The Season of You & Me (2 page)

The path opened up to a clearing and wide dirt patch with at least ten cars parked askew. People roamed the lot and leaned against rear bumpers. Someone scooted in front of the car, knocked on the hood, and yelled “Drewmeister!” We may as well have been in a car-ride safari park, staring at the jungle life.
Oooh, look, seniors.
I toned down my wide-eyed gawking.

Once out of the car, Drew opened four longnecks and handed one to each of us. Gavin split, leaving me staring at Drew and Ems, who were staring at each other. I took a sip of beer, determined to go along with wherever the night took me. Why not? I’d survived the ride, and there were so many people there, so many
new
people, I didn’t need that guy.

“Where’s Gavin?” Emma asked me.

I shrugged. Her brows scrunched together. Drew took her hand. “C’mon.”

The three of us walked toward a makeshift bonfire that
someone had started in a garbage can. The night was cool, and while a fire was hardly necessary, it added to the mood, made faces more exaggerated, intriguing. What may have looked like one large group was actually several smaller ones, threes and fours, clustered together, all caught up in their own little impenetrable worlds. When I turned to say something to Ems, she was gone. My phone buzzed. I slid it out from my back pocket, grateful for something to do, and tapped for the message.

Eres muy bonita esta noche, Cassidy.

No way,
I thought, but must have said out loud, because the person next to me stepped back and said, “What?” My mind blanked; it was just letters on the screen that I didn’t understand. I knew
muy
was “very
.
”
Bonita
was . . . “pretty”? And my name. I should have been freaked, but it made me smile. Being called very pretty didn’t feel like a threat. I tapped a response.

RU here?

If whoever had been texting me responded with
en español, por favor
, I would have screamed.

Look up.

I slowly tilted my chin and looked up at the sky. What the hell was I supposed to be looking at? Was this an elaborate Emma prank?

“Not
that
up,” a male voice called.

I looked across the fire. Gavin stood on the other side.

Everything snapped to focus and sharpened.

Gavin was the one who had been texting me?!

“You?” I asked as he walked closer. Damn, he had dimples.

He raised his hands up.
“Sí.”

“But . . . why?”

“Why not?” he asked, walking past me. His secretive smirk beckoned me to follow him. We sat side by side on the hood of Drew’s car, sipping our beer, making small talk about school and the night, until I decided to cut to the important stuff.

“How did you get my number?”

“Emma.”

“She didn’t—”

“I told her not to.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to talk to me in class?”

“Where’s the mystery in that? Besides, you’re too serious in class, pen at the ready, open notebook, conjugating verbs and shit.”

He thought I was serious? He noticed me in class?

“So, Ems knew you were texting me, and you knew I was the friend coming tonight—why did you disappear when we got here?” I didn’t know where this bold Cassidy was coming
from, but I felt charged, wanting to get to the bottom of it, and he was too freaking cute close up.

“I got the feeling you weren’t interested. You looked out the window the whole way here.”

“You were talking about the crappy music.”

“It was pretty crappy, wasn’t it? I mean, Drew pays out the ass for premium satellite, you’d think—”

“What did the last text say?”

“You take Spanish, you should know.”

“I only look serious. You’re the Spanish scholar.”

“Only because it’s my second time taking it. Butler needs to change up her lessons,” he said.

I wasn’t letting it go; I wanted to hear him say it. He shifted to face me, the glow from the fire flickering across his face. He kept his eyes on mine. So serious.

“You look very pretty tonight, Cassidy.”

I blushed at the compliment, laughed, took a sip from my beer. Suddenly there was a loud mechanical
woop
sound. Then there were lights. Blue and red and blue and red.

“Shit,” Gavin said, grabbing my beer and tossing it with his toward a nearby garbage can. He took my hand. “Run.”

We weren’t the only ones scattering toward the woods. I wasn’t sure what kind of trouble I was running from, but visions of Nana in her housedress, or worse, Mom, who was out on a date that night, coming to pick me up at a police station, fueled my run. Leaves crunched as we darted through
the trees. Peals of laughter, more crunching,
shush
es coming from every direction as kids from around the fire scattered. The woods were cooler, and my face was frozen in a grin, my breath coming out in gasps. I had no clue where we were headed, but I trusted Gavin. I had no choice.

