Midsummer

6. Ivy

“Ihave something to tell you,” Miri said. She’d been back in town for two days, and even though I’d missed her, I hadn’t realized exactly how much until she was here, like a piece of me had safely found its way home.

We didn’t talk about the last time we’d seen each other. We hadn’t mentioned it when we’d spoken over the summer, and we didn’t talk about it for the two whole days we’d spent catching up. This did not stop me from wanting her. Those mahogany eyes shimmered in the sunlight, her dark curls catching just right so the red undertone stood out. I ached to run my hands through it, pull her head back, and devour her lips. I wanted to pull her into my bed and spend days there making up for lost time. I had fallen tragically in love with her, and one summer apart didn’t change that.

Still, I swallowed all that down for the sake of our friendship. I’d rather have her in my life as my best friend than not at all, and given the fact that she’d moved on with someone else, I figured all hope for the two of us had ended the same night it began.

Now, we sat at a four-top in the food court at TW, Miri directly across from me.

“Okay.” I stuffed a fry in my mouth, wary of her ominous tone.

“I’ve been seeing someone,” she said.

“You told me. Your mystery lover.” I tried not to let my disappointment show, hiding my emotions behind deflection and forced happiness the way I’d always done. I hadn’t exactly waited for her all this time, and if this new person had brought her some sort of peace, then I wanted to be happy for her.

Miri wrung her hands and then clenched them into fists in front of her.

“Okay, out with it,” I said. “Who is it? George Clooney? Brad Pitt? C’mon. Just tell me.”

“Long time, X,” came the voice from behind me.

I straightened. Every hair on my body stood on end.

Lex Fairfax.

My enemy. My archnemesis. The only boy to ever kiss me. He’d stolen my first and acted like it meant nothing. The fucking audacity. To walk up to me like this?

He took the seat next to Miri and wrapped an arm over the back of her chair. I’d admit, he looked good. Healthy. Happy. No deep, dark bags under his eyes. No perpetual smirk between his brows. His dark hair hung over his forehead, longer than I remembered, but still shiny and thick.

“Hello, darling.” Miri gave him a kiss.

“Hello, Princess,” Lex murmured against her mouth.

My heart dropped into my stomach as I caught up to reality. All the puzzle pieces locked into place. Miri had gone home for that fancy royal dinner with some US politicians, who I now knew must have been Lex’s parents. Lex was already in London, and he had stayed there for the summer. In Scotland. With Miri.

All the stories she’d told me. It was all Lex. All of it.

God.

Venom raced through my veins, hot and fiery, and I set my glare on him, wishing not for the first time that I could shoot bullets out of my eyes. He didn’t deserve her. He barely deserved the air she breathed. How dare he take my best friend from me?

“Him?” I snarled.

“Ivy,” she tried.

“You’re dating Lex Fairfax?” I kept my voice calm and level, even as it shook with jealous disbelief.

“Ivy, darling. Please, listen to me.”

“You know he’s the biggest jerk in the world, right?” My fingernails cut into my palms. I was sure I’d have half-moon imprints later.

“You realize he’s sitting right here, right?” Lex cut in.

“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “You’ve been nothing but a shit to me your whole life and you’re upset I’m calling you on it in front of your shiny new girlfriend. That’s called karma, Lucifer.”

“That’s not what karma means, X,” he said. “That’s called you being a frigid, stuck-up bitch.”

A frigid bitch you kissed at your brother’s funeral.

It was on the tip of my tongue, and I only managed to bite it back at the last second. He could see I was about to say it, his hazel eyes widening at the taunt and his lips preparing for an equally horrible retort.

But Miri didn’t know Lex had been the one that who kissed me. I’d purposely kept that a secret because I didn’t want to have to explain why I hated it so much. Or why I dreamed about it all the fucking time. Or why I could still feel his mouth on mine even as we sat at that table.

Did he know about Miri and me? Would she have told him that?

No, I decided. We never talked about it, not to each other, and not to anyone else.

