（twenty-six days ago）
Los Angeles
I was driving home from yoga one sunny morning in July when my phone dinged with a text from Summer.
I’m back, where are you?
I couldn’t remember where she’d gone—it had become hard to keep up with where in the world she and John were hopscotching to. She’d breeze in for a day here or there, dropping nuggets of her new life: a Cartier watch on the bathroom sink, a story about dinner with a famously conservative senator and his “ladyboy” girlfriend in Bangkok, a VIP security pass for the palace of an oil-rich dictator not known for his human rights record. Every time I was tempted to feel envious, I reminded myself of the part of herself she’d traded for a seat on that jet.
I was more than a little vexed that she was yet to officially move out of my apartment, but after what happened with Three—which both of us still felt was at least somewhat my fault—I didn’t feel like I could be too pushy. I’d seen very little of her over the past few months, anyway—and though she still wasn’t paying rent, she was very generous with her loot, gifting me designer clothes John didn’t like and even a little round Gucci bag I absolutely adored. She mostly stayed with John in Beverly Hills when they weren’t jet-setting, and I’d been busy bartending at a new bar and hustling acting jobs—whatever came my way—trying to eke out a living.
I’d met John twice. The first time was just in passing while lying by the pool with Summer at his Beverly Hills mansion, but the second was a month or so ago at an awkward dinner with Summer, Wendy, and Claire that none of us besides Summer knew he’d be attending. He showed up after we’d ordered and sat with us for a torturous thirty minutes, during which he interviewed us like job candidates while one of his goons lingered at the bar behind us, before dropping his card and decamping. When I’d asked Summer about it, she’d demurred. “Oh, he’s heard so much about you guys; he just wanted to meet you.”
The following week she sentthe three of us a photo of herself sunning on his yacht:
Who wants to join me here for my birthday?
An official invitation to Summer’s birthday trip arrived a few days later, in the form of an email from John’s travel coordinator, coupled with a request for our passport information. It turned out John actually had been interviewing us at that dinner—apparently we’d passed. “I told him you guys were beautiful and amazing,” Summer confided the next time I saw her, “but he’s super particular about his image, so he had to see for himself. My mom and sis are coming, but between us, I have to buy them all new outfits for the trip.”
Though I was still having trouble getting on board with Summer’s May–December romance, I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of an all-expenses-paid trip to the Mediterranean aboard a yacht. Sure, it was her sugar daddy’s yacht, and I realized the trip wouldn’t likely be exactly what I would imagine for myself…but still, a yacht. The Riviera. Hell yes.
When I got home from yoga, I found my door partially open and Summer in the living room, throwing things into a new, oversize Louis Vuitton suitcase that matched her overnight bag. “Hi!” she said brightly. “I texted you.”
“I was driving. What’s up?”
“John has to work in the Middle East the next few weeks, and I can’t accompany him, so he got me a beach house in Malibu.” Hallelujah, she’d finally gotten her own place. It was all I could do not to break into song. “Wanna come out for the night? Or the weekend?”
A beach house, a yacht trip…I had to admit there were definitely perks to having a rich friend. “You know, I think my schedule just cleared up.” I smiled.
“Great!” She clapped her hands. “Because the house is ridiculous. And it comes with a wine cellar that he had an assistant stock. Only thing is, you’ll have to drive because my car’s at the garage.”
We sped up the coast with the windows down, singing along at top volume to blaring nineties pop songs the entire way. It had been a while since we’d had that much fun together, and it felt good––like old times, almost. When we pulled up to the house, Wendy’s SUV was already parked outside. “What up, sluts?” she said. “This place looks incredible.”
“I thought you had to work tonight,” Summer goaded.
“Yeah, I did until I pulled up pictures of this place,” Wendy divulged. “Also, AssPlay is going to be there, and I really don’t want to see him.”
“Remind me who is AssPlay?” Summer whispered as we pulled into the garage.
“Who do you think? The guy she dated last year that was so into playing with her ass. You met him. She brought him to my birthday party.”
Summer snorted. “Must not have been memorable.”
The house was a large modern affair, made almost completely of glass and situated directly on the beach. Every room had wall-to-wall views of the ocean, and sliding glass doors stretched across the front of the house. We immediately pushed them open, letting in the ocean air and the sound of the crashing waves.
“How long do you have this place?” I asked. “Because I figure you’ve stayed with me what, a year? So I can move in at least that long, right?”
She laughed. “I have it for the rest of the summer. But I don’t know…maybe I’ll keep it. Although it might get kinda lonely in the winter. And you can stay here as much as you want, as long as John’s not in town.”
