The Summer We Fell by Elizabeth O'Roark

Author:Elizabeth O'Roark [O'Roark, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

22

THEN

JULY 2014

The night before Luke and Danny are due to leave for training camp, we head to the beach to celebrate Luke’s win earlier in the day—a shortboard contest at Steamer Lane that finally got him the attention he deserves from potential sponsors. When we arrive, Luke’s just getting out of the water and wearing nothing but a wet suit, peeled down and hanging off his waist. His body is a symphony, every muscle a separate instrument, coming together to make something so beautiful it hardly seems real. As he takes a seat, I have to look away.

“Someone should call the police,” Grady says, on another of his rants, which are a regular occurrence. “It’s disgusting.”

He’s carping about “the gays” again—the guys who hang at a beach nearby, minding their own business. I’ve never seen them do anything but ogle the surfers and listen to music, but Grady insists it’s a hotbed of sexual depravity somehow. I wish Libby would tell him to stop, but she says nothing.

A joint is passed around. Danny demurs and I do, too, and from the other side of the fire, Luke lifts a beer bottle to his lips, watching me. “Hostage,” that look says. “Ask yourself if this is really what you want.”

I already know the answer to that question. It isn’t what I want, not anymore. I don’t really have the money to leave now, but the bigger issue is I’ve assumed I’d end up with Danny for so long that it’s hard to seriously consider another outcome. We’ve been together for nearly three years, a sixth of my life, and it’s the only relationship I’ve ever been in. Not being with him, somehow, never occurred to me.

Ending this also seems so…ungrateful, after all they’ve done. Thank you for sheltering me throughout high school. I no longer need you and am moving on with my life. But do I repay my debt by weathering something that isn’t serving any of us, or do I pay it by letting them hate me for walking away?

And for better or worse, the Allens are my family. The only family I have. There will be no one to spend holidays with if I leave. No one to worry if I’m home late, no one in the entire world who still cares.

“Luke will care,” a voice says at the back of my head. But I dismiss it. Luke is off limits because I can’t do that to Danny, and Luke is never going to come find me in LA.

Danny’s telling anyone who will listen that he’s definitely going to be starting quarterback this year and describing his workouts in grueling detail. Libby keeps trying to talk to me about a group she’d like to start at the church for teenagers, suggesting I can do it this coming year since I’m staying home.

I press my fingers to my temples. I don’t want to be out here tonight. I don’t know how I’ll survive remaining in Rhodes at all without Luke.

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