Chapter 2
Lucy
I lock eyes with Ethan, and that sweet, sloping grin spreads across his face. “Hey.” His voice is low, and he leans in for a kiss, chaste by our measures, but even so Frankie makes a retching noise.
“Get a room!” she calls.
“Kissing is a totally normal greeting, Frankie.” I sit down beside her and bump her shoulder with mine. “You’ll have to try it sometime.”
“Barf. At least next year, you guys can do that away from us.”
“Knowing you two, you’re going to have dorm rooms right next to each other,” Alex teases.
Ethan squeezes my thigh, and I know what he’s thinking. I can’t wait. But my stomach seizes, and I desperately want to change the subject.
“Let’s deal,” I say. “Who’s up?” Trevor pulls out a deck of cards from under the coffee table and starts shuffling. We’ve been doing this exact Friday-night ritual for years, since Frankie and Alex were old enough to understand the rules.
“Mills, hearts or what? It’s your turn to choose.” Trevor nudges Millie with his socked foot, but she’s got her eyes on me, that bottom lip wobbling. Oh no. I hate when she gets like this.
“What are we going to do on Friday nights in the fall?” she asks, her voice strained. “When you’re gone?”
A hush falls over the room, and while I used to think her sentimentality was sweet, I wish she’d stop making such a big deal about next year.
The whole shtick has started to bug me and makes it so I can’t focus on my emotions, only hers.
I’d never say that to her face, though. My oldest-sister brain kicks on, and I reach my hand to hers and squeeze.
“You’ll do the same things, and it’ll be fun. I promise.”
My phone buzzes beside me, and Frankie swipes it before I can see. “Speaking of fun,” Frankie says, “looks like Billy is having a throw down tonight.”
I cringe. That’s a party I have no intention of attending.
“Please say you’re not going,” Millie says. “We only have eight Fridays left.”
“We’re not going,” I say, and elbow Ethan. “Right?”
“No way. I don’t want to be hungover for work tomorrow.” Ethan flashes a grin at Millie. “See you on the lifeguard stand.”
—
“It’s almost midnight,” I say, not even trying to suppress a yawn. “Time to call it.”
Everyone rises from their seats, yawning and rubbing their eyes.
These nights usually go late like this, but over the past few weeks, Millie has been stretching them longer and longer, like she’s desperate to make time stand still.
Ethan’s always telling me that I can’t keep worrying about her like she’s my kid or something, but that’s impossible.
Mom says that having children is like having a piece of your heart walk around outside your body—that’s how I feel about my sisters. Millie and Frankie are small slices of me, toddling out in the world on their own, and I’ll always want to protect them.
As everyone makes their way to the door, Ethan grabs my hand and holds me back so we’re the last ones in the pool house. “Wanna go down to the bonfire?” he asks, his breath soft on my ear. “I left some blankets down there.”
“Okay,” I say, even though the promise of sleep sounds better. “For a little.”
When we get outside, Millie and Frankie are about to disappear through the archway between our properties, and Trevor and Alex are racing back to their house. Millie turns around, and I wave at her. “Go on without me,” I say. “It’s okay.”
She nods once, her brows pinching, and then disappears behind the hedges.
Ethan slips his hand into mine, his touch as familiar as if it were my own.
Together, we trod over the wooden walkway, beyond the dune, and drop down onto the blankets spread around the firepit.
Only a few hours earlier, we were here with both sets of parents, roasting marshmallows, assembling s’mores, the air heavy with heat and humidity.
But now the wind has picked up, whipping my hair across my face, and the darkness above is an inky black dotted with stars.
Ethan leans forward and blows on some of the embers that have stayed lit. I lay a few pieces of kindling on top, then stack driftwood like a Jenga tower. It doesn’t take long for the splintered edges of wood to catch fire.
“How many hours do you think we’ve spent on this beach?” Ethan asks, leaning back to rest on his elbow.
“Months.” I sit cross-legged and warm my hands against the flames. Ethan wraps his arm around my back, his fingers light on my side.
“Years,” he says. “By the time we’re our parents’ age, how long do you think it’ll be?”
Something inside my brain zaps like it does every time Ethan brings up our future.
These big assumptions that he and I will live exactly like our parents do, that perhaps we’ll inhabit this very same stretch of Pelican Island Road and send our children to Pelican Island Academy and find a family to live next door who can produce a child the very same age as ours, which will result in an inevitable best friendship, or perhaps a new generation of Gold-Silvers, though we’d probably have to choose one last name because together they sound absurd.
At some point over the last two years, Ethan assumed we had our lives planned out together, on one single track, even though I have no recollection of ever agreeing to such a thing.
When Ethan talks like this it has a dizzying effect, like my head is a Mylar balloon being pumped full of helium and it might soon float away on its own.
“I don’t know,” I say, and scoot closer to the fire.
