Page 49 of Summer After Summer

Our eyes meet one last time, that brief flash of heat where I think he might kiss me, and then his hand drops, and I’m free to go.

I can’t stand to be in this conversation for one more minute, so I push hard against the pedals and crouch low over the handlebars and pump my legs as fast as they can take me.

The tears fall one second after he can’t see me anymore, and soon I’m going so fast, the wind is in my ears.

I think he might be calling after me, he might be saying my name, but it’s probably wishful thinking like the belief that we could ever have made it to five years from now, when the truth is—we couldn’t even last the summer.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

July 2023

Ash doesn’t look any different from the last time I saw her. Thin, tanned, with her hair in immaculate beachy waves, wearing a light pink dress that must’ve been tailored to her. She had two children in two years, but I always knew her figure would bounce right back.

“Hi,” I say.

“I was expecting fuck you.”

“The thought had occurred.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m so, so sorry, Olivia. For all of it.”

I blink back the tears that were already forming.

“Can we talk somewhere private?” Ash moves her hands around as she speaks, and I can see her large engagement ring flashing on her finger just above the diamond eternity band. My own rings are shoved into a jewelry box in one of the bags I haven’t unpacked yet, my finger bare without them. “And maybe with alcohol?”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

She smiles, her teeth whitened, her skin that tight, perfect look you only get with treatments. I wish she’d left her face alone, but she wasn’t the first or last woman who felt the need to adjust her approach to age. “Does William still keep a bottle in his study?”

“Let’s hope.”

We walk together to his study, an uncomfortable silence between us, so different from how we never used to run out of conversation.

His study is lined with bookshelves, and there’s a bar cart under the window. There’s a bottle of twenty-year-old Scotch on it, and two heavy tumblers. I pick them up. “These might be from the last time we did this.”

“Does Scotch go bad?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Excellent.”

We exit, and I go to the stairs, some instinct or memory driving me to my room as Ash follows. We used to do this, years ago, when the adults were asleep. Steal liquor and spirit it away to the third floor, giggling quietly so we didn’t get caught. We don’t need to hide now, but it still seems like the best place to have this conversation.

We enter my room. Even though I opened all the windows and left the fan running, the heat is stifling.

“How can you stand it?” Ash asks, her face already glistening with sweat.

“It cools off at night a bit.”

She looks around. “It’s exactly the same.”

Nothing’s changed in here since I moved out for college. Pale blue walls, boy band pictures, a vanity mirror, a princess bed. I remember when these things were so important to me, but now they’re just evidence of the person I used to be.

I put the bottle down on the dresser with the glasses and pour us each a stiff drink. I hand one to Ash, and she sits in the old blue rocker in the corner, the one my mother bought for the nursery, that I’d dragged up here after she died, to soothe myself in.

I sit on the edge of the bed and raise my glass to her. I take a sip, the dark liquid rough in my mouth, but she downs the whole thing, not even taking the time to shudder afterward.

“You didn’t come to the cocktail party the other night,” Ash says, giving me that direct stare I remember from childhood.

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