Page 87 of The Summer I First Saw You
“The Ghost Wave is off Pebble Beach. Asilomar is cool but nothing special.” I shrug and answer the question before she can pose it. “Just wanted to say I’d been.”
Which is sort of a lie. Asilomar isn’t anything special, but it’s special to me. It was a favorite memory and now it’s piercingand painful. I hate that the end with Harrison makes every fucking thing hurt.
She says she’d like to go back to Big Sur. That she and Scott went once after they started dating and that it was so romantic. I nod, but inside my chest, there’s a cry that’s about to turn into a wail.
Yes, I know it’s romantic.It’s so romantic you could convince yourself the thing you had might last forever if you were young and stupid enough. And when he knows all the lyrics to a Jack Harlow song,filthylyrics, and buys you eight avocados you don’t need, you’ll feel as if it’s all meant to be. Despite the amazing scenery, when he looks at you, it’s as ifyou’renow his favorite sight—and he hasalwaysbeen yours.
“Sweetie, why aren’t you eating?” my mom asks.
I glance at the table, at my hand in the exact same position it was in five minutes ago, ready to lift a fork I don’t want to hold, to scoop lasagna I don’t want to eat.
I force a smile. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
My lips are numb. My stomach turns as the first bite hits my throat.
If you’d told me two months ago that I’d be back in school, that they were refunding the money, it would have seemed like magic beyond my wildest dreams. Now I only want to wrap myself in a comforter and stay there until the pain goes away, just like I did last winter.
Except what really crushed me when it ended with Christian was that I was lost—he’d taken things away from me, and I’d taken some things away from myself too—while what crushes me about the end with Harrison is that he felt like home, a home I’d always sensed but never quite found. And I’m not sure how I’ll live without getting it back.
“Are you coming down with something?” my mother asks, and I saymaybesimply because I’m not sure I can keep pretending to be well for her sake or my own.
I go to bed. My mother holds a hand to my forehead and brings me ginger ale and promises I’ll feel better by morning. I don’t think I will.
I miss the sight of his head on my pillow, the way his hands would tug at his tie, the slow half-grin on his face when I’d paddle toward him at the break. I miss him because there was nothing I loved in the world that I didn’t love even more when he was doing it with me. I miss Harrison because he made me feel safe, and lucky, and worshipped, but most of all, because he made me moreme. The more irreverent, barefoot, sunburned, naked and sandy I was, the more he liked me…and the more I liked myself.
I don’t know what I’m even thinking. I just miss him.
When my mother arrives home from work the next day, she frowns at the sight of me curled up under a blanket on the couch. I should have brought the LSAT study guide out here just so she wouldn’t worry I’d been wasting time.
“If you’re still sick in the morning, I’m taking you to see Doctor Thomas.”
“I’m too old to see a pediatrician, Mom.”
She clicks her tongue. “We see kids older than you,” she says. “She won’t care.”
Jesus. A hundred bucks says Dr. Thomas asks me, just like my mother still does, if I’ve been brushing my teeth and eating vegetables at school. Maybe it’s normal when your kid is twenty-one, but I felt like I was twenty-one when Scott came into the picture, and I feel thirty now. The past seven years were long ones, but no one gets that but me.
The next morning, I force myself out of bed and open the LSAT study guide just to tell her I did it but wind up asleep within five minutes. She makes a joke about me living up to my nickname, and I can barely force my laugh.
I don’t think I’ve got it in me to keep faking so many things, to keep pretending I’m the daughter she wants. I rise from thecouch and go into her yard, soaking in the sunlight. I’m still not happy, but I sense an answer here somewhere—in the bright light, in the slight breeze, the smell of freshly mowed grass. I’m not going to get better inside. I’m not going to get better by studying for a test I don’t want to take.
On Thursday, I drive down to the farmer’s market, and I sense an answer here as well in all the colorful displays. I’m still so broken, but there’s something I love about the world, other than Harrison, and it’s my job to fucking find it.
I buy impatiens and plant them in the flower beds Mom keeps along the side of the house. I let the soil crumble in my hands, and there’s something here, too—something I’ll be able to love again one day.
I’m still at it when Mom gets home from work. She stops in the driveway and rolls down the window. “You don’t need to do that,” she says.
I pat the soil down in front of me, surveying my work. It brought me such pleasure only seconds ago, all the velvety purple petals dancing in the breeze, and now the sight of them embarrasses me, as if it’s shameful somehow, what I’ve done here.
And that’s fucking ridiculous, isn’t it? Yes. It’s ridiculous. “I like gardening, Mom.”
Her lips purse. “You’re about to have a college degree. You need to keep your eyes on the prize.”
What prize, though, Mom? What if this is the prize I want? Why are the things I love such a problem for you?
She walks inside and I swallow the retort down, putting the shovel and soil in the carport before I follow her in.
“I got some tomatoes at the farmer’s market,” I say, walking into the kitchen. “I was going to make Bolognese.”
