After Summer (10 page)

On Thanksgiving morning, Beth came back from her early run cold, panting, and not exactly thrilled to find George stretched out on her parents’ sofa in the family room. He was dozing in front of the television.

“Don’t sleep,” she warned him. “We have to hit the road as soon as I shower.”

George muttered something and waved a hand at her, so Beth left him there and raced up the stairs toward her bathroom.

She showered quickly, and sighed when she emerged from the bathroom to find George still stretched out—but this time, across her bed.

“I need a cuddle,” George said, grinning at her. “The sun’s not even up yet.”

“Come on,” she said. “We have to get going. This is why we should have left last night with my parents.”

“I liked last year’s Thanksgiving better,” George said around a yawn. “Remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Beth said. She pulled on a pair of jeans and her swim team sweatshirt, and packed a few changes of clothes into her duffle bag.

“Your mom cooked all morning, and we just lounged and made out and pretended we liked each other,” George said. He grinned when Beth threw a look at him.

“Come here,” he said, opening his arms. “Just for, like, five seconds.”

Beth could see exactly where that would lead. She shook her head.

“Later,” she said. “Right now, we have to get on the road.”

George sat up slowly, and there was a tightness around his mouth.

“Do I, like, physically repulse you?” he asked.

Beth felt her eyes widen as she stared back at him. She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

“You barely even look at me anymore!” He was half shouting. “You pull away. I thought we’d spend more time together when your swimming thing ended but you’ve spent the past week going out of your way to get rid of me.”

“I’ve spent the past week catching up on stuff,” Beth
retorted. “Like
sleep.
Maybe you missed the fact that I’ve been exhausted this whole term. Maybe you were too busy dressing me up like your personal slut for Halloween!”

George gaped at her. “I apologized for that about seventy times.”

“Yeah, well, the boyfriend I thought I had would never have done it in the first place,” Beth snapped at him. She looked at her watch. “Let’s not do this now. We have to start driving.”

But George ignored her.

“What’s going on?” George demanded. “You’ve been acting weird for weeks now. You never touch me, you’re always tired—”

“Maybe I’m not exactly thrilled that every time we even hug, it immediately leads to groping,” Beth said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“That is such bullshit—”

“Like at the Halloween party?” Beth shook her head at him. “When you actually interrupted conversations by pawing at me?”

George looked down.

“I can’t believe this is what you think of me,” he said. “Like I’m some sex-crazed asshole.”

Beth ran her fingers through her still-damp hair, frustrated.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

It was quiet then. Outside her bedroom window, weak morning light began to creep across the sky. The trees were bare and the ground was frozen over.

“I’ve been trying to convince myself otherwise,” George said slowly. He frowned, and his eyes darkened. He searched Beth’s face. “But all of this feels kind of familiar. Doesn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.

“Not to me,” Beth said, having no idea where Mr. Random was going. “It just feels
bad.
”

“Well, I’m the one who would know,” George said, and his voice was bitter.

He paused for a moment, and Beth felt something icy shiver down her spine. Like she knew in the breathless moment before he spoke what he was going to say.

“You’re cheating on me again, aren’t you?” George accused, getting up from the bed and facing her across it. “Is it that Adam guy again? The lifeguard? Let me guess, he’s a big swimmer, right?” George’s eyes were dark and angry, the way Beth remembered all too well.

Except this time, she hadn’t done anything to deserve his wrath. This time, instead of feeling a wave of guilt and self-loathing, Beth looked right back at him and felt something like rage sweep through her.

“
What
did you just say?” Beth demanded.

“You heard me,” George said quietly.

“I haven’t even
thought
about Adam since we were in Pebble Beach,” Beth spat at him.

“Then who is it?” George demanded. “I know it has to be some guy on the swim team, right? Because that’s the only thing you have time for anymore. So, who are you sleeping with? Is it that jock coach guy? You like the jocks, don’t you?”

“This is like a bad dream,” Beth whispered. “I can’t believe you would accuse me of cheating on you.”

“Because you’ve never done something like that.” George’s tone was dripping with sarcasm.

“Screw this,” Beth muttered. She grabbed her bag off the floor, swung it over her shoulder, and headed downstairs. She could hear George following her, but she didn’t turn around. She just slammed her way outside and threw her bag into the backseat of her mother’s car, which she was taking on the road trip to Connecticut.