I focused on his hand clasped around mine, pulling me forward. It felt right, comfortable, like I’d found something I’d been missing. My pulse pounded in my head and the last sip of beer threatened to rise on the back of my tongue. We finally reached a clearing, a large field with waist-high weeds surrounding a massive, imposing-looking building with chain-link fences around it. Gavin let go of my hand and stumbled forward a bit, looking up at the sky and laughing. I bent over, hands on my knees, dizzy from the run, my mouth dry. Gavin took my hand again.

“C’mon.” He was out of breath too. We sat on the chilly ground with our backs against the trunk of a large tree, facing the abandoned asylum. My breath slowed; my thoughts became more rational.

“Well, now what do we do?”

Gavin laughed. “We wait. This always happens when some jackhole lights a fire.”

“Will they come after us?”

“Too much of a hassle; that’s why we scatter. Sometimes they have a patrol car over here, but I guess luck is with us tonight. As long as no one causes any real trouble, like setting
the woods on fire, everyone kind of goes along with it.”

We sat listening until the sounds in the woods died down. The fire was snuffed. The flashing lights were gone. I pulled my knees up to my chest for warmth and stared at the abandoned asylum. “Think it’s haunted?”

“Nah,” Gavin said, reaching into his pocket and producing an ornate silver flask. “But this would make one helluva horror flick, right? Maybe there’s a psycho who got loose right before the place shut down and he’s been living in the woods all this time and decides to go on a killing spree because he thinks he’s being attacked.”

“So we’re the first to die, then?”

“Maybe me—you’d be the ingenue, the one everyone falls in love with.” He opened the flask and offered it to me. I was about to take it, but stopped.

“Or,” I said, “the ingenue gets lost in the woods, but is found by a charming guy who turns out to be the escaped psycho, and he drugs the girl and takes her to his asylum lab to perform all kinds of sick experiments.”

He took a swig from the flask. “It’s only Fireball.”

“And you feel the need to carry a flask?”

“Sometimes. Takes the edge off. Keeps you warm. I won’t perform any sick experiments unless you want me to,” he said, holding it out.

I took the flask from him this time and downed a sip. Fireball was the perfect name because the liquid burned my
throat, but it tasted like cinnamon and, true to Gavin’s word, warmed me up. I ran my thumb across the engraved front of the flask.

“GWH—what’s your middle name?”

“It’s my father’s flask; he’s George Wallace Henley.”

“Wow, that’s a flask-worthy name.” I handed it back to him.

He laughed. “Sounds impressive, right? I’m Gavin William Henley, so I guess I can pass it off as mine.” He took another sip before screwing the top back on. His phone dinged. He reached into his pocket and checked the messages. The screen illuminated his face.

“Drew says coast is clear.”

My heart fell. I was sitting in a field of weeds in front of an abandoned asylum and had no desire to leave. Gavin stood up, held out his hand for mine, and pulled me to standing. I stumbled over the root of the tree and gripped his arms for balance. He steadied me, laughing. Even his laugh was sexy. I couldn’t stop staring at him, couldn’t wait to hear what would come out of his mouth next. How had I not noticed any of this for two months in Spanish?

“I think we’d be the couple who made it out alive,” he said. “The one everyone roots for.”

I leaned against the tree and pulled him toward me, my mouth reaching for his before I could think, rationalize, stop myself, because the boy with the silver flask was trouble, and
I knew it, but I didn’t care. He was momentarily startled, but then made this low rumble of approval in his chest that I felt as he kissed me. His lips were warm and tasted like cinnamon and as his arms crushed me against him, everything around us dissolved. I had an epic story to whisper in the halls of school on Monday.

It was a story I wished I could forget.

And wishing . . . well, yeah, I knew where it got me.

“Hey, Cass, you’re a million miles away.” Nan held the railing as she settled onto the top step next to me. I shook off the Gavin thoughts, but a nagging question remained, the one Emma had brought up earlier in my room.

“Do you think I’m running away?” I asked.

She wrestled something out of the pocket of her housecoat—a waxed paper envelope with two almond cookies. She offered me one. I was going to pass but figured I’d be missing Jade Garden soon enough. We nibbled on the cookies before Nan said anything.

“You know, I never liked that boy. He didn’t eat dessert.”

I laughed. “That’s random.”

“No, a man who doesn’t eat sweets doesn’t know how to be sweet, in my experience anyway. And I don’t mean the superficial fake sweet. I mean the real, deep sweet.”

