Page 23 of The Summer I First Saw You
I grin. Why is his discomfort so much fun for me? “So, so much sex. Do you want to hear about my first time? I was fourteen. He was eighteen and in a band.”
“Continue describing this situation, which is considered statutory rape in California, and I’ll have a legal duty to report it.”
He’s probably bluffing. But he might not be. And the next set is coming in. I get flat on my board and turn to face the shore.
“Not this one,” he snaps. “It’s too big.”
I roll my eyes. It’s not that big. If he’d seen the wave I took Wednesday, the one the guys cheered for, he’d have had a heart attack. I start to paddle, trying to ignore my nerves. Itisn’ta huge wave, but I’m so anxious about messing up in front of him that I might very well do something dumb.
“Just push up, Daisy,” Harrison says in my head. The old, sweet version who wanted to see me fly. The version I know is still inside him somewhere.
My chest lifts and all the other steps fall into place—I plant my back leg and then my front, and when I glance over my shoulder, he’s right behind me, carving into the wave. For a moment, our eyes catch. I don’t miss his reluctant grin before I turn away.
It’s a perfect ride, and I feel more free and morecompleteduring the seconds it lasts than I’ve felt in a very long time.
When the wave dies out, I jump off the board and he does the same. Our heads surface at the same moment, and I’m on the cusp of giving him the finger, but the sheer joy on his face makes it impossible to do anything but smile.
“Have anything you’d like to say to me?” I shout, paddling his way.
“Your forefoot wasn’t quite centered,” he replies.
So I do give him the finger.
“Fine, I was wrong,” he admits. “I shouldn’t have told you where you could surf.”
His gaze meets mine and he smiles again, happier than I’ve seen him in a very long time.
That smile of his presses right to the center of my chest like a thumbprint.
I want to hold it there forever.
After an hour in the water,we walk back to the house together and shower—the showering is done separately, of course, though I could easily be persuaded to go about it another way.
I go to the kitchen after I get dressed, put on music, and start making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with this gross, healthy bread and super-oily peanut butter from the rich people store. I’ve got no clue why rich people like bread that’s full of grains. Someone should introduce them to the white bread I grew up on, the kind that melts in your mouth and doesn’t go bad for weeks. They’d never go back.
Liam texts while I’m attempting to make the gross rich-people peanut butter mix together. We’ve played phone tag all week, and even though he’s preoccupied with his new girlfriend, I feel bad anyway.
Liam
There’s this old James Bond movie playing at the new theater in town. You want to go?
I love James Bond. But if I see Liam, he’s going to ask whereI’m staying, and he’ll pursue details he wouldn’t pursue normally because he’s actually asking on my mother’s behalf. He’ll ask which friend I’m staying with, where she lives, how I know her, why he doesn’t remember her.
Eventually it’ll come out that I’m in Santa Cruz. And he’ll say, “We should meet Harrison down there,” and I’ll somehow wind up telling him that Harrison’s not dating anyone in LA. Oh, and that I’m living with him and he gets erections alot, shockingly large ones, and I might even have been responsible for one or two of them.
If I know my uncle at all, that will not go over well.
Harrison walks into the kitchen, his gaze sweeping over me. “I’d forgotten about that,” he says.
“Forgotten what?”
He nudges me out of the way to make himself a sandwich. “The way you dance around the kitchen when you’re cooking.”
I roll my eyes. “Great. One more way you’ve remembered my childhood.”
“There isn’t anything childish about itnow,” he grunts. Something in that grunt makes my stomach tighten deliciously.
Two months ago, it seemed like an easy decision to give up on men and sex and the roller coaster of it all. Harrison has obliterated that ease with a single low noise in his throat. If he suddenly turned around and said,“Hop up on this counter. I’ve decided to fuck you,”I’d knock dishes off in my haste.
