This Summer At The Lake

by Daphne James Huff

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” Her voice was quiet, and it pained him all that much more to hear the concern in it.

  “Not really,” he said, deciding honesty was the best policy in this case. What good would it do to deny it? He was so pissed off and hurt, he wanted someone to take on a little of that with him. And his mom already hated the Harts.

  “What happened?”

  Logan hesitated. This was harder. Should he tell her about the accident? Would it change anything in terms of the lawsuit his mom was dealing with? He hadn’t been hit, and as angry as he was at Cassie for lying, he did think she was telling the truth about being sober that night. There was nothing for his mom to gain in her case by adding on more deceitful behavior from the Harts.

  “She’s just…siding with her dad on the lawsuit,” he said finally. It was still technically the truth, he decided. Just not all of it.

  “Oh, Logan, I wish I could say that I’m surprised.”

  His anger flared at the insult, before he remembered he hated Cassie right now. He hated everything about her.

  Though that also wasn’t all of the truth.

  “I am sorry that you’re hurting,” his mom said. She did sound sorry. And tired. Guilt shot through Logan again at knowing his mom had lost sleep yet again over him. “Do you want to come home early?”

  “No, I still have three more weeks at the restaurant. I’ve been making crazy good tips at the bar.”

  There was silence again, and he wanted to say more. But how to explain what had happened? The hurt and anger were so raw; he just needed to be alone with the feelings for a while.

  Besides, he had to start getting used to being alone without his mom there to help him.

  “Okay, just let me know,” she said softly. “Good night, sweetie.”

  “Night, Mom.”

  He tossed the phone down and fell back into the futon. His heart felt raw, his body ached everywhere, and there was so much swirling around in his head that he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep for hours.

  He turned over, settled in for a sleepless night, and passed out immediately.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Cassie wasn’t sure what felt worse—losing Logan or finally agreeing to help her dad.

  Her parents had at least waited until the next day to come talk to her. They must have been scared off by the wails coming from her room the night after dropping off Logan (in a freaking thunderstorm, her crushed heart reminded her daily). But the next morning they’d been waiting for her at the breakfast table, a united front ignoring every other pain than the one directly affecting them.

  Did she realize the best way forward for everyone was for the family to stick together?

  Yes, she saw that now.

  Did she understand what they expect from her from here on out, if she still wanted to go to Columbia?

  Yes, she understood.

  But it still felt wrong. She had her parents back by her side but had lost something so much bigger. Her escape from this life and from who she didn’t want to be was gone forever. She was still going to New York, but she’d be alone. Until she ran into whoever her parents had decided she needed to end up with, that is.

  In the end, she decided it was just easier to not fight it and learn to deal with the unsettled feeling that clung to her day in and day out.

  Exactly sixty-two hours and seven minutes after Logan had walked out of her car and into the rain (not that she was counting), Cassie was curled up in a ball in her bed, struggling to deal with an ever-present unsettled feeling, when her phone rang. She moved faster than she thought possible, hoping it might be Logan but knowing there was no way he’d ever talk to her again. She didn’t even look at who it was, just swiped the phone open.

  “Hello?” she cried, her voice cracking desperately.

  “Cassie?” A teary but familiar girl was on the other end of the phone.

  Cassie shot up in her bed like she’d been electrocuted.

  “Marissa? What’s wrong?”

  “Can I come over? I really need to talk to you.”

  All thoughts of Logan were pushed aside in an instinctive reflex of helping her best friend. However, her concern was tainted by lingering annoyance. Seven weeks without a peep and Marissa calls her crying? Cassie wasn’t going to make it that easy.

  “About what?” she said slowly, sliding off of her bed to start pacing around the room. It was kind of a mess, now that she was the one in charge of cleaning it. Which she most definitely had not been doing over the past few days.

  “Sp-Spencer,” Marissa sobbed into the phone. She tried to say more, but the words weren’t coming out. Cassie held the phone away from her ear for a minute, wondering why Marissa hadn’t just sent a text if she was so upset. She’d probably wanted Cassie to hear her crying to make her more sympathetic. With an annoyed huff, Cassie bit back her irritation. Two could play at that game.

  Just as she was about to say something dismissive and appropriately rude, she stumbled. Her things were strewn about the room so haphazardly, it could have been anything. But she looked down and it was Logan’s green hoodie. The one that he’d let her keep after the Fourth of July. The one he thought she looked really good in. The one she’d been sleeping with in her arms before tossing it aside every morning in a new half-hearted attempt to forget about him.

  Tears formed in the corner of her eyes as she scooped it up with one hand and brought it to her nose. It still smelled like him. Everything did, the gingery citrus scent clinging to everything he’d touched, even her sheets. She’d even crawled under her bed to see if the floor smelled like him.

  It was definitely getting ridiculous. She needed her best friend. It didn’t matter if this was Marissa’s big goodbye or some lame attempt to explain herself. Cassie needed to see her. She missed her.

  Plus Cassie’s house was full of all sorts of tension. Satisfied that Cassie was on their side now, her mom had left the day before, saying there were things to arrange back in Helena before Cassie left for school and in advance of their annual end of summer party. It was only Cassie and her dad again, like it had been in June.