I wasn’t about to touch what real, deep sweet meant. I’m sure whatever Nan was thinking was far away from where my perverted mind was taking it. Mom stepped out onto the
porch, opened the folding chair, and sat down, putting her legs up on the railing and letting out a long, hassled-sounding sigh.

“Cassidy thinks she’s running away.”

“I want to run away,” Mom said, tilting her head back and looking up at the sky.

“So you think I am?” I asked.

She turned her head to me. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. Emma thought maybe it was immature to skip out.”

“And Emma’s the authority on maturity now,” Nan said.

“I know, I know, I just don’t want it to look like I’m copping out.”

Mom looked dreamily up to the sky again, her face softened. “Copping out of what? Cassidy, you’re spending the summer with your father, you’re not running away. You’re changing the scenery. There’s a difference. You’re opening yourself up to new experiences. That’s all, nothing wrong with that. This will be good for you.”

I hoped she was right.

EYES CLOSED, I COULD IMAGINE I WAS IN THE OCEAN.

I was whole underwater.

Floating.

Still.

In control.

One with the water around me.

Some moments, I could step out of my life. (Step. Ha.)

There was always that point, though, when my brain reminded me that communications between it and my legs were wonky. That it could shout commands all day and my lower half wouldn’t listen, as if the nerves in my legs were plugging their ears and singing
lalalalalalalalalala, we can’t hear you
, but worse, because there was no undoing it.

I’d never walk again.

Even a year and a half after the accident those words were unreal.

T-10. Incomplete. Numbers and letters that defined me now.

They were unreal too.

In the water though, I could imagine. Remember.

If only some instrumental version of “Radioactive”
hadn’t been playing under the water, I would have been golden.

“Bryan.”

A splash across my face brought me back to the rec center pool. Fluorescent lights instead of the sun. Chlorine instead of salt. I blinked the water from my eyes, shifted the therapy noodle out from under my knees, and paddled upright. My arms ached from my workout. I’d pushed myself hard. I may not have had use of my legs, but I had the upper body of fucking Iron Man. #wheelchairperk

Jena, a rec center noob, stood at the side of the pool and waggled her fingers at me. We didn’t really know each other, but knew
of
each other. Wade had her stats down, like he did for every girl who was working at the rec center for the summer. Single. Sophomore. Soccer/swim girl. Liked to party. Her red lifeguard hoodie skimmed the top of her legs. Her long, tanned legs. Legs that could run and jump and kick without a second thought. Thighs that could wrap around me.

She cleared her throat.

“Sorry for the splashing. I wanted to get your attention.”
She bent down and grabbed the therapy noodle out of the water.

“No worries. I’ve had people get my attention in worse ways.”

She pressed her lips together. Clearly my material was not charming her.

“We’re, um—closing soon.”

“Seven already? I’ll be right out.”

She looked around. Her eyes landed on the pool lift. My first few times in the water, I’d used and hated everything about it, especially needing someone else’s help just to take a swim. Six months of training and I was expert at getting in and out of the pool, no fanfare necessary. Although getting help from Jena might have been worth it.

“I don’t need that,” I said, and made my way toward the end of the pool. She followed alongside as I swam to the end of the lane.

I pulled myself up on the edge and twisted, placing my butt down and centering my weight. Jena handed me a towel. I was about to tell her she didn’t need to baby me but nodded thanks and took the towel from her. Hot girls being helpful was definitely a #wheelchairperk. I’d left my wheels close for easy access. She looked at the chair, then me. I smiled.

“It’s not as hard as it looks; I can manage.”

She played with the string pulls on her hoodie and fidgeted, eyes darting between me, the chair, and the kids who
were screaming at the other end of the pool. “Mr. Beckett said to check in with him before you leave. Do you, um . . . need help with anything else?”

“I
am
headed to the shower. . . .”

Her head snapped up and her eyes locked on mine. A confuzzled-kitten look, maybe wondering if she’d heard me right. It was cruel of me to leave her hanging. I knew that. She was vibing off the tragic of my situation, like anyone else who knew of me and my accident.
Oh, he’s that guy, the one who liked to surf, the one who tripped and fell and fucked up his life forever. The one they had that fish-fry fund-raiser for over at the VFW hall. Must not laugh around him.

I smiled. “Kidding.”

