The Other Side of Summer by Lyla Andrews

Author:Lyla Andrews [Andrews, Lyla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

☼ ☼ ☼

Allie

AFTER OUR disappointing defeat in the bags tournament, Taylor and I relax in the sunshine for awhile before making our way into the dining hall to prepare dinner with Cora and Victor joining us. I told Taylor that the bride shouldn’t be doing any of the work to prepare meals for her guests, but she wasn’t having it. A lifelong control freak, though in the best way possible, Taylor needs to be in the know for every piece of planning and every detail. The least I can do is lessen the load for her.

As we pull out large containers of mostly-prepared food, I find my thoughts returning to Caleb, no matter how hard I try to push them away. I wish I could forget about what he meant to me, forget about the way he hurt me, but I can’t. More than anything, I wish I was able to move on. But I never did. Every date I went on in college and afterward, I subconsciously compared every man to Caleb. How they made me feel, how easily I could laugh with them, whether their smile made me melt. None of them stood a chance. I’ve spent years telling myself that the right one will come along, but I sometimes worry if maybe he already did come along, and I lost him. If it was Caleb I was meant to be with, and the universe just fucked everything up.

No, I chastise myself, the universe didn’t fuck everything up. Caleb did. That night when everything went wrong replays in my mind constantly, questions that will never be answered looping with every detail. Is there anything I could have done differently? Was there something I could have said or done that would’ve changed the course of those events? If things had gone differently, would we be together today, celebrating our love like Taylor and Santiago are?

What hurts the most is that I’ll never know. But that’s also for the best, even if it’s a painful truth. Some mistakes just can’t be taken back.

It’s even harder to ignore memories of the past now, seeing him in the flesh for the first time in eight years. I didn’t even think I could feel that much anymore after being so numb to life lately, but his presence has brought back a visceral reaction in me. On that canoe today, I felt more alive and more present in the moment than I have in years. I’ve been fighting the instinct to fall back into our easy friendship and to forgive him for everything that happened, but it’s so hard to fight when his goofy, lopsided smile still makes me melt and charm drips from every word he speaks.

Also, why the hell did he have to get even hotter? Because as much as I value a good personality over a sexy body, him having abs definitely hasn’t made it easier for me to stop thinking about him all day today. Seeing him in only a

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