Page 105 of Summertime Friends

This doesn’t feel like I just got off or another shag. No, it feels like releasing a part of me—the best part of me that I want her tohave forever. Loving her, being with her, knowing her—that is the best part of me.

We come down from our high. Emerson lays beside me. I roll over to face her.

I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she says, “I should leave.”

43

LIAM

Now

Irushed to Natalie’s, hoping to catch her before she left for a shoot she has this evening.

“Nat! Natalie, are you here?”

“In here.” I follow her voice, finding her in the bathroom washing her face. “How was your meeting with Cal?”

“Productive. We’re moving forward with a different concept at the pool-bar area.”

“Love! A new place for my friends and me to live at next summer. How long will it take to build out?”

“Since the pool is already finished, quicker than I anticipated. We already had a solid menu mockup, furniture, and everything. We should be ready for the opening.”

“Nice,” it comes out muffled while she brushes her teeth.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” Natalie lifts her head, finding my face in the mirror. She frowns around her toothbrush when she reads my expression.

“Oh.”

She spits and rinses, patting her face dry with a towel, and then returns it to the hook next to her black-rimmed mirror.

Natalie walks out of the bathroom, past me, leaning against the door. Taking a seat on the edge of her bed, she pats the space next to her, inviting me to sit down.

“Figured I should sit down when I am about to be broken up with,” she says.

I tell Natalie everything. I tell her how I know Emerson. I tell her how I was in love with her then and still am now.

Natalie doesn’t speak the entire time.

For someone who doesn’t know when to shut up, I appreciate her silence right now.

She doesn’t look at me while I’m talking, though.

Natalie focuses straight ahead, staring at the door to her bathroom, keeping her eyes fixated on the only spot the sun is hitting: a small beam coming in through her window.

I’ve run out of words. Natalie knows it all, but she still isn’t saying anything.

“Natalie, please say something.”

“I should have known. You look at Emerson differently than me,” Natalie finally says.

Her body language is hard to read. She appears to be. . . relieved?

I thought she’d chop my head off or something. She can be terrifying when she wants to be. She’s all sunshine on the outside, but on the inside, she can be downright ruthless. I’ve experienced that side once and thought I was going to again this afternoon.

Shouldn’t I be the one relieved that she’s taking this better than expected? Instead, I am filled with a strange gut reaction that she knows more than she lets on.

“I—” I start to speak.

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