Autumn Rising: A Summer Remains Novella by Seth King

Author:Seth King [King, Seth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-07-16T07:00:00+00:00

A long weekend with Hank’s family at St. Simons Island in Georgia brought them on their first real vacation. The most shocking thing about Hank, considering that he was such a depressive, was that he had a close and beautiful and loving family. He just seemed like he was forever floating on the outskirts of it. It was a bit awkward for Autumn at first, but she charmed them, as she always did. Autumn loved his parents, because they were just as cynical as she was. They quickly grew to love her, too, despite her various flaws, because she made their son happy for the first time in years. At their first meeting, Autumn did shove her foot into her mouth when flirtatious old Grandpa Basara remarked that Autumn had beautiful dark eyes that could “just knock somebody unconscious.”

“Oh, I was acquitted,” Autumn smiled, as Hank’s family’s facial expressions slid from amusement to horror. “That woman punched herself in the face at that Nordstrom Rack sample sale, or so my lawyers proved, after the surveillance video of our brawl over the last pair of size eight Tory Burch heels mysteriously disappeared. Best five thousand dollars I ever spent, let me tell you.”

Eventually, they came around. “A force of nature,” Hank’s father even called her after she single-handedly talked the pizza delivery guy into giving them a hefty discount after showing up half an hour late. Hank’s younger sister was gorgeous in a weird, art gallery sort of way, and Autumn couldn’t lie, having a hot sister made him that much more attractive to her. He was beautiful with his two little nieces, patient and kind and funny, and it made Autumn so full of feelings for him, she had to look away before she cried.

As usual, though, Autumn and Hank had totally separate experiences. Hank loved the outdoors, while for Autumn the outdoors were an excuse to break in a cute pair of boots before retreating to a couch and a throw blanket. During the days, Hank would go jet skiing while Autumn suntanned miserably on the deck of their bayfront rental house, eaten up by bugs, unable to concentrate on even her gossip magazines, which were extremely important to her. But things were fine until the last day of the trip, when Autumn was searching through Hank’s car and found a program from Summer’s funeral. She tried to toss it back under the seat and act like she’d never seen it, but something seemed to fall down inside her, and she cried for the rest of the night.

The night after returning, Autumn lounged in a sagging hammock on her back porch only yards from Summer’s family home, as the ghosts beckoned in the night. Soon Hank dropped down next to her and sank into her silence.

“Babe, I wanna tell you something,” he finally said.

“Okay?”

“First of all, thanks for dealing with my family. I know my grandpa is…a bit much, and my nieces are a lot, but you were great, and I’m happy you got along with them.

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