Boys of Summer (33 page)

It looks like a frat house after an end-of-semester party.

There are dirty dishes overflowing from the sink. There are empty wine bottles scattered all over the floor. And there's trash
everywhere
.

There's no way my grandparents would live like this.

I hurry to the garage door and flick on the light. My stomach sinks when I see that their car is not there.

Where did they go?

How long have they been gone?

How long has my mother been living here by herself?

I never even thought that she might be here all alone. I always just assumed my grandparents were here to watch over her. Now I think back to all those texts I got over the past month. Asking me to come look at home movies. Asking me to visit my father's favorite places on the island.

I just assumed she was trying to get me to reminisce with her. Trying to force me to grieve the way she wanted me to grieve. I didn't realize she was asking because she was lonely.

I glance down to see an empty wine bottle at my feet, and suddenly I can't control the rage anymore. It controls me. It pilots me. It takes over.

I pick up the bottle and hurl it against the wall. It shatters with an ear-piercing crash. I reach for the next one and resign it to the same fate. I'm astonished by how good it feels. How satisfying that sound is.

The sound of things breaking.

The sound of things ending.

The sound of things that will never be put back together.

When there are no more bottles left, I drag myself back up the stairs, my body tired and heavy and out of breath.

I stand in my mother's room for a long time, staring at her unconscious form on the bed. She's completely out, lying at an awkward angle across the comforter, the left side of her face flattened and disfigured against the pillow.

My emotions run the gamut from anger to disgust to pity to guilt, then back to anger again.

Round and round it goes.

Why should I feel guilty? She's the adult here, not me. She's an army wife. Army wives are supposed to be strong. They're supposed to know how to take care of themselves. This is
not
how my father would have wanted her to handle his death.

And what about me?

What would my father have wanted from
me
?

The question plummets the temperature of the room, and I shiver.

He always wanted so much from me. So many things that I wouldn't give him. An army legacy. A soldier. A son who knew how to hold a gun instead of a guitar. And yet
he never complained. He wasn't like Grayson's dad, forcing his past on my future. He was always supportive of my aspirations, even if he didn't agree with them.

But what would he want from me now?

And what does it even matter, now that he's gone?

I guess it doesn't.

I shake my head and turn to leave, but my foot catches on something, and I stumble. I look down to see a box filled to the rim with photographs, which have now spilled out onto the floor.

“Shit,” I swear aloud, and bend down to scoop them up.

My hand freezes and my stomach turns over when I notice that every single one of these pictures has my father in it. I drop the photographs from my hand like they're made of hot coals.

I'm suddenly paralyzed in my crouch. I want to shove them all away, stuff them back into that box and kick the box under the bed. I don't want to see them. I don't want to be reminded. And yet I can't seem to move. All I can do is stare numbly at the photos. At his cheerful, round face peeking out from every single one of them.

My dad wearing a lobster bib.

My dad and mom holding hands.

My dad in his mess uniform, right before their wedding.

My dad holding me as a baby.

My dad and me fishing on Cherry Tree Bridge.

That's the one that makes my body unfreeze. That returns the sensation to my legs and arms and fingertips. I lean forward and scoop it up, careful not to touch any of the others. I stare at the photo for what seems like forever. It's a close-up shot, slightly off center. I remember my dad held the camera out in front of him with one hand and attempted to capture both of us, but the side of my head is cut off. I
try to memorize every inch of it, from the colors of my dad's fishing hat and the shape of the one lone cloud that sits in the sky behind us, to the look of pure joy on both of our faces.

This was our common ground. Of all the things we could never agree on, we could always agree on this.

There was always time for fishing.

Finally the weight of the memories becomes too much and I crumple. I fall back and lean against the side of the bed, pressing the photograph to my chest.

I don't know if my dad would have wanted me to cry.

But like I said, it doesn't really matter anymore what he would have wanted.

GRAYSON

I
can't remember who started kissing whom first. Harper and I were hugging, then we were just walking the beach talking, and then our lips just found their way to each other. Like they've done all summer. Like they did that one summer six years ago in the garden shed.

Harper and I are complicated magnets.

On one side we attract, on the other we repel. When it's good, it's good, but when it's bad, it's the kind of bad that makes you feel stupid. Like burning yourself on a hot plate that someone already warned you not to touch.

Harper's lips move urgently against mine. I can feel her trying to intensify the kiss. She needs something from it. The way we've both needed something from every single kiss we've stolen over the past two months. But it's something I can't give her. At least not here, just outside the cove. We're too exposed. We're too out in the open.

I pull away. Harper's eyes stay closed for just a moment before slowly dragging open. And then, in a flicker of a second, they're wide. Staring at something just over my shoulder.

A tiny, incomprehensible sound gurgles from her lips.

I'm pretty sure I already know what I'll find when I
turn around. We've had so many close calls this summer, I've come to recognize Harper's reaction to them.

Someone has spotted us. Someone has seen us kissing. Someone now knows.

I just don't know who that someone is and how big an issue it will turn out to be.

Is it as small as an unknown tourist who we've never spoken to?

Or is it as big as someone like Whitney or Ian?

I suck in a breath and turn around.

It's worse.

It's the worst.

It's Mike.

