Page 41 of Summer After Summer

“Ash.” My eyes flash to Fred’s.

“What? Fred doesn’t mind that you tell me about the kissing, do you, Fred? That’s what girls do. Talk about kissing their boyfriends.”

“Maybe I should get you a Coke,” Fred says.

Ashley walks up to him, the beer sloshing out of her Solo cup and onto the sand. She puts her hand on his chest. “Do you know that you’re the first boy Olivia ever kissed?”

“You don’t have to answer that, Fred.”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t he answer that? That was the whole point of the list, right? Right there in the number-one position. Kiss a boy on your sixteenth birthday.”

Fred goes pale. “Is that true, Olivia?”

The pain on his face stabs at me. “Not the way it sounds, no.”

“It wasn’t a … challenge?”

“It was. But that’s not why—”

“It was my plan,” Ash says proudly, biting the edge of her cup. “I got Olivia to leave the club and go to the beach to find a guy, and I saw you first and I introduced you, remember? I did that. I get the credit.”

Fred takes Ash’s hands gently and lowers them off his chest, then steps away. He turns to me. “Is what she’s saying true, Olivia? This was all some game? It didn’t matter who it happened with?”

I’m fighting tears. What is happening? “Of course not. Fred, how could you think that?”

“What am I supposed to think?”

“That I met you and I liked you and everything that’s happened since then is because we both wanted it. Please believe me.”

“I … I don’t know what to think.”

“Fred, come on. Ashley’s drunk. You can’t … This is not a big deal.”

His eyes are so dark they’re scary. “It is, Olivia.”

“Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not …” He shakes his head. “I need to go.”

“What?”

“I can’t be here right now. Take Ash home.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?”

He doesn’t answer me. He just turns and walks up the beach, dropping his beer into a garbage can, leaving me there with Ash, who’s swaying by my side.

“Was it something I said?” Ash giggles, and I rush past her. I want to go after Fred, but my stomach is rolling, and instead of catching up to him, I bend over when I hit the dunes and hurl.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

July 2023

For the next week, life in the Hamptons falls into a routine.

I rise early and train with the team, working through the aches and pains that are accumulating in my body. Cindy and I have developed a rivalry. Little Killer, I call her in my mind, because if she could kill me with her eyes each time I get a shot past her, she would. But already my steps are faster, my mind more focused. Some of the muscle tone has returned to my arms, and my skin isn’t so pale, my face less drawn. Sometimes she wins and sometimes I do, and Matt looks on approvingly, so we both must be doing something right.

Training ends at ten. After a shower and a stretch, I clean out another room of the house, then fill up my car with things to take to Goodwill, the dump, my sister’s. I’m working the perimeters of the house—guest rooms, the formal parlor. Rooms that don’t contain hard memories or secrets, working up the courage to get to the difficult parts.

---