“Everything okay?” Ethan asks. “Are you nervous about work?”
I shake my head. Interning at Mayor Cho’s office has been the only thing I’ve been thinking about since graduation, even while all Ethan wants to do is play tennis and go to Billy’s parties and fool around in the pool house.
“Everything’s fine,” I say.
Ethan raises his eyebrows. “You’re going to act like I can’t read every single one of your facial expressions?”
I look at him, his angled features shadowed by the firelight, the tiny gold hoop in his earlobe vibrating with the wind.
He’s concerned, flexing his fingers in the sand, and I can tell his heart rate has picked up from how quickly his chest is rising beneath his shirt.
Here is a boy who knows every single part of me, even the awful parts like how I cried hysterically in my car when Erica got a higher score than I did on the AP Gov final or how I ruined Millie’s favorite sweater with black cherries last summer or that all dairy makes me gassy and yet I still can’t stay away from the chocolate flavors at Scoop DeVille. All that and he loves me still.
Now. Now is the time to tell him the truth.
It would be so easy, in theory, to say the words.
I’m not going to Cornell with you. I could tell him in one breath—that I got off the waitlist at Penn last week.
That he knows how much I want to go there and study in the political communications school.
That, sure, Ithaca is far from Philadelphia, but we would find a way to work it out if we wanted to.
But I can’t say that because he would hang on to that one word. If.
He would know immediately what I’ve been trying to hide for months: that I’m not sure I do want to find a way to make our relationship work come September.
I raise my hand to his cheek, feeling the familiar fuzz of his face, the hint of stubble on the bottom of his chin. He turns his lips to my hand, kissing my palm, then looks up at me.
“Whatever’s going on, you can tell me.”
I open my mouth, believing him. He’s never given me any reason not to.
But when I think about what his face will look like when I do tell the truth—I’m scared; I don’t know if I want to keep this going in college; I don’t know who I am without you, and that’s not a good thing—I press my lips into a smile.
“You’re right,” I lie. “I’m nervous about my internship. First summer not working at the Club. And I want to do a good job for Mayor Cho.”
Ethan’s face brightens. “You’re going to be amazing. Lucy, you planned a mock election when we were in kindergarten.”
“Herbert the Toad was robbed.”
“You were built for the role. There’s a reason she picked you and only you out of a hundred applicants.”
I nod, hoping he believes he’s comforting me when, in truth, I know all those things myself. Have never doubted that I would be an excellent intern with Mayor Cho.
Ethan’s phone buzzes, and he looks down at the screen where I see Billy’s texted again. Ethan’s gaze lingers, and he presses his lips together.
“You wanna go?” I ask, trying not to make a face.
Billy’s always felt like an ear infection I can’t get rid of.
He’s been Ethan’s best friend since we were born, more because of the fact they rolled into each other at a Mommy and Me class rather than because they actually like each other.
Billy’s the guy who takes a joke too far, whose sole focus is riling everyone up as much as possible, who needles you and then calls you “uptight” when you tell him to quit it.
He only became tolerable when he started dating my best friend, Erica, who insisted that he was different behind closed doors. But ever since they broke up after prom, it’s been a relief to have an excuse to pass on hanging with Billy.
“Maybe for a little,” Ethan says. “Is that terrible?”
I glance at my own phone and see a text from Erica. Oops I ended up at Billy’s party. Come?? Please???
I turn the phone around so Ethan can see the message. “Looks like tonight is going to get messy.” I scrunch up my face. “No thank you.”
Ethan nods, and I let him pull me in for a hug, as he’s done so many times, enjoy the warmth of his lips pressing down on my head.
His heart rate steadies, and I calm, too, knowing I’ve played my part well enough for him not to worry.
There will be no tears tonight. No conversation about my betrayal.
No desperate pleas for me to change my mind. No bike rides to Billy Godwin’s party.
“You’re right,” Ethan says. “Let’s just enjoy this.”
I close my eyes and try to be present. The summer is long, stretched out, and we have, like Millie said, eight more Fridays together, just the six of us.
Eight more weeks of bike rides down the boardwalk and ice cream cones at Scoop DeVille.
We have the summer solstice party at the Club, the Fourth of July parade on Main Street, the tennis tournament where Ethan and I will crush our competitors at mixed doubles, and so many lazy days of swimming in the Sound and snuggling up in sweatshirts to search for shooting stars as they flicker over the sand.
But tonight, I can sit by the fire with Ethan and forget about what comes next. What lies I’ve already told. The ones I’m still plotting out. Tonight, I can let myself be loved for a little longer.
Sometime during all the sparklers and the buttered cobs of corn, and the parties at Billy’s house and the kegs Erica pays for with her parents’ credit card, there will be a discussion about our future.
There will be unrelenting tears and cracked voices, pleading.
Because this summer, I am going to break Ethan’s heart.