He stands there, staring at us with a closed-mouth, empty gaze, as though he's sleeping with his eyes open. As though he's not even seeing us at all but, rather, seeing through us.

As though we're ghosts.

And I have a feeling that after this moment, we will forever
be
ghosts in his mind.

That's when I realize that my hand is still wrapped around the back of Harper's head. I quickly release it and take a tentative step toward him.

It's the very opposite thing from what my head is telling me to do.

My head is telling me to
run
the other way. But it's as though my brain has been put on mute and my conscience has taken over, guided with some helpful suggestions from my overactive, pounding heart.

“Mike,” I say, raising both hands in the air like the surrounded criminal that I am. A criminal who's been on the run for far too long. Who's tired of hiding and lying and disguising himself as someone that he's not.

Who's ready to turn himself in.

Mike still hasn't said a word or moved a muscle.

Is he in shock?

I take another step. Somewhere behind me Harper starts to cry. Her quiet sobs don't deter my course. And they definitely don't do anything to break Mike's trance.

“Look,” I say. “I never wanted you to find out this way. I never wanted . . .” I trail off, running out of steam, running out of logic.

Another step.

The statue in the shape of my best friend doesn't move.

“I'm so sorry, man. It just happened. Neither of us planned it.”

Two steps. I'm now only a foot away from him, yet he still hasn't fully focused on me. In fact, I can't tell where he's looking. At me? Behind me? Into me?

Now that I'm this close, I can see the subtleties of his expression, the finer details of the sculptor's work. A slight crease below the hairline. A pinching of the jaw muscles. A furrowing of the brow.

His eerie stillness fuels my anxiety, and all I can do to muffle the screaming in my head is keep talking. “I've felt horrible about it all summer. I'm telling you, the guilt has been eating me alive. I've lost so much sleep over this. Because I swear I didn't want to hurt you. Neither of us did. We just—”

THWACK!

Before I can comprehend what has happened, I feel the throbbing in my nose and the blood trickling into my mouth. My face is on fire. My vision swims.

Somewhere behind me Harper lets out a gasp.

I groan as I double over and stare at the ground. Tiny drops of crimson drip onto the sand. It takes my mind a moment to catch up.

Blood.

That's blood.

That's
my
blood.

Mike punched me. In our twelve years of friendship, I don't think I've ever seen Mike throw a punch. And yet he sucker punched me right in the face.

Not that I didn't deserve it. I did. I do.

I deserve all of it and worse.

I take deep breaths, trying to dull the pain. Trying to keep the beach from spinning. When I finally manage to get the disorientation under control, I stand up straight again.

THWACK!

Mike punches me again. This time in the cheek. The same cheek my father smacked only a week ago. My ears ring. My jaw throbs with pain.

“What the hell!” I scream at him.

One punch I deserve. I may even welcome it. But two? Two just seems excessive.

WHAM!

Now he has punched me right in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. I double over again, gagging and fighting for breath.

“Fight back, you asshole!” he yells from somewhere. But through the sound of Harper crying and my ears ringing and the waves crashing, I can't, for the life of me, figure out where his voice is coming from. Is he behind me? In front of me? Towering over me?

“I'm . . . not . . . going . . . to . . . fight . . . you,” I manage to gasp out between spasms of breath.

WHAP!

Another solid punch. The pain spreads so fast, I can't even tell where it originated.

“You'll fuck my girlfriend, but you won't fight me?” Mike yells.

“Stop!” Harper screams from somewhere in the dizzying, shrinking void that is my vision. “Please, stop!”

“What kind of a spineless loser are you?” Mike bellows. “The star quarterback. The pride and joy of the Cartwright family. And he can't even throw a fucking punch! What a joke!”

I feel my hands ball into fists. My wounded arm screams out in protest. But the rage wins. It's louder and more persuasive.

“Is that what the extra money was for?” Mike shouts. “Is that why you were padding my checks? To alleviate your own pathetic guilt?” He snorts out a laugh. “I should have known. That's how a pretty little rich boy deals with his problems, isn't it? You throw money at them. You try to buy them off. Because you're too much of a fucking coward to face them yourself.”

My muscles coil. My body readies itself to run.

Run.

That's what I've been doing all my life. I've been running. Running away from my father's disappointment. Running away from my future. And what did I do when my mother left? I ran. I ran all the way into that tree.

I'm a quarterback. I'm not supposed to get sacked. I'm not supposed to join the action. I'm supposed to run away from it.

But apparently I'm done running away from the conflict in my life. This time I'm running right toward it. I let out a fierce growl and charge into Mike. He goes flying backward and lands on his back with a grunt
.
I tumble forward from the momentum and fall on top of him. I scramble to my knees and throw my first punch. It hits him squarely
in the jaw. I cock my fist back for another one, but he's too quick. He pushes me off him, and we roll, grappling for control, for the superior position.

Somewhere in the distance I hear Harper calling to us, shouting our names through her terrified tears. But it's too far away to be real, and I'm too far gone to come back.

Mike may be taller than me, but I'm stronger. I always have been. I'm the athlete in the group. I'm the brawn of the Cartwright family. This is what I was born to do. To fight. To be strong. To win.

I manage to get Mike underneath me again, and I pull my fist back, ready to send it flying into his face. But it never gets there.