lake George to face her past and unexpectedly meets Summer McBride. Summer is a beautiful, vivacious, carefree woman--everything Amanda isn’t--and Amanda begins to fall for her until she learns Summer’s dark secret. Can love heal all wounds?

  "Falling for Summer"

  © Bridget Essex 2015

  Rose and Star Press

  First Edition

  All rights reserved

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  For Natalie, always

  And for Kai

  My sister drowned when she was ten years old.

  I grip the steering wheel a little tighter as I take a deep breath, willing the cold sweat that just broke over my brow to go away. To leave me alone. My mouth is dry; my heart is palpitating; memories are already flooding my head...

  This isn't how I wanted this vacation to start.

  But all of it comes back to me instantly, unbidden, because it's the one thing I've never been able to forget...the one thing I've never been able to forgive myself for. The one thing that has influenced every day of my life.

  My sister drowned when she was ten years old. And I could have saved her—but I wasn't there.

  I wasn't there.

  My sister drowned because of me.

  I shouldn't go back to Lake George. I mean, it's a great place, a gorgeous place. It's the beautiful little town where I grew up, a perfect lakeside town where the trees line the road, and the cool lake breezes make you crave cold sodas and skinny-dipping late at night when your parents aren't around, the thrill of being a teenager still racing through your blood. It's where everyone in eastern New York goes for summer vacations, lounging around the lake, buying ice cream and building happy memories. It's a place people want to visit, where people would want to live all year round, if they could. And though it's a little town, and—traditionally—little towns are places you want to move away from, most people in Lake George stay put because it's just that damn wonderful.

  But the moment I turned eighteen, I couldn't leave fast enough.

  I grip the steering wheel harder now, my knuckles white against the black leather as I try to take deep, even breaths, flicking on the cruise control as I merge onto I-87.

  So, yeah, even though it's the ultimate vacation destination, even though it's a wonderful place...there are a million reasons that I shouldn't return to Lake George. It's certainly not home anymore; after all, I haven't considered it home since that night. And ever since my parents moved down to Juno Beach, Florida, there isn't even a physical house in town for me to return to. They sold the house before they moved.

  Every place in Lake George reminds me of my greatest mistake. Every place there, no matter how beautiful, how full of happy memories for other people, reminds me of the night that I would do anything to go back and change.

  I pass a tractor trailer, flooring the gas pedal as I merge back into the right lane, gritting my teeth. The bank of dark gray clouds along the horizon are drifting ever closer, threatening rain, and the gloomy sky matches my mood.

  Before I left New York, Ashley told me that going back to Lake George was a really stupid idea. She's the closest thing I have to a best friend, my long-suffering secretary who has been there with me through everything, and she advised me forcefully, clutching one of the company iPads to her chest, her mouth in a thin, straight line, that what I intended to do was going to be a mistake. “What could you possibly gain from going back there and torturing yourself?” she asked me, real concern making her eyes narrow.

  “It's over and done with, Mandy, all of it,” she told me then, her voice soft, quiet. “You don't have to pay penance for something that happened almost twenty years ago. Your sister would have wanted you to live a good life, not keep looking back to that night and living in purgatory because of it.”

  Ashley's right, of course. She's always right. She's the glue that keeps my online advertising company, Dynamic Unlimited, together, and she's my rock in all other areas. Yeah, she's my secretary, but she's been by my side since college. She really has had my back through everything, driving over to my high-rise condo in the wee hours of the morning when I'm having a panic attack about that night again. Coming over and soothing me with tea and a big hug and reminding me, over and over, that the accident wasn't my fault. Even though I know it was.

  Ashley's done everything within her power to convince me not to do this.

  And I know I shouldn't go back to Lake George. But I'm compelled to. Every year in the summer, I could have gone back, and I didn't. But this year... This year, things are different.

  Because this summer marks the twentieth anniversary of my sister's death. Of Tiffany's death. Twenty years ago, I was seventeen, my whole life in front of me, and I made a stupid mistake. Twenty years ago, because of my stupid mistake, my little sister's life was cut short.

  And ever since then, I've been wishing that I could go back in time, go back to that night. I wish I could go back and fix it more than I've ever wished for anything else. But I can't go back in time, no matter how many times I've wished it, and I can't fix what happened that night, or its tragic outcome. But the twentieth anniversary of Tiffany's death seems extra poignant somehow. My nightmares have increased in frequency lately: I've been having them about once a week instead of once a month. Once a month I could almost handle. Once a week is killing me.

  So I want to go back to Lake George and... I don't know what I want to do, exactly. I'll visit my sister's grave, visit the lake, spend some time by myself. Think about that night and all of the ways it could have turned out differently.

  “You're just doing this to punish yourself,” Ashley told me before I left, her frown of disapproval deepening.

  I can't deny it. To some extent, I know that I am doing this to punish myself.

  But it's the twentieth anniversary. And I have to commemorate that in some way. Going back is the only thing I can think of to ease my aching heart.

