“Yeah. With hindsight. But how were we to know Lainey would be that combative? She’s one of those people who is so hard to help. Her own worst enemy.”
Hannah sighs, then lowers the shoulder straps on her bathing suit top before reclining. I put my sunglasses on, picturing Summer’s perpetual runner’s tan lines—which, with her pale skin, were more often burn lines. She was constantly applying sunscreen to her nose and cheeks, determined to keep her freckles at bay. I close my eyes, feeling a wave of haunting regret that I never told her how much I loved her freckles. Her face. So many things about her.
“Are you okay?” I hear Hannah say.
I open my eyes and realize that I’m frowning.
“Yeah,” I say, relaxing the muscles in my face, taking a deep breath.
“What were you thinking?”
I take another deep breath, then tell her the truth. “I was just thinking about Summer.”
Hannah nods and says, “What about her?”
“How much she hated her freckles.”
“I know,” Hannah says. “I loved them.”
“Same.”
“She didn’t know how pretty she was.”
“She really didn’t,” I say.
“Looking back, I can see that she was insecure. About a lot of things,” Hannah says. “I never saw it at the time. She was such a star.”
“I know,” I say, thinking of the argument Summer and I had a couple days before she died. I’d been so annoyed with her, but now I see how vulnerable and fragile she actually was.
“Sometimes I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Hannah says.
I take off my sunglasses, look at her, and nod.
“Do you ever forget? For, like, one second? And think you can just pick up the phone and call her?” she asks.
“That used to happen to me all the time. But not so much anymore. I hated when her parents cut her phone off,” I say, remembering how I used to call and listen to her outgoing message. Then, suddenly, one day there was a recording saying her number was no longer in service.
“Oh my God. Yes!” she says. “That ‘no longer in service’ message was the worst.”
We sit in silence for a moment, before Hannah looks at me and says, “She really was our sun, wasn’t she? I mean, we were a foursome, but in a lot of ways, she was our center.”
“Yeah,” I say, getting a bit uneasy with the direction of the conversation. “She was our leader. From the very beginning. But who knows how that might have changed over the years….” My voice trails off.
“Why would that have changed?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just that ‘sliding doors’ concept. Lots of things could have changed our dynamic. We might have had a fight or a breakup—” I stop suddenly, realizing what I’ve just said.
“A breakup?” Hannah asks.
“Well, not a breakup per se, but a rift or a fallout—” I stammer, trying to cover for myself.
Hannah gives me a suspicious look.
I put my shades back on and close my eyes, but I can feel Hannah staring at me.
“Tyson?” she says after a few seconds.
“Yeah?” I say, bracing myself. Somehow, I know what’s coming even before she asks the question.
Sure enough, she says, “Did you ever have feelings for Summer?”
My heart skips a beat and my jaw clenches. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“You know what I mean, Tyson. Romantic feelings.”
“Why would you ask that?” I say, my eyes still closed.
“I’m just curious,” she says. “I always suspected that she had feelings for you, but did you have feelings for her?”
I inhale deeply, my chest rising. I start to lie, but I can’t do it anymore. For all these years, telling the truth felt like a betrayal to Summer. Now, suddenly, it feels like a betrayal not to tell the truth. To both Summer and Hannah.
I glance over at Hannah. She is staring at me intently. Knowingly. I take a deep breath as she sits up in her chair, turning to face me.
I remove my sunglasses, turn my head, and look her right in the eye.
“Yes,” I finally say, knowing that I’ll never be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
“Oh my God,” Hannah says. “Did she know how you felt?”
