Summer Love
First Love
Book One
Harley Turner
Copyright © 2015 Harley Q. Turner
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from the author.
ISBN: 1508705534
ISBN-13: 978-1508705536
Summer Love
Dedication
~one~
~two~
~three~
~four~
~five~
~six~
~seven~
~eight~
~nine~
~ten~
~eleven~
~twelve~
~thirteen~
~fourteen~
~fifteen~
~sixteen~
~seventeen~
~eighteen~
~nineteen~
~twenty~
~twenty one~
~twenty two~
A Message to my readers
About the Author
~Autumn Goodbye~
Dedication
This book is dedicated to a very special friend that inspired this book. Chad, you have always wanted your story told, and although I wasn’t able to be completely accurate, I hope I did it justice. You were always the one person who encouraged me to share my writing with the world, and this is the perfect story for my first attempt. I wish you were around to read it.
I also want to dedicate this to my husband, who has (mostly) been very supportive in my writing. It hasn’t been easy on him while I revisited old friends and feelings, but he urged me to not give up.
~one~
“I love it up here! I wish I didn’t have to go home this week!” Marissa was talking to her older cousin, Brayden.
“You know you will be back next summer,” he assured her.
She knew he was right. For as long as she could remember, Marissa had spent every summer in the small town in north western Wisconsin either camping with her grandparents or staying with her aunt. She was twelve years old, although she was very tall for her age, and had long dark blonde hair and brown eyes. She was dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a purple tank top. It was the end of the summer, which meant that in a few days, her grandparents would be taking her back home, to the town that was almost four hours away from where she was now. As much as she was dreading returning home, she was also excited to get back to her best friend, Melissa. The two of them were starting junior high the following week.
“Are you coming with me, or are you going to hide in the house writing all day?” Brayden asked her. He was slightly older than his cousin, having just turned fifteen a month earlier. They weren’t technically related, but since Marissa’s Aunt Lynn had taken in Brayden and raised him since he was an infant, they grew up seeing each other as cousins. Slightly shorter and stockier than Marissa, he had white-blonde hair and dark green eyes. While Marissa always wore jeans and tank tops, Brayden was always dressed in athletic shorts and t-shirts such as the red shorts and plain black shirt he was wearing now. “I want to get going. Chad is finally free, and they are probably waiting for me.”
“Who is Chad?” Marissa asked as her pulled her hair back into a pony tail. She had spent all summer watching Brayden and his friends play football in the park while she sat on the sidelines scribbling in her notebook. She had always dreamed of becoming a writer, and this summer she never wasted an opportunity to work on it. Most of the summer was spent writing physical descriptions of the same seven boys. She was excited at the thought of adding another.
“Chris’s twin brother. He’s been my best friend since I was 5, but we kind of drifted apart this year. He fell into the wrong crowd and spent the last three months locked up,” Brayden explained.
Marissa was shocked. “He was in jail?”
“Juvenile. But hurry. I haven’t seen him all summer.”
Marissa stuffed her notebook into her bag, tossed the bag over her shoulder and walked towards the door, only pausing for a moment to slip on her flip flops and grab a few bottles of water from the fridge. Once outside, she started walking towards the street, the way they usually walked to the park, but Brayden stopped her. “I’m already late. We’re taking the short cut today.”
Marissa stopped. The short cut he was referring to meant walking through the cemetery next to her aunt’s house. It was definitely a faster route, but Marissa hated it.
“You go ahead. I’ll meet you there,” she told him.
Brayden sighed. “Are you serious? It’s just a cemetery.”
Marissa looked over Brayden’s shoulder at the cemetery. It would take less than five minutes to run through it to the park, but Marissa hadn’t set foot in that cemetery since her great grandmother was buried in it the previous September.
“You know I will get in trouble if I let you go walking through town by yourself,” he pointed out.
Marissa knew he was right. Walking through town to the park, while only a 10 minute walk, would mean Marissa would have to walk by the gas station that her aunt was working at. “Whatever. You win this time. But we are taking the long way home, even if we are running late.”
“Deal,” Brayden told her. He took off jogging toward the cemetery entrance.
This wasn’t the first time the cousins used this short cut to the park. Before their great grandma’s funeral, Marissa had never had a problem running through the headstones, down the hill, and into the park. She couldn’t explain why it bothered her now.
Once through the entrance gates, they followed the gravel path to the right until they reached a steep hill. This was where the path ended. They had to weave in and out of headstones down the hill. As the ground leveled out, they climbed the small white fence separating the cemetery from where they spent their entire summer.
The ‘park’ wasn’t really much of a park. It was really just an open field, perfect for football. The cemetery fence ran along one side until it disappeared from view and the other side was bordered by a small creek that fed into the lake. The cemetery and a small foot bridge, that the locals referred to as the swinging bridge, were the only ways to reach the field. Brayden helped Marissa climb up on top of the five foot tall boulder before running to join his friends.
