Page 100 of Hot Summer

“So I should be able to take over if everything has been sorted?” She was livid and didn’t bother hiding it. “And how’s everything supposed to get sorted if you all aren’t addressing it publicly?”

“That seems to be the best way to navigate these kinds of situations,” Robert said. He wasn’t making eye contact now, instead staring at something on his computer screen. “If you don’t address it publicly, either, it should just go away.”

“So then the entire public will just forever think I tried to game the system to trick people into sponsoring me or whatever the hell they’re saying about me.”

“Does it really matter if they don’t know the truth?” Robert asked. “As long as the people in your real life know your intentions?”

He probably hadn’t meant to, but his words were eerily reminiscent of the things Ada used to tell her in the early rankings. That they knew her, they loved her. That she didn’t need to take public opinion into account because the people who really mattered understood.

But in this case, the people who really mattered didn’t understand. She couldn’t leave this unaddressed. Couldn’t move forward until she fixed things.

Robert seemed to take her silence as assent, because he just carried on talking. “Like I said, we’ll circle back on this in a few months’ time. You should be more than able to go back into events in the meantime.”

Events. Fucking events.

“Well, if we’re not going to take this seriously...” Cas unclipped her badge from her jeans loop and tossed it onto Robert’s desk. “I quit.”

Cas was almost giddy as she walked out of the building. Giddy in that uncontrollable kind of way, like she was so overwhelmed by her feelings that she couldn’t sit still. She didn’t have anywhere to go, didn’t have anything to do, but she needed to walk. Get this energy out of her system.

One of the best parts of having an events job was that she didn’t have a desk to clean out. She could just throw her badge on the desk and walk out, as if she were in some kind of film and this was the dramatic moment. But it felt strange, too, that she could leave this place she’d worked at for half a decade without having to pack a box or even so much as pick up her mug from the staff kitchen.

Even when she’d had no plans to leave Friday, she’d clearly been careful to avoid making any actual connections to the place. Setting down any roots.

A theme in her life up until recently, apparently.

She’d just got to the nearest corner when her phone started vibrating in her pocket. Robert. Cas ignored it, ignored it again when he called three seconds later, and finally just switched it off vibrate altogether.

Robert could keep calling her. She wasn’t going to answer. She didn’t owe him anything anymore.

It was an exhilarating thought, but also a really fucking terrifying one.

As the adrenaline started to wear off, the terror began to take over and Cas needed to go somewhere, anywhere, to just sit down. Get her head together. There was a park not too far away from her office building—her old office building—and she found her way back there easily enough.

It wasn’t a large park; it was little more than a few basketball courts, a fairly large bit of grass, and some benches, but it would do. One of the great benefits of city living: She could sit on any bench and freak out about the state of her life without causing a scene.

She chose one of the benches at the far end of the park under the shade of one of the large trees, and pulled her phone out of her pocket as she sat down. There were a few people playing basketball on the courts at the end of the square, and Cas listened to the squeak of their trainers on the pavement, their shouts of laughter as one of them missed a shot.

She had seven missed call notifications from Robert. Cas didn’t even consider them for half a second before she swiped and erased them from her home screen.

Cas’s phone lit up again, this time, thankfully, with a message from Aisha.

Aisha: I know you’re still in a place about this and I cannot vouch for the source because I don’t think anyone should be spending this kind of time editing you BUT

Aisha had attached a link below and, though the preview hadn’t loaded, Aisha’s description of it was enough for Cas to worry. What could Aisha possibly have sent that involved some sort of viewer edit?

Her browser took a few seconds to load the link, and when it did, she felt her heart start hammering in her chest again.

@toffeetay: Cas and Ada are the Cutest Couple in #HotSummer History, You Guys are Just Haters: A Thread

There were more than a dozen posts in the thread, and each and every one was a picture or a GIF of Cas and Ada. Cas looking at Ada as they got out of their Jeeps on the first day. Cas getting a smudge of ice cream off the corner of Ada’s lip. Ada diving into Cas’s bed in one of the early weeks, Cas and Ada laughing on the striped pool float, Ada throwing a pair of socks at Cas’s head when she was complaining way too loudly about being cold. Ada kissing Cas in the orchard.

It had been easy to convince herself in the days since she left Cyprus that everything with Ada had been her invention. That her experience of their relationship didn’t match up with reality. But seeing it now playing out again in front of her, even in these highlights, it was impossible to ignore the real chemistry between them.

Impossible not to see the real love in Cas’s eyes as she looked at Ada.

Cas watched the last GIF—Ada kissing her good night on their last night together in the villa—before she clicked back into WhatsApp.

Cas: Is that what you guys were all seeing???

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