“Are you two quite finished?” Miri said.

I crossed my arms over my chest and squared my jaw, surprised by my reaction. Moments ago, I’d been desperate with unrequited yearning for my one true love, and now I burned with scalding fury at how Lex always ruined everything he touched. He’ll ruin her too, one day, if she let him. I shouldn’t care. I didn’t.

“DC?”

A voice whipped our heads up.

There he was—six feet two, dirty-blond hair sticking out from under a backward Bears cap, amazing indigo eyes that looked like the sky at twilight. Dark and shimmering. Pouty lips and that boy-next-door grin. Even at eighteen, Carter Scott could bring me to my knees.

“Chicago?” There was a shimmy in Lex’s voice as he said it. I doubted anyone else noticed it. Lex was good at hiding his emotions and always had been, but I’d known him my entire life. Something about this guy made him nervous and not in a bad way.

“Jesus Christ, it’s you.” Lex stood and wrapped his arms around his friend. “How have you been? It’s good to see you.”

“Good, good,” Chicago said. “You look great.”

“So do you. Did you get some sun? You’re burned.”

“Fucking Irish boy down south for the first time, you know,” Chicago said.

“You never called,” Lex said.

“Neither did you.”

“I’m an idiot. You should have known better.” Lex shook his head and gestured to us. “This is Miri and Ivy.” Then, he returned to his friend. “And this is Carter. We met in London.” Lex returned to his spot next to Miri. “Come. Sit.”

“Actually,” she cut in, “Ivy and I need to talk.”

“No, it’s okay, Miri,” I said, suddenly intrigued by this Carter guy and specifically what about him made Lex anxious? I mean, he was gorgeous, sure, but something had gotten under Lex’s skin. “I’m curious how you two know each other. You said you met in London?”

“Yeah, we were friends of friends,” Lex said as Carter lowered into the seat next to me. He smelled like outside and cigarette smoke, and he had this artsy frat boy vibe about him that drew me in like a child in a fairy tale who had discovered a house made of candy.

Carter told us the story about the pub and the girl with the ex-boyfriend, but I returned my attention to Lex, watching for his reaction. When Carter got to the part about going back to the girl’s place and getting kicked out by her father, Lex licked his lips and one of his eyebrows twitched.

There. Right there.

X might have marked my lie, but Lex’s eyes gave him away every damn time. Now, I was very curious. Still, I’d just met Carter, and I was lonely without Miri and fueled by hatred for Lex, so after Carter finished his tale, I gathered my books and stood.

“Well, I have an audition in an hour so…Nice to meet you, Carter,” I said. “Miri, I’ll talk to you back at our room. Lex, go fall off a cliff.”

“Audition?” Carter asked. “You’re trying out for the winter play?”

“Yeah, my mother says it’ll help with my stage fright. I doubt they’ll cast me. They usually don’t cast freshmen, but we’ll see.” I threw my bag over my shoulder to leave, but Carter stood, too.

“My audition’s at 2:30. I’ll walk with you.”

“Wait,” Lex cut in. “You’re doing theater on top of poli-sci?”

“That’s what double major means, himbo,” I snarled.

Lex rubbed at the back of his head, looking between Carter and me, but I didn’t wait around for any more of his commentary.

“I take it you and DC don’t get along, huh?” Carter asked once we were outside, strolling across the courtyard toward the theater building.

“He’s an ass.”

“Oh, he’s not so bad.” Carter straightened and pulled his lips into a knowing grin.

“You’ve known him one night. I’ve known him eighteen years. Come talk to me then.”

He grinned, and a wicked girlish lust shot through me at the hint of his dimples. He was incredibly attractive and so fucking kind, all the alarms I had about not getting involved with anyone blared deep in the recesses of my mind. Carter would spell trouble with a capital T, and I didn’t want any part of that. Still, I couldn’t deny his appeal, and I desperately wanted to know the history between him and Lex.

