Next Summer (16 page)

“A world of no,” she said with a sigh. “It was Jeremy, but that’s pretty much a total bust. I don’t think he likes me much.”

“What do you mean?” Kelsi asked.

Ella gave her the rundown on the Jeremy situation, and soon Kelsi was laughing despite herself.

“So,” Ella finished, after lots of hand waving and eye rolling, “he obviously thinks I’m like a sexual predator or whatever. Right?”

A cruelness stirred in Kelsi then. She wanted to shrug, and say
Of course not
in that way that meant
Yeah, he does,
just to wound Ella. But Ella clearly cared about Jeremy. For the first time in her life, Kelsi’s little sister was seriously in doubt over whether or not a guy was into her. Kelsi could see the flush high on Ella’s cheeks and the confusion in her round brown eyes.

Kelsi realized she couldn’t bring herself to deliberately hurt Ella. She was starting to understand that her anger toward Ella had almost nothing to do with Peter. It went deeper than
that—back to their childhood, when pretty, confident Ella had been the one who got all the attention.

But Ella was just…Ella. She couldn’t help drawing all the attention her way, or the fact that boys flocked to her. Being mad at Ella for
being Ella
seemed unfair and pointless, Kelsi thought. That would be like yelling at the ocean for its waves.

There was a part of Kelsi that was still angry, but there was a much bigger part that loved her sister, no matter what. And now, she wanted to help her.

“You idiot,” Kelsi said, almost fondly. “Have you even thought about being subtle?”

Beth barely let Kelsi and Ella get out of the car before she was spilling every horrible detail of George’s discovery right there outside the cottages.

“And now I don’t know what to do,” she concluded. Beth knew she sounded hysterical, but she couldn’t help it. “No one’s even seen George since last night and what if he, like, decided to walk back to Boston or something? Anything could happen to him! He could be picked up by some serial killer and—”

“Okay,” Ella said, cutting her off. “You need to breathe and think rationally for maybe one minute here.”

“I’m sorry,” Beth said. She closed her eyes and breathed, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She wasn’t sure she’d ever feel better. She’d been up all night, and all day she’d alternated between crying on her bed in the fetal position—the
one that George was so familiar with—and wandering around Pebble Beach looking for George, ignoring Adam’s calls.

“First, we need a drink,” Ella declared. “We had a long drive, and you’re having a crisis, and I believe I have the perfect cure.”

“I can only imagine what that means,” Kelsi said, and Ella snorted with laughter. Beth noticed the look they exchanged—friendly and possibly even affectionate. Apparently, they’d done some bridge-building on their road trip, but she didn’t have the emotional energy to ask about it.

Ella hoisted up her bag and headed for the house. “Our room in, like, five minutes,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m hitting Dad’s liquor cabinet.”

“So,” Kelsi said, crossing her arms and turning to look at Beth directly once the screen door slammed shut behind Ella. “When you say ‘Adam,’ do you mean the Adam I’m supposedly dating?”

Beth wanted to burst into tears, until she saw Kelsi’s smile and realized her cousin was okay with that part. She probably had never really been that into Adam. Beth sighed with relief. At least that was one less person she had betrayed.

Later, Beth and her cousins lounged across the beds in Ella and Kelsi’s room. Ella had scored a bottle of vodka, a carton of orange juice, and three glasses, which she’d set out with elaborate ceremony. She began mixing drinks immediately.

“We’re lucky Dad never checks his alcohol,” Ella said.

“What makes you think he doesn’t?” Kelsi asked, taking
her drink from Ella. “I always figured he knows we help ourselves sometimes, but he wants to be the fun dad who lets us do stuff like that in the summer.”

Ella stared at her sister. “That’s sick.”

“But possibly true,” Kelsi said, laughing. Ella looked disturbed by the possibility.

“Suddenly,” she said, “this is less fun.”

“How was Jamie?” Beth asked, swirling her drink around in the glass, wanting to forget about herself for a while.

“She’s great,” Kelsi said, turning to look at Beth. “I think academic life really agrees with her.”

“She thinks you’re crazy to pick some random surfer guy over George,” Ella added, sipping daintily from her drink. “She said, and I quote, ‘But Beth’s been in love with George for years.’”

“You told her what happened?” Beth didn’t know whether to be outraged or touched.

“Like that’s a surprise!” Kelsi laughed, and settled back against her headboard. “Ella thinks it’s her duty to be the Tuttle family version of
The Enquirer.
”

“Please!” Ella fluttered her lashes dramatically. “I’m
US Weekly,
thank you very much!”

