Five Summers (16 page)

SKYLAR BURIED HER FACE IN HER TOWEL. THE FRESH air wasn’t enough to chase off the last remnants of her headache, and she was pretty sure her legs were already burning. To top it all off, her hair still smelled like lake, and she was starting to think everyone was avoiding her. Jo was busy doing some sort of weird capoeira workout on the sand, Maddie had gone down the beach to talk to Nate, Adam was suspiciously AWOL, and Emma had gone out of her way to stay as far from Skylar as humanly possible. Even though she knew yoga breaths would be more productive, Skylar decided to allow herself to wallow briefly in all-consuming self-pity. She curled up in the fetal position and pulled Maddie’s towel on top of her.

Skylar had been to therapy, after she got caught breaking into the science lab sophomore year so that she could bleach her hair in the girls’ bathroom with hydrogen peroxide (she hadn’t realized you could buy it over the counter at CVS), so she knew that parents got blamed for most people’s problems. And she had to admit that there was a precedent in her life for a man who treated her like she didn’t have anything to offer.

She flashed back to sitting in her dad’s studio after her junior art expo, the semester before she’d gone to Florence. The rain had been beating against the floor-to-ceiling windows as she’d sat on a stool and stared at his big, violent canvases streaked with black, red, and white— a series Skylar and her brothers had nicknamed “Snowball in Hell,” due to the white blob at the center of each piece that seemed to sit melting in a fiery wasteland. “Where’s the point of view?” he’d said as he paced around her work, spread out across the broad, paint-splattered planks of the hardwood floor. It had smelled like turpentine and incense, which served the duty of masking any lingering scent from the joint he liked to smoke while conceptualizing a new piece. “Anyone could have done these, Skylar,” he’d finally said, frowning at her, his thick, cracked fingers massaging his chin. “I just don’t think you have anything unique to say. But don’t beat yourself up.” He’d clapped her once on the back and cleared his throat. “We don’t choose our talents. You’re either an artist, or you’re not.”

When she saw Maddie making her way back to the towels, Skylar emerged from her cocoon.

“So . . . where is she?” she asked, hoping that she sounded at least semi-casual.

“Who?” Maddie seemed confused.

“
Emma
,” Skylar said. “Didn’t you go looking for her?”

“Oh, right. Sorry, I got distracted.”

“Didn’t you ask Nate?” Skylar pressed. “I saw you talking to him.”

“No, actually. I guess I should have.” Maddie smiled, as if at an inside joke, and Skylar wondered for a second if there was something brewing between her and Nate.

“It’s okay,” Skylar said. “I’ll ask him myself.” She pulled on her shorts and walked quickly down the shore, the beads on the ties of her bikini jangling with each step. As she approached, Nate, Zeke, and Bowen Connors exchanged awkward looks.

“Hey, guys,” she said, crossing her arms over her triangle top self-consciously. “Have you seen Emma?”

“Yeah, she was on the beach when we got here around eleven,” Nate said.

Skylar could have killed Jo. Their pointless hike around the island meant that she’d missed Emma’s arrival.

“Well, do you know where she is now?”

The boys exchanged smirks.

“Um, she’s with Adam,” Nate said, fiddling with a toy soldier and avoiding eye contact.

Of course
, Skylar thought. They were probably off somewhere bitching about her.

“They disappeared a while ago, though,” Zeke said.

“Do you know where they went? I really need to find Emma. I couldn’t care less about Adam.” The last part was both unnecessary and untrue, but she wanted Adam’s friends to know she wasn’t just a jealous third wheel—no matter how much she was starting to feel like one.

Suddenly, Bowen coughed—except it wasn’t a real cough. It was one of those coughs that doesn’t try very hard to conceal something that’s being shouted.

“Thanks,” Skylar said quickly, turning so that the guys wouldn’t see her eyes welling up with tears. The words Bowen had coughed were “Virginity Point.”