“What monologue are you doing?” he asked, changing the subject.

We talked like drama nerds the rest of the way there. He told me about his time in the Royal Theater Company and how he’d wanted to act ever since he knew what it meant. He planned to go to LA after graduation to do it for real. TW had an amazing theater program and counted several award winners among its alumni. He talked about his younger sisters with such deep abiding affection, especially the youngest, Lizzie. It reminded me of how I felt about my sister Abigail, and I bonded with him about being the oldest and feeling responsible for the rest.

“I try to protect them from my old man,” he said.

“Me too. With my mom, I mean.” Fuck, we had so much in common, and I’d known him twenty minutes.

“Yeah, I can imagine that might suck—being the president’s kid.”

“It’s not fun.” Even if I couldn’t deny my privilege. I’d been afforded more than most because of it. “Most of the time.”

He smiled. “My dad thinks me wanting to be an actor is a joke. Like I’m wasting my energy.” He rolled those gorgeous dark blue eyes. “Which only makes me want to do it more, you know? To prove his ass wrong.”

I sighed. “My mother thinks doing this will get me more comfortable with my future role in politics. I didn’t get much of a choice either way.”

“I promise it’s not too scary,” he said. “Just imagine the audience naked.”

My cheeks burned, and I widened my eyes at the mental image, nearly tripping over my own two feet. “That’s—uh—that’s not likely to help.”

He laughed, and pride flooded the center of my chest, making me yearn for that sound again. I liked making him smile, too. For all that he joked about everything else, Carter took school seriously. He was here on a scholarship, so he couldn’t fuck it up. His look and his genuine personality initially attracted me to him, but when I found out he had goals and aspirations, I nearly wilted from how hard my thighs trembled. Eighteen-year-old boys usually only had one thing on their minds, and it wasn’t a career plan.

We auditioned together and even ran a few scenes at the request of the director. He thanked us for our time and dismissed us, but a natural, easy chemistry had blossomed between us on stage, almost as if it had been there all along. After it was over, we hit up the Shake Shack and figured out we were in a lot of the same classes. We even lived in the same dorm, two floors apart from each other. We agreed to study together and share notes so we could do half the work for all the grade. In a matter of a few hours, Carter Scott had weaseled his way into my life easier than anyone before him.

“If we get cast, we’ll run lines together, too,” he said.

“You’re assuming I have all this time to spend with you, Chicago,” I said, mocking Lex’s nickname for him as I took a sip of my smoothie.

“I’m a straight-A student, and I don’t fuck around with my study partners. If I promise you something, I’ll deliver.”

I snorted a laugh. “Are we still talking about homework?” I said it before I could stop myself, realizing too late it sounded awkward and weird.

But Carter smiled and wiped at my bottom lip with his thumb, coming away with a bit of milkshake. “Even if we weren’t…” He winked, sucking his finger between his lips. “I’d deliver on that, too.”

We locked eyes and the smile faded from my lips as his meaning settled somewhere around my clit. How I must have looked to him—mouth open in surprise, cheeks bright fucking red, and the X on my neck burned against my windpipe. I put a hand over it to cover it up.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“Catch?” He pushed a chip into his mouth.

“Yeah, the catch. Beautiful, smart, charming. No one has it all.” I narrowed my eyes at him again. “There’s got to be a catch.”

“C’mon. It’s the same as you, Miss Double Major.” The knowing judgment in his indigo eyes rocked through me, making me tremble. “Ambition, Ivy. That’s the catch.”

* * *

Making up with Miri came easily, and even though I could see their mutual affection for each other in everything they did, it still bugged me she’d willingly spend her time with Lex Fairfax. Or touch him. Or kiss him. Or fuck him. I understood why we couldn’t carry on the way we had at Mount Oberon, especially not now that she was seeing someone else, but it chafed all the same.

“He’s different with me,” she said. “I think I’m in love with him.”

And that only made me more frustrated.

In love? With Lex?

