The Summer We Forgot by Caroline George

Author:Caroline George
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2021-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Darby

JULY 8

SEASIDE

My mundane tasks at the Comber can’t keep me out of my own head. I shouldn’t think so much about the blackmail video. I shouldn’t have watched it forty-three times. But I do. I did. It’s engraved into my thoughts, each tilt of the head, each brush of Morgan’s lips, all playing on the walls of my mental room like a four-way theater.

Another secret. This ache within me to feel what I felt then. No one can know, not the number of times I watched the video or how I think about a boy more than a murder.

A milkshake glass smacks the bar’s resin countertop.

I spin toward the sound, dots floating across my vision like a swarm of gnats at golden hour. The Comber sharpens into focus, a Norman Rockwell diner overlooking the Gulf. Vinyl stools and checkered tables, patrons sinking their teeth into sandwiches and banana splits, mister fans whirling the sultry air into a damp breeze.

Chocolate malt slithers toward the bar’s edge in dark veins.

“Happens all the time,” I tell a little boy, who gawks at the mess while his parents rush to create a napkin barricade. I grab a dishrag from the counter and sop up the brown sap. “Don’t worry. I’ll make another one for you. No charge.”

The parents mutter thank-yous as I hurry to remake the milkshake. I scoop chocolate ice cream from a cooler into a silver cup. I add milk before whipping the concoction together in a spinner. Then I pour the drink into a frosted glass, top it with cream, and deliver it to the little boy. Already condensation slides down the cup and creates a rim on the bar’s countertop.

Perhaps I wouldn’t think so much if Morgan didn’t haunt my dreams. Each night I imagine him standing on my front porch as cicadas wail our song. He leaves without a word, and I chase him down the road in the bronzy glow of streetlamps, my hair still wet from the shower and scented with rosemary shampoo. I yell at him to come back, to please love me again. He freezes. He looks at me with tears in his eyes. He cups my face in his large, callused hands and breathes against my lips, “I never stopped.”

But the dream vaporizes by daybreak, nothing more than an ephemeral hope replaced with fear and dread and the realization my problems now transcend a boy.

Maybe that’s why I dream about Morgan, to ease my mind with a pain I understand.

Maybe the past I mourn isn’t this glittering recap of Sharpie hearts on kneecaps and sand between my toes, a world of sunshine and hindsight and friends who swore forever and always.

I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. I will myself into motion as a cook yells from the kitchen, as other servers carry plates to booths. This job is one of the few normal things in my life, so I can’t afford to lose it.

Too much has already been lost.

Mrs. Aldrich emerges from the back office and grabs two baskets from the kitchen window.

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