Page 29 of The Summers of Us

“I do. Just didn’t think you would too. Mine’s in my jewelry box back home. Remember the sea turtle?”

“Yeah.”

I’m babbling too much. A babbling brook. I laugh. I’ve never heard myself talk this much. Can’t decide if I like the sound. He’s too quiet. I know I don’t like that sound. His silence.

The spinning comes back. It never left.

A few paces away, there’s too much space between us.

Something within me shifts. My heart and my lungs beat in quick confusion. Words no longer come easily. The beer stops writing on my tongue. There’s only Everett. Curly, charcoal hair. Tan skin. The muscles visible where his arms wrap within themselves. Broad shoulders. His cheek that’s always been home to the most beautiful beauty mark I’ve ever seen.

We’re not fourteen anymore. That couldn’t be clearer.

Perhaps it’s a deep dive into madness. Perhaps it’s just the truth that’s always existed. Perhaps I haven’t gone anywhere not yet travelled.

I can’t take it anymore.

I kill the space between us. My hand ends up on his chest. I smooth out a crinkle in his tee shirt. There aren’t any crinkles on his face, but I smooth those out too with my thumb.

I want to kiss Everett. I always did. We’re already in his room. All we’d have to do is shut the door.

A truth vinyl spins in my head. “I don’t know what got into me down there. I wasn’t thinking straight. I shouldn’t have run away. I’m here now.”

He swallows so hard I see it in his Adam’s apple. I think I hear it, too. A tsunami of noise. Finally, he takes his eyes off the penny they’ve been glued to. Looks at me, his eyebrows still knitted together. Clears his throat. There’s no mistaking the fire in his eyes, the unspoken words on his lips. Nobody has ever looked at me the way he’s looking right now. He wants to kiss me, too. I know it.

I wrap one hand around his neck, still warm like a summer night. My heart is about to burst from my chest.

He grabs my wrist, pulls my hand from his neck. Swallows. Something like pain on his face, but shouldn’t there be joy? “Quinn, you’re drunk.”

Doesn’t he want me?

“You’re not?” I ask like I’ve been struck by the sky. I can’t remember if he’s been drinking, but he doesn’t smell like beer. Not like me.

His pupils are dark, apologetic, cavernous. He rubs his thumb on my wrist. Warm and cold all at once. “Not like this.”

He lets me go.

I’m freezing cold.

I float alone in a cavernous ocean. It only knows how to take. Take. Take. Take until I’m nothing.

He smiles at me sullenly. “Come on, let’s go back downstairs.”

The rain falls dramaticallyon Everett’s driveway later that night.

I lie dramatically in Everett’s hammock. Everyone else left when the rain started, but I stayed to listen to the world receive the rainfall. The rain bathes the world of its sins, leaving it glittery and new.

Some beer has drained from my head, but the world still feels a bit blurry. I still the swaying hammock, freeze my eyes on the street to steady my stomach. I’m still not sober enough to go home yet, but I’m not drunk enough to kiss Everett; it’s in the past now, but does it still swirl in Everett’s head?

The stairs groan like stones skipping on each rung—Everett is on his way down.

He hands me a water bottle and sits on a chair across from me. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah.” I yawn and temper my fatigue with ice cold water. “Thank you for the water.”

He shrugs. “No problem.”

What is he thinking right now?

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