“I need to talk to you,” Skylar said to Jo, pulling her aside when she got back to the towels. It was everything she could do not to start freaking out, but she couldn’t let Maddie know what was going on—not yet, not after what she’d been through with Charlie. Skylar needed counsel from someone who wasn’t going to get emotional or passive-aggressive. They all gave Jo a hard time about being stoic, but in certain situations it was a lifesaver.

Luckily, Maddie was quite happy to lie on her towel and nap while Skylar and Jo took a walk. They cut through the woods to the south, away from the beach and the noise and the cabin where Adam was doing who knows what to Emma. Skylar cringed and put her face in her hands. Mid-afternoon sunlight spilled through the thick tree cover in kaleidoscopic patches.

“Adam took Emma to the cabin,” she blurted out. “I think they’re hooking up.”

Jo frowned. “Isn’t that a good thing?” she asked. “Or did I miss something?”

Skylar took a deep breath. Her junior year drawing teacher used to say that once a student shared their work with the class, it didn’t belong to them anymore, and she hoped the same principle held true for secrets. Because she didn’t want it anymore. She needed to let it go.

“It would be a good thing,” Skylar said slowly, “if Adam hadn’t tried to kiss
me
last night. And if we hadn’t been hooking up all summer.”

Jo didn’t react, except to look down at her hands. “I thought something might have happened between you guys, but I didn’t know it was still going on,” she said quietly.

“It’s not. I ended it.”

“Well, that’s convenient.” Coming from anyone else, this would have been sarcasm, but coming from Jo it was just a statement of fact. “How long had you two been . . . ?” Jo asked.

“Too long,” Skylar said with a sigh. “Three years.”

“Shit!” Jo never cursed, so this was a big deal. “I had no idea it was that serious.”

“It wasn’t,” Skylar said. “For him, anyway.”

“And for you?”

“I didn’t think it was, but I’ve known him since I was ten. It was always going to be more complicated than just sex.”

“Ew,” Jo said.

Skylar sighed. “We’re not twelve, Jo. Sex isn’t gross.”

“I’m not ew-ing sex in general, just with Adam Loring.”

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”

“Okay,
ew
,” Jo said. “And for the record, that one was specific to you guys.”

“Are you mad?” Skylar asked.

Jo kicked a pine cone. “Not mad, just . . . why him, you know? Why do that to Emma? To all of us?” Skylar felt a fresh wave of guilt.

“She’s going to hate me, isn’t she?” Skylar whispered.

“Probably,” Jo said. “But I hope she hates
him
, too. I hope you both do. It wasn’t just you; it was him.” She started to sound genuinely upset. “Adam’s been manipulative since he was a kid, but this is going way too far. Leading Emma on, and then hooking up with you, trying to have it both ways. I always knew he had a sleazy side, but I never thought he was a bad guy.”

Skylar didn’t know what to say to that. Was Adam a bad guy? She’d never thought it either. An unrepentant flirt, definitely. But she’d never thought of him as manipulative. In fact, she always felt like
she
manipulated
him
. It had been Skylar who called the shots, who’d told him when she wanted him and when she didn’t, who’d pushed him away when she was done. Throughout their whole relationship, Skylar had felt in control. She had never once stopped to consider the fact that he was getting exactly what he wanted, with no strings attached.

“Maybe he’s not that way with Emma,” she said. “Maybe he really likes her.” The possibility made her both hopeful and depressed.

“I don’t know. From the way he was acting last night I’d say he was playing her, too,” Jo mused. “Emma wants talk, so he plays up his sensitive side. You want to hook up, so—”

“I want more than that,” Skylar said sharply.

“Sorry, that came out wrong.” Jo stopped and put her hands on Skylar’s shoulders. “I know you think I judge you, but I don’t. And whatever Emma does, I won’t judge her either.” That gave Skylar a terrible mental image.

“I should go stop them,” Skylar said. “I can tell her right now and keep her from doing anything with him.”