“What happened to the Miri who wanted to stay single forever and retire to her country estate with fifteen dogs and a house full of plants?”

She laughed, making me want to pull her close just so I could feel its breathy weight on my skin. “That’s still the fifty-year plan, but I want to live a little first and fall in love, over and over again. Right now, it’s Lex.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Can you accept that?”

“Of course,” I told her, softening at her touch. At the end of the day, I loved her. I’d always love her. I wanted her to be happy. If for some stupid reason that was with Lex, much good may it do her.

But after a few months, it annoyed me to spend any length of time with them. They’d kiss or cuddle and wrap their arms around each other, and he’d be so sweet with her, like he wasn’t the goddamned Anti-Christ. It made me burn with an unquenchable fury. What was so great about Lex that Miri would rather spend her time with him? What was so great about Miri that Lex could treat her with such gentleness?

If I didn’t have Carter, I would have holed up in my dorm room and never come out again. True to his word, he delivered on his study partner promises. We got bit parts in the winter show, and we ran our lines together every night before bed. We shared notes from lectures and went through each other’s homework, and more than once, he’d fallen asleep in Miri’s bed only to wake us up an hour before class so we could do it all over again.

On the weekends, he forced me out of my comfort zone.

“People are generally good, Weeds,” he insisted. I loved the nickname, a play on my first name, which he described as an invasive species that spread until it choked the life out of anything in its path. I suppose he saw a similarity.

“Not when all they want to do is take pictures of you and sell them to magazines,” I said. “And the longer you hang out with me, the worse it’ll be for you.”

He gave me a look that said he was unconvinced. “Dude, let them see. I don’t give a shit.”

“But I do,” I said. “Everything I do now, it’ll come back to haunt me someday.”

“Who told you that?”

“My mother.” I put on my jacket, even as I insisted I didn’t want to go. “She’s usually right about these sorts of things.”

“So what if she is?” He shrugged. “One day, you’ll be old and look back on your time in college and wish you’d done whatever made you happy.”

“Who told you that?” I mocked his tone.

“My mother. You’re only young once.” He gave me that panty-dropper grin and his eyes twinkled with mischief and innuendo, sending a tremble down my spine that I tried to hide. In the time we’d spent together, Carter and I had done nothing more than flirt. I wanted to think I was special to him, that we had something he didn’t have with anyone else. But once I got to know him better, I realized that’s just who he was. He flirted with everyone. I learned not to take anything he said or did personally.

Even in moments like this, where his eyes shimmered down at me like I hung the stars in the sky, like I was the only girl in the fucking universe. Then the moment passed and we went back to being friends.

Carter took off his baseball cap and put it on my head, brim forward.

“There,” he said. “Completely unrecognizable. Almost as good as Clark Kent. Let’s go.”

The first time he went home with another girl, I pretended it didn’t bother me. I even looked around the party for a suitable option for me to take back to my place, but no one wanted to fuck the daughter of a former president, and at this point, I was too afraid to admit the only person I’d ever let in my pants had been Miri. At the end of each and every night, I went back to my dorm alone and watched Golden Girls until I passed out.

Carter went through girl after girl. Sometimes, they’d hang around for a week or two, but he dismissed them as soon as they started talking about getting serious. Carter meant what he said about being ambitious; he didn’t plan on letting a relationship get in the way.

Once or twice, I’d even caught him flirting with Miri—hugging too long, laughing too loud, touching and talking in a way that made my skin itch. As much as the friendship between them bordered on inappropriate at times, it never went any further. Whether that was because she was with Lex or she suspected how I’d started to feel about him, I’d never know.

By the end of spring semester, I was certain I’d been friend-zoned, and Carter had no interest in me aside from our scholastic partnership. Even if an undercurrent of wanton undeniable adoration always simmered between us, neither of us acted on it.

“Hey, Weeds,” he said on the morning of our Econ final. “Get up.”

