Page 58 of The Summer I Destroyed You

My mother turns to me, the look on her face withering. “That’s your problem right there, Emerson. You think you’re too good for everyone.”

Pot, meet kettle. The only person alive that my mother doesn’t think she’s too good for is Jeff, her mini-me.

“I don’t think I’m too good for everyone,” I reply, “but I’m sure as hell too good for that guy.”

My mother smirks. “You’ll never be happy. You’d have met someone by now if you were going to, but if it hasn’t happened at age twenty-eight, it never will. You’re sure not going to get better looking over the next decade.”

It’s a conclusion I’d already come to myself, a conclusion I’d embraced, but hearing it from her mouth makes it sound truer than it did before, and I guess some part of me still hoped it was an outcome I’d evade—that despite my terrible attitude and personality and general unloveableness, some man would see a good thing inside me. And that he’d push his way in.

“Do you have a point?” I ask between my clenched teeth.

“My point is that you’ll die alone and miserable, and it’s entirely your own fault.”

I let the dishes fall into the sink with a crash. “You think you’re not dying alone and miserable, Sandra?” I ask, my tone as scathing as hers. “You think Dr. Sossaman wants to marry a woman decades older than he is?”

My mother’s eyes narrow. “I have Jeff and Jordan. I have friends.”

“Yes,” I reply as I walk away, “it’s clear how involved Jeff and Jordan and your friends are. They’ve really been beating down the door, haven’t they?”

I climb the stairs to my room, feeling worse than I did when I came home. Because as bad as she is, I’m the one who just reminded a senior citizen she’s unloved. I’m not sure even my mother would sink that low.

I lie flat on the bed and stare at the ceiling, thinking of all the nights my father used to come in and sit beside me, reading me stories that always had a happy ending. I loved knowing that Jo March would eventually become a writer if that was what she wanted. I loved feeling certain Harry Potter would one day put the Dursleys in their place.

I’d thought real life was the same, but now I know better. I watched my grandmother die miserably, mostly alone and in pain, after spending decades with an abusive spouse. I watched my aunt die two months after discovering her husband had knocked someone else up. She never got a second chance at love, and karma never came for her husband—he married his mistress and they went on to have two more kids.

There’s not a single reason to think my outcome will be any better. How happily can The Victimized Teenager Who Comes Back to Take her Revenge on her Small-minded Hometown end? Maybe I’ll experience the joys of vengeance, but what will be left once it’s all said and done? What’s left when I’ve ruined Bradley’s family business? When I’ve destroyed Lucas Hall?

As much as I hate what my mother said, what I hate most is that she’s probably right.

I’ll never be happy. I’ll never be loved. I’m going to die alone.

Sometimes I wonder if destroying all the people who ever hurt me will be enough to make up for it.

30

LIAM

Bridget meets me at the grocery store Thursday and patiently waits for me to gather my stuff and lock up. I’m glad she suggested dinner because I need the distraction.

There hasn’t been a minute of the day, asleep or awake, without Emmy in my head. Every goddamn second of that night in her office is like a spark, igniting me from the inside out. The slick feel of her, how tight she was when I pushed inside her, the way she said yes when I asked if she wanted me to treat her like a whore.

I’d never have said it if I wasn’t furious. But God, it was hot when she agreed. It’s the first time Emerson has ever given an inch, and what a fucking inch it was.

I wake rock hard every morning and have to actively shut down the memory simply to get through a day of work. I want a repeat more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, and I know she wants one, too, because it was too goddamn good for her not to want it. But she has to come to me this time.

I just hope she doesn’t make me wait long.

Bridget links her arm through mine and lets her head rest against my shoulder for a minute as we walk. “I can’t believe my baby’s really coming home for the rest of the summer! I’m so excited.”

“What changed her mind?” I ask. “I thought she had some big internship.”

Bridget shrugs in a weird way. I’m not sure if it means she doesn’t know or if she simply doesn’t want to tell me, and I’m about to grill her when I see Emerson.

That’s all it takes for every thought that isn’t Emerson-adjacent to vanish.

She’s indecently lovely in her yoga attire, flushed and sweating. It reminds me of her face as she came—cheek pressed to the desk, mouth open. My jaw grinds with the effort to stop thinking about it.

Her gaze meets mine and her smile fades. She turns toward her car, now looking every bit as miserable as I am.

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