Summer 3 - We'll Always Have Summer

by Han, Jenny

  I banged on the door.

  “Somebody’s in here,” Jeremiah slurred from inside.

  Then I heard him retch into the toilet.

  I stood there another few seconds, and then I walked away, past our table and outside to the parking lot.

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  Chapter Forty-seven

  An hour later, the boys came back, drunk as skunks.

  I’d seen Jere drunk before, but not like this. He was so wasted, the boys practically had to carry him upstairs. He could barely open his eyes. “Belllllly,” he called out. “I’m gonna marry you.”

  From the bottom of the staircase, I yelled back, “Go to sleep!”

  Conrad wasn’t with them. I asked Tom, “Where’s Conrad? I thought he was your designated driver.”

  Tom was swaying upstairs. “I dunno. He was with us.”

  I went out to the car, thinking maybe he’d passed out in the backseat. But he wasn’t there. I was starting to get worried, but just then I caught a glimpse of him way down the beach, sitting in the lifeguard stand. I took off my shoes and made my way over to him.

  “Come down,” I called up. “Don’t fall asleep up there.”

  “Come up,” he said. “Just for a minute.”

  I thought about it for a second. He didn’t sound drunk; he sounded fine. I climbed up the side of the chair and sat next to him. “Did you guys have fun?” I asked him.

  He didn’t answer me.

  I watched the water lap along the shore. There was a crescent moon. I said, “I love it here at night.”

  And then, suddenly, he said, “I have to tell you something.”

  Something in his voice scared me. “What?”

  Looking out at the ocean, he said, “Jere cheated on you when he was in Cabo.”

  That wasn’t what I expected him to say. It was maybe the last thing I expected him to say. His jaw was clenched, and he looked angry. “Tonight at the club, one of his dumbass friends said something.” He finally looked at me.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear it from me. I thought you had a right to know.”

  I didn’t know how to answer him. I finally said, “I already knew about it.”

  His head jerked back. “You knew?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re still marrying him?”

  My cheeks felt hot. “He made a mistake,” I said softly. “He hates himself for what he did. I forgave him.

  Everything’s fine now. Everything’s really great.”

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  Conrad’s mouth curled in disgust. “Are you kidding me? He spent the night in a hotel room with some girl and you’re defending him?”

  “Who are you to judge us? It’s none of your business.”

  “None of my business? That shithead is my brother, and you’re …” He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he said, “I never thought you’d be the kind of girl who would put up with that from a guy.”

  “I put up with a lot worse from you.” I said it automatically. I said it without thinking.

  Eyes flashing, he said, “I never once cheated on you. I never even looked at another girl when we were together.”

  I slid away from him and started to climb down. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I didn’t know why he was bringing any of this up now. I just wanted it all to go away.

  “I thought I knew you,” he said.

  “I guess you thought wrong,” I said. Then I jumped the rest of the way down.

  I heard him jump down behind me, and I started to walk away. I could feel tears coming, and I didn’t want him to see.

  Conrad ran up behind me and grabbed my arm. I tried to turn my head away from him, but he saw, and his face changed. He felt sorry for me. That only made me feel worse. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. You’re right. It’s not my business.”

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  I spun away from him. I didn’t need his pity.

  I started walking in the opposite direction of the house. I didn’t know where I was going, I just wanted to get away from him.

  He called out, “I still love you.”

  I froze. And then slowly, I turned around to look at him. “Don’t say that.”

  He took a step closer. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get you out of my system, not completely. I have … this feeling.

  That you’ll always be there. Here.” Conrad clawed at his heart and then dropped his hand.

  “It’s only because I’m marrying Jeremiah.” I hated the way my voice sounded—shaky and small. Weak. “That’s why you’re saying all this all of a sudden.”

  “It’s not all of a sudden,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “It’s always.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.” I turned away from him.

  “Wait,” he said. He grabbed my arm again.

  “Let go of me,” I said, and my voice was so cold, I wouldn’t have recognized it. It surprised him, too.

  He flinched, and his hand dropped. “Just tell me one thing. Why get married now?” he said. “Why not just live together?”

  I had asked myself the same question. I still hadn’t come up with a good answer.

  I started to walk away, but he followed me. He put his arms around me, over my shoulders.

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  “Let go.” I struggled, but he held on.

  “Wait. Wait.”

  My heart was racing. What if someone saw us? What if someone heard? “If you don’t let go of me, I’m going to scream.”

  “Hear me out, just for a minute. Please. I’m begging you.” He sounded strangled and hoarse.

  I let out a breath. In my head I started to count backward. Sixty seconds was all he would get from me. I would let him talk for sixty seconds, and then I would go and not look back. Two years ago, this was all I wanted to hear from him. But it was too late now.

  Quietly, he said, “Two years ago, I fucked up. But not in the way you think. That night—do you remember that night? The night we were driving back from school and it was raining so hard, we had to stop at that motel. Do you remember?”

