Page 84 of The Summer I Destroyed You

The words drip with what she really means, which is that it’s an unpleasant surprise. I guess I warned him, though.

Jeff is reserved, taking his cue from my mother, while Jordan’s hug is overly friendly and her smile is slightly too wide. Jeff better be careful or Snowflake’s not going to be the only thing Jordan ditches at my mom’s house.

I open the bottle of wine Liam brought and pour two glasses. I hand one to Liam and when I start to sip from the other instead of handing it to Jeff or Jordan, my brother rolls his eyes and gets off the couch to retrieve his own.

“So, you two are…dating?” Jordan asks.

Liam and I glance at each other and he grins. “Yeah, Emmy,” he says with a low laugh, “we’re dating. Don’t try to walk it back.”

“I wasn’t,” I argue, though that’s precisely what I’d been hoping to do.

“Emmy’s dating half the town, apparently,” my mother says, turning to Liam. “She’s also dating my doctor. Were you aware of that?”

I roll my eyes. Maybe this is why she was so awful last week, though I guess that still doesn’t explain the preceding twenty-eight years. “I went out with your doctor once, and it was nearly a month ago, Mom.”

“Well, back in my day, we had a name for a woman who’s dating multiple men and doesn’t even come home ’til morning.”

“Popular?” I ask.

“No,” she replies with a mean smile as she takes her seat at the head of the table, “that wasn’t the word I had in mind. My knee is starting to ache. Emmy, finish up in the kitchen.”

Well played, Sandra.

“I’ll help,” says Liam, rising when I do.

“Don’t trust me with the knives?” I ask. Behind us, my mother’s voice drops to a whisper.

“Just want to make sure you poison the right person’s food,” he replies under his breath and I laugh.

My mother’s head jerks toward the sound. She suspects we’re laughing at her, and I guess we are, but for the first time in ages, it doesn’t really matter that she’s mad. It doesn’t matter that she basically called me a whore a minute ago, that she’s probably bitching to Jeff and Jordan about me right now.

It doesn’t matter what she says. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. With Liam here, I have an ally for the first time since my father left, and it’s shifted the balance in some way I can’t put my finger on.

Maybe it’s just that, for the first time in ages, I don’t feel so alone in my family home.

The food is mostly ready. I put it on platters, finish the potatoes, and make a quick salad while Liam starts carrying things out. We’re in the kitchen getting the last two dishes when my mother starts serving the food.

“Should we wait for Liam and Emmy?” Jordan asks.

“I’m not waiting for someone who wasn’t welcome in the first place,” my mother replies.

Before I react, Liam’s hand wraps over mine—his way of telling me it doesn’t matter. And the fact that he’s here, that he’s in this with me, makes that almost seem true.

We go to the table, and Liam and I begin serving ourselves.

My mother is in the middle of a story about some supposed friend of hers who hasn’t come by once in the weeks I’ve been here, but stops in the middle of it when Liam hands me the potatoes.

“That’s going to go straight to your ass. Restraint has never been a strength of Emmy’s,” she adds for Liam’s benefit.

Ah, excellent. A joke where I am the punchline.

Jeff laughs and Jordan, who’s already taken a large helping, looks confused but sort of laughs. Only Liam remains silent, staring at my mother, then me, in turn.

Suddenly there’s a lump in my throat that makes it hard to swallow around. What is it about him that makes me so soft?

“I’m confused,” Liam says. “Emmy has plenty of restraint. So is all this commentary based solely on the fact that she weighed more in high school?”

My mother laughs again. “She simply weighed more—is that what you think, Liam? I should show you some photos. Remember how big she was, Jeff?”

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