“No,” Jo said. “If you stopped her, she’d just resent you. If she hooks up with him, she hooks up with him. You can’t make that decision for her.”

“But what if he’s just using her?” Skylar protested.

“What if he isn’t?”

“I get that you’re playing devil’s advocate,” Skylar said. “But please, just pick a side. None of this what-will-be-will-be crap is helping.”

“If you want me to pick a side, you might not like whose side I pick,” Jo said.

“I know.”

“From the outside, it looks like you tried to hurt her on purpose.”

That was too much. Skylar’s hands flew to her face, and she started to sob.

“I’m not a bad person,” she choked out. “I was just in a bad place.” She felt Jo’s arms wrap around her, and she held on for dear life.

“I’m not going to cry,” Jo warned her after a few minutes of comforting.

Skylar laughed and pulled back, wiping her puffy eyes. “No one asked you to, robot,” she sniffed. “But I do need you to lead us back to the beach, because I have no idea where I am.”

Jo smiled. “That I can do,” she said. She grabbed Skylar’s hand.

“Is this the buddy system?”

“It never fails,” Jo said.

Skylar interlaced her fingers with Jo’s and smiled. Her dad—and Adam—had been right about one thing: you couldn’t choose certain things in life. They found you. Like your best friends. She resolved to find Emma and tell her everything, before anything else could pull them apart.

“SEE? I TOLD YOU!” ADAM PULLED ASIDE A HEAVY PINE branch and gestured grandly. Beyond it, Emma could see a clearing with an open-air cabin that looked out on a little half moon of beach.

“Wow,” she said, impressed. “And here I thought you were leading me into the wilderness to take advantage of me.” She grinned and bit her lip. Ever since he’d stepped off the boat, greeting her with a Christmas-morning grin and a grateful hug, she’d been flirting with the kind of intensity and commitment she normally reserved for memorizing SAT flashcards.

“No, I just moonlight as a highly motivated real estate agent,” Adam joked. “I really think you’ll like this one. There’s no roof or bathroom, but I think you’ll agree that the natural beauty of the land trumps the need for shelter and plumbing.” Emma laughed.

“This
is
nice,” she said as they walked around the right side of the cabin, stepping carefully through a thicket of overgrown brush. “But I think I’m looking to settle somewhere . . . less in the middle of nowhere.” Her eyes fell on a pair of boxer briefs stuck in a nearby shrub and she shrieked. Adam put an arm around her.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, but that’s what happens when you don’t have a washer/dryer,” he said. “Let’s check out the waterfront.”

When they got about ten feet from the lake, Adam opened his backpack and pulled out a blanket and a paper bag.

“Wait, were you
planning
this?” she asked.

“Not planning so much as hoping,” he said, looking up at her with a wink.

“And what’s in the bag?”
Please don’t let it be something gross like malt liquor or condoms
, she silently pleaded with the powers that be.

“Just some of those fake Oreos you like. I swiped them from the kitchen.”

She grinned. “Aw, you shouldn’t have.”

He looked at her more seriously.

“I owe you a lot more than knockoff sandwich cookies.”

Emma sat down on the blanket and kicked off her flip-flops, digging her toes deep into the gravelly sand. She knew that they would eventually have to talk about what had happened with Skylar at the lake and all the feelings they’d been dancing around since she’d come back, but part of her wished they could just erase everything between when he’d squeezed her hand on the path the night before and when they’d met on the shore that morning. She knew that if she and Adam ended up together, she’d delete that stretch of time from their story. It could be like the five-second rule, right? They’d dropped things for a minute, but they could easily pick them back up. Sitting together in the hazy afternoon light on a private beach seemed like as good a restart button as any.

They passed the cookies back and forth and watched the sun dip beneath the clouds. “Skylar and I . . . have become pretty good friends since you left,” Adam finally said, staring out at the lake. “In a way, I feel like she missed you so much she needed me to lean on.”

