Chapter 10 Tyson
“You think we should go check on Lainey?” Hannah asks as we sit poolside on chaise lounges. Mine is under the shade of an umbrella, while hers is angled toward the sun.
“Nah. She’s a big girl,” I say, sipping my margarita. I’m not one to drink during the day, but after the morning we’ve had, the tequila hits just right. “She’s got a higher tolerance than both of us combined.”
“I’m not talking about her tolerance,” Hannah says.
“You mean Dog Guy?” I say—which is how Lainey will undoubtedly refer to him from now on, though Dog Boy might be more accurate. “Lainey could eat him alive.”
“Yeah. But I mean…I’m just worried about her mental state generally.”
“She’ll figure it out,” I say. “She always does.”
“Maybe so. But I think she’s really struggling.”
“I know,” I say. “But I find it hard to muster much sympathy for her. That shit at her sister’s house was so unnecessary. She went in there looking for a fight.”
“I think that was a defense mechanism. She was scared—”
“Oh, please,” I say. “Lainey’s never scared.”
“Maybe not scared scared. But she was definitely afraid of rejection. She wanted to hurt them before they could hurt her.”
I swipe my thumb along the salted rim of my plastic cup, then lick it off. “Well, she pulled that off in spades.”
“I just wanted to help her,” Hannah says. “But coming down here was clearly a bad idea.”
“Yeah. With hindsight. But how were we to know Lainey would be that combative? She’s one of those people who is so hard to help. Her own worst enemy.”
Hannah sighs, then lowers the shoulder straps on her bathing suit top before reclining. I put my sunglasses on, picturing Summer’s perpetual runner’s tan lines—which, with her pale skin, were more often burn lines. She was constantly applying sunscreen to her nose and cheeks, determined to keep her freckles at bay. I close my eyes, feeling a wave of haunting regret that I never told her how much I loved her freckles. Her face. So many things about her.
“Are you okay?” I hear Hannah say.
I open my eyes and realize that I’m frowning.
“Yeah,” I say, relaxing the muscles in my face, taking a deep breath.
“What were you thinking?”
I take another deep breath, then tell her the truth. “I was just thinking about Summer.”
Hannah nods and says, “What about her?”
“How much she hated her freckles.”
“I know,” Hannah says. “I loved them.”
“Same.”
“She didn’t know how pretty she was.”
“She really didn’t,” I say.
“Looking back, I can see that she was insecure. About a lot of things,” Hannah says. “I never saw it at the time. She was such a star.”
“I know,” I say, thinking of the argument Summer and I had a couple days before she died. I’d been so annoyed with her, but now I see how vulnerable and fragile she actually was.
“Sometimes I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Hannah says.
I take off my sunglasses, look at her, and nod.
“Do you ever forget? For, like, one second? And think you can just pick up the phone and call her?” she asks.
“That used to happen to me all the time. But not so much anymore. I hated when her parents cut her phone off,” I say, remembering how I used to call and listen to her outgoing message. Then, suddenly, one day there was a recording saying her number was no longer in service.
“Oh my God. Yes!” she says. “That ‘no longer in service’ message was the worst.”
We sit in silence for a moment, before Hannah looks at me and says, “She really was our sun, wasn’t she? I mean, we were a foursome, but in a lot of ways, she was our center.”
“Yeah,” I say, getting a bit uneasy with the direction of the conversation. “She was our leader. From the very beginning. But who knows how that might have changed over the years….” My voice trails off.
“Why would that have changed?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just that ‘sliding doors’ concept. Lots of things could have changed our dynamic. We might have had a fight or a breakup—” I stop suddenly, realizing what I’ve just said.
“A breakup?” Hannah asks.
“Well, not a breakup per se, but a rift or a fallout—” I stammer, trying to cover for myself.
Hannah gives me a suspicious look.
I put my shades back on and close my eyes, but I can feel Hannah staring at me.
“Tyson?” she says after a few seconds.
“Yeah?” I say, bracing myself. Somehow, I know what’s coming even before she asks the question.
Sure enough, she says, “Did you ever have feelings for Summer?”
