Summer’s Never Over

Chapter Twenty-Six #2

This was it. I could feel it; we were standing on the precipice of two very different outcomes.

I could deflect, evade, refuse to answer.

Do what I did best. And Trevor would stand, stretch, and politely tell me he was headed to bed.

In two days he’d go back to Colorado, and I might never see him again.

My other option was to simply follow the terms I’d agreed to. If I kept being honest with him, I could stay. Margo had said over and over that I was a liar. Maybe that was true—but I was so tired of lying to Trevor. I would tell him as much of the truth as I could bear.

“We’re trying to solve a murder.” I closed my eyes. “Maybe two.”

For a moment, the only sounds were the cicadas buzzing, and a soft but steady wind that had begun rippling through the trees.

“What are you talking about?”

“Let me start from the beginning. I never told anyone this. I couldn’t. But—that summer—it was Steph. She was the Phantom.”

I didn’t look at him as I told him the whole awful story, what I’d confided in Margo. When I finished, Trevor didn’t speak for a long moment. Finally, I dared to turn back to him. Shadows danced across his face.

“Are you mad at me? For not telling you?”

“I’m not mad,” he said. “Surprised, maybe. But not angry. It feels so long ago now…. Doesn’t do me much good to be mad at you for something like that.”

He gave a long sigh, still seemed to be considering. “And maybe I’m a little sad, too, that you didn’t feel like you could tell me any of this. Maybe if you had…”

“I wish I could go back in time. To that summer. Even just the day of the fire, if I could have…I don’t know, if I could have warned her, if I hadn’t…”

Trevor reached for my hand for real this time, getting far enough as to actually lace his fingers with mine, and the touch surprised me so much that I literally jumped out of my chair, and made a high-pitched sound that was somewhere between a squeal and a yelp.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Old habits, I guess.”

“So,” I continued, ignoring the way I could still feel the warmth of his fingers. “I think she may have found something—I don’t know what—that put a target on her back. That made someone…”

“Start the fire?”

I only looked at him.

Trevor shook his head, his hair falling in his face.

“I always thought it had to be the simplest answer. Figured it was some high school campers, showing off for each other. Even that shit down at the waterfront—just campers behaving badly. Trying to look cool, or whatever. And I always believed your mom, what she said about the fire. I remember the lightning that night. It just seemed…like the world’s worst timing.

Like your mom couldn’t catch a break, you know?

Rowdy campers and then a horrible act of nature. ”

“And what do you think now?”

“I don’t know. It’s a lot to process. What was her endgame? What was the point of all of it?”

“She was trying to find her mom,” I whispered into the night.

It wasn’t an excuse, but it was all I had to cling to.

Not because I thought she was perfect, as Margo had claimed, but because she was my friend.

Even now, after everything, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“Margo told me that she was looking for her mom, Trevor. Her mom was here.”

He blinked at me. “That summer?”

“No, when we were younger. I mean, when we were really young. Her parents met at Dread’s Cove.

She was here as a baby, like me and Chelsea.

And her mother, Winona, was best friends with my mom.

” I shuddered at the visceral memory of finding that photo of all of us together—darkly, I wondered how soon after that she’d vanished.

“I never knew about her. My mom never told me about her best friend, and Steph didn’t tell me about her mother.

But she’s why Steph came here. Because her mom disappeared, almost thirty years ago now, and she was trying to figure out what happened to her.

We think that her mom…that she didn’t leave of her own free will.

And we’re wondering if—whatever she knew, whatever secret she had that made someone angry enough to get rid of her—that Steph found that same secret.

That maybe she was even killed for it.” By the time I finished speaking, my voice was a shriveled thing, barely audible.

“The real truth is that…I don’t give a shit about the story.

Not really. I just want to know what happened.

To both of them. And maybe that’s unfair of me.

Maybe that…maybe that’s actually terrible.

” I felt tears start to blur the edges of my vision, but I pressed on.

“But I have to believe that it’s the right thing to do.

I have to stop pretending that nothing fucked-up happened here, you know? ”

“Damn,” Trevor said at last. I pursed my lips in agreement. A few tears leaked from my eyes, and I rubbed them away gruffly with my sleeve.

