Summer Nights Read online

  “Dominos should deliver everywhere. That was bullshit, and you know it.” I took another swig of whiskey, sat up and wiped my mouth. “I may have just taken five billion steps backward with Ray.”

  “How so?” He reached out, I handed him the bottle while he took his turn and handed it back.

  “Oh, you know, lots of yelling, rage, asshole made an appearance and decided to stay after she sucked my dick rather than kissing me on the mouth, making it seem like a sexual favor rather than this personal thing I was trying to do to shake her up.” I groaned into my hands. “I may have told her I hated her. Yeah, so basically all the things you can do wrong? I did in less than five minutes, and I can’t apologize because she drives me so insane I can’t help but just react.”

  “Huh,” Jackson nodded. “This is why sex ruins things. You skip all the words and then realize that you’re still just as fucked up as before you got naked, cheers.”

  “She won’t let me in.”

  “You can’t force yourself.”

  “If you could stop giving me good advice and just let me get high that would be fantastic.” I groaned and drank more.

  “And I’ll take that.” He jerked the bottle from my hand. “Look, this solves nothing, I would know, I mean look at me, I’m one bad decision away from going to prison at this point.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “It’s true, trust me, just ask Jen, I’m kidnapping her later and putting her in my trunk, how long you think that will land me behind bars if I get caught?”

  “Creepy looks creepy on you.”

  “You need more words between you. If she won’t let you in and you can’t force her, then guess what? She needs time, and you’re not helping by asking for dick kisses.”

  “I didn’t ask for a dick—” I shook my head. “The point is, I love her. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

  “What exactly did she say to you that day? We never got past the yelling and drunkenness on your part.”

  “She says she can’t be with me if she doesn’t love herself, but how the hell do I get her to love herself if she can’t stand to be in the same room with the only guy willing to sell his soul to be with her?”

  “That’s your problem?” He burst out laughing.

  I almost grabbed the bottle and hit him over the head with it.

  “Bro, bro, listen up…” He grinned like he was already drunk, maybe he was. “Rumor mill i.e. Jen says she had a rough childhood right? And from the whole parent day thing happening this weekend, I can imagine that you’re trying to parent trap her or something… If she doesn’t love herself it’s because she’s never really known love and she doesn’t feel worthy of it. So, you do the easy thing. You show her she is.”

  “I was showing her.”

  “No.” Jackson tilted the bottle back. “You were fucking her. Big difference.”

  “That’s not what I was—”

  “That is exactly what you two were doing. That’s not love.”

  “And you know this because?”

  “I live by this.” He rasped and looked down at the floor. “It’s why I pissed Jen off, because I did things backward. Because I slept with her out of need, I took from her because I wanted her, and then afterward, when she was covering up her naked body, I knew I’d messed up — because she was insecure. And sex should never make a woman feel insecure, it should make her feel unstoppable, loved. So, I apologized because that’s what a guy in love does when he messes up. Only she thought it was her. But it wasn’t her. It was me. I messed up. She needed to know when we got to that place that it was about more than the physical, and she didn’t. She assumed wrong and I tried to correct it — badly. You want her to know you really love her? Love her beyond all reason? You make her more important than you.”

  “She is.”

  “Prove it, because you’ve been walking around like a kicked, pissed-off puppy that never got a nice home. I know you have shit from your past, but you’re Marlo Fucking Brandon, one of the most talented guys I know. Tell that little six-year-old shit self to shut the hell up and be a man. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to drink the rest of this until I pass out and drown in my own puke.”

  I jerked the bottle from him. “No, you’re not. I’m getting Jen.”

  “Oh good, she can kill me, thanks man.”

  Within minutes, I had Jen in the cabin.

  She swayed toward him.

  And then she was in his arms.

  I left them staring at one another, hoping that she could at least anchor him and keep him from getting drunker.

  I walked into my cabin, grabbed a pillow and a blanket, then made the trek up to Ray’s cabin.

  I knocked.

  When she answered, she was sobbing.

  Sobbing.

  I did that.

  I made her cry.

  I pulled her into my arms and let her keep crying.

  And then I gently tucked her into bed.

  And put my pillow and blanket on the floor to set in for a very uncomfortable night next to a domesticated chicken.

  I WOKE UP in the middle of the night and stared down at Marlo. I wanted him in my arms, in my bed. I wanted to tell him I hated him and I loved him and I was sorry.

  I wanted him to know the truth.

  That I hadn’t felt like me in a really long time.

  That he made me think I could be okay as long as I held his hand.

  But what happened if he stopped?

  It would break me.

  I wouldn’t survive having a love like his and losing it. It had nothing to do with self-sabotage and everything to do with growing up as if I was invisible and not wanting to return to that place.

  How do you move past that feeling in your chest? The achy feeling paired with the words that say you are unlovable and you will never be enough to keep anyone’s attention.

  If you can’t even keep your parents’ attention?

  How in the world can you keep him?

  Perfect. Wonderful. Hateful. Him.

  I reached down and touched his hair.

  His hand immediately moved and grabbed mine, and then I was pulling him into my bed while he wrapped his muscular arms around me.

  I pressed my head to his chest and listened to his heartbeat, and I wondered if it was selfish to wish that with every pulse it yearned for me the way mine yearned for his.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to him for dear life. I pushed away my worries, I pushed away my thoughts, and I inhaled him, drank him in, and just relaxed into his arms.

  Morning would come too soon.

  And along with that, I knew a line would divide us yet again.

  If I could have him in my dreams, I could survive my day.

  If I could have him in the moonlight, the sun wouldn’t burn so bad.

  He kissed my forehead.

  “Sleep,” he rasped.

  So I did.

  Because I was in his arms.

  And I knew I was safe.

  From the world.