My heart skips a beat and my jaw clenches. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“You know what I mean, Tyson. Romantic feelings.”
“Why would you ask that?” I say, my eyes still closed.
“I’m just curious,” she says. “I always suspected that she had feelings for you, but did you have feelings for her?”
I inhale deeply, my chest rising. I start to lie, but I can’t do it anymore. For all these years, telling the truth felt like a betrayal to Summer. Now, suddenly, it feels like a betrayal not to tell the truth. To both Summer and Hannah.
I glance over at Hannah. She is staring at me intently. Knowingly. I take a deep breath as she sits up in her chair, turning to face me.
I remove my sunglasses, turn my head, and look her right in the eye.
“Yes,” I finally say, knowing that I’ll never be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
“Oh my God,” Hannah says. “Did she know how you felt?”
“Yes. She did,” I say, feeling light-headed.
“So y’all…talked about it?”
I take a few measured breaths, then sit up and face her all the way, my feet planted on the sundeck. “We more than talked about it, Hannah.”
She stares at me, looking shocked. “You were…together?”
“Sort of,” I say. I take a deep breath and start rambling. “It started in April. Before graduation. I kissed her—and we hung out a few times after that. I was in her room the night before she died…. Nothing happened. She was just studying. But I saw her for a few minutes—”
“Oh my God, Tyson,” she whispers. “I had no idea.”
I bite my lip and nod, feeling a wave of familiar guilt that I was the last person to talk to Summer in any meaningful way. I’d been in the best position to prevent what happened. I could have stayed in her room. And I didn’t.
“How have you kept this secret for so long?” she says.
I shake my head and say, “I didn’t see how telling you would have helped the situation.”
“Wait. Does anyone know? Did you tell Summer’s parents?”
I shake my head. “No. You were the only one I considered telling. I almost did. So many times.”
“What stopped you?” Hannah asks.
I sigh and say, “I don’t know. I could never get the words out. And part of me felt it would be disloyal to Summer…. It was her secret, too.”
Hannah nods, her eyes wide. “Well, I’m glad you finally told me. And I hope you feel a weight lifted. I can’t believe you’ve lived with that all alone for all these years.”
I nod, realizing that I do feel lighter. But I can’t help wondering if Hannah now blames me, on some level, for what happened. Something on her face seems slightly off.
“I want to talk about this more,” she says, her voice sounding funny, too.
“We don’t have to, actually,” I say. “There’s not much more to say.”
“Still. I’d like to,” she says. “But for now, we should probably go check on Lainey.”
“Probably,” I say, grateful for a subject change.
We gather up our things and head back inside. The cold, dark bar is a shock to the system and a bit depressing after being out in the bright sunlight. We look around, but there is no sign of Lainey or Dog Boy.
“Oh, snap,” I say under my breath. “This isn’t a good sign.”
“I’m sure she just went upstairs to sleep it off.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Sleep it off—or sleep with—”
“Tyson. Stop.”
“Well, don’t act like that’s not a distinct possibility.”
“No way. They just met. It’s the middle of the day.”
I shake my head at her “middle of the day” comment, guessing that Hannah is a sex-at-bedtime kind of girl—and only after her teeth are brushed and flossed.
“Besides, he’s not her type,” Hannah says. “He seems a little nerdy for her.”
“Oh, please. Lainey doesn’t have a type. Anything goes,” I say.
We ride the elevator in silence, and a few seconds later, we’re in front of our door. I put my key card up to the sensor. It turns green, but as I push the door open, I discover that Lainey has the security guard latched.
“Oh, hell no,” I say, giving the door a hard pound. “Now we’re locked out of our own room?”
“Calm down,” Hannah says in a low voice.
“She’s so rude. I told you she’s fucking him—”
“You don’t know that, Tyson. I always put the security latch on when I’m in the room alone.”
I pound on the door again.
“Chill out!” we hear Lainey shout. “I’m coming.”
A second later, the door swings open. Lainey looks sheepish anddisheveled in an oversize T-shirt and quite possibly nothing else.
I blow past her but stop when I see Dog Boy sitting there on the edge of the bed, shirtless and shoeless.
“Jesus,” I say under my breath.