“Okay, so that’s that. Another topic, please.”

Trevor looked like he wanted to argue with me. But I really didn’t want to start openly weeping on his back porch. Not when, just for a few minutes, things almost felt okay between us. Not quite as broken as they’d felt for so long.

I made a hard pivot: “Your turn. Rig said you were looking for me earlier. Why?”

“To check on you.” He seemed to be considering his next words carefully. “And because I miss you.”

I huffed a breath, feeling dangerously lightheaded.

It was either from Trevor, the drink, the stupid deal we’d made, or my rapidly decreasing sense of self-preservation.

But the words just spilled out before I had a chance to be smart.

“I’ve missed you every day for the past four years.

Whenever I make a new drink, I always wish you were there to try it first. I don’t even do our same old walking path anymore. It makes me too sad, walking it alone.”

Trevor’s gaze was searing as I asked, “How’s that for honesty?”

I reached for my glass again, but his hand clasped mine before I could grab it.

His thumb ran its way down the back of my wrist, and I shivered involuntarily. “Go on, then. This is good. Tell me everything else you’ve been wanting to say to me. I can take it.”

I took a labored breath, my pulse vibrating beneath my skin. “Well, your hair is way too long,” I began. “You look like you’re in a boy band. And not a good one.”

Trevor barked a laugh, the sound loud enough that it echoed. “Fair enough. Anything else?”

This was growing dangerous, fast. But I couldn’t stop.

It’s like I’d uncorked a shaken-up bottle, and everything was spilling over, entirely uncontrolled.

“I’m so fucking mad at you,” I said. “You didn’t even tell me you were coming.

For two weeks, I wondered—and then you were here, and it’s just so unfair. ”

“What do you mean? What’s unfair?” His thumb was still stroking my wrist.

“You have to know how I feel about you. How it destroyed me when you left me behind. And you come back here when my life is a complete shit show and surprise me and it’s just completely fucked.

You let me in your cabin for a nightcap when we both know this is stupid, very stupid, but I don’t even care, because all I want to do is—”

I clapped my free hand over my mouth, but it was too late. And the worst part was, I couldn’t even make myself regret it. I didn’t want to take it back. There was something so terribly refreshing about telling the truth.

The humor between us evaporated even more quickly than it had arrived, and then it was just Trevor and me, holding hands on his back porch, when no one else in the world was around.

It all felt so precarious. Fragile as glass, like even one breath could shatter everything.

“I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “You’re the one who ended things. If you still felt—still feel—”

“Wait,” I choked out. “That is not what happened. You broke up with me.”

We stared at each other. Finally, Trevor shook his head, slow and deliberate.

“That’s not true. You told me it was over. That night, in your apartment. You were very clear that you didn’t want me anymore. That I was too much.”

I stood up, overcome with adrenaline, and pushed back from the table.

“No, I told you I couldn’t do it, Trevor.

That I couldn’t move away. I was drowning in so much guilt and sadness that I didn’t know how to process—still don’t know how to process—and I just froze.

The thought of leaving Georgia was just—I couldn’t stand it. ”

Trevor’s eyes were round, his pupils blown wide. “When you said you couldn’t do it, I thought…I thought you meant that you couldn’t do this.” He gestured between us. “That you couldn’t do a relationship anymore. That you were done with me.”

“No,” I said. “No, no, no.” I was keyed up now, replaying that awful night with entirely fresh eyes.

It had been three days before we were scheduled to leave for Boulder, and I was a mess.

But it felt like he didn’t even care, because he was so excited.

He’d come by after his shift, and started talking through a bunch of details—hotels he’d booked for the drive, his start date in two weeks—and I’d gotten so overwhelmed that it all spilled out at once.

I’d started to cry, and he’d asked me what was wrong.

That was when I’d said those words that had sealed everything: I don’t think I can do this.

He’d gone white as a ghost. “Are you serious?”

“I’m…not ready,” I’d said, wringing my hands. “It’s too much, too fast.”

He’d given me a curt nod, his expression closing me out like his hard drive was shutting down. “Okay. Got it. Wow. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“This is a lot for me, and it’s just not—it’s not what I want. I’m sorry.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I wish you’d told me you were second-guessing everything.”