A flash of teeth and a high-pitched giggle told me she was seriously relieved I hadn’t been trying to put the moves on her. Laughter always broke the ice. Even if it was of the holy-shit-I’m-so-glad-you-were-kidding variety. At least I’d made her think of something other than hauling my ass out of the pool.

“You should tell Mr. Beckett he needs to play some better underwater tunes—that instrumental stuff is boring. Something like Neck Deep.” I draped the towel over my shoulders.

She laughed again, but stopped when she saw I wasn’t. She must have thought I was joking.

“That’s a band?”

“Yeah, I know it sounds like—well, I guess it might be
ironic if I was quad, or would that be a coincidence? I always mix that up,” I said.

“Quad?”

“—draplegic, you know, paralyzed from the neck down. That would be sort of—”

Oh hell, Bry, why not joke about your daily skin check for pressure sores, wouldn’t that crack her up?
“I also like Jimmy Eat World and the Story So Far.”

“I love Jimmy Eat World. I’ll have to talk to Mr. Beckett about it,” she said, over-smiling to erase the awkward. The kids at the other end of the pool screamed again, running away from each other. Jena sounded her whistle. The kids kept messing around. She rolled her eyes. “Gotta deal with them. See ya.”

“Later,” I said as she yelled for them to stop running. They didn’t listen.

Good for them.

I locked the brakes on my wheels and hoisted myself into my chair, then pushed off to the showers.

Alone.

“So I hear you don’t like my taste in music?” Mr. Beckett stared intently at his computer screen as I maneuvered through the doorway. The rec center was an older building; not much thought had been given to accessibility except in the newer wing with the pool. It was tight, but I managed, positioning
myself between the chairs that were in front of his desk. He may have thought it looked like he was working, but I could see in the reflection of his glasses he was playing solitaire. After a few clicks of his mouse, he turned his focus on me, folding his hands on the blotter in front of him. The scene felt oddly formal considering he was my godfather.

“It’s great if you want to put everyone to sleep, Owen.”

“It’s popular stuff though, no?”

“For forty-year-olds.”

“Ha, ouch, Lakewood.”

“You wanted to see me?”

Mr. Beckett was my father’s best friend, best man, fishing buddy, a fixture at our house on Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. As Mom and Dad and my younger brother, Matt, were working through their own shit adjusting to our new situation, he’d been the first person, aside from my therapist, to help me feel that being paralyzed wasn’t some dismal life sentence. He didn’t do it with fake enthusiasm. No pom-poms, no clichéd words of wisdom or pity. He did it by being there, in the worst and best moments, offering silent acknowledgment to move forward, letting me feel shitty if I wanted to, but never allowing me to wallow so deep I couldn’t get out. From the look on his face, I couldn’t tell what kind of moment this would turn into, but I knew he wanted to talk about something. He took off his reading glasses, folded them with more care than necessary, and placed them at the top corner of the
blotter before finally leaning forward on his elbows.

“What?”

“How are you feeling about Monday?”

“Good. Ready.” Monday was my first day back as a camp counselor post-accident. I’d held the same job when I was fifteen, and figured things couldn’t have changed all that much in two years. Six-year-olds were six-year-olds. They ate. Ran. Spilled shit. And didn’t want to do much else but swim. Totally manageable.

“Okay, cool.”

“It doesn’t sound like you think it’s cool.”

He blew out a long breath and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head like he was doing a sit-up. He looked at a water stain on the paneled ceiling as he spoke.

“I do think it’s cool, and I’m glad to hear you’re ready, because I think you’re ready too.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Don’t you think that looks kind of like Florida?” He pointed at the ceiling, outlining the water stain in the air with his index finger. “There’s the panhandle, and see, over there—”

“Just be straight with me. I can handle it.”

He looked at me again, sat upright in the chair. “A few of the parents have expressed concern about your ability to take care of the kids in case of emergency.”

“Wasn’t that the whole purpose of that Q and A session last
week? What kind of emergency?”

“I don’t know. Polar ice caps melting. Werewolf bites. The usual stuff parents worry about. I know both you and Wade are more than capable of taking care of your group.”

“Then why are you telling me this?”

“I wanted you to hear it from me, not some trickle-down island gossip or mouthy kid. You can handle it—I wouldn’t have offered you a job if I thought otherwise—but I know it can be tough dealing with people who don’t understand what you’re capable of.”

“Fuck it.”

“Mouth, Bry.”

“Who complained?”

