DAY 1
Sidney
Here’s the problem with knowing someone since you were ten and vacationing with them since you were thirteen: they know way too much. They’ve seen things. The neurotic things you only did once. The embarrassing things you wish you could forget. Usually it’s people we love who know these seemingly harmless things. But when it’s someone you hate… those tiny bits of your past become the ultimate ammunition. And with the right arsenal, it’s war. The war I call summer lasts exactly fifty-six days. It doesn’t end, and it has only two sides: mine andhis.
Asher Marin doesn’t let me live anything down, and he doesn’t let me forget. I don’t let him, either. It’s why we’re both darting out of our cabins at 8:37 a.m. on the first full day of summer vacation. Why I sat by the window, barely able to make out the shadow of him at his, as I ate my bowl of cereal this morning, twitching out of my seat with every flutter of activity from the kitchen window that mirrors mine. It’s our sixth year vacationing together in twin houses that sit atop a little hill overlooking a sprawling inland lake. And saying that we know each other doesn’t even begin to describe the two of us. Tosurvive summer, I don’t just have toknowAsher, I have to getin his brain.
“Your hair looks pretty today,” he says. I’m walking out of my door as he walks out of his, my cereal bowl discarded so quickly I’m not positive it isn’t in shards in the old metal sink. We’re mirror images starting our days, as we each make a hard turn onto the concrete sidewalks that run alongside our houses—toward the deck that juts out from the hill rising up from the shoreline. He’s lazily smiling, and someone who didn’t know him—didn’t knowus—would think he was being sweet. Complimenting me. But he’s not smiling, he’s smirking. I don’t have to look at his face to know; I can hear it in his voice. In the way the wordhaircomes out on the whisper of a laugh he didn’t allow himself to let loose.
Because Asher’s inmybrain, too. He knows I hate when my curls get like this, wild and untamable in the summer humidity. When I was younger I’d try to straighten them every morning, like I did for school, and as the day went on and the Michigan air took its toll, the curls would rise up around my face, consuming me like my very own auburn wildfire. When I was sixteen, I finally decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Wasn’t worth the snickers throughout the day, the sideways glances from him as my hair revealed its true form after a day of swimming. Who was I trying to impress, anyway? I like how easy it’s made my daily routine for two months out of the year.
My hand is going to my hair without thinking, but I catch myself, twisting a few pieces in my fingers and squinting my eyes at him, still coming down the little sidewalk, keeping pace with me. I speed up, and he matches me.
“I love that shirt,” I say, my voice level and innocent as I eye the vintage green T-shirt that stretches across his chest. “Did Jordan pick that out?” I sayJordanthe way he sayshair.Like it’s a weapon shooting off of my tongue.
“Jordan and I broke up.” His voice matches mine, friendly and light. We’re maybe thirty feet from where our paths willmerge into one, and I squeeze the towel rolled tight under my arm. My pulse speeds up, adrenaline pooling in my veins as we partake in the world’s slowest two-person sprint. We’re just a couple of pumping arms short of looking like old people powering through the mall in their bright-white sneakers. My flip-flops slap against the stone.
“Oh, did you?” My voice drips with mock innocence. Asher and Jordan broke up about a month ago. I overheard my mom talking to his in one of their weekly phone calls leading up to our joint family vacation.Poor baby, such a sweet girl, blah blah blah.
“Stalking me?” he says, his voice taking a teasing edge.
Itsoundsa little stalkerish that I know about Jordan. But knowledge is power, and I can’t help that my mom insists on updating me about Asher every time she talks to Sylvie. As ifIdidn’t have the means to contact Asher a million different ways, if I wanted to. As if we’re friends and I need to know what he’s doing the ten months out of the year I’mnotbeing subjected to his presence. “You wish.” I roll my eyes, even though he can’t see them. “You must have been distraught, if your mom had to call mine to talk about it.”
“Devastated,” he says dramatically, not sounding it at all.
“Lucky girl,” I say.
“How’s… oh, what’s his name…?” In my periphery I can see his hand slap against his thigh like he’s trying to recall some lost bit of information. We try so hard, the two of us. We smile and tease and torture—the kind of animals that like to play with their food before they kill it.
I cringe, knowing what’s coming next. I shouldn’t have pushed him on Jordan, I should have just left it alone.But that smug face of his.I set myself up for this.
“Taylor…? David…? Evan…?” There’s a long pause and I inwardly cringe. “Or was it all of them?”
I take in a deep breath and let it out. My face doesn’t change, my eyes don’t move. They’re focused on the deck looming below us, up ahead—the end goal.
His voice is casual. “None of them stuck, huh?”
“Nowwho’s stalking?”
“I can’t help myself. Apparently your love life is better than an episode ofThe Bachelor.Andyouhave a chatty mom, too.”
I snicker. “You watchThe Bachelor?” We’ve reached the spot at the crest of the hill where our paths converge and lead down into a single walkway of cement stairs. I narrow my eyes as we both squeeze onto them. They’re barely wider than one person, but we walk side by side, as fast as two people possibly can without running or tripping or looking like we’re purposefully racing. And weareracing. I let out a little snort. “That’s sad.”
“As sad as your two-week boyfriends?”
“Ten days,” I correct him with a shrug. “What can I say? I’m easily bored.”
It’s true, there’s something that happens to me after the first week of dating someone. When the glittery newness has worn off, and I start to notice all of the little things that drive me crazy. Taylor constantly chewed with his mouth open. David started calling mebabe.Like,You look cute, babe. Good night, babe. Do you want some popcorn, babe?All I could think about was the old movie I used to watch at my grandma’s house with my cousins. That little pink pig. And that my nameisn’tfreaking Babe.
And Evan—okay, I’m the least proud of Evan. He was a full inch shorter than me. And it shouldn’t have bothered me; I know it shouldn’t have. And it didn’t… for nine full days. But by day ten, all I could think about was our prom pictures. About dancing with him in two-inch heels. If I’d be able to see the top of his head, and if he’d have to stretch up on his toes to kiss me. If I’d have to wear flats to our hypothetical wedding someday. They were all little things—things that didn’t matter for ten whole days—things that wouldn’t matter anytime soon. But things I couldn’t let go of. Things I couldn’t imagine overlooking for months or years. And so what was the point? Best toend things before they got too serious; before I screwed it up too badly and it felt like an actual loss.
“They were heartbroken, probably,” Asher says as our shoulders bump roughly and my foot slips off of the step and into the lumpy grass, throwing me off balance. He grabs me by the elbow and pulls me straight. I shake him away and he snickers.
“Devastated,” I say.
“I imagine.” His voice is level, serious. Mocking.
“I would bet you imagine a lot of things about me.”