The sun was barely up, and it was so cold outside it made Beth’s hair freeze against her head.

“You’re just walking away from me?” George asked. “Very mature, Bethy.”

“I thought we’d dealt with this!” Beth threw back at him, with such force she was surprised it didn’t crack the ice on the branches of the leafless trees. “What was the point of the last few months if you still don’t trust me?”

“How am I supposed to trust you?” George exploded, his voice harsh in the hushed morning air. “You lie to me, you cheat on me, you pretend everything’s okay but now it’s like you’d rather be anywhere else than with me! What the hell, Beth?”

“I don’t understand what happened,” she burst out. “It’s like the only thing you think about is sex. I can’t even change my shirt without you wanting me to have sex with you. And when I’m not in the mood, it means that I’m cheating on you.”

“It’s actually
normal
to want to have sex with your boyfriend, Beth,” George snapped at her. She knew the
normal
part was supposed to sting, and it did, but she shook it off.

“You don’t talk about anything but sex.” Beth started using her fingers to list her points. “You don’t suggest we do anything except have sex. You don’t
want
to do anything except have sex. When you complain that we don’t hang out enough, I think you mean you want to spend time together, but no, you mean sex.”

“Having sex is the closest two people can be!” George argued.

“It doesn’t feel that way to me,” Beth said quietly. “Not anymore.”

George stared at her for a long moment, so long that Beth began to feel the November cold seep under her jacket. Then he shook his head.

“You had sex with me because you felt guilty,” he said in the same anguished sort of tone. “That night in Maine. I’ve always known it. If anyone ruined what was special about us, it was you.”

“Is
that
what this is?” Beth felt helpless and sick. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if that might warm her. “I’m the enemy here?”

And then, standing there in her parents’ driveway, not far from the tree where they would hang the hammock when the weather was better—the hammock she and George had kissed in months before, before the summer even started—Beth considered the impossible.

She tried to imagine her life without George.

When she’d tried to do it before, she couldn’t. Back in the summer, when things had gotten crazy, the bottom line was that she didn’t know how to live without George in her life.

But whatever that was—that certainty—she didn’t have it any longer. It was like she’d read about those feelings in a book once upon a time. Like she’d heard about it all happening to someone else.

She didn’t want to live like this. She didn’t want to feel like the cruel one. She wanted to swim without worrying what might happen when she came back out of the water.

“George…” She could barely say his name. She was so upset, and yet, somehow, knew that this was exactly what she had to do. That it was overdue.

He just watched her, like he couldn’t understand how they’d gotten to this place.

Beth didn’t know, either.

“I think this is it,” she whispered.

“How is that possible?” he asked, barely above a whisper himself.

But he didn’t disagree.

“I don’t know,” Beth said.

“I just can’t trust you,” he said. “And I keep trying to hold on, and it isn’t working.”

“I think we need to end things,” Beth said, more because she had to say it than because it needed to be said. She felt numb. Oddly light-headed.

“I think you’re right,” George said.

They looked at each other as the winter wind kicked in and rustled in the bare branches above them. In a way, although Beth hadn’t even considered this when she’d rolled out of bed earlier, she knew that this had been coming for a long time. Maybe even since the summer, when she’d tried to fix something that had stayed broken.

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“I know,” he said. “I am, too.”

Beth held his gaze for a moment, and then she climbed in the car, turned up the heater to high, and drove away.

They didn’t say good-bye.

“So tell me,” Ryan said, his eyes glowing suggestively. He leaned in closer. “What do you like best about Thanksgiving? Because I’m a big fan of dessert.”

He made it sound naughty and appealing all at once. Most of the family - like Uncle Carr, Jessi, Jordan, and Drew - were outside tossing around the Nerf. Sneaking off to a quiet nook of the house with Ryan and chilling in the kitchen would have been perfectly fine with Ella, except for one small detail.

He wasn’t talking to her.

He was leaning on the counter, talking to Jamie.

Granted, Jamie was cute. She was a Tuttle and was, by definition, cute. Today she had even backed away from her
usual freaky bohemian thing, and was wearing black boots and a very low-key and yet flattering black dress from H&M, which made her green eyes seem to glow from beneath her curly dark hair.

