Meet Me at Midnight

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 and his.

“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 know us—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 word hair comes out on the whisper of a laugh he didn’t allow himself to let loose.

Because Asher’s in my brain, 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 say Jordan the way he says hair. 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 will merge 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.

It sounds a 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 if I didn’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’m not being 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?”

“Now who’s stalking?”

“I can’t help myself. Apparently your love life is better than an episode of The Bachelor. And you have a chatty mom, too.”

I snicker. “You watch The 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 we are racing. 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 me babe. 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 name isn’t freaking 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 to end 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.”

He lets out a little grunt but I can tell he wants to laugh. “This is probably our last summer, Chipmunk.”

“Don’t call me that.” I practically growl the words.

“But it’s so cute.” I can hear the mock pout in his voice, can see his lake-blue puppy dog eyes, even without looking at him. I will never forgive my father for letting that nickname slip in front of Asher.

“I’m going to destroy you,” I say with a smile. “You’ll be calling me something very different by the end of the summer.”

“Sounds dirty,” he says, and I let out an irritated grunt. “Looking forward to it … Chipmunk.” There’s a smile in his voice.

As we descend onto the wooden deck, we both abandon our illusion of normalcy and race for the chair.

It’s sitting along the far side of the square deck, its soft, thick cushion the lone pop of color in a string of hard, white plastic lounge chairs.

The unicorn chair, as I like to call it.

The one comfy, padded lounge chair. A mystical, magical chair amongst a sea of cheap plastic ones.

I hip-check Asher and twist toward it, but he lunges from behind me, throwing an arm around my waist.

“Let me go,” I grunt, trying to pull away, my feet kicking at his ankles. But he pulls me tight to his chest and twists us. And then I’m falling. I’m free-falling, until I’m in his lap, on top of the lounge chair. I twist this way and that.

“How much do you hate me right now?” The words whisper against my neck and send a shiver up my spine.

“Hard nine,” I say through gritted teeth, and his chest shakes against me in unreleased laughter. “Let. Me. Go.”

“Gladly,” he says, loosening his arm and reclining back onto the plush green pad.

I stand there for a minute, staring down at him, his head tipped back, eyes closed, laid out on the unicorn chair like a summer prince.

At his long, tan legs stretched out in front of him, and the messy golden brown hair that skirts across his forehead.

Asher has a swimmer’s body. Broad shoulders, slim waist. Lean muscles I wish I could look at without scowling.

But I can’t, because Asher Marin is the absolute worst. And by the end of summer, I’m going to make him regret all of the summers that came before this one.

All of the pranks and the snarky comments.

It doesn’t matter who started this between us so long ago, because this summer I’m going to finish it.