Villainous Summer (Seasons of Us)

1. Summer

Summer

W ith a bottle of champagne in hand, I studied the front door of the man who’s made me the other woman.

Five blissfully ignorant hours before, I was forty-one thousand feet above Alberta, staring at the picture on my phone.

Despite the past three months of daily video calls, sexting, and exchanging more naked pictures than the ones littering my cousin’s nudie magazine stuffed under his mattress, Cory was engaged to someone else.

Cory Thompson. My Cory. Only he wasn’t mine.

Someone named Kodi Ann had tagged him in the pictures, proving that. Her heart-shaped face split in a big grin as she held up the halo style engagement ring between her and Cory. Cory kissing her, with her left hand resting on his cheek.

Cory and Kodi.

Bile rose in my throat.

Two weeks before I was to leave for London for my three-month internship with Prescott Hoteliers, I met Cory at a local dive bar, Skol House.

It was trivia night, a weekly tradition I would faithfully attend with my cousin Autumn and our friend Wren. Only, this time, they bailed. Leaving me to sit alone at the bar and watch the fun being had by other teams.

Three Freedom Bay Ales in, I had spotted him nursing a bottle of German beer and staring at the Kraken game three stools down. When his eyes would catch mine, a warmth would flush through my body.

Medium brown hair, light-brown eyes, and a slender build, he was charming and seemed sweet. He had told me he moved to the area a week before for a civilian job in on the local naval base.

As I switched to soda water, he had three more beers. As that night wore on, our knees knocked together, and he brushed strands out of my eyes, his thumb tracing my jaw.

When he asked me to go home with him, I did.

He had no ring or tan line. His phone’s wallpaper displayed a Gonzaga Bulldogs graphic.

We had spent two perfect weeks together, laughing and falling for one another.

In his rented house, pictures of his parents, Don and Sheila, hung from the walls. Wallets of nieces and nephews stuck to the stainless steel fridge with a magnet from Kamloops, BC. Sparse decorations indicated he was still moving in.

When he would leave the room to answer calls, I had assumed it was his job. When I would ask him to meet my friends, he would have an excuse, but I would chalk it up to him settling in.

As I tried to leave for London, he kissed me a dozen times. He’d downloaded a new app for us to talk on while I was abroad. Upon landing, I had a dozen sweet messages filling my inbox. After finding out my new address, he had arranged for a bouquet of blue tulips to be delivered the next morning, as he would call me “his blue” for my eyes.

Blue as my heart without you.

I had tucked those flowers between pages in a book and kept with me while I was away.

Every day, we would talk, sending pictures back and forth. It was lonely in London, though the weather was so similar to my hometown of Ridgewood in the Pacific Northwest I didn’t have my usual homesickness for rain. Confiding in each other and reading his long, passionate emails got me through damp nights.

At no point did I think there was someone else—worse of all that I would be the one to intrude.

I had dissected every detail. She was tiny, smaller than me, with dark hair like mine. Blue eyes. We could have been sisters. No one could say he didn’t have a type.

Gripping the phone, I reread the caption.

Five months of the greatest love story, two months long distance, one big move-in day, a foster kitten, and I finally got that BLING.

Five months.

They, likely, had started dating only weeks before we met.

With the gift of foresight, I could see everything I had missed. All the hints I had ignored.

With social media full of sports memes and beer, he wouldn’t let me post pictures of us, claiming that he liked “privacy,” that others didn’t need to know our business, and that what we had was “too precious to spoil with social media.”

I cursed under my breath. I could have stayed in the flat. Shopped and went out to the pub with my new friends and got takeout. Instead, I had paid an extra two hundred dollars to change my ticket and be dumped in the sky.

Not one to process my feelings alone, I screenshot the announcement and sent it to my girlfriends.

Autumn: That complete dickwad. I’m going to egg his house.

Devin: I’ll get the TP

Wren: I never liked him.

Autumn: I had a bad feeling about him. When you said he doesn’t like animals because they’re too messy, I should have known.

Neither Wren nor Devin was close enough to Ridgewood to succumb to petty vandalism, but I appreciated their rage.

My friend’s words pulsed under my skin.

Hours after seeing the picture, I found myself standing in his driveway.

With narrowed eyes, I willed myself to walk away. If I acted right then, I still had a shot to get my ride back, and no one would know I was here.