Not that it mattered how cute she looked, Ella thought from her seat at the kitchen table. It didn’t matter if Jamie looked like Keira Knightley—you would think that Ryan would know better than to hit on
Ella’s freaking cousin
when Ella was
right there.

Hello!

Jamie shot a mystified look at Ella.

“Um,” she said. “I like the green-bean casserole, actually.”

“No way!” Kelsi chimed in from the stovetop, where she was stirring flour into the rich-smelling gravy. Her voice was happy and light, as if her sister’s boyfriend wasn’t acting like a jerk right there in front of everyone on Thanksgiving afternoon. Ella knew it was for her benefit. “It’s all about the stuffing!”

Ella shot her sister a look, mentally thanking her, but Ryan didn’t seem to notice. He was concentrating fully on Jamie.

Ella knew exactly what that concentration meant. Not only had she once been the recipient of it, she’d given it out herself.

Ella watched Ryan reach across the counter and draw a little pattern on the Formica in front of Jamie.

“I can’t wait to taste it,” he murmured.

Jamie actually blushed. That was how dirty he’d made it sound.

“Um,” Jamie said. She widened her eyes slightly in Ella’s direction. Ella smiled as if everything was fine, but she didn’t move from her place at the table. She was almost afraid to move. If she did, she wasn’t sure what she would do.

“So whatever happened with that guy Dex, Jamie?” Kelsi asked in that same overly bright tone.

“Oh,” Jamie said nervously, her eyes flicking from Ryan to Ella and then back again. “We’re sort of seeing each other now. Actually, things are well, they’re going really well.”

“Define ‘well,’” Ryan said in his sexiest voice. And that did it. Ella had had enough. She opened her mouth to rip him a new one, but Ryan straightened up and turned away from Jamie.

Not to apologize for whatever blow to the head he must have suffered that had made him forget which Tuttle he was with. But to take his vibrating cell phone out of his pocket, grin, and disappear into the hallway to answer it.

Ella actually gaped after him.

And then had to deal with the humiliation of turning back to find her sister and her cousin staring at her.

“Ella,” Jamie began, frowning.

“I don’t know why he’s acting like this,” Ella said, before Jamie could say anything further.

“You don’t have to put up with that,” Kelsi said from the stove. “You deserve better.”

There was something about the matter-of-fact way Kelsi said it that made moisture prick at Ella’s eyes. It made her think of Jeremy.

“When did Beth say she was getting here?” Ella asked, swallowing and dodging the emotion.

“Soon, I hope,” Kelsi said, squinting at the clock. “She said she got on the road late.”

Ella nodded and then decided Ryan had spent far too long out of sight. As he was supposed to be hanging on to
her
every word, this was unacceptable. He obviously needed a reminder.

She found him out in the front hall, sending a text message, while in the living room the adults chattered and the younger cousins could be heard laughing over the sound of the television from the den. They must have come back in; it had gotten freezing outside.

“Hey, baby,” he said when he looked up. He finished the text and dropped the phone in his pocket.

“Who are you texting?” Ella asked.

“That gravy smells awesome,” Ryan said instead of answering. He closed the distance between them and ran his
hands down Ella’s arms. “I like your sister and your cousin. But I wish we were alone.”

“Are you deliberately not answering my question?” Ella asked, looking up at him.

“What?” He tried that smile on her. “I’m talking about maybe sneaking away for a little while. Just you and me.”

Ella gazed up at him, and that sly smirk of his. His eyes were clear and bright and she knew every move he was making. If she wanted to, she could probably figure out who he was texting, too.

But the truth was, she didn’t care.

He was acting like a tool. And Ella was kind of embarrassed that the first time she’d brought a guy home for Thanksgiving, it was this one.

“This is a mistake,” she said. The crazy part was, she wasn’t even mad. She just absolutely knew that she wasn’t the same person anymore.

“I’m not so good with family stuff,” Ryan said with a rueful grin. “But I make up for it in other ways.”