  But the mood was completely different. When her dad wasn’t off fishing, he was strolling around the house with a satisfied swagger that made Cassie slightly ill to witness. She didn’t need Marissa bringing even more drama into her house.

  “I’ll come to your place,” Cassie said. “It’s kind of a mess here.” It wasn’t the best excuse, but Marissa bought it, thanking her before hanging up with another exaggerated sniff.

  As Cassie pulled out of her driveway, she worried what she would say to her former friend once she got to her house. Everything that had happened seemed so far away now. Had it really only been two months since Marissa had driven up to visit with Spencer in the car? It felt like years.

  Without Logan taking up nearly every waking second of her day, Cassie realized just how alone she was this summer. Her sister was busy with her internship, and wouldn’t be back until late August for the big annual golf tournament in the next town over. Their parents hosted another party, even more important than the Fourth of July, because all the players attended. There’d be other families from Helena, just like there had been in July. But in all the weeks that Cassie had been stuck here at the lake, no one from school had reached out to her. She was totally alone.

  Sure she got messages and was tagged online in stuff, but she hadn’t seen anyone face to face in what felt like months. Was she so forgettable? Without school or cheerleading or any other reason for people to see her, apparently she wasn’t as important as she thought she was. Maybe they’d all seen through the fake facade as well, and now that high school was over, they didn’t have to pretend that they actually liked her anymore.

  Maybe she needed Marissa back in her life for more than one reason.

  “Cassie, I am so sorry!” Marissa fell into Cassie’s arms the second she opened the door. While she was happy to hear it, the gasping sobs coming from M
arissa seemed a little over the top.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Cassie said, patting Marissa’s back. She’d already decided to accept whatever Marissa presented as an excuse. “I get it. He’s hot. I dumped him. He was fair game.”

  “I got what I deserved. He dumped me!” She dissolved into a slobbering mess right before Cassie’s eyes.

  Steering Marissa towards her bedroom, Cassie held back the tiny bit of glee at this unexpected revelation. But she quickly turned her focus to her miserable friend. If this had been any other boy, what would she do?

  “Pit stop,” Cassie said, and steered her into the kitchen to grab a pint of ice cream from the freezer. She didn’t even look to see what it was; all that mattered was it contained the sweet sugary coldness that would soothe the worst kinds of pain.

  Curled up on Marissa’s bed, Cassie waited patiently for the crying to stop, smoothing back her friend’s dark curls from her face. It took another few minutes, but finally the sobs quieted, and she took a few gasping breaths before launching into the story.

  “I should have gone with you that night at the restaurant,” Marissa started. Despite her resolve to forgive her no matter what, Cassie didn’t offer any sign of disagreement at this declaration. “We went out to some house party. It was super boring but I was just so happy to be with him, without you around. What a bitch thing to do.”

  “Well, it wasn’t the nicest thing you’ve ever done,” Cassie acknowledged, trying to keep her tone light but the hurt still shining through.

  Marissa looked up at her with red-ringed eyes.

  “We made out on a couch, but he was so drunk, it was like kissing a fire hydrant.” She gave a shudder. “He fell asleep; he was totally out of it. I had to drive him home in his car and then call my mom to come pick me up. She was super pissed.”

  “Sounds about right,” said Cassie. Though when she’d been in those situations she’d avoided any parental involvement, thanks to Marissa.

  “But my mom was kind of happy to hear that it was Spencer.” That also sounded familiar. “She didn’t really punish me, and when he came over the next day to apologize, my mom let me go out with him that night.”

  “Spencer, apologize?” That was not something Cassie had ever experienced.

  “I know, right? He was being so sweet at first. I thought…” Marissa sat up and started blinking back more tears. She looked down at her hands. “I thought maybe it was because he liked me better than you.”

  Cassie took a deep shaking breath.

  “I wanted him to like you better than me, too,” she admitted. “I’ve been trying to get you together for months.”

  At this, Marissa stopped crying and looked up, her eyes wide with shock.

  “Why?”

  Cassie shrugged.

  “I knew how much you liked him. I was kind of over being his girlfriend after about two months of it. I thought you would be better together and we could all still hang out.”

  “You mean you’d really want to hang out after we…”

  Cassie gasped.

  “You didn’t!”

  Marissa nodded miserably, hand covering her mouth. Tears started to form again in her eyes.

  Well this conversation just got a little awkward.

  After hearing Cassie complain for so many months of putting off Spencer’s requests for more, she wondered if Marissa had figured that’s what would keep him interested. It broke her heart a little to think it was probably true. Marissa did what people expected of her, too.

  “I’m not mad!” Cassie said, trying to reassure her. “Really! Just surprised. Was it…everything you wanted it to be?”

  Marissa shrugged and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her hoodie. It was stained and the sleeves were baggy, like she’d been wearing the same clothes for days. Cassie looked down at her own messy ensemble of old leggings and a huge Stanford sweatshirt she’d swiped from her sister’s closet and started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Marissa asked with a hopeful smile.