“What?” she snaps back. “We were just talking.”
“Yeah, right,” I say, staring the guy down as he quickly finishes dressing.
“I was just leaving—”
“Whatever, man,” I say, waving him off.
As much as I know that Lainey was the ringleader, I’m angry with him, too. What kind of a guy takes a drunk woman he just met up to her hotel room?
“Leave him alone, Tyson,” Lainey says. “Don’t be a bully.”
“No. This is my fault,” Dog Boy says. “I should go.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” I say, following him to the door. “And I would tell you to stop taking advantage of drunk women in bars, but in this case, I think maybe you were the one who got taken advantage of.”
He gives me a sheepish look, then mumbles an apology before shuffling off down the hall.
“You’re such an asshole,” Lainey says the second I shut the door.
I ignore her as Hannah steps in to play mediator. “He’s not an asshole,” she says as I head into the bathroom. “He just cares about you.”
“He might care about me, but he’s self-righteous as fuck. I’m sick of his morality policing,” I hear Lainey say.
Her rant continues as I relieve myself, then wash my hands. I can’t make out most of what she’s going on about, but I hear something about “Saint Tyson coming to the rescue for his slutty, fucked-up friend.”
“Nobody called you a slut, but you are selfish as fuck,” I say when I get out of the bathroom.
Her face crumples. I instantly regret my words, but not enough to take them back or apologize, especially because they are true. She is being selfish.
She tries to flip it on us, saying, “I told you this would be a dumpster fire!”
“Well, yeah. You set the fire,” I say.
I wait for her to clap back at me. Instead, she bursts into tears. I look at her, shocked. Lainey never cries. Almost never. As I get a vivid flashback to Summer’s funeral, I lower my voice and say, “Okay, Lainey. You’re right. Coming here was a bad idea. I’m sorry. Hannah and I are both sorry.”
“Very sorry,” Hannah says, standing frozen in the middle of the room. “This is my fault. It was my idea—and it was a horrible one.”
“I just want to go home,” Lainey says.
She climbs onto the bed, pulling her T-shirt over her knees. “I’m going to book a flight back to New York,” she whimpers.
“No,” I say, my voice calm but firm. “You’re not going home, Lainey.”
“Yes, I am. You guys should go on the rest of the trip alone,” she says. “It will be better without me, and we all know it.”
“No,” I say again. “We’re sticking together. We all need this trip.”
Silence fills the room as Lainey and Hannah both stare at me.
“It’s what Summer would have wanted, and it’s what we’re doing,” I continue, my voice as strong and steady as I can make it. “I know she’s up there, watching us…. Rooting for us to get our shit together.”
“I don’t believe that,” Lainey says, shaking her head. “I don’t believe she’s anywhere.”
“Well, I do,” I say. “In fact, I’m absolutely certain of it. So if you don’t want to stay for Hannah or me or yourself, I need you to stay for her.”
She stares at me for a long few seconds, then slowly nods. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll stay. On one condition.”
I nod and say, “What’s that?”
“No judging me for the rest of this trip. I’m a grown woman.”
“Okay,” I say, resisting the urge to tell her that she really needs to start acting like one. “I won’t judge you—but will you please try to take better care of yourself?”
“I’ll try,” she says, sniffing.
“That’s not very convincing,” I say.
Before she can respond, we hear Hannah say she’s going downstairs for a minute but will be right back.
When the door opens, then closes, Lainey rolls her eyes. “Classic Hannah,” she says.
I nod and smile. “Yeah. She really finds any conflict unbearable, doesn’t she?”
Lainey nods, then immediately looks worried. “Wait. You don’t think she’s going downstairs to call Grady, do you?”
“No,” I say. “She wouldn’t dare.”
“God, I hope not.”
“See?” I say.
“See what?”
“The protective way you feel about Hannah is the way we feel about you.”
She nods, granting me the point.
“So what do we do from here?” I pause, then say, “I’m guessing you don’t want to check out those dripping springs?”
“No way, Tyson,” she says. “No fucking way.”
I raise my hands in surrender. “Okay. I was just confirming.”
“Confirmed,” she says. “Now get me the hell out of Texas.”