Ella shook her head at him. “I can read every single move you’re making, you know.” It used to be fun to play off of each other. But Ella was getting very tired of all Ryan’s hackneyed lines, his stale come-ons, his lifeless flirty banter. He just sounded…gross. And, in a sudden swoop, Ella felt incredibly grateful that she
hadn’t
gone all the way with Ryan. They’d come close, so close, just last week, but at the
last minute, she’d pulled back. Put on the brakes. As if she’d
known.

“I know you can,” Ryan said. “That’s what makes you so much fun.”

The thought made Ella shiver. She
wasn’t
like Ryan, at least not since last summer. That was the old Ella. This Ella was so much different.

“Maybe that’s what made me so much fun,” she said. “But I’m not there anymore.”

Ella felt her confidence rushing back. She felt like she did that morning of the assembly, when all the other girls were primping in the mirror. She was beyond this moment. Jeremy or not, she was better than this.

The common wavelength between Ryan and Ella had shifted. He searched her eyes as though he was looking for something he could recognize, trying to pin a flirty subtext to her words. “Wait,” he said, amazed. “Are you mad?”

“I’m not mad,” she said. “I’m just over—you.”

“Over me?” he shook his head. “Impossible. We’re practically the same person.”

Ella felt so far removed from him it was as if they’d never been together at all.

“Not anymore,” she told him. Then she cocked her hip, set her jaw, and pointed to the door.

“Is there a medical reason you have to sit in that chair
and watch?” Kelsi asked Ella some time later. “Because you could help me, you know. We told Mom she should relax and we’d do all this. You were there, remember?”

“By
we
I pretty much meant
you,
” Ella drawled, twirling a lock of blonde hair around one finger. She was glad Kelsi was home. She’d missed her.

But that didn’t mean she was going to subject herself to domestic labor out of some misplaced sense of sisterly devotion. Especially when she was feeling so depressed about Mr. Sketch-Man.
God.

“Don’t make me force you, Ella,” Kelsi warned her.

“I don’t cook,” she reminded her sister. “I don’t really do kitchens, either, but in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decided to keep you company today.”

“You’re always giving, El,” Kelsi replied, rolling her eyes. But she was grinning. “That’s what I love about you.”

“You love
everything
about me,” Ella retorted with a sniff. “And who can blame you?” But there was a part of Ella that didn’t believe it. A crack in her armor.

“Get up and chop onions,” Kelsi ordered her.

And then Ella was saved, literally, by the bell.

The doorbell, to be precise.

“I’ll get it!” she said, shuffling her feet. A tiny part of her wondered if it was Ryan, begging for forgiveness. Then she pushed that thought aside. Assuming it was Beth who had finally arrived, Ella hurled open the door, letting in the cold
November wind and the rain that had started earlier that morning, and was starting to look like snow.

Then she froze in place, staring, because the person at the door was Jeremy.

“Hi,” he said. His dark eyes were warm, as if he hadn’t broken her heart at all. Which she wasn’t even sure he had until just that moment, when she could really look at him. Ella loved the way his shaggy hair almost fell into his eyes, and the shy, crooked smile he aimed at her.

She thought maybe she was dreaming.

But then Jeremy thrust a quilted bag at her. Whatever was inside it was heavy and warm and smelled like butter. Ella was pretty sure that she would not dream about green-bean casseroles. She stared down at it, and then back up at Jeremy.

“I love you,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving her. “I’m an idiot. And I’ll do whatever it takes to make you love me again.”

Ella swallowed hard. Seeing Jeremy again made everything click suddenly into place. When Jeremy wasn’t there with her, she simply didn’t have the skills to deal with her emotions. With her missing him. She didn’t know what to do with the longing.

Or that fear that takes over when you feel yourself changing.

“It’s okay,” Jeremy whispered.

“How can it be okay?” she asked. “You dumped me. I dated someone else, but then I dumped him. Nobody dumps me.”

He stepped inside at that moment, and closed the door behind him. “We’ll talk about it. We’ll work it out. Just trust me,” Jeremy said, like he could read her mind. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. His dark eyes were so close. “Can you do that?”

“I can try,” she said. She pulled back to look at him. “I want to try.”

“Okay, then,” Jeremy said, and he smiled as if they’d never spent a moment apart. “And I’m going to trust you, too.”

“Okay,” Ella echoed. And she didn’t feel wild or free or any of those things.

She felt like herself. At last.

She felt like she was home.