Page 1 of The Summer I First Saw You
1
DAISY
It was a mistake to come home.
I probably already knew this, but I know it with certainty once my mom pulls out her wedding video. Whenever Bridget Doherty starts in some way fetishizing the glorious start of her marriage, shit always goes downhill. I just arrived in California yesterday—my car’s death rattle warning me I’d need another way to get back to DC in August—and it’s already clear I came here for nothing.
I keep it all to myself since we’ve got company. I try, these days, to be subtle in expressing my hatred for Scott, my stepfather. As the video is about to prove, however, I wasn’t always this chill.
“Ave Maria” plays as my mother and I—the only bridesmaid—walk down the aisle.
I throw a pillow at my Uncle Liam, who’s now laughing. “Fuck off.”
“That’syou?” gasps Emerson, the woman he is clearly sleeping with but who he’s introduced as acolleague. Her shock makes sense. WhileIam your basic California girl—blonde, blue-eyed, tan—the girl angrily stomping toward the altar ispale and hollow-eyed. She also has hair dyed black and cut short with kitchen scissors, a look crafted the night before the wedding.
I did not pull it off.
“It was a phase,” I reply.
Liam snorts. “A long phase.”
The video continues and I do my best to ignore it. Scott’s up at the altar—smug, self-satisfied, overconfident—saying,“Bridget, you grow more beautiful to me each day.”That should have been my mom’s first red flag right there: when a dude starts your life together by lauding you for your increasing beauty, a feat that woulddefy the laws of nature if you pulled it off, you’re already fighting a losing battle.
If I ever get married—highly doubtful—I hope the groom simply says, “Your beauty will wither a little more each day until you are unrecognizable, but even then, I won’t go fuck the neighbor’s au pair like Scott did.”
An awkward thing to address in the middle of the wedding, I realize, but at least it’sachievable.
I stop watching but am soon clued into my reappearance on the screen by Liam’s laughter. That hair of mine is the gift that never stops giving.
We are now at the reception. I stand against a wall, shoulders hunched over to make myself concave. The breasts that seemed to appear overnight and swelled way past anything I’d considered reasonable were the envy of all my friends and the worst thing that had ever happened to me—or so I’d thought.
“There she is,” says a voice. It goes down like caramelized sugar, gritty and smooth and sweet all at once. “Goth Wedding Barbie.”
Even now, all these years later, butterflies don’t take flight in my stomach—they freakingexplode.
Harrison Reid appears on the screen, and through the living room, there’s a collective intake of breath followed by alow, wistful exhale. It’s the sound made when multiple women’s ovaries go into overdrive simultaneously.
Harrison’s been inspiring it for most of my life.
He’s in a suit, of course, because it’s a wedding, but he somehow makes the suit look likemore: feral, filthy, expensive, testosterone-laced. His dark hair gleams, that hint of five o’clock shadow roughening up the prettiness of his face just enough.
His smile is a devastating promise of things to come. A smile that says, “Turn off the camera so I can fuck you into the next century.”
It’s pretty easy to imagine him wanting to leave the cameraon, too.
“Mmmm. Wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers,” says Jackie, my mother’s best friend. “And he’s single now too, right?”
We all look at Liam expectantly, though I’m not sure why. If we want to know who Harrison drafted in Fantasy Football anytime over the last decade, Liam’s got us covered, but he’s useless where anything relevant is concerned.
Why did Harrison and Audrey split up?Liam doesn’t know. He figures they grew apart.
Is Harrison upset?Liam never asked but assumes not.
“You missed your shot, Jackie,” Liam replies. “Harrison’s got a girlfriend.”
My head whips toward him as if it’s been punched in his direction. It figures that when Liam finally has information, it’s information I’d rather not have.
“Already?” My voice is unreasonably high. “Who?”
