Page 8 of Seven Lost Summers
Hair tumbling around her face, that smile that always seemed to know too much, as if she could read every twisted piece of us and still want in. And those fucking eyes. I could’ve drowned in them. I still do.
I blink hard, tearing my gaze from the photo just long enough to find Nate.
He stands frozen, staring at the photo like it’s reached off the wall and ripped his chest wide open. His hands shaking. And that look on his face… fuck, I know it too well. It’s the same one that surfaces every time the memory of her cuts through him.
The silence is brutal. Full of everything we should’ve said, everything we never fucking got the chance to.
“Do you guys want something to drink?” Quinn asks, her voice softer than usual, as if she knows we’re already drowning.
“Yeah, what do you have?” I ask.
“Water, juice, beer.”
“I’ll take a beer,” I answer without hesitation.
Quinn turns to Nate. “And you?”
He doesn’t answer. Just stands there, eyes locked on the photo like it’s choking him, pulling him under. His breathing is wrong. The twitch in his jaw says everything. He’s back there. With her.
I step closer, voice low. “You want a beer or something?”
This isn’t about the drink. It’s about giving him something to hold on to before the fucking grief swallows him whole.
He finally looks at Quinn and gives a small nod.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
His voice is steady, but his body’s still taut, wired tight with everything he’s not saying.
Quinn nods and turns for the kitchen. She doesn’t speak or look back, just moves with that calm, collected air she’s always had, like she’s seen this kind of broken a thousand times and knows better than to try to fix it.
She yanks open the fridge—a battered old thing humming loud enough to smother a thought. The door groans, worn out, like even it’s tired of this place. She leans in, grabs three beers, the bottles clinking in her grip.
Quinn turns, sets the bottles on the counter, and pops the caps. The metal tops clatter against the surface, one spinning off and disappearing somewhere behind the microwave.
She walks back over, no rush, no fuss. Just Quinn, steady as ever.
“Here,” she says, handing me a bottle before passing the other to Nate.
I take the bottle. The chill steadies me for a moment, enough to keep me from falling apart.
Nate doesn’t drink, doesn’t speak. He just stares, eyes locked on the label like there’s some secret carved into the glass, answers hidden beneath the condensation. As if staring hard enough might tell him how to fix the shit none of us knows how to survive.
Quinn nods toward the couch.
“Go on, take a seat.”
Nate and I trade a look before sinking onto the worn cushions, the springs groaning under our weight.
Quinn doesn’t sit. She lifts her beer, takes a slow pull, then sets it down on the coffee table beside her.
“I’ll be back in a second,” she mutters, already turning away
She heads for the closed door off the kitchen, pushes it open, and flicks on the light. A wash of red spills out, flooding the space.
A darkroom.
It’s the kind of space where silence clings to the walls. Where Quinn pulls memories out of the shadows and pins them down in black and white. Where moments that should’ve died still linger, refusing to be forgotten.
