Page 90 of The Summer I Destroyed You

I resist, but eventually I’ve got no choice but to drop the sponge and turn.

“Oh, honey,” he says, brushing the tears off my cheeks. “Is this because I left? I was just trying to clear my head before I said the wrong thing. I was always going to come back.”

I nod as if I already knew this, my tears soaking his shirt, but I didn’t. “I trust you, Liam,” I whisper, “but that’s what’s so terrifying.”

He leads me to the couch and turns off the light so we are mostly sitting in darkness. He pulls my head to his chest and runs a hand over my hair. “I just don’t understand, Em. I’m killing myself here to move at your pace, to show you how I feel. I just don’t understand why nothing seems to work.”

It’s time, I guess. I don’t want to tell him this story and it might ruin everything, but I need him to understand. “So what you need to understand is this,” I begin, my voice barely a whisper. “I had no friends in high school. I probably would have, but everyone was too scared of Bradley for that. I skipped lunch because she made fun of me for eating. I skipped every school event because I had no one to attend with. I was alone at home, I was alone at school, I was alone everywhere. That’s why I created the online book club.”

His hand runs in circles over my back.

I continue. “It was on Facebook. Mostly women who like Jane Austen. And then this boy joined. James. He lived in San Francisco and we were the same age. He started messaging me and I was so fucking happy to have a friend.”

I swallow. God, the whole thing sounds even more pathetic aloud than it did in my head.

“He liked me. He sent me photos of himself, and when I finally worked up the nerve to send him photos back, he told me I was perfect just as I was. This went on for about six months and messaging him was the highlight of my whole day. He convinced his mom to drive him down from San Francisco so he could take me to homecoming. He’d gotten a bright blue bow tie to match my dress…”

My voice trails off, remembering it all. Our discussions about corsages and matching ties and how late he might be able to stay. He was a virgin too. He was nice about not pushing me too hard, but I knew he was hopeful, and I was too. I was so fucking hopeful. I worried seeing me in person would change something, but I knew it also might confirm something.

“They got stuck in traffic, so he asked me to meet him at Lucas Hall instead of picking me up. He kept texting with updates, saying they were closer. I looked like an idiot standing out there, and I knew it, but I kept on waiting. It was a full hour before he finally texted to say he was on Main Street. I said something like, ‘I can’t wait to see you!’ and he said, ‘I can’t believe you thought I’d date a fat pig.’”

Liam’s arm stiffens. “Wait. What?”

My voice is rough. I can’t believe I’m still upset well over a decade later. “There was no James. Bradley fabricated the whole thing. And right after she sent that final text, she and her posse came outside and threw copies of all the messages I’d sent ‘James’ from the top of the stairs. It was all the pictures, everything, blowing down the steps. And it wasn’t until they started laughing that I realized he’d never existed in the first place.”

“God.”

How many decades will it be before I stop feeling ashamed of it? Before I don’t cringe at the memory of those photos of me blowing all over the stairs? I never sent him nudes, the way he requested, but the pictures I did send were bad enough. And those ridiculous, impassioned emails: James, I love you more every day. I can’t wait until we are at the same college.

Of course, he’d said those things to me too. He’d said more, so much more, all calculated to get me to say it back. But all that mattered after that night were my words, repeated back to me as I walked through the hall.

The pictures of me in a bra would pop up at random for the next two years—papering the lockers when we got back into school Monday, raining down from the sky when we threw our caps at graduation. Bradley and her little followers would quote my most heartfelt, pathetic missives to me as I walked through the halls.

I wanted to die, and the only thing that got me through it was by telling myself I was going to make them pay.

His lips press to my head. “I’m so sorry, Em. So, so sorry.”

“It isn’t that I don’t trust you,” I whisper, and my voice cracks again. “The problem is that I do. So don’t fuck up, okay?”

He pulls me tighter. “I won’t. As God is my witness, I won’t.”

I believe him. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still scared, too.

43

LIAM

I know Bradley. Not well, but well enough to notice how icy she’s been to me since I started working on the grocery store. And well enough to have said with some certainty, before last night, that she isn’t a sociopath.

So am I just a terrible judge of character, or is there some element of all this that I’m missing?

The next day, Em leaves for meetings in San Francisco, and I remain behind to fume about the way she was treated. Can someone ever move past the kind of shit she endured as a kid? I really don’t know, but when I see Bradley exiting the convenience store just as I’m climbing out of my truck, I don’t even think—I charge toward her, only slightly less furious than I was that night at the bar with Paul Bellamy.

Her eyes narrow as I cross the street. “If you’re here to apologize for trying to run us out of business, save your breath.”

I laugh. “Apologize? You must be out of your fucking mind. Why would I apologize?”

“Because you’re siding with the enemy, asshole.” She flips her long blond hair behind her shoulders. “You think Emerson Hughes really cares about this town?”

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