Pieces of Summer (A stand-alone novel)(22)

“I think I need coffee first,” I mumble, moving over to the blessed caffeine beast and hurriedly making a cup before we start swapping questions.

“Do I want to know why you’re in Aidan’s shirt?” I ask her, already dreading the answer. I can’t believe Aidan would do this. He’s hardcore against cheating, since he saw what having your heart broken did to me.

I might have been a teenage drama queen, but it felt like my life was ending. That led to a very f*cked up version of myself for longer than I care to admit. It’s probably part of the reason why Aidan is here with me now, probably worried it was all going to trigger something.

I’m not that girl. Yes, I’m severely different and incredibly messed up, but I’m in control now. I couldn’t be the wild, careless party girl I became after that painful spring even I wanted to be.

“I came here last night to talk to you,” she says on a sigh.

I relax a little. When I got home, Aidan had just showed up, and I told him I was sick before disappearing into my room. So… Whit spent the night and needed something to sleep in? That’s better than cheating.

“I feel like I should hate you.” Her words are matter-of-fact, not harsh.

I look over at her and frown.

“Why hate me? I’ve already promised I’m not here for Chase. I wouldn’t even be here right now if I’d known he still lived here.”

“You could have called any shop in this town and asked if the James boy still lived here, and they’d have told you yes. You could have asked Chuck about it one of the million times you spoke to him before moving down, and he’d have told you yes. So try again.”

True.

“I try not to ask about him,” I admit honestly. “But I did think he was gone. He always hated this place, and when his mother died and he posted he was moving, I never foresaw him returning.”

She sets her coffee down. “I always wondered why he came back, and now I think it was subconsciously about you.”

“Me? Why me? I didn’t live here. And in case you haven’t noticed, he’s intent on hating me.”

“Which takes me back to my previous statement; I feel like I should hate you. Are you the one who turned him into this? Because I’ve been blaming his parents this entire time. He was volatile when younger, but he’s just cold now.”

Volatile? When was he volatile?

My heart clenches in my chest, and I move my coffee to the counter and sit down across from her at the bar.

“You want all the sordid details?” I ask angrily.

“Yes. I do. I think I deserve to know them.”

She’s right. Even though I feel like it’s none of her business, Chase should have already told her.

“Fine. Let’s start at the beginning.”

That’s what I do. I start from the first time I saw the sweet boy in town. My father asked him if he wanted to come eat with us. He knew the James family. He knew how shitty Chase had it.

I tell Whit about how Chase and I retreated to the roof of this home the second dinner was over because there was a meteor shower. We ended up talking almost all night long. No one came looking for Chase, and my father made him a bed on the couch.

From then on, he was at my summer home almost every day, only leaving in small intervals to go check on his mother and make sure she wasn’t hurt, or choking on her own vomit, or shoving something into her arm that was going to kill her.

I tell her that my mother was annoyed with Chase, but that my father always had a soft spot for him. This was his town. He could have been Chase if he hadn’t had a rich grandfather.

Little by little, I recap every summer, telling her how we grew closer. Telling her how we slowly fell in love. Then I get to the part that almost destroyed us the first time.

“I was fifteen and stupid. Jared was seventeen and popular. I was constantly worried there was another girl all over Chase when I was gone. He was so beautiful, and he always said summers were ours, but we’d take the rest of the year to do our own thing. So I let Jared talk me into having sex. It felt so wrong. I actually felt disgusted afterwards. But I kept having sex, thinking it would eventually get better. It didn’t. Starting to see why the first isn’t so important?” I ask, trying to alleviate her unprecedented fears.

My stomach roils with just the memories. I blamed my mother. I blamed my jealousy and concerns over Chase. I blamed my hormones… It took a long time to blame myself for simply being stupid and own my mistake. I sometimes wonder if that’s what drove Chase into someone else’s arms.

She sits silently instead of answering, imploring me with her eyes to continue.

“Anyway, I broke up with Jared a little after my sixteenth birthday, and then summer rolled around again. I told Chase everything, and he… He slammed the door and left. He didn’t come back for a week. I sobbed like a freaking idiot, making it impossible for anyone to console me. I was always pretty dramatic,” I confess, trying to lighten the mood.

Whit just stares, sipping her coffee in silence and making this all so much more awkward.

“Somehow we moved past it, and by mid-June, we were us again. Then one night on the roof, he asked me to… Well, you know. He also wanted us to be loyal to each other if we took that step. No more doing our own thing during the school year. Summer we’d have each other, and the rest of the time we’d be waiting for summer. That was the promise.”