  It's about a three-hour drive to Lake George from New York, once you're out of the city proper. And it's a beautiful Monday morning—if you like overcast, quiet gray days. There aren't that many people on the road except for the occasional semi, but I sort of wish there was traffic, something to take my mind off of my looping, unhappy thoughts.

  I left New York today, Monday, when I really should have left it Friday evening. But I couldn't bring myself to go then. I had to psych myself up, packing and unpacking my leather suitcase with precision and a furrowed brow as I decided what to take and what to leave behind at home. I brought my eReader for those spare moments I wasn't sure I'd get, and I brought Tiffany's diary because... Well, I just wanted to bring it with me, to have that closeness with her.

  I'd packed and unpacked my bikini three separate times before I finally left it on the bottom of my suitcase and refused to look at it anymore. I knew I'd want to swim in the l
ake. I knew I'd want to take the same route that my sister took the night she didn't make it across the lake...the night she...

  I blink back tears as the first spatters of rain hit the windshield. The sky had been threatening rain all morning, and finally, after a few patters of drops on the roof of the car, the skies open above me, and a torrential downpour begins to methodically take away my ability to see the road. I slow down, turn on my headlights and my wipers, and I draw in deep, calming breaths, promising myself that I can have a Xanax when I'm safely checked into my cabin on the lake—but only then.

  I reach up, fingering the locket I'm wearing around my neck, the locket that I usually have hidden under my dress shirt for meetings, and my t-shirt when I'm puttering around my condo. The locket that I let so few people see. The locket that I wear every day. Tiffany's locket.

  I take a deep breath, pressing the slim gold circle against my fingers.

  The thing is, I'm worried that there isn't not going to be enough to do at Lake George to distract me from my dark thoughts. I can always distract myself in New York. It's the city that never sleeps, that folds the lost and the heartsick into its bars and nightclubs like a modern-day shepherd.

  The minute I left work on Friday, I called up Robin, and she wasn't busy, so I took her to dinner that night. Robin is my on-again, off-again “friend with benefits”—and we actually call each other that. She showed up to cocktails in an off-the-shoulder number in a deep, breathtaking blue...so we ended up not going to dinner at all. We drank a few glasses of wine and then went back to my place. The dress was on the floor in a matter of minutes, and then I forgot my pain for a few hours while I tasted her, every inch of her, relishing the scent of her skin, the way she cried out when I touched her just right. I focused on Robin and forgot about everything else.

  I don't know why, but thinking about Robin is what makes me doubt this excursion, makes me wonder if maybe this was a mistake. Coming here. Coming back home instead of staying in New York, a city big enough to disappear in, like an oubliette. Everybody knows everybody in Lake George.

  I take the exit, and I brace myself as I roll past the “Welcome to Lake George” sign, freshly painted, looking just like it did twenty years ago. Well, almost. Different colors, and the signpost has been replaced...but it's the same design: the sun setting behind the lake, the pine trees and brightly painted cabins dotting the scenic carving near the looping, cursive word George.

  I follow the curving road past the tiny town, toward the lake itself. I can see the glimmering blue of the lake through the trees at a turn, just a glimpse of it, but suddenly I'm no longer thirty-seven years old, a life of heartache weighing down on my shoulders. I'm seventeen again...with a life of possibility and excitement stretching out in front of me. A life without irreversible mistakes.

  I'm seventeen again as I look through those trees, my heart rising inside of me. My eyes squint at the sunlight glinting off of the water. Because, of course, the rain has broken, the clouds have begun to part, and over Lake George itself, the sun pushes its way through the cloud bank and spills sunshine down onto the waves below, making them shimmer. The sweet white crests lapping on the lake shore are a powerful magnet, pulling me toward them.

  I'm not at the campground yet, but I still pull over, parking the car at a crossroads as I turn off the ignition, palming my keys and looking out through those stately pines at the surface of the lake that holds so many memories—memories deliriously good and unbearably bad.

  This lake claimed my sister's life.

  I get out of the car then, as if pulled by gravity, and I stand on the ground that I haven't touched in twenty years. I look down at my feet in their expensive flats, the only shoes that I have without heels, aside from the cheap flip-flops that I bought at a rest area on the way here. My flats sink into the moss between two tall pines as I walk. It seems silly to even be wearing shoes right now, so I toe them off carefully; then I step with bare feet onto the moss. And it feels just like I did when I was younger, the springy moss between my toes, cradling my feet with a soft wildness.

  I take a deep breath of the rich, country air, the air that's heavy with water from the storm passing overhead and the lake right there, through the trees. The lake pulls me forward, tugging at my heart.

  I leave the car locked behind me, the keys dangling in my hand, and I leave my flats behind, too, beside the car. I take careful steps through the mossy undergrowth in my bare feet, walking with purpose toward the shore of the lake.

