Page 82 of The Summers of Us

I felt hot all over, my heart flipping on a hot griddle.

A long pause followed the final word of the first chorus—escape. He looked at me with a knowing smile, and just like that, all I wanted to do was escape. I wanted to jump out of my worries, my past, and my fears. I pictured two figures holding hands, running for the horizon like it was something attainable, like they could actually reach the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

I wanted to escape real life the way Everett was right now.

For a split second, jealousy consumed me. A thick green toxin slithered through my bloodstream. I wished I could be like Everett, who left his skin at the table and walked on a stage a famous, washed up singer.

I shook the thoughts, watched Everett perform his heart out. I couldn’t contain my laughter. He sucked at singing, dancing, and anything else involving a stage, but still, the crowd was enamored.

After the final notes, he thanked the crowd and stepped away from the microphone for a bow. The applause surpassed the sounds of summer. The static was loud enough for people on top of the Ferris wheel to hear.

I was the only one who stood, but he deserved a standing ovation. I clapped until he sat back down and I sat down after him. “I wish I could say I expected anything less from you.”

“I’m good, right?” His breath ran ragged, but he was still floating from the applause. He drank the rest of his piña colada.

“Ev, I’m telling you this because I don’t lie to my friends. You’re probably the worst singer I’ve ever heard.” There was irony in my words. I was lying about not lying. I hoped I wasn’t his friend. I hoped he picked up on my flirting.

“The crowd loved it!”

“The crowd’s drunk.” I raised one eyebrow.

“You’re not, and I saw you bobbing your head.” He read between the lines, nudged my foot with his under the table.

“It’s a catchy song.” I sipped from my drink to hide the curl of my lips. My cheeks had been on fire for the last five minutes, but I was confident the lighting was dim enough in there that Everett couldn’t tell.

When we stepped out onto the Boardwalk, the summer sun had finally gone back home, trading places with the moon. The moon was bright tonight, a waxing gibbous only a few nights from full.

Hadley once told me that she thought the sun and the moon liked each other, but I swore they were mortal enemies. Why else did they avoid each other like clockwork? Their entire existence revolved around opposing each other.

Although opposites attracted, the sun and the moon didn’t count.

But if Everett was the sun, then I was the moon, and that would make us impossible. So I imagined us both as suns, holding still together as the world moved in slow motion around us. Two suns who walked on the Boardwalk, admiring the stars around us, staying out well past curfew, together.

We were even better at breaking curfew than the sun was.

The Boardwalk smelled like freshly buttered popcorn and stamped out cigarette butts. The next time Hadley burned a bag of popcorn before movie night, I could count on it to send me right back to flashy storefronts, greasy food, and the whispers from the butterflies in my stomach:grab Everett’s hand.

Not yet.

Despite the warm summer night, I felt like I’d jumped into a cold swimming pool, shocked and exhilarated all at the same time. Pure happiness washed across my face like the Ferris wheel protruded into the night sky. It was impossible to feel sad on the Boardwalk. I needed my own personal Boardwalk.

Everett and I walked into the carousel line.

“Do you think the sun has a curfew?” I asked when we reached our spot in line.

“Of course, but it changes every night. The sunset is based on solstices and our location on Earth,” Everett said like he had Hadley on the other end of an earpiece, spouting out everything she knew about the Earth’s rotation around the sun.

“Nerd.” I smirked.

He shook his head, then opened his phone, tapped on his screen a few times, and turned it to me. The weather app was open on his phone. “Today, the sun’s curfew was 8:15pm.”

“You ever think maybe the sun wants to stay out a little longer?” I leaned against the railing. It was cold on my arm, but it felt good on a hot night like this. I turned so both arms touched it.

Everett faced me, his arms against the railing parallel to mine. The lights from the carousel flashed a whole rainbow of colors onto his face. The entire universe drowned out his eyes. “I think it gets bored of us. Do you miss the sun already or something?”

“I mean, you can’t have summer without the sun. The moon doesn’t really do much.” Summer and sun were so synonymous that even in the dead of winter, when I glanced at a patch of sunny grass the right way, I teleported to summer in Piper Island. The sun was strong enough to fool me sometimes, but the moon didn’t have that magic.

“You can always have the sun if you expand your definition of sun.” He looked at me again. It felt like I was looking at him through a telescope, close enough to count the stars glimmering in his brown eyes.

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