Beth snuck another look at Kelsi. She really did seem okay about Adam, but Beth couldn’t help feeling even worse because she hadn’t considered her cousin’s feelings for even a second. And there she’d been, so quick to judge Ella for basically doing the same thing. Some loyal family member she was.

“Of course, Jamie wants to know about your drama,” Ella
was saying. “What else is she going to do? She’s in summer school. She’s, like, convent girl. She’s
pining
for stories from the beach.”

“What am I? A soap opera?”

“You said it, Bethy, not me.” Ella giggled.

Beth groaned. “You guys. Help me. I want George back, but I keep thinking about Adam…”

“This is actually simple,” Kelsi said, assuming her Big Sister voice. “You need to choose the boy for you. George or Adam.”

“Ooh!” Ella chimed in, scooting closer on the bed. “We can make a list!”

“How can I just make a choice like that?” Beth asked. “This is pretty major.”

“It’s like making a college decision,” Kelsi said. “You can agonize about all the pros and cons of all the available choices, but then at the end, it’s really about which one you just know in your gut is right.”

Beth searched herself for an answer, but nothing came. “I think I just…I really ruined everything.”

All three of them were quiet then, until Ella started fussing around the room, topping off their drinks. Beth had slept so little in the past few nights that she already felt buzzed. It was definitely an improvement from how she’d been feeling earlier, she thought as she took another gulp.

“George hates me,” Beth said mournfully. “And I can’t really blame him, you know?”

“He loves you,” Ella replied, flopping back down on the
bed without spilling her drink. “Come on, Beth. You know that.”

Beth thought about that for a minute. She and George had always had this intense affection for each other. It was uncomplicated. Effortless. They were soul mates.

In that moment, it suddenly seemed very clear. All this time, Adam was merely a George proxy. A stand-in, someone she transferred all her feelings to because she was lonely.
G-2, indeed.
Not to say that she wasn’t attracted to Adam in his own right. But Beth realized that the connection she had with George was irreplaceable.
George
was irreplaceable.

But would he ever forgive her?

Beth sighed and stared at the contents of her glass. “He
used
to love me. But I keep remembering the look on his face. What he must have thought in that moment…” She broke off, and then downed the rest of her drink so quickly her throat burned.

“We need a plan,” Kelsi said firmly. “You should rent one of those planes and write an apology in the sky. It’s a grand gesture. It should at least get him to talk to you.”

“No, no, no!” Ella shook her head. “Nobody reads those things.”

“I do.” Kelsi was grinning.

“Beth, listen to me,” Ella said. “I may not be a genius, but if there’s anything I do know about, it’s boys. Take it from a girl with experience. You have to go the romantic route. You know, like dinner at that expensive place in town, or some begging in public.”

“Will you stop with that?” Ella retorted.

“Oh, because
your
date plan is actually going to work?” Kelsi rolled her eyes. “Bethy, you’d have better luck throwing George in the back of the car and holding him hostage until he promised to talk things out.”

“Now that’s more like it!” Ella said. She turned to Beth, her eyes bright. “We could totally work that. One of us can drive, and all the other two have to do is jump him and drag him into the car, which shouldn’t be too hard ‘cause he
is
pretty skinny.”

“Guys!” Beth was laughing, grateful to feel tipsy. “I think you’re missing the bigger problem,” she said, aware she was slurring slightly.

“Have another drink,” Ella urged her, passing over the vodka bottle.

“I don’t even know where George is,” Beth said. “The first thing I need to do is find him.”

“Here’s my final piece of advice,” Ella said wisely. “Let George have his space for a while, but don’t give up on him. Believe me, boys are sensitive, but they can take a surprising amount of abuse. He’ll forgive you.”

But every time Beth remembered the ravaged look in George’s eyes, she wasn’t so sure.

Tim wasn’t the only one with secret places scattered around Pebble Beach, Kelsi thought later that afternoon as she made her way down the side of the bluff on the other side of the cottages. All you had to do was get about a fifth of the way down the rocky outcropping, and there was a comfortable ledge to sit on. Kelsi liked to perch there and watch the schooners go by on the sea below, their sails proud and full against the wind as they headed up the coast to Camden and Bar Harbor.

She was almost to her secret spot when she heard someone cough from down on the ledge.
Great.
All she wanted was to be alone and think, and maybe see a pretty sailboat. And she felt unreasonably annoyed that someone else apparently knew about the place she considered hers and hers alone.

“Hey,” George said when Kelsi took that final jump and landed on the ledge, breathing hard. She did a double take, surprised he’d turned up so suddenly.

