Page 9 of The Summer I First Saw You
I imagine it wouldn’t even be an effort for him.
I google the nearest store and walk there, continuing to imagine it.
I don’t know how Audrey possibly could have given him up. Did she somehow forget that she’d married the hottest man who ever breathed air, that she didn’thaveto move to London? Hell, she didn’t even need towork. She could have just surfed and sat in the hot tub reading books all day, waiting for Harrison to come home and fuck her senseless, which is what I’d have done.
I imagine Harrison fucking me senseless for the second half of my walk and arrive at The Hillside Market having imagined only two of the four positions through which he would accomplish this. I should have chosen a store farther from his house, and only partly so I could have continued fantasizing.
My first clue that The Hillside Market is way out of myprice range is the display of local honey right inside the door—rich people don’t mind paying three times the cost for artisanal honey because it makes them feel virtuous, supporting a local business. They don’t mind the risk of getting salmonella from this locally grown and perhaps unvetted beekeeper because even getting salmonella is easier for the rich—they can afford two weeks off work with a bout of food poisoning. Their doctors will go the extra mile to make sure they don’t die, the same doctors who’d send the rest of us off with some ibuprofen and a warning about making better food choices.
I walk through the aisles, unsurprised to find that it’s every bit as ridiculous as I’d expected. No middle-class breadcrumbs for this set—you’ve got to buy panko in a tiny box that costs thirteen bucks.
I bet Audrey shopped here, though I doubt it was ever in order to make a meal for Harrison. She bought herself kombucha and fish oil harvested from baby salmon in the Arctic, and walked right back out, panicked she might have accidentally inhaled calories when she cut through the bakery. Later, she’d come back and buy a few jars of that locally grown honey and give it to friends, secure in the knowledge that even after a long bout with salmonella, none of those friends would be quite as thin as she was.
Maybe I’m being unfair. Everyone but me believed they were the perfect couple, and I guess on paper they were. They were both gorgeous and smart and possessed that mysterious reserve that saysI was raised with loads of money and you were not.
But to me, Harrison’s reserve has always screamed of repressed sexual hunger while Audrey’s screamed,“I wonder if the waitress washed her hands” and “My wine was not served at the correct temperature.”
Regardless, Audrey would definitely be better at shoppinghere, at coming up with the ingredients for a rich person dinner than I am. I’m not even sure what that would be—beluga caviar, perhaps? Even if I could afford it, I’d have no clue how it was served—on a Triscuit? In a ramekin, eaten with a tiny cocaine spoon?
It’s the kind of question that would have made Christian laugh when we’d first started dating but would have exasperated him toward the end.
It’s funny, the way a girl’s naivete is no longer hot once you’ve fucked her behind your girlfriend’s back enough times.
Harrison gets homelate and blinks at me in surprise, as if he’d forgotten I was even here, tugging at his tie as he throws his keys on the counter.
Why do I find it so hot, the way he pulls at his tie? Why is it an aphrodisiac for me that it only takes him a matter of hours to acquire the scruffy jawline of a lumberjack?
“I made dinner,” I announce. “And before you suggest that offering you lukewarm chicken parm isn’t really a quid pro quo for staying in your palace for free, allow me to counter that as I’m blackmailing you, I didn’t technicallyhaveto cook anything.”
His mouth turns up at the corner, but he successfully fights it back down. “Thanks.”
He fills a glass with ice and pours bourbon to the top before taking a long sip. There’s something erotic about the relief on his face. Maybe it’s just that I see something erotic in everything he does. I could probably get off to a film of him clipping his nails.
He sets the glass down and rolls up his shirtsleeves before he reaches into the fridge for the chicken. He has such niceforearms—broad, but not too broad. All tendon-y and lightly dusted with dark hair. Long fingers.How are you so perfect, Harrison? Couldn’t you have one flaw, aside from your apparent alcoholism?
“Since you’re still here,” he says as he places the chicken in the microwave, “I assume that means you and your mother haven’t made up. So what’s it aboutthistime?”
It annoys me, the way he saysthis time, as if he’s already certain it’s my fault. As if he’s already taken my mother’s side.
“If I tell you, are you just going to give me some big fucking lecture about how much she sacrificed on my behalf?”
“I don’t know. That depends on what the fight was about. Shedidsacrifice a lot on your behalf.” Harrison’s mom abandoned him when he was four to return to France, leaving him with a workaholic dad who was never around. I can see why he’d think what my mother did was extraordinary, butI’ve been reminded at least once a week since I was born that every bad thing that’s happened to my mom can be traced back to the decisions she made at age seventeen, and I’m over it.
“Do you know how tiresome it gets being reminded that your mom didn’t plan to have you and could easily have chosen not to?” I demand. “And I’m not sure why people think it’s a valid point to make…Anyone’smother could have chosen not to have them. Choosing to have a kid when it’s inconvenient isn’t some get-out-of-jail-free card. It doesn’t mean you don’t get held accountable foranything.”
Harrison pulls the chicken from the microwave, laughing to himself. “I find it suspicious that you’re having such a hard time admitting what the fight was about.”
I stare at the counter, at my hand pressed flat to its surface. No one will ever entirely understand my beef with Scott. They simply think I was a petulant teen who wanted her mom to herself, and I’ve allowed them to think it for my mother’s sake and my own.
“My mom kicked Scott out two weeks ago andbeggedme to come home for moral support. I gave up my job and sublet my room for less than what I’m paying in rent, and drove my piece-of-shit car across the country—and not one week in, not a single week in, she’s already let him come home.”
Harrison glances up at me from his plate, his gaze more serious than it was a moment prior. There’s a glimmer of the old Harrison there—worried, responsible, determined to fix things. “I’m sorry, Daisy. But your mom loves you, and you’ve been gone for years. Even if Scott annoys you, can’t you just suck it up when he’s around and give your mom the summer she wants?”
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me tosuck it upwhile understanding absolutely nothing about my situation, I’d be nearly as wealthy as Harrison.
I hop off the stool and walk to the refrigerator. “I’m not sure why I’d go to that much trouble when I’ve got this amazing house at my disposal.”
“My houseisn’tat your disposal,” he growls.
