The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(27)

“You sure you don’t want to go to Homecoming?” Danny asks during our next phone call. “If this guy said it was just as friends, I really don’t mind.”

“He doesn’t want to be her friend,” growls Luke, closer to the phone than I first realized.

Something lights up inside me at the sound of his voice. “Pull your head out of your ass, Dan.”

Danny laughs. “You’re too cynical, Luke.”

“And you’re too fucking trusting,” Luke replies.

Luke’s right. Danny’s too fucking trusting.

WHEN SAN DIEGO plays San Jose State in November, Donna, the pastor, and I all attend. The pastor wanted to save money by driving out on the day of the game, but for once, Donna prevailed and we left the night before. It’s our only real chance to get time with Danny since he’ll be busy before the game and will leave immediately afterward.

The pastor didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to stay in the same room as him and Donna but agreed to let me pay for an adjoining room. Donna swallowed down her disagreement…she’d pushed him to let us come a night early and she’s worried he’ll just abandon the whole plan if she continues to fight.

I’m not sure how she wound up in this position—with so little power, begging to ever get her way about anything—but I know I don’t want that for myself. I wonder if there’s a way to attain Donna’s kindness and contentment with life without giving myself away entirely.

The team has already arrived by the time we check into the hotel. We meet Danny in the lobby to

take him to dinner. “Thank you for coming,” he says against my ear as he hugs me. “You have no idea how good it is to see you.”

The pastor takes us to a restaurant in town. Donna asks about Luke, and I listen without saying a single word. “I wish he’d come with us to dinner tonight,” Donna says, and Danny looks from her to his father.

“I told Danny this should only be family,” the pastor says.

I catch the briefest flash of anger in her eyes before she gives her husband a small but firm smile.

“Luke is a part of the family.”

Good for you, Donna.

The pastor’s mouth opens to argue, but something in her face silences him. Maybe he’s starting to realize he doesn’t hold all the cards, that there’s nothing to stop her from leaving him now that Danny’s out of the house and I’m nearly out too.

After dinner, we return to the hotel. Danny and I tell his parents goodnight and take a cab to some sorority party on campus. My stomach is tied in knots on the way—I don’t know how the team got invited, but it certainly seems like the kind of thing Luke would be attending.

I follow Danny into a stunning house that is crammed with people, most of whom already appear to be drunk. The lights are bright, the music loud. Couples are pressed to walls, atop each other on chairs, ignoring the splendor—the high ceilings, the built-in bookshelves and ornate moldings, the hardwood floor a guy scuffs carelessly as he drags a chair across it.

I wonder if the girls who live here—on someone else’s dime, with no supervision—can even grasp how free they are, how lucky they are. They don’t have to help make dinner. They don’t have to clean. They probably don’t even fucking work. No one’s going to ask them why they’re late, no one’s going to make them feel guilty about drinking a beer on a Saturday night or taking their boyfriends upstairs.

“Out back!” someone yells to Danny, and we go through the French doors leading to the terrace.

Outside, there are kids everywhere in folding chairs, couples entangled with no shame whatsoever.

Someone calls Danny’s name from the darkest part of the yard, and we follow the sound blindly, eventually stumbling on a group of guys in a circle, Luke among them and already with a girl, of course. He gives me the smallest nod in greeting, nothing more, as if I don’t matter, as if he’d forgotten me. I’m not sure why I care.

We sit and I listen to them talk about some incident at dinner with the coach, and a bunch of football stuff I don’t understand. They ask Danny if the pastor is going to let him sleep in my room, then they tease Luke about spending more time in the water than in class. “If you were half as interested in football as surfing,” one of them says, “we’d be winning this season.”

Luke doesn’t look at me once the entire time, and I’m not sure how I ever convinced myself there was something between us that shouldn’t have been there. Maybe I just got so accustomed to hostility

from him that I mistook its absence for care.

There’s a couple pressed to the bathroom door when I go inside, the guy’s hand in the girl’s skirt.

I ask if I can get by and they don’t stop what they’re doing, but simply scoot over a foot. They aren’t ashamed of what they want—that’s the part that strikes me most.

When I reach Danny again, he’s alone, waiting for me. I wonder if his friends are trying to give him some privacy. This part of the yard is entirely dark, so we’d have it.

“You ready to head home?” he asks.

No. Enough. I’m tired of acting like we are ten years old.

I swing my legs over his lap to straddle him, the way I’ve seen girls do to Luke.

“Juliet,” he whispers, suddenly tense. “This isn’t a good idea.” He places his hands on my hips as if he intends to push me away. I ignore him. I want more. I need more.