I’d had the same reaction when my mom first mentioned it, although it seems impossible to imagine now.While OBX is full of people from the mid-Atlantic down, up here, everyone with a summer house on the beach goes to the Hamptons. It’s where I’d normally spend a week or two, lying out by the pool at the house Shannon’s parents rent every summer. But though she extended the usual invitation so we could hang out before school started, I’d passed in favor of starting my job at the Book and Bean, where Iwould’vespent the summer. It was beyond gracious of the owner, Beth, to give me another chance, including weekend shifts during the school year, and I wasn’t gonna screw it up again—not with my car fund on the line.
Plus, it kept me busy, which was way better for distracting myself from Jasmine than lazing around a pool would’ve been.
“They’re islands off the northern coast of North Carolina. You know Kitty Hawk?”
“First flight?”
“Yeah. That’s there.”
“Cool.”
I’d thought so too. Jasmine had teased me mercilessly, but she took me there for a tour and a photography session in front of the monument until the heat wore us down. One of those photos was my phone wallpaper for a couple of weeks until I got sick of feeling like every time my phone lit up it was a challenge to call her, and I changed it to a picture of my mom and me instead.
“Oh, duh, I forgot to put in the address.” Chase hands me his phone as he pulls out of the lot. “Can you check my texts? It should be the last one from Paulie.”
I’m basking in the glow of being trusted with his textmessages, so it takes me a few beats to realize I already know the address. I’ve been to this house. Picking up and dropping off my mother as needed, even going inside once when she made me wait too long and I had to pee like a racehorse. I remember the bathroom being black marble, presided over by a light-up mirror. I remember very shiny wood floors. I remember thinking, “Jesus, this is a big house for one person.”
But it isn’t for one person anymore.
“It’s thirty-seven Darlington,” I tell him, typing it into his phone’s GPS. His eyes are on the road; he can’t tell I didn’t check. And I don’t want the temptation of his text messages, of knowing what girls’ names I might see. If he and his cheerleader ex, Brielle, still talk, I definitely don’t want to know. If there’s a summer fling filling his inbox with heart emojis, that can stay in the vault.
We fill the space with easy and predictable conversation about the game, where we’re applying for college, and what scouts he hopes are coming to check him out, but I don’t expect any revelations, which is why I’m particularly surprised when he says, “Can I tell you something I haven’t told anyone?”
“Of course,” I say automatically, even though I know all I’ll want to do with the secret is shout it from the rooftops to prove Chase Harding trusted me with special, classified information.
“Honestly, I’m hoping to stay local. Marist is pretty much my dream. It’s D-I ball, and Poughkeepsie is only, like, an hour away. Plus, I look really good in red.”
“I’ll bet,” I say, my heart fizzing at his confession.“Is it Stratford you’re so attached to, or your family, or what?”
“Both, I think,” he says, and I pick up a tinge of a blush in the dark. “My brother goes to Arizona State because he wanted warmer weather and a fun party school, and he almost never makes it home. I don’t wanna be that. I like doing holidays and stuff with my family, plus making my little sister be alone at home for everything would suck.”
God, just when I thought my crush couldn’t get any bigger. But then, Chase being an incredible big brother is one of the things that’s always made my heart pitter-patter in the first place. His little sister, Kira, is a sophomore, and we were on the same Little League team as kids. He used to sit in the stands on the Sunday mornings he had free, holding massive homemade signs covered in terrible handwriting, and shout her name every time she came to bat.
At first, it made me sad I didn’t have my own big brother.
Then it made me realize I wanted Chase Harding cheering for me.
And that’s how it all began.
“This only child can confirm it would kinda suck,” I say, although I’ve never known anything else, and I love my mom and our cozy holidays. But I’d be lying if I said I never wished there were more than the two of us at our small round table built for four. If I said I didn’t occasionally wish we had a big ol’ dining room to make festive and fill with stupid things like poinsettia placemats. If my heart hadn’t twinged a bit on those summernights when me, Jasmine, my mom, and Declan sat down to dinner together, feeling like a very weird but complete little family. Without even thinking, as we stop at a red light, I reach over and squeeze his hand. “You’re a good brother.”
He smiles softly. “Thanks.”
Our hands stay locked until the light turns green.
The house is packed by the time we get there, with music blasting and people spilling out onto the lawn. We have to park two blocks away, which is perfect because it has Chase offering me his jacket to walk the distance.
I really, really want to say yes.
But Jasmine’s first vision upon entering Stratford High was me flirting with Chase, and I find myself imagining how I’d feel if she walked into my house wearing someone else’s jacket, and I can’t do it. Not yet. Not until she and I talk.
“It’s still pretty warm out, but thank you,” I say, hoping my smile makes clear this is not a symbolic rejection. “But I’ll take a raincheck for when it’s chillier.”
“Deal,” he says, tossing his jacket back in the car, but he doesn’t make a move to sling an arm around my shoulders or take my hand. I have to remind myself that a little space is what I implicitly asked for.
As the house—mansion?—comes into sight, I continue cycling through my Jasmine thoughts. What if she’s every bit as cold tonight as she was outside school? What if she’s already drunk? And the worst thought—what if she’s with someone when we get inside?
Somehow I’m standing next to Chase fucking Harding, about to fulfill item number seven on my high school bucket list (rolling into a party on his arm), and I’m thinking about how badly I would want to throw up if I saw Jasmine Killary making out with someone on the other side of that door.
