Page 17 of Love to Hate You

Summer stuck out her hand but Randy pulled her in for a big hug, really getting in there with the back pats and twisting side to side. Finally, he pulled away. “Cool to meet you, Best Sister in the World.”

“Ditto,” Summer said, a bit overwhelmed that Autumn was in love with a guy Summer knew nothing about. They shared everything, even their cycles. Why would Autumn keep something so big as a “him” from her this long?

“And here’s the best part,” Autumn whispered to Summer. “He comes with a sexy plus-one.”

Summer watched in awe as the driver’s-side door opened and out folded a fine specimen of a man. He wasn’t just tall, he towered. Then there were those broad shoulders and the dark hair that was perfectly styled. His jeans clung to his thighs, a button-up that was rolled at the sleeves was in a losing battle with his biceps, and he had—

Summer’s phone pinged in her pocket with a RoChance match.

“Bollocks,” said the man with the coldest blue eyes Summer had ever seen.

“You!” she said to her nemesis, who was grinning like Napoleon right before he conquered Italy.

“Hey, Summer,” Wes Kingston said. “I guess your sister and my brother are both big Taylor Swift fans. Small world, huh?”

Chapter 7

musicalchairsbeds

“Could you have been any ruder?” Autumn whisper-yelled.

“Under the circumstances, that greeting was tame. Trust me.”

“Tame?” Autumn jerked back, releasing herself from Summer’s death grip. “You didn’t even say hi. You grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into our bedroom. I didn’t even get a chance to introduce Randy to Mom and Dad.”

“Since when do we bring boys to the family retreat?” Summer hissed.

“Since I found love,” Autumn said with a dramatic sigh while spinning around, only to fall gracefully on the bed with her hand pressed to her forehead—nearly missing banging her head on the upper bunk. Summer was surprised an ark full of forest creatures didn’t appear to join her in song. “It was so romantic, Summs. There I was watching Tay-Tay live onstage, and our eyes locked over our Bic app. The one that mimics a cigarette lighter, you know? And it was like—pow.” Autumn made firework fingers. “The most beautiful man I’d ever seen wearing glow-sticks around his neck and singing ‘Wildest Dreams.’ You’d have loved it. It was the most perfect cute-meet in history.”

“You mean meet-cute.” And it did sound cute, dang it. But that wasn’t breaking news, because Autumn had accumulated a grocery list full of perfect meet-cutes—and not a single one had progressed to more than a month. Her twin had the attention span of a gnat when it came to love. No doubt this was going to be like all the others—with her sister going squirrelly at that four-week-fling expiration date.

God, what Summer would do to experience even one of the situationships her sister fell into. Sadly, her twin didn’t even realize how lucky she was.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Autumn said. “He’s different. He’s worthy of going in your guide.”

Cupid’s Guide to Lovewas a journal full of swoonworthy moments, relationship tropes, and hero archetypes—a real how-to-find-a-partner based on commonality and love language—and it was Summer’s.

Summer had collected these tips and tricks from her vast knowledge of 1990s rom-com flicks, classic cinema, and romance novels. It was the difference between finding happily-for-now and finding that one, true happily-ever-after. The difference between Summer living a lonely life as a party of one or a blissful existence with her person.

Her guide was gold—or it would be as soon as Summer nailed that meet-cute. So for Autumn to try to claim part of that felt like all of the other times her sister had outshone her. Not that it was intentional spotlight-stealing, but the result was the same—with Summer feeling like nothing more than the glue holding her sister’s extravagant life together.

Summer pressed her fingertips to her forehead and reminded herself to be patient, and that this was just Autumn being Autumn. But she couldn’t. Maybe it was that her sister was in “love” and this was the first Summer was hearing about it. Or maybe, and this was more likely, it was the emergence of that pompous, entitled bag of dicks downstairs who was ruining her life—and her vacation.

“Fine. What makes him worthy?”

“He asked for my number that first night,” Autumn began, and Summer had to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

“Clichéd.”

“I asked if he was going to call. You know how I act all disinterested and they cling to me like saran wrap?”

Oh, Summer knew all right. Autumn would be dismissive and feign boredom and men ate it up. Maybe that was Summer’s problem. She was too eager to find love. Or at least she acted too eager. But she believed deep down that when someone found their other half there was no need for games and tactics.

“Anyway, he said not only was he going to call me, he was going to marry me!”

Thatwasromantic. So romantic. Had her sister actually found the elusive love at first sight? Summer believed with all her heart that love at first sight was real—that was how her grandparents had met, and her parents—but Autumn wasn’t even looking for love. She’d made that clear. Then again, love was supposed to change everything, right?

“How do you know he’s the one?” she asked, genuinely curious. “You’ve never believed in love at first sight.”

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