“Doesn’t matter. I reassured the parties involved, but since this is your first time back to work, I thought I’d give you some options.”

“Like what?”

“You know Olivia isn’t going to be with Tori in the culinary class anymore. Her father is—”

“Working on an engineering project in Houston and they have to go there for the summer. Yeah, I know.” I left out that it was all Tori had been complaining about the past two weeks, pissed that Liv would be abandoning her for the whole summer and worried that Mr. Beckett was going to drop her cooking class and assign her to a group of tween boys.

“This is the first year we’re offering that as a special elective. It’s been a popular pick, so Tori definitely needs help. I
thought I’d offer you the position, let you make the choice if you’d rather stay in one place, help Tori and have the kids come to you, or if you want to stick with the plan. I’ve hired a replacement for Liv, but I wasn’t specific with her assignment so there’s still time to switch things around, if you’re interested.”

The one thing I’d loved about being a counselor was that no two days were alike. I was a rock star with the kids—at least I had been, at fifteen. Keeping them safe had never been an issue—I was always alert and did head counts, and a lot of the time we were in the building anyway. But hearing that people had concerns made me second-guess myself. Fuck that.

“Stick to the plan.”

He smiled. “I had a feeling that’s what you’d say.”

“Anything else?”

“Nah. Hey, remind your dad if he wants to go fishing tomorrow, the boat’s pulling out at four thirty a.m.”

“You guys are nuts,” I said, turning my chair to leave.

“Have a good weekend; rest up—you’re gonna need it!”

As I wheeled down the hallway my phone started blowing up in my backpack. I waited until I was out by the Charger before taking a look. Tori. The girl next door. Friend. Meddler extraordinaire.

Where ru?

Liv’s last nite!!

Do NOT bail!! We need u!

No, actually, they didn’t need me. Liv would be leaving whether I showed up or not. We didn’t need an awkward good-bye with buffalo wings and forced smiles, although I didn’t think it was her doing. Much ado about nothing was classic Tori, wanting us all to get along. I replied.

Me: Tired.

Tori: Huh? From sitting all day ;)

Me: Yeah. :p

Tori: Wimp

Me: Later

Setting the phone to silent, I tucked it away into the zipper pouch of my backpack; then I opened the car door and transferred to the driver’s seat. After my accident, the Dodge Charger had been my incentive, my reason to get out of bed. I’d been working on my probationary driver’s license and had my eye on it before I got hurt, but when the full impact of how my life had changed hit me, it hadn’t been the first thing on my mind.

After a particularly rough day in physical therapy, my father told me about the car—that the fish fry at the VFW hall had helped pay for the adaptive controls and some of the paperwork. When I was ready for instruction, the lessons were waiting for me. The car was an extension of me now as much as my wheelchair. I loved it and the freedom that came with it.
Learning how to transfer into the seat and adjust everything so I could break down my chair had taken a lot of practice, but now it was second nature.

I popped off one wheel from my chair, then the other, before folding it up and stowing it away, over my shoulder and into the backseat. I pulled the front door closed and revved up the engine with the hand control, turning up Neck Deep on the stereo to obnoxious.

I peeled out of the lot, nose toward home, grinning at the guy I’d cut off as I made my right turn. The population of Crest Haven had tripled since Memorial Day. Tourists.

To him I was just a douche in a car.

I loved it.

The closer I got to home, the more I ignored the burning feeling in my gut that I was, in fact, wimping out. It was too late to turn around, and going there, well, what would it prove? I
was
tired—that was a fact, not an excuse. But if I was being honest with myself, it had more to do with self-preservation. Was it awful to admit I was relieved Liv would be gone for two months? That maybe the time apart would give our friendship a reboot.

Liv had been Liv, always there in our group of friends, hanging out, catching air from a wave or joking in the halls at school with the rest of the guys. She was hot in a tough, take-no-shit kind of way and had a great smile, and when she
asked me to prom I said yes. Mercy date or not, it was nice to go. Normal.

We hung out for the month after. Nothing serious, hooking up a few times. Things got weird between us when she invited me over to watch a movie. Going over to people’s houses was always a challenge because of stairs and space and carpet. Although I was more practiced at getting around, not every place was prepped to have me as a visitor. Liv had a finished basement right off the garage complete with a forty-two-inch screen and leather recliner couch. It was kind of cool to have a place to chill and watch a movie. With a girl. Alone.