Page 59 of The Summer I Loved

“I knew it. With those shoulders…”

“Yes, those shoulders, that body, that mouth.” Adrianna shuddered.

Lauren slow-nodded. “Oh yeah. That’s what I needed to hear. Now you’re moving in together and it better not be to some God-forsaken place in Bubbafuck, Howard County. I can’t be that far from you andla princesa.”

“No, I told him it has to be within 30 minutes of the bistro and downtown. But I think if you wanted, he would build you a wing wherever we go.”

“Wait, what the hell did you tell him about me?”

“Well, your niece didn’t stop talking about you the whole time. How cool you were, everything you do with her, the talks, when you go cheer for her during her baseball games, how you get her and Ayla freebies at ice cream spots by batting your lashes at poor, pimply boys. And she asked him to help pick out a gift for you. He asked me about it and I told him about what we’ve been through together. How you’ve been there for us.”

Lauren did the one thing she never did. Her umber skin glowed into an unusual, yet delightful shade of scarlet. “Adri, why?”

“He needed to know. If I met his ex-girlfriend—"

“Ugh.” Lauren waved a hand. “She looks like a vanilla-latte drinking bitch.”

Adrianna laughed. “Anyway, if I had to run into her and learn everything about his siblings in the past ten years, Cam needed to know about my number 1-A.”

Lauren smiled. “Loca. Anyway, so his siblings…”

Adri bit her tongue because she’d been waiting for this. She’d been saving her energy and this was one of the conversations she was looking forward the most on her way back to Maryland.

“Bron has been keeping me up to date. I know Lux is not a witch anymore. She said she is nice and it kills me that she’s my favorite blogger and I never knew. I fucking swear by her beauty recommendations. But, I don’t want to talk about her right now.” Lo’s eyes had that sparkle that always signaled fun times.

“You want to know about the other sibling mostly?” Adri schooled her features straight and waited until her friend nodded. She planned to give Lauren a taste of her own medicine. “You mean the one that’s now really muscular and bigger than Cam and still has that twinkle of bad boy in his eye but was so sweet to your niece that she now has him at her mercy? That sibling?”

Lauren’s hand covered her mouth. “Oh God. Does he lookthatgood?”

Adrianna shook her head. “More. He’s gotten so handsome. When he came down the stairs, all I could think was that you would swallow your tongue. He still goes around like a player but Cam says it’s mostly an act. He’s more grounded than he lets on. I didn’t get to say goodbye this morning because he went to do some damage control with their mother.”

“Poor guy.”

“I know. I need to ask Cam how that went.”

“Would it have killed you to send me one photo?” Lauren asked.

“Actually, there are tons in Bron’s iPad.”

“I need to see those.”

“He asked about you.” Adri smiled but said nothing else, taking in the widening of her friend’s eyes, the stiffening of her spine.

Lauren shook her head. “Nope. Nope. Nope. I don’t want to know. The past is coming back to haunt me and that’s not good for me like it is for you.”

“What? You don’t want to know? What past? You haven’t even seen him.”

“Elias came by last night.”

“Why?”

Lauren shrugged but there was a guarded look in her eyes. “He said he came to apologize to you and that he saw my photo on the bistro Instagram page and wanted to say hello.”

“Oh. How do you feel about that?” She didn’t like it. No, that’s not true. She hated it. Elias had once been an asshole to Lauren.

Her friend sighed. “I don’t know. He seems a little different. Like he’s changed. He apologized for being a—”

“Dick, peehole, jerk,” Adri finished.

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