Page 13 of Summer Ever After
My sister let out a huge sigh. “You’ve got to be careful. Does she know who you are?”
Jess meant, did she know that I was one of the richest people in the state? “No. The only thing that she knows about me is that I ride a motorcycle and work in marketing in the city for my dad.”
“Are you sure? Max, you know there are women out there dying to sink their claws into you. You’re the talk of the locker room at the tennis club.”
“She’s not like that.” Of that, I was sure. If Daisy was a gold digger or an opportunist, she definitely wouldn’t have pulled the wrong house stunt. “We went to Keystone Point and these little kids got blown away on a float. We rescued them and then went swimming.”
“Uh-huh.” Jess’s eyebrows were raised. Her forehead would’ve been filled with wrinkles if it wasn’t frozen with Botox. “Swimming.” She pumped the already raised brows.
“We talked all afternoon and got to know each other. It was so easy. It felt so right.” I took a sip of my drink. “And yes, we made out a little bit.”
My audience giggled. “Sure. You made out.” Ramona winked. Even though I was furious about Daisy’s deception, I felt a burn inside me to defend her. “Yeah, we made out. That’s it. I didn’t fuck her.”
“Whoa.” Ramona blinked. “Easy tiger.”
I took a breath. “We had a great time. It was a perfect day, until the end.”
Jess grabbed two pieces of wood from the pile and sparks flew into the sky as she tossed them onto the fire. We all had to stand and shimmy our heavy wooden chairs back from the intense heat that radiated from the pit.
“Spit it out, Max.” Jenny leaned back in her chair and lit a joint. “This is getting boring. Perfect girl, blah, blah, blah.” She took a toke and passed the joint to Ramona.
I was also getting bored of hanging out with my sister’s friends. “I gave her my phone number and we agreed to hang out when I’m up next weekend.”
Ramona made a get-on with it swirl with the hand holding the joint, the ember glowed as it swirled in lazy circles.
“But this was the first weird thing. She said her phone fell in the lake.”
“Happened to me today.” Jenny shrugged.
“Yeah, but do you know your phone number?” I asked.
Jenny furrowed her brow. “Of course. Who doesn’t know their own number?”
“I have three phones.” Jess offered. “I only know one of them.”
I highly doubted that multiple phone numbers was Daisy’s issue. “Well, Daisy didn’t remember her own phone number. But the weird part is,” I sat up as the realization hit me. “She didn’t remember her phone number but had a goddamn photographic memory when it came to mine. I even asked her to recite it when I dropped her off. She got it – bang on.”
“That is weird,” Jess mused. “Pass that this way, Mona.” She snapped her fingers and I took the spliff from Ramona and handed it to my sister.
“You don’t want any?” she asked, the smoldering joint between her manicured fingers.
“Nah. I’m good.”
Jess proceeded to take three large inhales and spent the next ten seconds coughing. She pointed at me, the joint still smoking between her fingers. “You’re telling me that this bitch doesn’t know her own phone number, but remembered yours. Like perfectly.”
“Yeah.” It was totally weird. “I don’t know why she’d lie about it.”
“She’s got a boyfriend and she doesn’t want you calling her,” Jenny offered. “This way she can reach out to you when she feels like it. That’s shady as fuck if you ask me.”
The girls were really stoned and Jenny was starting to slur. I wondered how much of this conversation they’d remember. Jenny’s theory seemed plausible, in theory. But it didn’t fit. “That’s not the weirdest part.” I finished my drink and crumpled the can. “I dropped her off at her house. It was a cute little white place in that old subdivision across from the trailer park. Everything was amazing, I was on my way home and then remembered that I’d promised to buy her milk.”
“Wait, what?” Ramona’s eyes were red and she squinted at me. “Milk? I’m confused.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I promised to buy her milk if she went for a ride with me. It was ten million degrees this afternoon and if she went with me, hers was guaranteed to go bad. I was halfway home when I realized that she’d forgotten all of her groceries in the saddlebag of my bike. I hauled ass to get to the grocery store and replaced all the dairy that was in her bags.”
Ramona got up out of her chair and teetered over to the cooler. She distributed drinks to everyone, but I declined. I was already feeling buzzed, and unlike the rest of the people at the bonfire, had to get up early to get back to the city. She sat on the edge of her chair. “You went to get milk for her. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. Where was her car? Why couldn’t she go get her own milk?”
I forgot that I’d left out the part that Daisy had been trudging down the back road on foot. “It doesn’t matter.” I brushed off Ramona’s question. “When I went back to her house, the lady who opened the door had never heard of Daisy.”