Emma kept her eyes on the horizon.

“And same with me,” Adam went on. “I missed you. And she was the closest thing I had to you.” He looked at her with a pained expression, the sun hitting his irises at just the right angle to turn them into pools of gold-flecked copper. “But I think maybe for her, that got confused. And when she saw us together, she was sort of . . . jealous, I guess. She’s pretty insecure, underneath it all.” Emma had often thought the exact same thing, but when Adam said it she sort of wanted to smack him. Did he really think he knew Skylar better than her own best friend?

“Well, nothing happened, at least,” she said. “I was afraid she was going to try to kiss you!” She’d meant it to be funny, but Adam just looked more upset. Emma rested her hand lightly on top of his. “Thank you for the apology,” she said. It was more than she’d gotten from Skylar.

“I just don’t want it to mess things up,” he said. “With us.”

Emma threaded her fingers through his and turned to face him. It had been silly, she realized, to worry about knowing when her second chance would present itself. It was so obvious it was like an alarm had been tripped in her central nervous system. This was it. She would lean over, part her lips, and—

“Oh, shit,” Adam said, pulling his hand away. He rooted around in his pocket for his phone. When he found it he looked at it and raised his eyebrows. “It’s five o’clock,” he said.

Emma wasn’t sure why he suddenly cared what time it was, until it dawned on her. “We missed the boats,” she said. She immediately pictured Jo seeing the unchecked names on her list and shaking her fist at the sky.

“Don’t worry, Mack keeps a boat stashed down the beach,” Adam said. “I know where it is.”

“Do you want to go back now?” She tried to hide her disappointment.

“Hell no!” He started unbuttoning his shirt. “Since we’re here we might as well have some fun. We’ve got the island to ourselves. And since our swim was so rudely interrupted last night . . .”

Soon Adam was down to his swim trunks. He wasn’t muscular like Nate, but he wasn’t scrawny, either. He had a trim swimmer’s body, which she could actually see now, since it wasn’t pitch black. She noticed that Adam had a patch of chest hair as well as a trail leading from his belly button down below the waistband of his suit. Emma blushed. Pubic hair seemed so personal; she couldn’t believe guys got away with flashing it in public.

“You coming in?” Adam ran at the water like he was diving into the ocean, even though the placid green surface of the lake barely registered his presence.

Emma stayed seated as she peeled off her shorts. She pulled her tank top over her head and watched Adam dunk his head below the surface and then emerge, shaking his hair like a dog trying to dry off. She grinned.

“What?” he called, flexing his biceps. “You don’t like my bikini body? Get in here!”

She stood, and he took her in, just the way he had the night before. He didn’t say anything for a minute, and she was wondering if maybe the red had been a tacky choice, when he put his right hand over his heart and fell backward into the water. Emma laughed. She waded into the lake feeling like the most beautiful girl in the world.

The sun was just starting to dip below the horizon, sending a dazzling reflection shooting across the water. Emma and Adam bobbed farther and farther away from shore, until Emma had to stand on her tip-toes to touch the slick, mossy bottom. Treading water was making them both breathe heavily.

“In case you didn’t appreciate my fake heart attack,” Adam said, slicking his hair back from his forehead, “you look amazing.”

“Thanks, you’re not too bad either.” Maybe it was the cold water, but she felt exhilarated, like every pore was oozing an electric charge. She was hyper-aware of Adam’s body; how close it was; how she could just reach out and—

“Truth or dare?” he asked, splashing her playfully.

“Um . . . truth.”

“Did you want to kiss me?”

She bit her lip. Emma had never been stoned, but it couldn’t feel more dizzying than this.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she said, splashing him back.

“That night . . . with the fireworks.”

“Yes.”

“I knew it!”

“Okay, your turn,” she said. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Did
you
?”

“Did I what?” He smiled. He was making her work for it.

“Did you want to kiss me?”