His rented home resembled the one I had spent with him those two weeks, when I had been falling for a liar. Same bright blue siding, a basketball hoop over the garage, and a cooler on the porch. Blue printed curtains hung in a window. An oversized sign beside the front door exclaimed, “Oh, hello!” in gigantic calligraphy. Over the peephole was a fake sunflower wreath, complementing a row of dying potted daffodils on the steps.

Being there was a bad idea. Nothing good could come from confronting him. Maybe it was the three overpriced vodka ginger ales I had slammed after getting off the plane. Maybe it was my friend’s vitriol. Whatever it may have been, I was teetering on the edge of an all-too-familiar anger, the same fury that made my high school English teacher cry when she demanded Autumn change her top because she was distracting the boys. The same one that caused a man to back into a tree, who had tried to get away from me when his car door hit mine.

I didn’t need to confront him. I could’ve been mature, the better person, and leave Cory and his cheating ways behind.

Sitting in the spot my car would’ve been parked, a newer red coupe had a license plate frame infested with rhinestones, a monstrosity. In script letters, it read His Blue .

That was it. Red glazed over my vision.

With the champagne bottle, I marched up the drive. The doormat was made of coir with Probably at Target painted in red-and-black script letters.

Pounding on the door, I didn’t stop until it was wrenched open. The fake flower wreath swung up and whacked the white-painted wood.

Cory stood on the other side. He blinked at me as if I were a mirage.

The bottle’s foil seal dug into my palm, centering me as I stared him down. He looked smaller, shorter, and less muscular than when I had left.

Had he changed, or was it the memory of him I had built up in my head?

“Summer?” He glanced behind me, sucking in a breath. “What—I thought you were in London until Friday? I—“

“I guess we were both wrong about things, weren’t we?” Sticking out my lower lip, I feigned pity.

“Uh—“

His eyes darted around.

Likely, this fiancée was nearby or would be expected at any minute.

Good, I could only hope she knew what a scumbag her fiancé was.

“I heard congratulations are in order?” I offered a sickly sweet smile, cocking my head. “Locked it down in five months? That’s an amazing feat. Good for you two. Where’s Kodi? That’s her name, isn’t it? I should be able to congratulate the woman you’ve been fooling for the past four months.”

Yanking my elbow, he whipped me to the left and ushered me down to the walkway. “You need to get out of here.”

Breaking free of his grip, I pushed the champagne bottle at him. “To celebrate with your fiancée. I got it before I caught the early flight. Of course, I assumed I’d be celebrating with you, but you had other plans, didn’t you?”

“So, you know.” He assessed me, with his arms stiff at his side. “Did you have one of your nosy friends check up on me?”

A laugh escaped from my chest.

“That’s your big concern? No, my nosy friends did not. She tagged your Instagram. How exactly did you think this was going to go, Cory? Did you think I would never find out?”

“No, I . . .” He sighed, looking up at the sky as if it would give him the answers. “What do you want me to say, Summer? I was lonely, and you were there. I didn’t expect to fall for you. Then you were gone in London, and it all felt like pretend, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

With his thumbnail, he scratched his jaw, forming a grimace. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Blue.”

At the nickname, the fire inside me flared red to white.

“Don’t call me that. You think I didn’t see her license plate holder? Blue. Can you form a single original thought? We even look alike!”

Stepping closer, he set a placating hand on my cheek. “Look, if you leave, I promise I can explain it all later, okay? I’ll call you, and we can do dinner soon. But you have to leave now.”

I batted his hand away, shaking my head. “I can’t believe you. You think there is anything you could say that would make this okay?”

The sign he gave was patient, as if I were a petulant child. “Grow up, Summer. We had fun, but it’s over. Now, could you be an adult about this and leave before you get more emotional?”

Emotional? I’d show him emotional.

Sneering, I narrowed my eyes. “You want me to leave? I can’t do that before you take your gift, Cory.” Once again, I pushed the wine at him, but he didn’t take it. “Fine, your loss.” I stepped backward and hurled the bottle at his front door.

It whizzed by his head, narrowly missing his ear, where it hit the frame.

Yellow fizz and black glass exploded as it shattered against the Welcome sign, showering Cory. Liquid dripped from the wreath and onto the kitschy doormat.

He ducked, his hands covering the back of his neck. “You stupid bitch. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

As if bombs were falling—not a prestigious cuvée of Veuve Clicquot—he threw his hands over his head.

“Only what you deserve!” I shouted.