  “Look at us! We used to never even let anyone in our bedroom if we weren’t fully made up and our clothes perfectly matched!”

  Marissa looked down at her baggy sleep shorts and unshaved legs. She let out a giggle.

  “Practice for college, I guess?”

  Cassie laughed harder.

  “The clothes or the breakups?”

  “Both?” Marissa sniggered. Cassie hugged her tight.

  “See, we don’t have to go to the same college to go through this kind of stuff together. I’ll still be here for you, even when I’m in New York.”

  Marissa nodded and returned the hug. Cassie handed her a spoon and the ice cream, now nice and melty after waiting patiently on the side table for them to finish talking.

  “Here’s to college being different!” cried Marissa, clinking her spoon with Cassie’s. “No more setting our alarm at 5 a.m. to look perfect for assholes who don’t even care about us!”

  “Hear, hear!” said Cassie, as they both dug in.

  As the ice cream slowly disappeared, Cassie felt her heart start to mend. It was still broken beyond repair in so many ways, but at least this tiny part of it that belonged to her best friend was on its way to being whole again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The bar was slow that night, and Logan hated it. A busy bar kept his mind off of other things. Painful things. Also, a busy bar meant lots of tips. Whenever there was just a few people he always hovered and got a little weird, and no one liked to tip weird bartenders.

  Tonight there were even less people than usual; only one silver-haired man sat at the end of the bar, swirling a straw around his empty margarita glass.

  Mitch Huntington.

  Logan had seen him before, both here at the lake and around Helena. Of course he had no idea who Logan was. He’d never given much thought to Mr. Huntington as anything other than just the dad of another rich kid at his high school. Of course, that was before Cassie had entered his life and turned everything upside down. She never talked about Spencer much when they were together, other than passing references to parties or things they’d done together. Logan had been crazy jealous anytime she mentioned his name, but tried to reassure himself she had picked him, so she obviously didn’t care about how popular Spencer was, or how rich.

  But she’d never actually picked Logan; she’d been told to hang out with him. By her jerk of a father. For all Logan knew, maybe her dad had even asked her to break up with Spencer as part of some larger drama going on with the Huntingtons. What did Logan know about the complicated lives of the wealthy families in his town?

  At least now he knew enough to be glad that he’d escaped. He should be grateful to Cassie for breaking his heart. She’d saved him from a lifetime of always feeling like he wasn’t good enough and reminders that he wasn’t a part of her world.

  Luckily, Logan had enough practice at hiding his emotions to not let on to the thunderstorm raging in his mind and served Mr. Huntington like he would anybody else.

  Of course, when Mr. Huntington got a call and put the phone to his ear, Logan decided it might be a good time to clean that side of the bar one more time.

  “Jason! How are things going? Did that lawyer ever call you back?”

  Logan’s heart sped up. Jason Hart?

  He told himself didn’t care. He shouldn’t care. This was between his mom and her former boss, and had nothing to do with Logan.

  He stood there, wiping the same glass, with his back to the bar.

  “Oh yeah? What did the lawyer say?”

  A lengthy pause gave Logan’s heartbeat the chance to ratchet up another few miles per hour.

  “Great news! I knew they’d find something to work with. She’ll never see a penny, will she?”

  Logan nearly crushed the glass he was holding; he was gripping it so tightly.

  So that was it then. After everything his mom had been through, it would all be for nothing. He didn’t care that there wouldn’t b
e extra money for Columbia—he’d never counted on that at all. But it made him red with rage to think that just because she’d stood up to someone richer and better connected than she was, it had been a lost cause from the beginning.

  The two men started talking about the upcoming golf tournament in town and Logan breathed slowly through his mouth to quiet his racing heart. When he heard Mr. Huntington hang up the phone, he turned around with a practiced smile.

  “Anything else for you, sir?”

  Mr. Huntington stood up and shook his head, his eyes not quite focusing as he patted his jacket pockets for his keys. Of course he only left a dollar tip for the three drinks he’d ordered.

  Logan hoped the drunk idiot crashed his car.

  He shook his head. No, that might hurt someone else. Hot anger flared again as he thought of Cassie’s lie.

  However, it flared less brightly than it had a week ago. He could be furious at someone like Mr. Huntington for driving drunk and hurting someone. But Cassie had been trying to avoid that. She hadn’t even been drinking that night; she’d been the one trying to get her drunk friends home safely. He could just picture what a moron Spencer probably was when he was wasted. He must have grabbed the wheel or something idiotic like that. It probably hadn’t even been Cassie’s fault she swerved.

  But it was her fault that she hadn’t told Logan right away.

  Hideki kept telling him it wasn’t that big of a deal.

  “Yes but she lied about it,” Logan said for the hundredth time as they pounded away at Call of Duty later that night. The bar had been so slow, he’d actually left early and he didn’t have any houses to clean the next day. They’d started an epic battle that would probably go all night. One more thing checked off from the BSE list.

  “So what? Everyone lies,” said Hideki, his eyes glued to the screen as one of his players blew up one of Logan’s.