  I remembered that night. Of course I did.

  “That night, I didn’t sleep at all. I stayed up, thinking about what to do. What was the right thing to do?

  Because I knew I loved you. But I knew I shouldn’t.

  I didn’t have the right to love anybody then. After my mom died, I was so pissed off. I had this anger in me all the time. I felt like I was going to erupt any minute.”

  He drew his breath in. “I didn’t have it in me to love you the way you deserved. But I knew who did. Jere. He loved you. I thought he’d never hurt you. If I kept you we’ll always have summer · 237

  with me, I was going to hurt you somehow. I knew it. I couldn’t have it. So I let you go.”

  I’d stopped counting by then. I just concentrated on breathing. In and out.

  “But this summer … God, this summer. Being near you again, talking the way we used to talk. You looking at me the way you used to.”

  I closed my eyes. It didn’t matter what he said now.

  That was what I told myself.

  “I see you again, and everything I planned goes to shit.

  It’s impossible… . I love Jere more than anybody. He’s my brother, my family. I hate myself for doing this. But when I see you two together, I hate him too.” His voice broke.

  “Don’t marry him. Don’t be with him. Be with me.”

  His shoulders shook. He was crying. Hearing him beg like this, seeing him exposed and vulnerable, it felt like my heart was breaking. There were so many things I wanted to say to him. But I couldn’t. With Conrad, once I started, I couldn’t stop.

  I broke away from him roughly. “Conrad—”

  He grabbed me. “Just tell me. Do you still feel anything for me?”

  I pushed him away. “No! Don’t you get it? You will never be what Jere is to me. He’s my best fr
iend. He loves me no matter what. He doesn’t take it away whenever he feels like it. Nobody has ever treated me the way he does.

  Nobody. Least of all you.

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  “You and I,” I said, and then I stopped. I had to get this right. I had to make it so that he let me go forever. “You and I were never anything.”

  His face went slack. I saw the light die out in his eyes.

  I couldn’t look at him anymore.

  I started walking again, and this time he didn’t follow me. I didn’t look back. Couldn’t look back. If I saw his face again, I might not be able to leave.

  As I walked, I told myself, Hold it, hold it, just a little longer. Only when I was sure he couldn’t see me, only when the house was in sight again, that was when I let myself cry. I dropped down in the sand and cried for Conrad and then for me. I cried for what was never going to be.

  It’s a known fact that in life, you can’t have everything.

  In my heart I knew I loved them both, as much as it is possible to love two people at the same time. Conrad and I were linked, we would always be linked. That wasn’t something I could do away with. I knew that now—that love wasn’t something you could do away with, no matter how hard you tried.

  I got up, I brushed the sand from my body, and I went inside the house. I climbed into Jeremiah’s bed, next to him. He was passed out, snoring loudly the way he did when he drank too much.

  “I love you,” I said to his back.

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  Chapter Forty-eight

  Late the next morning, Taylor and Anika went into town to pick up some last-minute things. I stayed behind to clean the bathrooms, since the parents were arriving later that day. The boys were all still asleep, which was a good thing. I didn’t know what I would or wouldn’t say to Jeremiah. The worry was eating me up inside. Would it be selfish or would it be merciful not to say anything?

  I ran into Conrad on my way out of the shower, and I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I heard his car leave soon after. I didn’t know where he’d gone, but I hoped he’d stay far away from me. It felt too raw, too soon. I found myself wishing that either he or I wasn’t here. I couldn’t leave—I was the one getting married—but I wished he would. It would make things easier. It was a selfish thought, I knew. It was half Conrad’s house, after all.

  After I’d made the beds and straightened up the guest bathroom, I went down to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. I thought I was safe, I thought he was still out.

  But there he was, eating a sandwich himself.

  As soon as he saw me, Conrad put down his sandwich.

  Roast beef, it looked like. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  “I’m about to go into town to run some errands,” I said, looking somewhere in the vicinity of over his shoulder, anywhere but at him. “Wedding stuff.”

  I started to walk away, but he followed me out to the porch.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about last night.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Will you do me a favor? Will you just forget everything I said?” He flashed a slight, ironic kind of smile. I wanted to smack the smile off his face. “I was out of my mind last night, drunk off my ass. Being here again, it just brought back a lot of stuff. But it’s all ancient history, I know that. Honestly, I can barely remember what I said, but I’m sure that whatever it was, it was out of line. I’m really sorry.”

  For a moment I felt such rage, I think I forgot how to speak. I found it was hard to catch my breath. I felt like a flopping goldfish, opening and closing my mouth, sucking in pockets of air. I hadn’t even slept the night before; instead, I’d agonized over every word he said to me. I felt so stupid. And to think, just for a second, just we’ll always have summer · 241

  for a moment, I had wavered. I had pictured it, what it would be like, if I was marrying him and not Jeremiah. I hated him for that.

  “You weren’t drunk,” I said.