“Are you kidding? Wasn’t it obvious? I was doing the lean. But I can see how you might not have picked up on that. It was one of my first leans. I’m much better at the lean now.”

“Oh yeah?” She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to touch him. She beckoned, and he swam closer.

“Truth or dare,” he said. They were less than a foot apart.

“Dare,” she whispered.

“I dare you to kiss me right now.”

Emma wrapped her arms around his neck and he pulled her in. She tilted her face up, and he moved to kiss her, but she stopped his chin with one hand. She nuzzled his wet cheek and held her lips millimeters from his, so close they were brushing, but only just. He moaned softly, and she shuddered.
Then
she kissed him. His lips were full and warm, and the warmth seemed to radiate out from him and all the way through her—down her throat and through her stomach and out her legs, which wrapped around his back instinctively like a starfish curling around someone’s hand. He opened his mouth slightly and she tasted his tongue, salty and sweet. But then she pulled away. The sensory overload was almost too much to take. Adam looked at her with a dazed expression.

“Now you,” she said breathlessly. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare.” He smiled and reached for her, but she darted back.

“I dare you to kiss me like you mean it.” He pulled her in again and put one hand behind her head, pressing his lips hard into hers, his tongue braver this time. She wrapped her legs tighter around his waist and then his hands were moving from her hair to her waist to her breasts. She could feel him through her bathing suit and she arched her back toward him, trying not to fight the tingle that was spreading across her pelvis. As she took his face in her hands, she thought,
So this is why people have sex
. It wasn’t a moral choice or a rebellious statement. It was a base, animal instinct. Her body had never wanted anything more. It kind of scared her.

“I dare you to take your top off,” Adam said. Emma broke away and swam back a few feet. She grinned at him.

“Only if you take off your bottoms.”

“I only have bottoms!” he protested.

“Deal or no deal.” She didn’t have to ask him again. A minute later he held his swim trunks above his head with a flourish.

“Now, I don’t want you to manhandle me,” he said. “And by don’t, I mean do.” Emma suddenly felt out of her depth as she reached up to untie her bikini top. They’d only just kissed, after years of confusing build up, and now things were moving lightning fast, like one of those terrifying carnival freefall rides that lifted you higher and higher until it finally plummeted one hundred feet in two seconds. She wasn’t sure she was ready. Still, she dropped her bathing suit top, immersing her bare breasts in the cold water, hoping they were hidden from view.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said. She leaned in to kiss him again, but more tentatively this time. She didn’t want their bodies to touch—she wasn’t sure she could handle it. And when Adam reached for her, she knew she couldn’t.

“You know, we probably should head back,” she said, covering her chest self-consciously with one arm and splashing him. “Jo will just flip out and send a search party anyway.” He looked crestfallen.

“I should have known you just wanted to get into my pants.”

“I’m sorry!” she laughed. “But think of this as a ‘to be continued . . .’ on dry land.”

“Promise?” he said, fishing for his bathing suit in the darkening water.

“Promise,” she said. She made good on it approximately forty-five seconds later, when, top intact and feet firmly planted on the sand, she put her hands on his chest and kissed his neck.

“Mmmmm,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her softly. “Can’t we just stay here? Sleep under the stars?”

“Not tonight,” she whispered. “But soon.” Emma couldn’t wait to go on a real date with Adam. She wanted to kiss him on doorsteps, under street lamps, lying down on a proper bed. She wanted to do everything with him. As he brushed her hair out of her face and kissed her again, she couldn’t believe she’d tried to convince herself she didn’t want him that way for so many years. She wanted—no, needed—to feel this way all the time.

And now I will
,
she thought, trying to ignore the guilt that tugged at the edges of her consciousness. She’d blatantly ignored Skylar, ditched Maddie and Jo, and had barely thought about any of them all day. For the first time in her life, she’d chosen a guy over her friends—something she promised she’d never do. But they would forgive her—wouldn’t they?