“And you guys clearly need me to keep you company,” Wendy chimed in. “This house would feel empty with just the two of you.”
Summer opened the refrigerator, which was stocked with neatly organized rows of water, fruit, wine, snacks, and prepackaged meals from Whole Foods.
“There’s a person who comes and cleans and stocks the fridge and takes my dry cleaning and everything,” Summer dished. “Wine? What should we drink, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, or rosé?”
“Rosé!” Wendy and I answered in unison.
Summer collected the glasses and Wendy poured while I prepared us a plate of cheese, crackers, and fruit. Summer’s phone buzzed on the counter. “Ugh. Eric.” She silenced it.
I knew he was currently in town for a show—he’d invited me, but I’d turned him down. I’d stonewalled him for a couple of weeks after that awkward morning when he showed up at my apartment, but once I understood how serious John and Summer were, I relaxed my stance and gradually resumed communication. He’d been in town a few times since, but I had yet to see him. It was much easier not to be attracted to him when he wasn’t in front of me.
“He won’t leave me alone,” Summer complained. “This is the thirteenth time he’s called this week. I tried to tell him it was over last time I saw him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Funny, he’d told me just the opposite. But then, why was he calling her?
“He may not have taken you seriously if you were telling him while having sex with him,” Wendy teased.
“Have you told Eric there’s someone else?” I asked.
“No,” Summer admitted. “I was kinda hoping I wouldn’t have to.”
“You gotta tell him,” Wendy said. “You don’t want John finding out.”
Eric already knew. I’d accidentally told him months ago, not realizing it was a secret—a fact I didn’t share with Summer for obvious reasons. He’d been relieved to hear that Summer was in a serious relationship, but that had been the extent of our conversation about it. We didn’t discuss details, and in fact, we hadn’t talked about Summer since—and Summer hadn’t said a word about Eric to me, either. So while I’d assumed the two of them had stopped seeing each other, I now realized I could be totally wrong.
“I didn’t know you guys were still seeing each other,” I said casually.
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, it’s been a while ’cause I’ve been so busy with John, but he’s never given up. He’s always begging me to come out to New York for the weekend.”
Okay, clearly one of them was lying. I just couldn’t understand why. I was dying to ask more, but didn’t want to raise Summer’s suspicions, so I backed off.
Later that night, Summer, Wendy, and I were curled up on leather recliners in the velvet-curtained movie theater watching The Great Gatsby when Summer’s phone rang again. She groaned. “It’s Eric.”
“Answer,” Wendy said.
“You guys can keep watching. I’ve seen this a million times.” She answered the phone as she exited the room, shutting the door behind her.
The movie had ended by the time she returned, her mascara streaked and her face puffy. “How’d it go?” Wendy asked.
“Not good. He already knew, and even knew who John was. That’s why he’s been calling nonstop—”
“Wait. How did he know who John was?” I asked, confused. I was certain I hadn’t told him.
“Have you guys been photographed together or something? Or was he one of Eric’s buyers?” Wendy guessed.
“No,” Summer said, pacing in circles around the furniture. “But it’s not like we haven’t gone out in public, to restaurants or whatever.”
“So someone who knows Eric saw you with John and told him?” I asked. The idea seemed a bit far-fetched. The world of the rich might be small, but John and Eric didn’t exactly travel in the same circles.
Summer waved the question away, clearly annoyed at my pursuit of this line of questioning. “I don’t know.…He wouldn’t say exactly. Anyway, what does it matter? The important—”
“I’d wanna know—”
“Belle!” She spun to face me. “Can you just listen instead of interrupting me all the time with stupid questions?”
Suddenly it hit me: she knew perfectly well who’d told Eric. She just didn’t want us to know. Which of course only piqued my curiosity. But in the interest of preserving the peace, I raised my palms. “Sorry.”
“Anyway”—Summer paused as if trying to remember what she’d been saying—“the point is, he was very upset.” She sank into a chair. “He kept saying how I betrayed him and I’m just into John for the money and he hates me. He threatened to tell John everything.”
Wendy’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
It was hard to know how much of Summer’s story to believe. Even if she and Eric had still been seeing each other regularly, I’d have had a hard time buying him losing his mind over her dating someone else, and now that they weren’t in any way together, it just seemed bizarre.
“But what can he say to John?” Wendy asked. “You had only just met him last time you saw Eric, and you haven’t been with Eric since things became serious.”
“John’s jealous as it is,” Summer moaned. “He’ll dump me on my ass and cut my salary, take back my car, make my life a living hell.” She bit her lip. “Also, I did see Eric again, in New York a few months ago.”