  When I reach it, stepping out from the line of trees, I shield my eyes from the sudden sunshine. I left my sunglasses back in the car, and I wince from the brightness, from the dazzling sunlight on the lake, reflecting into my eyes. It's mesmerizing, the sunshine's reflection on the surface of the water, and as I step out onto the sand of the beach, the sand that had to be carted in from who-knows-where (there wasn't sand on the beach when I was a kid) to make the place more “beachy,” I suppose, I take a deep breath of that good, water-scented air, and I close my eyes, lifting my face up to the warmth.

  I'd forgotten this. I'd forgotten what it was like: the sound of the birds calling to one another in the trees, the gentle rhythm of the lapping of the lake on the shore, the cicadas singing merrily away in the long grasses, the tree branches shifting gently overhead from the light wind. I forgot how peaceful, how tranquil this place could be. For a long moment, I push all thoughts of my sister, of my guilt, from my mind, and I simply soak up the sunshine, the birdsong, the sound and scent of the lake.

  And then I hear it: splashing.

  Instantly, my eyes are open, my heart rate starts to build, and I'm looking out at the lake. Splashing? That means that someone's nearby.

  And, yes, there is someone nearby. I spot her, instantly.

  She's swimming toward me.

  Her hair is flat against her head, and because it's wet—and dark because it's wet—it could be any color. The woman keeps turning her head back and forth as she makes broad shoulder strokes, propelling herself strongly through the water in my direction. There's no boat around, but a little way down the shore of the lake, I see the cabins of the campground. I was pretty close, closer to the campground than I'd realized, when I pulled off the road to take in the lake.

  This woman gets to the shallows, and then she stands, the water up to her hips but too shallow to really swim through now. She runs her fingers over her wet hair and glances up at me with a sly smile, her body dripping.

  She looks a little...familiar. Which is why I'm staring. It was also, admittedly, a little surprising to have a woman emerge from the lake unexpectedly, like a mermaid. She's wearing a black bikini, and her tan arms and legs are toned, muscled, like she swims a lot, her hips curving under the strings of the bikini and drawing my eye, even as I wrestle with my gaze, forcing it upward to meet her eyes. She has abs, chiseled abs, so she's probably no stranger to workout machines or—knowing the occupants of Lake George—hard work. My eyes linger on her muscles, and then my gaze lifts to graze her high-cheekboned face.

  Her eyes are narrowed slyly now, to go along with her smile. She has bright white teeth, and against the tanned color of her face, they're even brighter, almost dazzling. Her eyes sparkle with the sunshine reflected off the surface of the lake, and her long black (I now realize) hair is plastered down her back as water drips from her arm muscles, her leg muscles, and she adjusts her bikini bottom with her thumbs, hooking them under the strings to better cover her bottom since the fabric shifted during her industrious swim.

  “Hi,” she tells me then, and there's a little bit of laughter at the end of that word, low laughter that shakes her shoulders as she straightens, stepping forward a few times through the water and then extending her hand to me. “Are you Amanda Tedlock?” she asks me, her voice soft and warm-edged, like the sunshine.

  I blink at her, straighten a little, suddenly very conscious of the fact that I'm barefoot, having walked through a patch of woods, probably trespassing, to ge
t to the lake. I nod, taking her wet hand. “Yes, I am. How did you know?” I ask her.

  Again, that soft, sly smile. “I'm Summer McBride,” she tells me, lifting her chin and holding my gaze. “I own the Lazy Days Campground... We spoke on the phone?”

  Her hand is firmly shaking mine, and it's so cold—she was just swimming through the cold lake—but the feel of her fingers against my fingers is oddly haunting. Familiar.

  “Of course,” I tell her, and she lets me go, putting her hands on her hips again, still smiling at me, still standing up to her knees in the lake, the water lapping against her tanned skin. I stare down at her then, my eyes going a bit wider as I finally remember. “Summer. You were...” My mouth is dry, and I take a deep breath, trying to calm my suddenly erratic heartbeat. “You were my sister's friend.” I choke on the word sister. Then I clear my throat, force out, “You were Tiffany's friend.”

  Summer's face grows dark for a moment as her smile fades. “Yes,” she tells me with a sigh, and stepping up and out of the lake, she moves onto the shore beside me. She leans over and slides her palms over her legs, sluicing off the water. It runs in rivulets over her skin, and I fold my arms in front of me, averting my eyes, clenching my teeth as I remember the small girl she used to be, acutely aware of the beautiful woman she's become.

  Tiffany was ten when she died, and she had many friends her same age, so this woman must be seven years my junior. She's thirty, then, right? God, she's gorgeous. But even as my body becomes aware of the fact that I'm attracted to Summer, I'm mentally horrified by the fact that, the moment I arrived in Lake George, I immediately encountered someone closely connected to Tiffany.

  But isn't this what I wanted? Wasn't this part of my penance, my “torture,” as Ashley put it? To be surrounded by a million things that would remind me—in excruciatingly vividness—of my little sister?

  “So you own Lazy Days?” I ask Summer awkwardly as she wrings out her long black hair and casts an appraising glance in my direction.