Page 60 of The Summers of Us

But I really was sorry, so I led her into the kitchen. She leaned against the island, slumped over while I opened the freezer for a fresh carton of cherry vanilla ice cream.

“I once heard that ice cream is the best solution for heartbreak.”

Haven managed a small smile. She was done crying, so she wiped the mascara from her cheeks and exhaled into a fresh start. Under the shadow of her hood, her smeared makeup made her look like an assassin.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, wrestling the lid off the ice cream as Haven joined me. We were facing each other, our backs against opposite cabinets.

“Will you do the honors?” I handed her the open carton and a spoon.

She jammed her spoon where there were the most frozen cherries, taking a large scoop that kept her mouth silently working for a while as I grabbed small spoonfuls for myself.

“Do you want to talk about it?” It was the right thing to say after sweetening the moment with ice cream.

Haven pulled her hood down. Her sadness was gone, replaced with a fiery anger and disappointment. “He’s a jackass, but you already knew that. How could I have been so stupid? Everyone saw it but me. When I told Holden, he comforted me, of course, but he looked so relieved.”

“You’re not stupid,” I said. “Love just makes us blind sometimes.”

“Thanks.” She shoved another spoonful in her mouth, then laughed some delirious laugh as if everything dawned on her at once. “I was a freaking puppet, dude. He had me acting like I’m not damn Haven Arda Rivera-Sanchez.”

The way she said her name—so wholly, so confidently, soHaven—made my mouth break into an ice cream sweet, moment-brightening laugh. Haven Arda Rivera-Sanchez was a firework who’d been snuffed out a couple months too long. She was back, crackling to colorful, bright life on my kitchen floor.

“Did you break up?” I took another small spoonful.

She leaned in, checking around us for Blair, then whispered, “Yeah, I was done after he accused me of not loving him just because I wouldn’t have sex with him.” She raised her eyebrows like it was the craziest thing she’d ever said. “I’m just barely fifteen, you know my parents would kill me if I ever did that. They’d kill me if they even knew I was drunk at Kelsie’s.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. I understand. You shouldn’t feel bad for standing your ground.”

Dawn rose on her face again. “And then just…everythingelse. He never wanted to hang out with all of us or meet my parents. He’d order salad for me when you know I wanted the grilled cheese. He never wanted me to show too much skin when we were out. Like,hello, I’m a person! I can make my own decisions.”

With every sentence she added to the list, I felt more and more relief. I was glad Haven finally saw the full portrait of Chance and his need for control, with all its vines and thick fog and rain hung heavily on the canvas.

“Damn right you can.”

“I’m better than that. And I deserve better, too.” Haven took another, more self-assured bite, her mouth working its way around the frozen cherries. “I’m an independent woman. I always have been.” She pointed her spoon at me. Ice cream soup puddled on my thigh. “And you are, too, you know.”

I wiped the soup off my thigh and licked it off my finger, laughing at Haven’s new outlook, and the fact that we were two independent women entirely dependent on each other and a carton of ice cream.

But that was okay, because life was not meant to weather alone, even if youcouldtheoretically survive without a best friend to laugh and cry and eat yourself sick with.

“I’m proud of you.” I smiled.

“Pinky promise I’m more proud of you,” Haven said, pinky out.

“Pinky promise that doesn’t make sense.”

“Pinky promise to agree to disagree.”

Thatwe could pinky promise to, and we linked pinkies in the warm kitchen light. We squeezed tightly like pinky promises had magical powers. On our canvas, they did.

The night unraveled in mindless conversation and midnight laughter at nothing. We finished half the carton by the time the sugar crash hit. Haven was too tired to make it back home; I was too tired to make it to my bed.

We slunk to the couch, bundled up, and got comfortable in the blue TV light, the terrible reality show welcome company as we fell asleep.

July 5

I’ve almost made it to dreamlandwhere everybody floats—and hopefully nobody else dies—when a ding from my phone brings me back down to Earth. I’ve spent the rest of the day after the pier at home, trying and failing to write a poem about sunrise, but I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I hate waking from a nap just before twilight. The gauzy indigo window teases that night hasn’t yet fallen, but I already missed the good part. I might as well be a recluse for the rest of the night, succumb to my guilt, but the universe has other plans.

I fish my phone from between the couch cushions, illuminated by a candle on the coffee table and a science fiction movie I lost the plot to.

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