I wondered if that was the time I knew about or yet another incident. Maybe I didn’t know Eric as well as I thought. “But how is Eric going to get in touch with John, and what is he going to tell him that proves you’ve seen him while you were together?” I asked.
“He’s smart. I’m sure he can get in touch with him if he wants to. And there are emails, text messages, pictures.…God I’m so stupid! How could I be so stupid! What am I gonna do?”
A desperation I hadn’t heard before had crept into her voice. And yet still I was not entirely convinced by her story. “How did you leave it with Eric?”
She sighed. “We were yelling at each other, and he hung up on me. Then he called back, but I didn’t answer.”
“Oh man,” Wendy said. “This is bad.”
Wendy and Summer spent the rest of the evening analyzing the situation from every angle while I did my best to participate in the conversation amiably, all the while unable to shake the feeling that Summer was at best omitting details. Even if my gut instincts about Eric were wrong and he had in fact freaked out on her for dating John, it was still obvious she was covering something up. But what—and why? We were her friends, who could surely help her better if she’d tell us the truth.
I finally crashed around two in the morning, my mind made up to call Eric the next day and hear his side of the story. I knew it was a betrayal of Summer’s trust, but then, what trust? If she trusted me, she’d have told me what was actually going on. Maybe I’d find she was, in fact, telling the truth, and then I’d have to face that reality—but I could no longer pretend to have blind faith in Summer.
In the morning I woke to the sound of my bedroom door opening. Summer was silhouetted in the doorway wearing black Lulus, her hair pulled into a ponytail under a baseball cap.
“You going hiking?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“I’m going to the desert to stay with Rhonda for a few days,” she replied. “Eric won’t be able to find me there.”
“Okay.” I fumbled for my phone on the bedside table, but it wasn’t there. I must have left it downstairs last night. “What time is it?”
“Eight,” she said, approaching the bed. As she drew closer, I noticed her normally rosy cheeks were pale, her eyes rimmed by dark circles.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I need your car. Please, you know Wendy will never let me borrow hers.”
“But I need my car,” I protested, pushing myself up to sitting.
Her hand trembled as she placed a set of keys on the bedside table. “You can use mine till I’m back. I texted you the address of the garage and the code to get in. It’s way nicer than yours anyway. You’ll like driving it. And Wendy can drop you. It’s near her place.”
Too tired to fight, I acquiesced. “Okay. Just don’t wreck it.”
“You should hope I do. I’d make John buy you something better.” She jingled my keys. “Thank you. You’re the best. Love you, babe.”
She blew me a kiss and quietly closed the door behind her.
When I woke again, it was to blinding brightness as the automated blackout shades slowly rose, letting in the glaring sun and pounding surf. I buried my head under a pillow, only to have it removed by Wendy.
“You sadist,” I grumbled.
“Rise and shine,” she chirped. “I gotta get back.”
“I need a ride.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m gonna shower up. Can you be ready in thirty?”
I was unable to reach Eric when I called him later that afternoon, and he didn’t respond to my messages, either. Summer was unreachable, too, and as unlikely as it seemed, I couldn’t help but wonder if the two of them had reconciled and run off together.
When we still hadn’t heard from Summer by the next day, Wendy and I were both a little worried. We’d left messages, texted, and emailed, but she hadn’t replied to either of us, so finally I called Rhonda.
“Hi, Rhonda, it’s Belle,” I said when she answered. “Is Summer there?”
“Hi, Belle!” she said brightly. “Yeah, Summer’s here.”
“Oh, good!”
“Yeah, she’s been here since lunch yesterday.” Rhonda continued before I could say anything more. “We don’t get great cell service out here, so she probably didn’t get your messages.”
“Is she around?”
“She’s down at the pool right now, but I’ll tell her you called.”
“Can you tell her to call me back?”
But she’d already hung up.
The next day, Wendy and I were waiting in the shade of a cabana by her deserted rooftop pool when Summer arrived. She was wearing big sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, and I could tell immediately that her energy was off. She started to undo the ties that held the curtains on the pool side of the cabana open, muttering something about wanting privacy.
“Come on, it’s hot. We need the breeze,” Wendy protested. “And anyway, we’re the only people crazy enough to be up here in this heat wave.”
Summer looked over her shoulder, sighed, and sat on the edge of my lounger. “Can I get a sip of your water?”
I noticed she was shaking as I handed her the bottle, her normally manicured nails ragged. “What is going on?”
She took a long swill of water. “It’s Eric.”
“What happened?” Wendy asked.
“He was acting crazy, so I just told him I needed time to think and went to my mom’s and turned off my phone.” Her words came out too quickly, tumbling over one another. “Then, when I turn it back on this morning, I get this email he’d sent day before yesterday, saying goodbye.”