“Well, you didn’t fucking ask me.”

We sat frozen for a moment, both of us shocked by my outburst.

“If that’s what you want, then—then I’ll send you back your half of the deposit.”

It had felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the air through a vacuum. “Hold on. Just like that? You don’t even want to…talk about this? About us?”

“What else is there to say? If you don’t want to do this, then I guess that’s it, right?”

A shocking clarity had rolled over me like a tidal wave. He was going to leave for Colorado, with or without me. Move into the apartment, start the job, live the life. I was the least important part of the equation. I was disposable. Easy to leave behind.

Sitting there, my dad had flashed through my mind. How unimportant I’d been to him, all those years ago. How unimportant I was to Trevor now.

“Okay,” I’d breathed, digging my fingernails so hard into the tops of my thighs that I thought I might draw blood.

“Okay,” he’d said back to me. He’d looked at me for one long, heart-crushing moment, as if daring me to say anything else. “Take care of yourself, Greer.” And then he was gone.

The Trevor of this present moment, who was back at Dread’s Cove with me, the dregs of my gin drink in front of him, was slack-jawed and trembling.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “We fucked up.”

There was a ringing in my ears. It seemed like my whole life was being unraveled and restrung in front of me. “I thought you left me.”

“I thought you wanted me to.”

I shut my eyes tight, felt the tears start to trickle down my face anyway. “In what universe would I have ever wanted you to leave without me? I loved you. You were the only thing. The only good thing.”

Trevor rubbed a fist to his eye, and my stomach swooped, because I knew he was crying now, too.

“You’d just been so sad. So detached. No matter what I tried to do, you kept pulling further and further away.

And then when I suggested moving, and you agreed, I thought that I’d finally gotten through to you.

That a fresh start was going to be good for you, for both of us. ”

He leaned forward on his elbows, knocking his drink in the process.

The ice shook in the glass, the sound reverberating between us.

“But then when you said you couldn’t do it, that it was too much, it was like I went into free fall.

I realized I’d been so stupid. You hadn’t gone along with the plan because you wanted to—you’d just done it to appease me.

When it came down to it, when the rubber met the road—you didn’t want a future with me. Because I wasn’t good enough for you.”

Every word was like a bullet in my chest. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I had no idea that was what you thought. You were more than good enough. You were perfect. Far, far better than me.” I dropped back into my chair, exhausted, letting my head fall into my hands as I began to sob.

And then he was there, scooting his chair around the table, close enough to me now that our knees were touching. His fingers ghosted along my chin, and I leaned into it. “I think about you every day. I still love you. So much.”

“Don’t lie.” My voice was shaking. My brain was malfunctioning.

“I can’t, remember? That’s the rule.”

My head pitched forward so that my forehead rested against his shoulder, and his free hand snaked its way up my back, resting lightly at the base of my neck.

“Please don’t leave,” I said into his shirt. “I can’t handle you leaving again.”

His breath tickled my ear as he spoke. “I won’t. I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever will make you feel better. Just tell me. Let me make it up to you. I’m desperate to make it up to you.”

I don’t know what I want, I’d said to him only a few minutes ago. That had changed.

“You can stay,” he breathed, the words soft and reverent.

I shot up from my chair again, so quickly I almost stumbled, and Trevor followed my lead. He tugged at his collar, shaking his head like he was coming out of a trance, before giving me a formal nod.

“Sorry, that was out of line. I’ll walk you back, just—”

“Shut up now, Trevor,” I said, lacing my fingers through his.

“I’m serious. Stop talking. Do not say anything else.

” Somewhere in the woods beyond us, a twig snapped.

In the back of my mind, I wondered if someone was out there, watching.

The match, and the broken window, and LEAVE, BITCH all flashed through my mind.

But I pushed them down, because I didn’t want to worry anymore.

I wanted to be right here, in this singular moment.

I didn’t want to be scared, and I didn’t want to be alone.

Trevor paused only for a second before he opened the back door, and I led him inside, down the hallway toward his room, and everything felt old and new again all at once.