“Beth and I followed you here once a couple summers ago,” George said with a faint smile. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” Kelsi said. She went and sat next to him, crossing her legs and staring out at the water. There was just the faintest breeze, bringing the smell of pine from below.

George sighed, and Kelsi faced him. She figured the stunned, hollow look in his eyes meant he hadn’t gotten much sleep.

“Where have you been?” she asked him finally. “Beth told us you came on Thursday…”

“Crashing in a motel in town,” he mumbled. “It’s pretty gross, but anything beats being…here. I’m going back to Boston later in the week. I got extra time off.”

“Are you okay?” Kelsi couldn’t help but ask.

“I don’t know,” George said. His legs hung over the ledge, dangling toward the shore below. “I don’t think so. No, in fact, no.”

Kelsi stared off across the water, remembering that rainy night she had been through about a year ago. Two soaking-wet people holding hands, walking across a parking lot. She remembered the breathless, desperate feeling. And all the tears.

“I know how you feel,” she told George. “I don’t know if it helps, but I’ve been there, too.”

“Yeah,” George said. “Beth left me this long, rambling message on my voice mail after…She mentioned you were dating him. I can’t believe she would do this to both of us.”

“I meant last summer,” she said. “And another guy. I went out with Adam a couple of times, but it wasn’t a big deal. I just mean, you know, my feelings aren’t hurt, too, that’s all.”

“I guess that’s good,” George said.

Kelsi nodded. She had never been that excited about Adam to begin with, if she thought about it.
Nice
really
wasn’t
enough. Chemistry was so undefinable, so random. But it was everything. Kelsi thought briefly of Tim, then brushed the thought away.

“So that guy last summer,” George said. “What happened?”

“He cheated on me,” Kelsi said softly. “It sucked. I cried a lot. But it’s not like you and Beth. He was just a…summer boy.”

“But I bet the girl he cheated with wasn’t some perfect lifeguard who rescued him,” George added bitterly. “Some, like, beach god.”

“Well, no,” Kelsi said. “He cheated on me with Ella.”

George’s mouth opened in shock, and then he shut it with an audible snap.

“Um,” he said.

“Yeah,” Kelsi agreed.

George shuddered, and then, surprising both of them, he laughed. “I guess you win,” he said. “Um…congratulations on the being the most screwed-over?”

“So tell me how you got past it,” George said, looking closely at Kelsi. He seemed so vulnerable. “You’ve moved on, right?”

“I guess,” Kelsi said, and Tim flashed into her head again. The way he’d looked at her that first night at the bonfire, and the way he’d hijacked her phone at the bowling alley. How much she laughed whenever he was around. She frowned slightly. Of course she hadn’t been that into Adam. She’d already met Tim.

Tim wasn’t anything like Peter, or any of the other guys Kelsi had lumped him with. In fact, she’d never met anyone like him before. She remembered what he’d said before the road trip:
It’ll be great.
I’ll
be great.

It all sank in. Tim had done exactly what he’d said he would do on the road trip. He hadn’t been flirting with Ella, he’d been preventing a catfight on I-95.

And she’d sent him away.

Kelsi felt her heart sink. Literally. All the way from her chest to her bare feet.

George sighed, sounding as dejected as Kelsi felt. “Beth wants to talk, and I don’t even know what to talk about. I don’t know where to start.”

Kelsi tried to shrug off the horrible way she felt about Tim, and focus back on George. “She loves you,” Kelsi told George, returning her attention to their conversation. She didn’t know if that would help or hurt him at this point, but she felt
compelled to say it anyway. “It might be hard to believe right now, but she does.”

“I’ve loved her for so long,” George said, quietly. “I’m pissed at her, but at the same time I don’t know how to not be in love with her.”

“I think you have to talk to her,” Kelsi said. “Tell her exactly what you feel.”

George was silent as he tugged some grass free of the earth beneath him. He ripped the blades into tiny pieces and scattered them into the wind. He didn’t say a word, but Kelsi knew what he was feeling.

Suddenly, she missed Tim—and missed him even more when she realized she was unlikely to see him again, thanks entirely to her evil behavior. Kelsi had spent the summer focusing on how wrong he was for her. And now it seemed all too clear to her that she didn’t want anyone
but
him. Not Peter. Not Adam. Just Tim.

Although Kelsi had wanted the cove all to herself, now she was glad George was there, even if it was just to keep her company while she mourned her lost opportunities. When George took her hand and held it tightly, she prayed that, in the end, they’d both get what they wanted.