The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(13)

I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry. Of course he’s not going to fucking say anything, Donna.

He’s your guest. What’s he going to say?

I straighten, setting the paring knife down to face her. “No. He wouldn’t.”

She studies me for a moment while I silently will her to see the situation as it is, not how she wishes it was.

She bites her lip. “I don’t know how the pastor will feel about that. I’ll need more money for the food budget.”

I suspected as much. The church rents this house for them, but they don’t have a lot beyond that. I see Donna sitting at the table every morning clipping coupons, fretting when a recipe calls for a half-teaspoon of some expensive ingredient. I should have been helping out all along, I guess.

“I’ll start chipping in,” I tell her. I’m saving so I can get my own place after graduation, but Luke’s only here for the summer and I’ve got another year to go. It won’t kill me.

She shakes her head. “Juliet, no. You work so hard. I don’t want to do that to you.”

I know she doesn’t, but she’s between a rock and a hard place. The pastor doesn’t actually want me or Luke here. He’s bearing us, nothing more, which is why she has me on my feet whenever he’s coming home but begs me to relax anytime he’s not around. If she mentions the issue to him, it could make things worse for all of us.

“Donna, it’s fine. It’s the only way.”

She wants to argue. I know she does. Her mouth opens, then closes. “That’s very kind of you,” she says quietly.

Our guest, Mrs. Poffsteader’s nephew, arrives a short time later with his shirt buttoned to the top and his thin brown hair neatly combed. Grady’s in his last year of Bible school and will be able to work as a pastor once he’s completed a one-year mentorship. He looks like a kid pretending to be an adult, and I can’t imagine who the hell would spend an hour on Sunday listening to the thoughts of a twenty-two-year-old.

Especially this twenty-two-year-old.

The pastor shares some interminable story about indulgence, based on hearing a father tell his daughter she can’t have ice cream, and Grady’s eyes shine like he’s sitting at the Dalai Lama’s feet.

“What an amazing revelation,” Grady says when he concludes. “Your thoughts fascinate me. I can’t wait to hear you preach.”

When the pastor foists him off on us, suggesting we take Grady with us to the bonfire, I wonder if Grady’s sucking up is too obvious, even for him.

“We’d love to have you along,” Danny says politely, and my stomach sinks. It’s bad enough spending a night being looked down on by Luke. I’m not spending the night being looked down on by Grady as well, especially not a night when the pastor and Donna will be gone and I could get the whole house to myself.

“I’ve got to stay home,” I tell them. “I’ve got some summer reading to do.”

I sound convincingly apologetic, but when I glance up, Luke’s gaze is on mine with a hint of a smirk behind it. Somehow, he knows it’s a lie. How? How does he know these things when my boyfriend of two years doesn’t have a clue?

I clean up dinner alone and then go to the backyard with my brother’s ancient guitar, the one thing my stepbrothers never managed to take from me.

I’ve got this new chord progression I can’t get out of my head. I don’t know where it would fit into a song, but I play it again and again, humming along. When I get too frustrated, I revert to

“Homecoming”, the one song I feel is truly completed.

Danny—the only person I’ve ever played it for—was unimpressed. “Why don’t you try writing a happy song?” he’d asked. He praises me over the smallest of things: the way I fold shirts, and brownies I made from a mix. Hearing him say this song I wrote, created, and performed was “sad”, felt like his gentle way of telling me I should find a more realistic dream.

That was last winter, and I’ve barely played it since. But tonight, I’m listening to it, and I just think he was wrong. Yeah, it’s a sad fucking song. But life can be sad too. There’s just as much room for sad songs as happy ones in the world, isn’t there?

I play it from start to finish without a hitch, pleasure that borders on euphoria rushing through my veins. It’s not like I’m Taylor Swift or something, but it’s just a good freaking song…the longing in the lyrics, the guitar, and even my voice. None of them are perfect on their own, but they come together in



a way that just hits this sweet spot inside me, that makes me marvel a little at myself. I did this. Me.

The final notes die off at last, and it feels like all my joy—all my everything—goes with it.

Maybe this is why Luke doesn’t trust me. Maybe when he peers into my soul, all he sees is empty space.

IF I THOUGHT I’d escaped Grady with my little lie about summer reading, I could not have been more wrong. Soon, he’s dating Libby and with us nearly every night, though I can’t imagine why he’d want to be when he doesn’t drink or surf. He seems to resent everyone but Danny—but it’s me he hates, and the feeling is mutual.

“Grady was suggesting we hang out someplace else tonight,” Danny tells Luke over dinner. “He’s tired of the beach.”