In my peripheral, an older lady stepped out onto her porch, narrowing her eyes and wrapping a cardigan around her shoulders.

Swiping away the frothing champagne from his hair, he glowered. “Are you crazy? That could have hit me! I could have been hurt.”

“You’d deserve it. I wish it did, you lying piece of shit.”

More people popped their heads out of their front doors.

Stalking to me, he reached for my elbow again, but I jerked it back.

“Can you go, before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.”

His words were hisses through clenched teeth.

Rage boiling in my veins, I wanted to stay, to scratch and wound him as deep as he had me.

I wasn’t going to stand here and allow this man to tell me what to do.

“Me? I’m the fool? You sack of garbage. I ought to—“

From the left, someone asked, “Cory, should I call the police?”

With a glare to the neighbor, I stumbled back.

In the two weeks after I met Cory, that neighbor used to wave and flash a cheery smile at me. Now she was threatening me?

Cory waved, plastering on a customer-service grin. “No need, Mrs. Partridge. My guest is leaving.” He turned to me, the placating smile falling away. “Go now. Before this gets worse for you.”

A part of me wanted to call his bluff, to see how he would handle the police showing up. His fiancée would find out for sure. But then what? I’d be the crazy gal who threw wine at him? The jealous ex?

I was due to go back to work in days. This community was too small to be starting drama before I even began.

Turning on my heels, I stomped off. I was a block away before the rage simmered lower and the red faded from my vision.

The late spring wind nipped through my too-thin sweater. A glance at the darkening sky told me it would likely rain again in the next hour. Miles from my apartment, I was alone with nothing but my temper to warm me.

Another block down, the first icy drop fell on my cheek. Clouds above me were slate colored and then it was a barrage.

That was the moment the police car pulled onto the street. At first sight of the light bar, I started up the driveway of a small two-story white craftsman. Passing the rows of well-tended irises and hyacinths, I headed for the front porch.

I knocked three times, training myself not to look behind me as the cop car rolled past. No answer came from the other side of the white door, with its stained glass lily window.

I knocked again. No answer.

Rolling down the soaked road, the car’s engine faltered as it slowed.

“Fuck it,” I mumbled as I tried the doorknob.

It turned, welcoming me inside.

Framed watercolor paintings of bright flowers adorned the walls flanking an ornate gilded mirror. Coats hung under a bookshelf lining the doorway to the end of the peach-painted hall.

In a large frame on the table was a picture of an older woman in a wheelchair and a younger man crouched beside her. His dark locks blended with her salt-and-pepper hair as they leaned into each other. With matching wide smiles, their identical gray eyes sparkled with affection. Judging by the decorations, the woman must have been the owner of the house.

“Hello?” I called down the hall and waited for a response.

A rumbling dryer and a faint scraping filled the silence. As far as I could tell, the house was empty.

On my tiptoes, I peeked out the front window. It looked like the police car was gone.

Maybe waiting a minute or two inside this empty, unlocked house would do me some good. I could call for a ride and stay out of the rain.

As I unlocked my phone, the picture on my wallpaper of Cory and me assaulted my vision. Our hair was the same shade of brown, my blue eyes squinted in laughter as he nestled into my neck. It was blurry, candid, and I had thought it was so lovely in that postcoital moment.

“Foolish,” I mumbled to myself.

Some women would have been insulted by being called a bitch. Called crazy. That wasn’t what hurt me. It was being foolish.

Being so careless in what I wanted him to be, I missed the red flags. I was weakened by this man, and worst of all, I allowed it.

As if I could shake the thought away, I tossed my head.

Focus. Next step. Get out of this random elderly lady’s house and go home.

With the rideshare app pulled up, I tapped on the screen when a door clicked open somewhere in the house. Frozen, I looked up to find a hulking man a few feet away.

Tall and bulky, he took up half the hallway. His thin blue shirt had grease smeared on what I had to admit were amazing pectoral muscles. The shirt’s sleeves stretched taut over his wide shoulders and biceps. Dark hair fell in front of his steely gray eyes. A muscle ticked in his strong jaw as he stared at me. He held a dirty blue cloth, wiping his palm with it.

In a deep voice that made my stomach twist, he asked, “Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?”

No simpering would get me out of this. I never was good at playing at the damsel, and I certainly wouldn’t start.

As if I had every right to be dripping water on his blue floral rug, I put out my hand. “I’m Summer Townsend. I need a favor.”