Page 74 of The Summer I Destroyed You

“Sure they do,” Bridget says, turning to me. “You want to see this guy as an obnoxious twenty-something?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Liam says.

“Yes,” I correct. “She does, actually.”

That’s all the persuading Bridget needs.

She loads the video. Her wedding begins on the TV and my gaze goes straight to Liam, one of the groomsmen.

He’s lankier and has player written all over him—cocky, overconfident, ready to feed any girl he meets a line and get her quickly undressed. Liam a decade ago is the kind of guy who tries to get in your pants and then tries to get back out of them as fast as humanly possible. Liam now is the kind of guy who wants what he wants…but refuses to hurt anyone in the process.

I wouldn’t trust the Liam of a decade ago, but I trust the one beside me more than I’ve trusted anyone in a very long time. The realization makes my breath come a little too fast. It’s definitely going to end badly but I know I’m not willing to stop it yet either.

Liam starts to laugh as the camera turns to a kid with pitch-black hair, cut off at her ears. Daisy throws a pillow at him. “Fuck off, Liam.”

“That’s you?” I ask, only recognizing her as she turns to glare at the camera.

“It was a phase,” Daisy says.

“A long phase,” Liam suggests.

There’s some bickering over whether or not to watch the vows and it’s forwarded to the sight of young Daisy, glaring once more as she stands against the wall with her arms folded.

“There she is,” says a man’s voice. “Goth Wedding Barbie.” The camera turns toward a guy I saw with Liam a few weeks ago, looking much younger and happier than he does now.

“Mmmm. Wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers,” says Jackie.

“You missed your shot, my friend,” Bridget replies. “Harrison’s already seeing someone.”

Daisy’s head whips toward Liam. “Already? Who?”

Liam shrugs. “Some girl in LA. None of us have met her, but it must be serious.”

And at that, Daisy—the lovely, non-Goth version currently across from me—looks absolutely crestfallen before she covers it up. I wonder if Liam even has a clue that his beloved little Lazy Daisy is head over heels for one of his best friends? If he does, I doubt he’s taking it seriously, but if I had a niece who looked like her, I’d be taking it very seriously indeed.

This girl could have anyone she wanted…including her uncle’s friend.

We don’t stay long. Liam and Daisy make plans to get dinner together and then we get back in his truck and ride down to this casual place in Capitola, where an outdoor deck looks over the ocean and the crowded street below.

“I used to come down here with my dad,” I say with a faint smile. “We’d jump in the water then bundle up and get donuts and hot chocolate. It was cold as hell, but I wanted to be just like him, so I pretended to love all the things he loved.”

“Money laundering?”

I laugh. “Wow, I can’t believe you went there. No. I did not pretend to enjoy money laundering, though it does seem like the kind of thing I’d enjoy now. But jumping in the ocean in the middle of winter without a wetsuit wasn’t great. Nor was watching Dr. Who, which I thought was terrifying.”

“What’s terrifying about Dr. Who?”

“Don’t you remember those weeping angel statues? They were so creepy. And if you smash them, they gain power. So we crafted very elaborate plans for how we’d smash them and bury the pieces all over the world so they couldn’t come back together.”

He grins at me. “So your violence toward Frank the rooster has some precedent.”

“Frank is the only thing I hate more than those statues,” I tell him, taking a sip of my wine.

“What about Bradley Grimm?”

“Oh, right. Okay, it’s Bradley, then Frank, then those statues. But basically, I want all of them to die.”

He laughs as if I don’t mean a word of it when I’m pretty sure I do. I like the person he imagines I am: one who talks a good game but wouldn’t hurt a fly. I like it so much that I want to become her, but I’m no longer the pathetic little kid so desperate for love that she’d become someone else entirely in pursuit of it. It’s precisely the sort of weakness that makes you feel like an asshole when it’s over.

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