~two~
Marissa, once settled on top of the boulder, pulled out her notebook along with a bottle of water. She looked over to where the boys were gathered, disappointed. There were only six teenage boys. Even though she barely knew any of them, she quickly determined that Chris and his brother Chad were the ones missing. She took a drink of her water as a tall and tanned boy came running by. It was Chris.
“You don’t happen to have any extra water do you?” A voice from behind made her jump, and Marissa almost dropped her bottle. “I forgot to bring any, and after the summer I’ve had, I will be dying of thirst after five minutes of trying to keep up with them.”
Marissa looked to the direction of the voice. This must be Chad, she thought. Although he did bear a striking resemblance to his brother, Marissa could hardly believe they were twins.
“Of course I do,” she told him. “I’m used to these guys forgetting by now,” she babbled as she pulled another bottle out of her bag and handed it to him.
“You must be the little cousin from Illinois. Thought you were younger.”
“I’m almost thirteen,” she told him. “You must be Chad.” She felt immediately stupid for pointing out the obvious.
“I guess someone has been talking about me. But yes, I’m Chad. The bad influence that everyone is warned to sta
y away from. Thanks for the water. I better get over there. My brother will probably put a leash on me if I get too far from him.” He took the water and jogged across the field to the group of boys before Marissa could say anything.
She just stared as he grabbed a football and threw it to another boy that Marissa didn’t know. He was the most gorgeous guy Marissa had ever laid her eyes on. She tried to remember if she had ever met him before. Chances are she had, if he was her cousin’s best friend, but she didn’t remember. She had stayed with her grandparents at the campground the previous summer because Brayden had been in trouble the whole summer. As she stared, she wondered how she would ever manage to write a description that would even come close to how she saw him. She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to try, for fear of not being able to describe him right.
“Quit drooling over my asshole brother.” Another voice spoke up from behind Marissa. She looked back as a young girl was climbing the fence from the cemetery. She was shorter than Marissa, although Marissa assumed she was older than her, with long wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. “He has a stupid girlfriend any way,” the new girl continued.
“I wasn’t drooling. He’s too old for me anyway.” Marissa wasn’t quite sure how old he was, but she would guess at least seventeen.
“And he’s an asshole. Don’t forget about that. Who are you anyway?” the girl asked.
Marissa introduced herself. “I’m Brayden’s cousin,” she told her. “And you are?”
“Melanie,” the girl replied. “Chris and Chad are my brothers.”
“Why don’t you like your brother?” Marissa asked.
“He’s mean. He always completely ignores me, especially after he started dating Tamara last winter. Then he started getting in to trouble. That’s when my parents started fighting.” Melanie climbed on to the boulder next to Marissa. “How old are you anyway?” she asked.
“I’m twelve. I’ll be 13 next month. Are your parents getting divorced?” Marissa’s parents had split up before Marissa was even born and both were married to someone else. Her mom and step dad split up soon after her sister, Kayla, was born a few years ago.
“No!” Melanie shouted. “They were just fine until Chad started dating Tamara and getting into trouble. After he went to jail, they started getting better, but now they are back to fighting all the time. He is not supposed to see Tamara or even leave the house unless Chris is with him.”
“What did he do?” Marissa asked, hoping Melanie would tell her. Brayden had seemed like it was something he didn’t want to talk about.
“He met Tamara. She’s 18 and already has 2 year old daughter that her mom takes care of. Her mom lets her do whatever she wants, so she is always going to parties, drinking, and doing drugs. Chad met her at a New Year’s Eve party and since then he has changed so much. He started sneaking out of the house at night and drinking all the time. He was arrested for stealing from a liquor store.”
“How old is he?” Marissa asked.
“That’s the problem. He is only two years older than me. He is barely sixteen. We were hoping that now that he is out, he would start hanging out with Brayden and his other friends again, but I’m not sure that will happen now.” Melanie looked disappointed.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“On our way here, we ran into a friend of Tamara’s. She thinks she is pregnant again. Which would mean that my brother would be a father at sixteen years old. Throwing his life away over a stupid slut.” Melanie was crying.
Marissa could tell she was really worried about her brother, even though she tried to act like she didn’t like him. She didn’t know what to say. How was her cousin ever friends with this guy? But as her eyes drifted toward the guys, she couldn’t help but notice once again how cute Chad was.
The boys were already taking a break from the game and sitting by the river bank. Looking at Chad and Chris next to each other, Marissa realized how much they actually did look alike. Both were average height with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Chris was tanned from spending the majority of his summer outside, while Chad was noticeably paler, but also had more muscle definition. Chris kept his hair short. Chad’s fell to his ears, which Marissa noticed were both pierced. He also had dyed the tips of his hair a dark blue and wore a hoop in his right eyebrow. He was leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette and staring over at the girls.