  “Yeah, I really was.” This time he gave me an apolo-getic smile.

  I ignored it. “You brought up all that the weekend of my wedding, and now you want me to just ‘forget it’?

  You’re sick. Don’t you get that you can’t play with people like that?”

  Conrad’s smile faded. “Hold on a second. Belly—”

  “Don’t say my name.” I backed away from him. “Don’t even think it. In fact, don’t ever speak to me again.”

  Again with the ironic half smile, he said, “Well, that would be kind of hard, considering the fact that you’re marrying my brother. Come on, Belly.”

  I didn’t think I could be angrier, and now I was. I was so mad, I practically spat as I said, “I want you to leave.

  Make up one of your bullshit excuses and just go. Go back to Boston or California. I don’t care where. I just want you gone.”

  His eye twitched. “I’m not leaving.”

  “Go,” I said, shoving him, hard. “Just go.”

  That’s when I saw the first cracks in his armor.

  His voice cracking, he said, “What did you expect me to say to you, Belly?”

  “Stop saying my name!” I screamed.

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  “What do you want from me?” he yelled back. “I laid myself fucking bare last night! I put it all out there, and you shut me down. Rightfully so. I get that I shouldn’t have said any of that stuff to you. But now here I am trying to find a way to come out of this with just a little fragment of pride so I can look you in the eye when this is all over, and you won’t even let me have that. You broke my heart last night, all right? Is that what you want to hear?”

  Again, I was at a loss for words. And then I said, “You really are heartless.”

  “No, I think you might actually be the heartless one,”

  he said.

  He was already walking away as I called out, “What is that supposed to mean?” I walked up right behind and twisted his arm toward me so we were facing each other.

  “Tell me what you meant by that.”

  “You know what it means.” Conrad jerked away from me. “I still love you. I never stopped. I think you know it.

  I think you’ve known it all along.”

  I pressed my lips together, shaking my head. “That’s not true.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  I shook my head again.

  “Have it your way. But I’m not going to pretend for you anymore.” With that, he walked down the steps and to his car.

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  I sank onto the deck. My heart was pounding a million trillion times a minute. I never felt more alive. Anger, sadness, joy. He made me feel it all. No one else had that kind of effect on me. No one.

  Suddenly I had this feeling, this absolute certainty, that I was never going to be able to let him go. It was as simple and as hard as that. I had clung to him like a barnacle all these years, and now I couldn’t cut away. It was my own fault, really. I couldn’t let go of Conrad, and I couldn’t walk away from Jeremiah.

  Where did that leave me?

  I was getting married tomorrow. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking this way. It was shameful.

  If I did it, if I chose Conrad, I could never go back.

  I would never cup the back of Jere’s neck in my hand again, feel it’s downy softness. Like feathers. Jere would never look at me the way he did now. He looked at me like I was his girl. Which I was, and it felt like it had always been that way. That would all be lost. Over.

  Some things you can’t take back. How was I supposed to say good-bye to of all those things? I couldn’t. And what about our families? What would it do to my mother, his father? It would destroy us. I couldn’t do that. Especially—especially with everything so fragile now that Susannah was gone. We were still figuring out how to all be together without her, how to still be that summer family.

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  I couldn’t give all that up, just for this.
Just for Conrad.

  Conrad, who told me he loved me. At last, he said the words.

  When Conrad Fisher told a girl he loved her, he meant it. A girl could believe in that. A girl could maybe even bet her whole life on it.

  That was what I would be doing. I would be betting my whole life on him. And I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t.

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  Chapter Forty-nine

  Conrad

  I was in my car, driving away, my adrenaline pumping hard.

  I finally said it. The actual words, out loud, to her face.

  It was a relief, not carrying it around anymore, and it was a rush, actually telling her. I was in an elated sort of daze, on a high. She loved me. I didn’t need to hear her say it out loud, I knew it innately in the way she looked at me just then.

  But now what? If she loved me and I loved her, what did we do now, when there were so many people in between us? How could I ever get to her? Did I have it in me to just grab her hand and run away? I believed she’d come with me. If I asked her, I believed she really might come. But where would we even go? Would they forgive us? Jere, Laurel, my dad. And if I really did take her away, where would I be leading her?

  Beyond that, the questions and the doubts, in the pit of my stomach, there was all this regret. If I had told her a year ago, a month ago, even a week ago, would things be different now? It was the day before her wedding. In twenty-four hours, she would be married to my brother.

  Why did I wait so long?

  I drove around for a while, into town and then along the water, then I went back to the house. None of the cars were parked in the driveway, so I thought I was home free for a while—but then there was Taylor sitting on the front porch.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked her.

  “Well hello to you, too.” She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “They went sailing.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?”

  “I get seasick.” Taylor eyed me. “I need to talk to you.”

  Warily, I eyed her back. “About what?”

  She pointed at the chair next to hers. “Come sit down first.”

  I sat.