I cracked my eyes open and focused on him, standing in front of me wearing a towel and nothing else. Water dripped down the front of his body and over the curves of his abs in delicious rivulets, and my tongue damn near fell out of my head, aching to lick every last drop.

“Enjoying the view?”

God. Yes.

“You’re the one prancing around a girl’s room wearing only a towel.” I stretched my arms high over my head. “How else should I react to the sight of a beautiful naked man first thing in the morning?” I blamed a blatant lack of caffeine for my uninhibited tongue.

“I can think of a few ways,” he murmured.

“Name the one you want the most.” Sure, that bordered on risqué, especially for me first thing in the morning, but I gave him a Cheshire grin when his cheeks turned bright rosy pink and he hung his head between his shoulders. Only I got this reaction from him, this bashful, unfiltered Carter. Everyone else saw the confident lady killer. I could make him blush. A yearning twist of warmth radiated down the center of my torso at the thought, licking the space between my thighs in the worst way.

He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose, pulling his lips into a thin line. The tension shifted between us, and what once had been playful now turned stifling with all the months of saying it wasn’t like that when sometimes it could never be anything but that.

I wanted to kiss him so bad it hurt, but I was afraid I’d lose him as a friend if it didn’t work out. What if I made the first move, and he rejected me? He might only pretend to like me the way Marcus had, the way Lex teased me about. He might only want me once and never again.

“We have a final in an hour,” Carter said. “Get up.”

“Whoa,” Lex shouted, walking into the room without knocking. The door banged off the wall behind it and sprung back on him. “Did you two finally blow up that friend zone?”

“Ignore him, darling. We’re only here for my biology book.” Miri came in behind him and ran her eyes over Carter before looking at me and raising an eyebrow. “Unless he’s correct?”

“Shut up, Lex,” I said. “Carter and I have a final. That’s all.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Lex said.

“Har har.” I sneered at him and ran my hands over my face to more fully wake up. Lex and Carter talked about a party they wanted to go tonight, the last party of the year, and Miri searched around her desk for her book while I pushed myself upright.

“Layla’s coming, too,” Carter said.

“Layla?” My stomach dropped.

“Yeah, Layla McIntire. Junior. Brunette,” he said.

I knew who Layla McIntire was. I just didn’t know Carter knew who she was. “Why is she coming with you?”

“Because Carter’s hoping she’ll put his penis in her mouth.” Lex used a patronizing tone that made my fingers curl into a fist, the one that sounded like he was talking to a child. “Unlike you, X, some of us want to get laid.”

I glared at him, a million comebacks bubbling through my mind, but I’d promised Miri I’d make an attempt to be nicer to him. She hated when we fought.

“Hey,” Miri cut in, pointing at him. “You said you’d be nice, Alexei.”

“Yeah, back off, dude. Ivy gets laid.” Sweet, sweet Carter. Always jumping to my defense.

“No, it’s okay, Carter,” I said, “let the Neanderthal think the only reason to be nice to someone is because you want to fuck them.”

“Which gives you enough reason not to be nice to anyone, right?” Lex said. “No one is good enough for Ivy Washington.”

“That sounds like jealousy,” Carter cut in.

“That’s not what it’s about, Lex.” I ignored Carter’s attempt at dissipating the tension between us. “No one can make me come as hard as my vibrator, so why waste my time?”

I regretted it as soon as I said it. Miri shot me a look, a momentary wince behind her eyes that she quickly pushed away.

Fuck.

I didn’t mean it like that, but now that I’d said it, I couldn’t take it back without making it more awkward.

“And that,” Carter said, pointing to me, “sounds like a challenge.”

My cheeks flamed harder, but Lex barked out a laugh, and Miri giggled to herself, pushing another set of papers out of the way.

“But we’ve got a final, and I gotta get dressed. Not necessarily in that order.” Carter backed toward the door and waved goodbye to Lex and Miri before shooting me one last look full of the heat that had been there before we were interrupted. “Meet me downstairs in thirty, okay?”