Page 66 of The Summer You Found Me

He stares out at the view. “My mom always said that everything in life has a counterpoint, and you need one to appreciate the other. So you have to be hungry to appreciate being full. You’ve got to be tired to appreciate rest. Your fear of losing something makes you appreciate how much you love it. That’s why it’s better to go through the hard things than to avoid them...because it’s going through them that makes you grateful for what you have.”

“That still sounds like self-help bullshit, but your mom sounds cool. I think I’d have liked her.”

He looks over at me, a tiny smile on his face. “She’d have liked you too.”

I laugh, the sound short and a little bitter. “Unlikely.” His mouth opens and I wave him off. “I wasn’t fishing for you to tell me otherwise. I’m bitchy and mean. I wouldn’t like me much either.”

“I would never in a million years use either of those words to describe you,” he says, the words floating quietly in the afternoon air. “You lash out at the wrong people sometimes, but I’ve seen plenty of the other side of you, too.”

Would he be so generous if he knew about the Facebook ads I targeted at Lucie? Or the way I’ve conspired with Kayleigh?

“If you think that,” I reply slowly, “it’s only because you don’t know just how awful I’ve been.”

He stretches out, using his backpack as a headrest. “What have you done that’s so awful?”

I want to keep him talking because it means we get to rest longer, but I’m not sure this is a conversation I necessarily want to have. I can’t tell him about the shit I’ve done to Lucie. I can’t.

I guess there’s a lot of other shit I’ve done, too, though. It festers, and I’m tired of it festering. I’m too exhausted—physically and emotionally—to keep lugging its weight.

I swallow. “I cheated on Caleb.”

His jaw is knifelike in silhouette, his whole body tense. “When?”

I scuff my hiking boot along the dirt, unable to meet his gaze. “When I was using...Caleb was watching our money like a hawk. I could only withdraw small amounts at a time and I was desperate. And then I left rehab last year and started using again. It didn’t even feel like a choice.”

“Who was it?” His voice is gravel and ash. I wish I hadn’t told him.

I grab a branch beside me and start drawing flowers in the dirt. “Kent. My dealer. That’s where I stayed the second time I left rehab, when it looked like I’d just disappeared. I was barely even conscious for most of it.”

The resulting silence makes my chest tighten.Well done. You’ve proven to the one human being who liked you that you are truly awful. “I told you I was evil.”

He sits up. “That doesn’t make you evil. You were an addict, and you were desperate. I fucking hate that you let him use you like that, but you’re not the villain in that story. He is.”

In foster care, I was always at fault. They expected me to have handled any situation that went badly in a different way, even if I’d seen other people do the same thing I had. No one, until Beck, has ever taken my side.

He rises to his feet, then pulls me up too. His hands squeeze mine for an extra second. And when he releases them and helps me put my backpack on...it seems a little lighter than it did before.

The higher we go, the quieter it seems to get. My breathing is labored, my shirt drenched in sweat, and I barely notice. My hideous brain—with its constant stream of insults and grievances—is silenced, too busy making sure I don’t fall over rocks and downed tree limbs.

It’s dusk when we reach our destination and I’m exhausted, but it’s a good sort of exhaustion, one that makes me feel complete rather than depleted.

He puts up our tent and sends me to collect wood. Within an hour, night’s fallen, but we have a fire blazing and baked potatoes are cooking in the coals—he insists it will work, though I have my doubts.

I skewer a hot dog on a stick and hold it over the fire while he does the same. My hands are filthy and this dinner is disgusting and yet . . . I’m still happy.

“I forgot to get mustard.”

“You also didn’t get ketchup,” Beck adds.

“Ichosenot to get ketchup, because ketchup on a hot dog is vile and childlike.”

“Your hot dog is burning.”

“Fuck!” I swing the flaming skewer away from the fire and narrow my eyes at him as he laughs.

“You can make another one.”

I grab the bun I’d set out and shake my head. “I’m too hungry to wait.”

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