Page 17 of Those Summer Nights (Sweet Cravings 2)

“No.”

“Mila.”

“Kristen.”

She laughed and pulled my sheet down from my face. Her smile disappeared, probably because I looked like I’d been crying half the night and was about to burst into tears again.

“Jesus, what happened to you?”

If she kept looking at me with so much sympathy I really would cry. “Nothing.”

“Clearly it’s not nothing. What did the hot lifeguard do to you? Was it the anal thing we talked about? Because you’re really supposed to work up to that slowly…”

I tried to pull the blankets back over my head but she grabbed them and held them down.

“So…not that. You have to tell me what happened. I know what he looks like now. Want me to go kill him?”

“No. He’s just a stupid boy, if you kill him you might as well kill the rest of them too. And I don’t want you to go to prison for killing half the population. I need you.”

She smiled. “Will you at least tell me what happened?”

I sat up, wiping beneath my eyes. I was pretty sure I’d collapsed in bed right after sitting on the beach last night. My sheets felt sandy. And my hands were blackened by running mascara. “It was stupid. I thought that maybe it was a date, but I’m pretty sure he just brought me there to make fun of me with his friends. They called me Stalker Girl.”

“Mila, I hate to break it to you, but you were stalking him.”

“I was not stalking him!”

“You go to the beach the exact same time on Tuesdays and Thursdays specifically to watch him. That’s what stalking is.”

“Stalking is when you sit in a tree outside someone’s window with binoculars and watch them change.”

“No…that’s a peeping Tom. Please tell me you don’t do that too.”

“Of course I don’t! Because I’m not stalking him.”

Kristen shrugged. “So the date was a bust. You gotta shake it off.” She pushed my shoulder like she could shake it out of me. “There are plenty of lifeguards in the sea.”

It wasn’t really the date or lack thereof that I was upset about. It was the fact that I’d foolishly thought for a second that maybe I’d be able to put the pieces of my heart back together and then bam. I felt naïve and stupid. This summer was supposed to be about me figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Not falling for the first guy who looked my way. Not that I was falling for my lifeguard. He was a dick. And on top of being beaten back down to my self-pitying ways? I made a horrible, awful mistake.

“It’s not just the date I’m upset about,” I mumbled. That would have been bad enough. But I had to go and put a cherry on top.

“Did he do something else?”

I shook my head and looked down at my phone. “I called Aiden.”

“The Aiden? The one that never stopped saying he loved you, yet his dick was probably in some chick for months before you broke up?”

Vulgar. But I nodded my agreement.

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t answer. He hasn’t spoken to me since he kicked me out of his place. There’s no reason for him to suddenly answer his phone now.”

“Phew. Well, good. No harm no foul then.” She patted my leg.

I wish. “I left a message.”

“Oh, no.” So much freaking sympathy on her face. “What did you say?”

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