The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(10)

“Come on, hon,” he says, gentle and yet frustrated.

I sigh. “Danny, I turn eighteen this year.”

“It doesn’t matter how old you are…you’re not that kind of girl.”

“What kind of girl?”

“You know, the kind of girl who does that. Who has sex before marriage.”

He wants to wait for marriage? It seems like the kind of thing he should have told me before now.

But I guess the fact that I didn’t wait for marriage is the kind of thing I should have told him before now too.

And even if I wish my first time hadn’t gone the way it did, I want the things that girl with Luke is getting right now. I want to walk into a room, mid-party, with that satisfied, secretive look Maggie had on her face. I don’t even know what I want, really. I just want more. More than what I have now, which is so wrong, when I already have so much.

Danny walks me to my bedroom door, kissing me goodnight in that way of his—making me feel like a treasured object, something fine and fragile that must be handled with care. Yes, occasionally I wish he’d kiss me like Ryan Gosling kisses Rachel McAdams in the The Notebook: full-on, hot, desperate. But there’s something to be said for Danny’s way too.

I just can’t quite remember what it was as I look at Luke’s empty room.

LUKE SOMEHOW ESCAPED GOING to church his first week here, but the jig is up by the end of the second. I’m already sitting with the choir when he walks in behind Danny, bleary-eyed on the two hours of sleep he got, looking like he’s preparing for battle: hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched over while he stares at the floor. The only sign of life on his face comes when he realizes Danny has positioned them directly across from me. He starts looking around, hoping for an available seat elsewhere, but there isn’t one, so his jaw locks and remains that way through the entire service, whether it’s the pastor speaking, prayers being offered, or me doing my solo.

“That was lovely, Juliet,” the pastor says as I take my seat. He turns to the crowd and starts talking about his time as a missionary in Nicaragua, an experience which provided him endless stories of human suffering—and his own goodness. I’d believe in his goodness slightly more if he wasn’t always milking the misery of others to prove it.

“But we don’t have to look to the third world for people in need, because they are all around us,”

he says. I stiffen. “Yes, they are all around us. They come in the form of a man who sits out on the corner begging for change, a woman who can’t afford formula for her baby, a girl who stays in the school library because she’s scared to go home.”

My eyes lower to the floor, and my face burns as the church’s collective gaze slides to me. They all know who this one is about. I’m used to it by now—the pastor’s thinly veiled references to me in his sermons are par for the course at this point—but I wish Danny hadn’t told his dad about the library thing and I wish Luke wasn’t hearing it too. Maybe it isn’t even his disdain that upsets me—

it’s simply the way it reminds me of all the ugly things I am, and that I’m unlikely—no matter how hard I fake it, no matter how hard I try—to be rid of them for good.

At the end of the service, I remain near the pastor and Donna, enduring the comments people make, the reminders posed as compliments.

“You sang so beautifully today, Juliet,” says the church secretary. “You’ve really blossomed since the Allens took you in."

I force a smile, though I wouldn’t say I’ve blossomed. The only difference between me now versus two years ago is that I have significantly fewer bruises. The price of being poor, I guess, is that there is always someone better off who will get the credit for your accomplishments.

Mrs. Wilson is the next to compliment me. “Juliet, what a lovely job you did.” There’s pity in her smile.

Luke, beside me, laughs as she walks away. “Prance, little show pony, prance.”

I don’t have to ask what he means because I already know: the pastor doesn’t want me to sing because I’ve got a decent voice. He wants me to sing to remind everyone that he was the one who dragged me out of the dirt.

“Go fuck yourself,” I reply under my breath.

His eyes lighten and his mouth twitches. “There she is,” he says, only for me to hear. “I knew she was in there somewhere.”





5





NOW


I take a long shower, rinsing off the day of travel. Luke’s in the backyard, starting the lawnmower.

His face, in profile, is a work of art—the fading sun marking the curve of his cheekbones, his sharp jaw, his straight nose. I step closer to the window, drawn to him. He tugs out a weed and when his bicep pulses there’s a throb between my legs to match it. He glances up, as if he knows I’m watching, and I hustle off to the kitchen in shorts and bare feet, damp hair streaming down my back.

Donna’s assembling ingredients on the counter but stops and smiles when she sees me. “There’s my girl. You look just like you did when you first came to us.”

I can’t imagine that’s true. I’m decades older on the inside. I arrived here at fifteen feeling dirty and used up, naively hoping I could be made clean again. I know better now.

“Sit,” I tell her. I made chili often enough growing up here that I recognize the ingredients. “I've got this.”