Page 67 of The Summers of Us

Everett.

He sat on a chair by the bonfire, Kelsie Miller across his lap, their lips running wildly over each other’s. Kelsie’s dirty blonde hair fell into her forehead. It was more blonde than dirty, streaked in natural and maybe not-so-natural golden highlights. Her freckles were pronounced, sunflower seeds on a sunny afternoon. The sun favored her, and so did Everett.

Tonight ran off the rails. The boy I wanted to make things right with had other plans.

Haven turned me around, steadied me. She looked me in the eyes, sorrow drowning her face. “Let’s go somewhere else, okay?”

I nodded and let her guide me to a space far away from the fire. We sat side by side on a small stretch of beach. The air felt colder down here. The sand was almost too squishy to sit on. Probably riddled with fiddler crabs. It smelled like dead fish and seagull shit. In the buzzy background, everyone else was still having the time of their lives.

The moon reflected a million tiny, choppy moons on the sound.

“Listen, Everett sucks.”

I knew Haven didn’t mean it. I knew she didn’t believe it. I knew I didn’t believe it.

“I’m sure he’s still into you…He’ll come around…Drunk kisses don’t mean anything.”

None of Haven’s attempts to comfort me worked. My eyes pooled with tears, but I blinked them away before it revealed too much emotion.

“It’s okay to cry.”

“I’m fine.” I shook my head, looked down at the water lapping the shore. I brushed a line into the sand.

I was not going to cry about a boy. He was not that important to me. It wasn’t like I’d spent the entire school year thinking about him, imagining his warmth beside me on lonely, sleepless nights. Seeing beautiful shapes in the clouds and wanting to text him all about the stories they told.

This was what having a crush did—it made you feel like crying on the sand, wanting more beer like it hadn’t already killed you.

Haven used the glowing orb of the party to pick through the shells around us on the sand. Most were chipped mussels or clams with skin that peeled like dehydrated paint, but a few coquinas lived to tell the tale. She found one with a purple underbelly.

“Look, it’s got a hole in it. Wanna make it the seventh shell?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want this to be the moment I wear on my neck for the rest of my life.” My eyes stung. I wiped them before any tears could form.Stop being a baby.

“Fair enough,” Haven said. “It’s a pretty shell, though.”

I grabbed the shells already on my neck, hoping they would teleport me to better days when I wasn’t a complete idiot. I wanted to go back to before Everett tried to kiss me at Kelsie’s. Before I started my descent for him at the aquarium. Before we met at the Boardwalk. I wanted to relive the moment I got the first shell, tell myself not to be such an asshole.

Then I’d be the one making out with Everett right now.

“Hey Haven, can I steal you from Quinn for a bit?”

I heard him before I saw him, then looked behind me at the silhouette of Chance Walker. Just when things couldn’t get worse, he had to encroach with two cups of beer.

Haven’s eyes asked what her mouth didn’t.Can I go?

If she were more sober, maybe she’d remember the taste of cherry vanilla ice cream, how she once talked about him on my kitchen floor. But she was drunk, and Chance had a love potion just for Haven. I could’ve been less drunk myself, so who was I to judge? I nodded and offered her a fake smile.

They walked away. The look in Haven’s face sang louder than the speakers still playing to the stars. It told me she was sorry, that she’d make it up to me.

I lay back on the cold sand. Beer burned inside me and sloshed in my stomach. The stars filling the sky started to dance wherever my eyes looked, doubling up over each other, riding their own rollercoaster until I was too dizzy to watch. Thousands of constellations spread in front of me, but everything blurred together. I couldn’t find a single one. Even Scorpio and Sagittarius hid from me.

Hadley would have been so disappointed.

I pulled myself back up, staring forward at nothing. The darkness enveloped me in the unknown. My head spun. I had just flown to the moon and back. I was living in a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from, no matter how many times I opened and closed my eyes.

“Quinn?”

I must have been imagining Holden’s voice. Haven said he was staying home for the night since he couldn’t handle another day with everyone from school. I thought it might have had something to do with Mason and Luke.

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