Page 82 of The Summer I First Saw You
DAISY
Iwanted to avoid all this.
I will never be his perfect wife Audrey with her immaculate nails and her flat-ironed hair and the way she knew things I never would—the best airline to take to Dubai or the difference between champagne and prosecco—but I’d thought I could hide the uglier parts of myself, and now he’s going to see those too. He had eighty percent of me this summer, and he liked it well enough. But I’ve never been able to see how he could cope with the twenty percent that remains whenIstill can’t.
“The guy I told you about? Christian?” I can no longer meet his eye. “Well, he ended things right before Thanksgiving, and I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later.”
He grows entirely still. I can’t let myself think about what that might mean right now. My throat is tight as I continue, the words hoarse. “I wanted to keep it.” It’s all I can get out before the tears start to roll down my face. “I wanted to and—”
I only exist because my motherdidn’tmake the decision I did. I want to explain what happened before Harrison distances himself and I’m crying too hard to do it.
He pulls me to his chest, crooning my name as if I’m young and injured, and he can barely stand that for me. “I’m so sorry. Daisy. I wish I’d known.”
My chest is still raw but the gentleness in his voice is a balm. He doesn’t even knowwhyI did it and he’s already not holding it against me. It’s the kind of forgiveness I haven’t even been able to offer myself.
“Christian accused me of doing it on purpose. He called me a gold digger. And when I told my mom I’d bombed my finals, she just completely fell apart. I just couldn’t stand to disappoint her.”
“How could you have been so careless? Don’t you know how lucky you are?”she’d cried and I just couldn’t imagine telling her that I was pregnant on top of it. That I was about to be a single mom, just like her. That I probably wouldn’t graduate at all.
“I’m so sorry you went through it all alone,” he says pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
I’m crying again and it’s half grief over what happened, but it’s also relief. He truly doesn’t hate me for it the way I’ve been hating myself.
“Afterward it was like I was in this hole I couldn’t climb out of, and that I’d given something up that I actually wanted, but Istillwasn’t going to be able to make my mom happy. I got really depressed and I just couldn’t shake it off.”
His hand runs over my back. “Did you talk to anyone?”
“The school tried to give me the same antidepressants that caused a reaction in my dad.” I laugh miserably. “I have no clue if I’d be wandering the streets now like he is if I’d taken them. Or if it’s something that’s just going to happen down the line, whether I take them or not. I couldn’t get out of bed, and eventually, I dropped all my classes. I—” My tongue prods my cheek. Should I keep talking or leave the rest held inside me?
His hand curves around my hip. “You…?”
“I’d go to sleep hoping I didn’t wake because I knew all my lies were going to catch up with me. I still don’t know if they’re letting me back into school, and how the hell do I tell my mother I might not be graduating because I couldn’t get out of bed? I can’t even explain it to myself.”
“She might understand better than you think. People go through this stuff. I mean…when you arrived, I was blackout drunk and had lied to everyone rather than admitting that my wife left me.”
I laugh through my tears. “Yeah, yours is worse.” After a moment, though, I sober again. “You fixed things, Harrison. You’re back at work. I kept loan money for a semester of school I didn’t attend, and I postponed the hearing about getting back into school when my mom asked me to come home, so I’ve got no idea if I’m returning.” It was so fucking stupid.
“And it’s been weighing on you this entire time,” he concludes.
God, I’ve made such a fucking mess of everything, and it sounds even worse spoken aloud than it did in my head. “I think I was just scared of what they’d say. There’s a significant possibility that they won’t let me come back, and I’m already getting mail about the loans.”
He tips my chin up to face him. “I happen to know a lawyer who could accompany you to this hearing.”
I raise my eyes to him. “Really? I mean…do you think it would help?”
“Daisy, you were a frightened student to whom the school did not provide appropriate guidance. They put a struggling, emotionally damaged kid—”
“I don’t love being described asemotionally damaged.”
He presses his lips to the top of my head. “I don’t care if you were the most psychologically stable human in the last forty years. For the purposes of my argument, you were a struggling, emotionally damaged student who was placed in a reallyunfortunate position and was offered no fucking help when she asked for it. They willdefinitelybe letting you back into the goddamn school, especially once they know you’ve got a lawyer involved.”
I’m relieved. And I’m also horrified.
Because I told him most of the story. Just not all of it. Not the part he’ll hate.
I provideHarrison copies of all the relevant documents: my grades, the report from the health center, the receipt from Planned Parenthood, and the letters regarding my student loans. He gets the hearing scheduled for Friday. As much as I’d like to put it off, I can’t come up with a good reason to do so. It’s not as if I can tell him that my biggest fear is no longer that the school will kick me out but that the school will press for answers, answers I’ll have to provide in front ofhim.
I tell my mom I’m surfing with friends for a long weekend—we’ll only be in DC for one full day, but there’s no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth. If I’m going to lie about a trip away, I might as well make the lie big enough to encompass a night or two at Harrison’s while I’m at it.
