Page 18 of The Summer I First Saw You
Her unfocused eyes meet mine. “Why didn’t you just go to a different firm?”
I considered it. I should have. I probably should have moved someplace else entirely, and I’m still not sure why I didn’t. “There’s not a lot in Elliott Springs in the first place, and certainly nobody who was going to bring me in as a partner. I guess I didn’t want to go even farther backward than I have.”
I drink and so does she, though it’s really fucking clear she needs to stop. I also want to take the focus off myself. “Go to bed, Daisy. I’m just going to sit on the deck and finish this bourbon and I’m done for the night.”
She laughs, rising when I do. “Oh, no, my friend. I’m sticking it out as long as you’re here. And I’m a college student. Nine isn’t bedtime for me…I’m just getting started.”
I remember those days well, except I had a lot more fun during my summers than she’s having. I was working, sure, but my nights were full. I’d surf until dark and then sit around a bonfire with my friends, and there weren’t enough minutes in the day for me to fit it all in—I couldn’t wait to be done withschool so that the hours would become my own, but then they became my own and I wound up filling them with none of those things at all.
“Youshouldbe getting started,” I reply. “You’re too young to be spending every summer night sitting inside with me.”
It’s true. I don’t know why it’s a hard thing to say to her, though—perhaps because then I’ll have to worry about heroin addicts in unmarked vans.
I leave my plate where it is and walk out to the deck. Aside from the distant lights of Santa Cruz, the night is pitch black and peaceful. I can’t see the ocean, but I like knowing it’s there, the roar of waves attacking the Horseshoe’s jagged cliff face.
Daisy drops into the seat across from mine, that bottle of Malibu looking less heavy than it did before. “I love it here,” she says with a happy sigh. “I missed this so much in DC.”
Two decades ago she was a tan, blonde toddler who refused to wear shoes and always had sand in her hair. I suspect, beneath the curves and the pout and the porn voice, she’s still that same kid.
“I was surprised you left,” I admit. “I always thought you’d stay out here.”
The glance that flickers my way is wary, tinged with unhappiness. “It was easier than dealing with Scott all the time. And I wanted to give my mom the whole experience.”
“Experience?”
She laughs. “She’s a little obsessed with the idea of college, but not real college. I’m talking, like, college the way it appears in old movies. Buildings covered in ivy, tea with the dean. But anyway…I wanted to give her that. I wanted her to live vicariously through me since she never got it for herself.”
Daisy’s always been such a mix of contrasts. Ridiculously rebellious one moment—refusing to get out of the water as a kid, or dying her hair black before Bridget’s wedding—but endlessly sweet at the same time, like this. Moving across thecountry to ease an awkward situation with her stepfather. Going to an old East Coast school to suit her mom rather than herself.
Blackmailing me, but making me dinner each night while she does it and trying to force me to clean up my shit. What would Audrey have done in her shoes? If we were still together and she’d discovered me drinking in my boxer shorts, lying to all my friends…
I guess it’s fair to say she wouldn’t have done a goddamned thing. Or that she’d have been too busy cheating on me to notice.
“I guess you’re not as terrible a daughter as I thought,” I say with a grin, and she swings her leg out and kicks me before curling up in her chair, pulling the oversized sweatshirt around her knees for warmth. The bottle of Malibu is now clutched to her chest like a beloved toy.
“I’m the only kid she’s got,” she says with a shrug. “Speaking of other kids, do you see your stepsiblings much?”
I give her a half-hearted smile. “Seeing them would be a full-time job at the rate my father’s going.” I now have four half-sisters in various countries and a fifth on the way. “I was supposed to see Oliver and Matthew in France this summer, but—”
I run a hand over my head. That was a plan made when I’d thought I’d be reaching them via a two-hour train ride rather than a thirteen-hour flight. “Oliver will be in LA for work in a few weeks. I’ll probably try to see him then.”
“Oliver,” she muses. “Was he the hot one?”
There’s…a twinge. A tiny pinch of irritation where there should be none.
“This might come as a shock to you, Daisy, but I don’t think of my brothers in terms ofhotness. He’s the one who looks like me.” There’s an iciness to my voice that shouldn’t be there. Why should I give a shit if Daisy was ever attracted to one of mybrothers? “And he’s too old for you, so I’m not sure why that would be relevant anyway.”
She laughs. “Too old? When he came to visit you, he was fifteen and I was nine. Unless time works differently in France, that only makes him six years older than me.”
“There’s a world of difference between twenty-one and twenty-seven,” I argue. “The years after college change everything.”
And, more to the point, I just can’t stand the idea of her with my brother.
When she looks at me over her bottle of Malibu, I’m disturbed by how amused she is and by how veryadulther amusement appears to be. “Harrison, you went to school at eighteen with two wealthy parents to pay your way and what was, I’m sure, a very generous trust fund. I went at seventeen on loans and part-time jobs and have been scraping by ever since. You probably never had to support yourself until you left law school, right? Which means that you’ve only had one more year of independence than I’ve had. A six-year age gap isn’t the dealbreaker you think it should be.”
She’s right, and it changes nothing. Because I don’t think what really bothers me is the idea of Daisy with someone older, or with one of my siblings. It’s the idea of her with anyone at all.
“You should still be dating guys your own age,” I insist.
