Page 38 of Summer After Summer

“I think you’ll forget about me,” I say.

“No, Olivia. No.”

“Some girl will catch your attention, and I’ll get some Dear Olivia letter, and that will be that.”

“Never.” He kisses me again, his tongue lazy against my teeth. I arch up to meet his body, needing to feel that connection, and he wraps his arms around me. “You’re the one who’s going to forget me. You’ll go to college, and you’ll be the star of the tennis team, and everyone will want you.” He reaches down and caresses my bare legs. I stifle a moan. “They’ll want these legs, and this face, and this mouth. And maybe you’ll fight them off for a while, but you’ll be lonely, and eventually you’ll give in.”

“Won’t we have shore leave?”

“We will.”

“That’ll be enough.”

“And then in five years …”

I plant kisses along his jawline. “You’ll come to college, and we’ll find a house and we’ll live in sin.”

“Would it be such a sin?”

I close my eyes and feel the slow circle of his fingers just below the hem of my shorts. I’m not ready for sex—so I’ve told him and so I tell myself—but my body is. Oh god, it is so ready.

I put my hand on his to gain some control. “I’m speaking for William.”

“He likes me, doesn’t he?”

“He does.”

Fred came to cocktails the day after my birthday and spent an hour talking to William on the veranda, turning down drinks and sipping on a Coke. When Aunt Tracy called us into dinner, he was invited to stay, and my father even gave him the tour of the house, trotting out his old stories about how the Taylors had acquired the acreage and how much money it had taken to build the house. “You’ll not find a parcel like this anywhere on the shore. Not one with this much land and this much beach.”

Fred had shown as much interest as any seventeen-year-old could in real estate, and I’d left them alone, amazed William seemed to be taking an interest in him. Charlotte whined to me that it wasn’t fair because he barely talked to Wes when she’d brought him to the house the day after.

“I’m glad,” Fred says. “Wouldn’t want it to get all Shakespearean up in here.”

“Ha. That’s what Ash said.”

“She thought it was going to be a Romeo and Juliet situation?”

“Not exactly … That’s more Charlotte’s situation.”

“What’s your dad’s problem with that guy anyway?”

“I think it’s because he doesn’t like having a better-looking man named Taylor around.”

Fred laughs. “Oh, so you think Wes is good-looking?”

“Not as good-looking as you.”

“Good. Hmm. Maybe it’s because he’s not actually a Taylor? No Mayflower, no fancy house.”

“That’s probably it. God, I’m so sick of my father acting like he did something important with his life because he was born with money.”

“It’s what he knows.”

“It’s gross.”

Fred checks his watch.

“Do you have to go?”

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