Wendy furrowed her brow. “Goodbye?”
Summer picked at her cuticles intently. “That if he can’t be with me, life isn’t worth living.”
“Wait, what ?” I gasped.
Unable to sit still, she pushed herself to standing and paced back and forth, cracking her knuckles. “Like, he was gonna kill himself.” Her voice shook. “And now I can’t get in touch with him. His phone goes straight to voice mail, and the text messages are going through green instead of blue—like his phone is turned off or he’s out of range.”
No. This couldn’t be real. Eric wouldn’t kill himself. And certainly not over Summer. I knew he wouldn’t.
Or did I? He’d done a lot of things I couldn’t necessarily explain. But this ?
“Oh my God,” Wendy said.
“Have you called the authorities?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, I did a couple of hours ago, but it’s not a missing persons case until twenty-four hours.”
“Can they track his phone or something?” I asked. I was desperate to call him again myself, but of course I couldn’t do that in front of Summer.
“It doesn’t seem like his phone’s on,” she said, continuing to pace.
The pressure was building in my chest, constricting my lungs and making it hard to breathe.
“And of course John is flying in from Dubai this weekend just to see me, and I have to act like everything is fine !” She choked back a sob, collapsing onto a lounger with her arm over her face. “This is so bad.”
My brain simply couldn’t accept the idea of Eric committing suicide. It didn’t make sense. Unless…unless he was the one who had been lying this whole time, and Summer was telling the truth about his protestations of love. “You don’t think he really killed himself? I mean, he never struck me as suicidal. He seems too egotistical to kill himself.”
Summer sat up. “Are you kidding? Killing yourself is pretty much the most egotistical thing you can do.”
No, it couldn’t be. A flash of memory—his lips on mine. With a herculean effort, I blinked away my tears and turned my attention to Summer, praying she wouldn’t read how upset I was.
“Are you okay?” My voice cracked. “Sorry, I know you’re not. This is really upsetting.”
Summer wrung her hands. “I feel sick.”
“Breathe.” My instruction was directed at Summer, but clearly I needed it as badly as she did. “Just breathe. I should call Dylan.”
“Have you talked to him recently?” Summer asked.
I shook my head. “We’ve emailed some. He reached out last time he was in town, but I was in Georgia visiting my parents.”
She handed me my phone. “Can you do it now?”
I balked at the phone, watching as my hand reached out to take it from her. My heart was in my throat as I found Dylan’s number and pressed call. I heard the double ring of a foreign line and secretly hoped he wouldn’t answer so that I could prepare myself better before talking to him. But no such luck.
“Belle.” There was a smile in his voice. My stomach tied itself in knots. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” I replied robotically. I reached for words, falling back on social custom. “How are you?”
“I’m in France for the next few months, working. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you last time I was in town.”
“Me too.”
Summer signed for me to get to the point.
“Um, listen.” I swallowed. “Have you heard from your brother?”
“We talked last week.”
“Did he seem okay?”
“We were fighting.” He sighed. “As usual. Ever since I took this job, all we do is fight. But I guess you know that. Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s just, Summer got a disturbing email from him a few days ago, and now she can’t reach him.”
“What was it?” he asked.
“I’ll let her tell you,” I said, afraid my emotions would betray me.
I switched the phone to speaker, and Summer sat next to me and relayed the sequence of events. I peered over her shoulder as she read from the email Eric sent her on July 22 at 2:04 p.m. The messages he’d sent me were almost poetic—all lowercase and full of line breaks and ellipses—but this one was oddly formal, capitalized and punctuated like a term paper. Strange. When she finished, Dylan was silent.
“Dylan?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Do you think he would do it?” Again, he was quiet long enough that I wondered whether the call had dropped. “You still there?”
“Yeah, sorry.” He sounded tired. “No. It just doesn’t sound like…I can’t…But I don’t know. I mean, he has an artist’s temperament. He’s up and down…” Another long pause. “His mom committed suicide. I don’t think he ever really got over it.”
Suicide. My heart ached for young Eric, eleven and suddenly motherless. I couldn’t read Summer’s reaction with the hat and sunglasses obscuring her face, but if she was surprised, she hid it well. Had he shared this tragedy with her? Perhaps their relationship was indeed deeper than he’d made it out to be. I leaned closer to the phone. “Do you think you could help find him?”
“Of course,” Dylan said, pulling himself together. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. Let me see what I can do. Forward that email to me. I’ll get back to you.”
As I hung up the phone, I felt a prickling sensation at the base of my spine. Something just didn’t add up.