Page 7 of The Summer I Destroyed You

4

LIAM

Are you enjoying California’s fine weather and chill vibes yet?

Emerson

I’d need to enjoy “chill vibes” in the first place. I like you a little less for even employing the phrase.

So you’re admitting you like me. Progress. Have you ever gone surfing, by the way?

I’d look too good in a bikini. I’d be a distraction to the other surfers.

I laugh as I put my phone away. I’d forgotten, until Emerson and I began texting, that I’m still capable of feeling intrigued by someone. I have no idea what she looks like—for all I know she’s a million years old, hideous, and extremely pregnant—but when I text with her, I feel entirely certain that she’s none of those things. I’m not sure it would matter at this point anyway even if she was. I just like her.

When I really don’t have the time to like anyone. We’re stretched too thin—part of my desperate attempt to get the company’s assets back to where they were, and we seem to get stretched thinner by the hour.

I get through all the morning’s jobs before I head to the theater to finally meet Emerson. I park and am just outside when my steps stumble: there’s already a woman in the building, talking to the guys. Emerson Hughes has beaten me apparently, and the sight of her from behind—long legs, short skirt, dark brown hair that falls past her shoulders—is enough to give me that charge in my gut, the one that says hell, yeah.

She turns when I open the door. Pale blue eyes, mouth like a peony about to burst open, the kind of skin that would feel like rose petals to the touch.

“Ugh,” she says. “You’re Liam?”

It’s the voice that puts the dots together.

Emerson Hughes is Sandra Atwell’s incredibly hot daughter, the woman who came outside wearing little aside from glasses and disdain this morning. I was under the impression that Emerson was sort of pretending to be bitchier than she actually is, but this chick isn’t pretending shit. “You’re Emerson?”

“Yes,” she says, nostrils flaring. “And you’ve installed the wrong ceiling tiles.”

The disappointment hits hard. There are women in the world whose prettiness hasn’t done them any favors, who’ve been taught that a tight little body and a face to launch a thousand ships are enough, and she’s definitely one of them. I wasted two months dreaming about a woman who is more awful in person than she appeared to be by text, and not in a way I secretly enjoy. Why the fuck did I think there was more to her? Just because she liked eating donuts with her dad? Because there’s a commercial capable of making her cry?

“These are the tiles your designer chose,” I growl, “so take it up with her, princess.”

There’s something both creepy and magical in the way her blue eyes flash silver when I say it. I half expect lightning to shoot from her fingertips and snakes to writhe in her hair.

“Mr. Doherty,” she says with an icy smile, “as we established earlier today, calling a grown woman princess is blatantly misogynistic. I should also point out that a princess generally has very little power, whereas in this situation, I have nearly all of it. My designer didn’t choose the tiles, I did, and this is absolutely not what I chose. It needs to be fixed.”

“Talk to your designer, sweetheart,” I reply. My sister would smack me in the head if she could hear me right now, but I’m not going to put up with this witch undermining me in front of my crew at two goddamn jobsites. Mostly, though, I’m just pissed that I’ve invested so much time, so much thought, into a woman who has turned out to be…her.

Her eyes flash once more. “Call me sweetheart again and believe me, you’ll regret it. And you’ll be fixing that fucking ceiling, I promise you.”

She storms out. She has an ass that won’t quit, and I’m already trying to forget I’ve noticed when JP, standing at the back of the room, lets out a low whistle.

“I bet she’s a little wildcat in the sack,” he says.

“Haven’t thought about it.”

He laughs. “Liar.”

I decide to ignore him since I was, in fact, lying. That charge in my gut, the one that said hell, yeah is still saying it. Thank God my brain is wise enough to say hell no.

I pick up my phone and text Bridget.

Send me that girl’s number when you get a chance. The one at your practice.

There are worse things than being bored to death during a date.

Wasting two months daydreaming about Emerson Hughes, for instance.

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