Page 24 of A Novel Summer
“Well, thank God,” Hunter said. “Maybesomeof my secrets are safe.”
Okay. She probably deserved that.
“I really am sorry,” Shelby said. “About the book.”
Hunter waved away the comment; she didn’t want to talk about it.
“No, I mean it,” Shelby said. “I was an idiot. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d never do that.” She meant it. But she could tell from the look on Hunter’s face, something faraway in her eyes, that it wasn’t that simple. It might be a long time before Hunter was able to let it go. If ever. The one difficult thing about Hunter was that she saw everything in black-and-white. Good or bad. Madly in love or indifferent. A lot of people tended to think that way, but it felt more extreme with Hunter. She’d seen Hunter turn on people in the past who let her down. And while Hunter always insisted she avoided relationships because she didn’t want to get married, Shelby suspected they would simply require too much emotional compromise.
“Anyway, we owe it to Colleen to get along this summer, right?”
Hunter said, “Yes. We do.”
They looked at each other. Hunter’s blue eyes, outlined in smudgy charcoal liner, were wary. Shelby wanted to just reach out and hug her, but she refrained. A few seconds ticked by. It was awkward.
Finally, Hunter stood and said, “Let’s go get drunk.”
Eighteen
Tucked away on a side street off Commercial, the Atlantic House—better known as the A-House—was over a hundred and fifty years old and looked more like a twentieth-century schoolhouse than a bar. Inside, it pulsated with pop music and was crowded with a makeshift dance floor. Britney Spears videos played on a big screen. It smelled like beer and old cigarettes and something musky and damp, and the familiar scent brought Shelby back to past summers.
Shelby and Hunter found spots at the bar. She recognized the bartender, Chris. He’d been there forever. She never knew for sure if he was a few decades older than they were or if he was just weathered-looking from the sun. He was bald, with a full sleeve of tattoos on both arms. Behind him the bar was strung with Christmas lights, and decorated with a wooden bust of a merman.
Shelby had grown up with strict parents. She never drank during high school. So the first time Shelby ever went to a bar had been with Hunter. It was their first week of freshman year. Bryn Mawr College was an all-women college in a suburb of Philadelphia, a leafy campus with Gothic architecture designed like the buildings at Cambridge. The nearby thoroughfare, Lancaster Avenue, was lined with bars, drawing students from nearby Haverford College and Villanova University. That was why Hunter was eager to go off campus. It wasn’t for the drinking; it was for the guys.
Hunter never would have chosen an all-girls school, but she was a third-generation legacy and her mother insisted. Shelby hadn’t necessarily been looking for a Seven Sister school, but Bryn Mawr had an exceptional English program. So while they came to the school from different upbringings and for different reasons, the hands of fate (and roommate assignments) brought them together. Shelby, with her military father, wasn’t a big rule breaker. She’d been nervous to go out with a fake ID. Maybe that was what drew her to Hunter: opposites attract.
Hunter ordered two shots of tequila. When Chris slid them across the bar, Shelby said, “Remember Flannery’s?” Once they’d both turned twenty-one, they’d stopped going.
Hunter touched one of the multiple piercings in her ear, a silver hoop. “Gotta love Flannery’s,” she said, raising her shot glass. Shelby touched hers to it.
“To Flannery’s,” she said. They both knocked them back. Hunter signaled to Chris for another round.
“So...we haven’t discussed the Colleen situation,” Hunter said, turning her empty shot glass around and around on the bar.
No. They hadn’t.
Shelby still couldn’t believe it: the first of their threesome was becoming a mother. It seemed like just a few months had passed since they’d stood together on the beach, wondering what life would look like after college.
“Colleen’s going to be amother,” Shelby said. Colleen would be the world’s best mom—Shelby had no doubt. Personally, she couldn’t imagine being ready for such a responsibility. Her career came first, and lately it felt like she couldn’t even manage that. “I think it’s amazing. It’s just a lot to absorb. Babies...”
Hunter pulled a vape out of her pocket and took a drag, exhaling away from Shelby’s face. “Colleen’s upset about the timing,” she said. “But it was going to happen eventually. The way I see it, if you’re going down that road, just...go. You know what I mean?”
Shelby wasn’t so sure about that. It was important to be ready for things when they happened. That was the problem with her relationship with Justin; she hadn’t wanted to fall in love at age twenty-two. She couldn’t handle a long-distance relationship. Looking at Colleen’s situation, she saw the trade-off she was facing: motherhood might come at the expense of losing her dream to take over Land’s End. To Shelby, it seemed like a terrifying trade-off.
“It’s just mind-blowing that Colleen is going to be aparent, and I guess get married and buy a house. And I’m, what—working out of Duke Nestley’s living room and crashing at my parents’?” Hunter said.
“What do you mean? You don’t even want a serious relationship.”
“How do you know what I want?” Hunter snapped. “Besides, what I mean is—at least her adult life has started. I feel stuck in this way station.”
“It’s not a way station, Hunter. You’re here on your own, working for Duke’s press, living your life. This summer would have seemed pretty good to both of us when we were in college. Or even that last summer here. It was hard to leave—for both of us. But now we’re back. I hope we can find a way to enjoy it.” She reached out and touched Hunter’s arm.
Hunter didn’t reply, but ordered a glass of Patron Silver over ice with a lime. Shelby frowned. They should slow down.
“For you?” Chris said, but Shelby shook her head.
“Just water, thanks.”