“Your cousin is cute, Brayden,” Chad said.
Chris looked at his brother. “Thinking of calling it quits with Tamara and moving on?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
Chad flicked his cigarette into the river and took a drink of his water. “You know I can’t do that. Not now. I need to see her and find out for sure before I do anything.”
“Find out what?” Brayden spoke up, ignoring his friend’s comment about his cousin. “Thought you couldn’t see her anymore.”
“Apparently she’s pregnant, and my parents can’t keep me away if she is. Does anyone need water?” he changed the subject.
Two guys spoke up, so Chad started walking across the field toward Marissa and Melanie, hoping Marissa had more water in her bag. Brayden stood up and jogged to catch up with him.
~three~
“What’s going on with you man?” Brayden asked.
“I’m going to see if your cousin has any more water,” Chad told his friend.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
Chad stopped walking and turned towards Brayden. “I have been screwing up a lot this year. If Tamara is pregnant, things will change. I will be a good father and prove to everyone that I’m not the screw up they think I am. Prove that I can be better.”
“So you are going to raise a kid, who may or may not even be yours by the way, at sixteen? With no job. You are in high school. What about wrestling? What about school in general?”
“Being a father is more important than some stupid sport,” Chad pointed out.
“That stupid sport was always your plan out of this town. A scholarship so you could get away from your family,” Brayden reminded him. “Besides, you haven’t even seen Tamara since May. Don’t you think that if she really was pregnant she would have told you by now?”
“If I stop the drinking and stupid shit I’ve been doing I’m sure my parents would help me, but if not, I have more than enough money. And if she’s pregnant, Tam would have to stop too. She wasn’t allowed to visit or even call me, so she had no way to tell me.” Chad looked at his best friend. “I need you to help me. I have to see her.”
Brayden looked down. Chad had been his best friend for almost ten years, when they first started wrestling. They had been through so much together. How could he tell Chad that Tamara had moved on?
“Look, I know you don’t like Tam,” Chad continued, “but please, help me find a way to talk to her. I need to know that we’re still together. And I need to know if the rumors are true.”
“But you really will stop the stupid shit?” Brayden raised his eyebrows as Chad went to light another cigarette.
“I’ll stop the rest of it. The drinking, the drugs, the stealing, even the lying and skipping school, is done. I haven’t had a drink since May. I’m on probation til I’m 18, and I sure as hell don’t want to be locked back up. I’ll go back to school when it starts, although I’m a few credits behind where I am supposed to be.” Chad put the cigarettes away without lighting one.
“And your so-called friends?” Brayden asked.
“I’m done with them. You are the absolutely only person that I’m not related to that wrote to me at all while I was gone. I’ve had a lot of time to figure out who my real friends are. Please, just help me see her.” Chad hoped Brayden was still his best friend. He hoped that he hadn’t thrown it all away in the past eight months. “Look, I know I screwed up. I know I was an ass. But I’m here, asking you to forgive me and to help me with one little thing. Please.”
“What if she has moved on?” Brayden asked. “Or even worse, what if she wants to go bac
k to the way things were before you were busted?”
Chad tried to blink the tears from his eyes without drawing attention to them, something he had a lot of practice at over the last couple of months. “If she has really moved on, I will have to accept that. But if she waited for me and is pregnant, I will find a way for us to raise this baby together. I won’t go back to how things were though, no matter what.”
Brayden had already known that Tamara had moved on, probably with more than one guy, since Chad was gone. He knew that she had left the police station with someone else the very night that Chad was arrested, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell his best friend that. “I can’t promise that I can get you to see her, but I can get you to talk to her. If you can stay at my house tonight.”
“With your cute cousin?” Chad started walking toward Marissa.
Brayden rolled his eyes. “Yea, because that will help your situation. Dude, I already told you, she’s twelve!”
“Just messing with you.” Chad approached Marissa and Melanie. “Got any more water? None of the guys came prepared, but we’re not ready to leave yet.” When he smiled at her, a chill shot up through Marissa’s spine. She reached into her bag and handed him her last three bottles of water. When she looked at him, she noticed a deep scar on his left cheek bone and his adorable dimples. “Thanks. Guess I’ll see you later,” he told her as he and Brayden turned and walked away.
~four~
“Oh. My. God. I haven’t seen him flirt with anyone else since he met Tamara!” Melanie exclaimed when the boys were out of ear shot.
“He was not flirting with me,” although Marissa thought he was. He’s too old for me, she told herself. But maybe someday. She couldn’t help but smile.
“No he totally was! Maybe he will forget about Tamara!”
Marissa picked up her notebook and started to write. It wasn’t long before Melanie grew bored and walked away. Marissa had filled up several pages before Chad and Brayden approached her again. The sun was starting to set, which meant they would be expected home soon.
Summer Love (First Love Book 1) Page 1