  From my nightmares.

  Kieren would have liked him.

  A lot.

  I smiled as I drifted toward sleep with the picture of my twin in one hand, and the man I loved holding the other.

  I WOKE UP feeling like shit.

  And when I turned and saw that Ray was still there, I felt even worse. She stared back at me like I was a stranger in her bed.

  I didn’t kiss her.

  I held her next to me though.

  I let out a dramatic sigh. “I’m sorry about the damn chicken.”

  Her lips pressed together in a firm line and then rose up at the sides. “It could have been worse, as in you could have eaten him.”

  I smiled wide. “Yeah that was in the plan, midnight fried chicken.”

  Johnny flapped into the air like he knew we were talking about him and then settled back in his spot on the bed.

  I exhaled in relief. “I doubt I could have caught him anyway.”

 
; “Finally admitting that the chicken has more athletic ability?”

  “I’m pretty sure that was never even on the table, but if it makes you feel better at night that the chicken can kick my ass — I’ll give it to you.” I stared into her hollow eyes.

  I wanted to reach my hands into her body, to set loose her soul, I wanted her heart, I just wanted her to fly.

  To be set free.

  And no matter what I did.

  Nothing worked.

  I pulled.

  She stayed.

  And then like Cinderella at midnight — she lost the shoe, she retreated, she defaulted.

  My mind went back to my conversation with Jackson. As much as I loathed what I was about to do, I said the words anyway. “I need you to know something, Ray.”

  “What?” Her face was worried, she chewed her lower lip and then inhaled a sharp breath like it was going to be bad news. Was she always expecting the negative? Never the positive?

  “No matter what happens between us…” Kill me now. Someone stop me from dooming myself. “I want us to stay friends.”

  “Friends?” she repeated in a shocked voice. “What do you mean friends?”

  I elbowed her in the side, then grabbed a pillow and slammed it over her head. “You know the kind who have slumber parties and share secrets!”

  “Ouch!” She tumbled away from me then grabbed the same pillow and chucked it at my face, I dove away only to have her jump onto my back and keep hitting. “You deserve this!”

  I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes as she lamely tried to muscle me back toward the mattress, I easily flipped her on her back and pinned her arms and legs. “Aw, you stuck?”

  And since I was just taking the immaturity to an entire new low, I gripped her right foot and started to tickle.

  She thrashed beneath me. “Noooooooooo!”

  “Was it this spot?” I kept tickling. “Or was it the left foot that was more ticklish? I don’t remember, it’s been what… over twelve years so…”

  “I’m KILLING YOU!” she shouted between huffs of laughter. “MARLO!”

  “Keep screaming, only encourages!” I laughed and then dropped her feet when she tried kicking me in the face.

  Ray let out a gasp and sat, hair wild, eyes alive with excitement like me tickling her was better than the best sex. “How do you remember?”

  I licked my lips and tried to focus on the words, not the way I wanted to sink into her, the way I wanted to wrap my arms around her and make her promises I would keep, promises she deserved. “I remember everything about us back then, the late-night swimming, the campouts between our houses, you were always so sad, and then…”

  She looked away. “You asked if you could be my friend.”

  “I was pretty lonely and dejected too,” I admitted, giving a half shrug. “I mean it wasn’t as bad as asking my mom for a pet and then getting a rock, but…”

  She winced. “Yeah that was a fun one, get a rock, dress it up, problem solved!”

  “You had a lot of rocks.” I grinned. “And then you had me.”

  “I didn’t dress you up,” she pointed out.

  I let out a laugh. “Not for lack of trying!”

  She smirked up at me. “You would have made a very pretty doll.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is creepy, and no. No, I would have looked like I belonged in a horror movie, trust me.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “You were like this dark, angsty poet who hated everyone and everything.”

  “And you were this Ray of light who’d been pulled from the sky too many times, who’d started to dim because when you’re pulled from your home — from your light, that’s when darkness has no choice but to move in.”

  “Redemptive darkness,” she whispered. “That’s what you were to me.”

  “And now?”

  “Now.” She took a deep breath. “Now I just feel… like if I could just sit and touch you for the rest of my life and do nothing else — I would still feel unworthy of every second my skin touched yours.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut then opened them. “Funny, that we both feel the same way about each other — but not about ourselves.”

  “Easier said than done?” she asked with a nervous laugh.

  “I want to start over,” I confessed.

  “What do you mean start over?”

  “Well…” I moved to stand. “When we were kids, it was all about the words. I wasn’t even sure what my dick was for other than peeing in your mom’s fountain.”

  Ray’s head fell back as she let out loud laugh. “Oh, she hated that.”

  “Also, why I found great joy in doing it.” I crossed my arms. “We used to spend summer nights laying on the grass, watching the stars, making wishes. What did I promise you the summer before junior high?”

  Her cheeks pinked. “You said I would be your first everything.”

  “First kiss, first sex, first love, first friend.” I nodded. “And what did I do next?”

  She looked down at her hands “You kissed me and said, two down, two to go. You said if other kisses don’t feel like yours, then they aren’t right for me, that you’d wait for me no matter the cost, and within two months, I was calling you lawn boy and making out with the point guard of our basketball team.”

  “He’s in prison now.”

  “What!”

  A laugh slipped out at the look of shock on her face. “Kidding, I was just trying to look better, give me that at least.”

  “You’ll always look better.” She gulped and stared down at my mouth.

  See, normally this was where I would press her against the mattress, where I would ask her if I could taste her again.

  This was where things would go south.

  In a good way.

  Don’t go south.

  Shit, this was going to be hard, because I’d already tasted, I’d already wanted again and again.

  “I swore to you then I would be your first — and somehow I was able to follow through… Right?”

  “Right,” she whispered.

  “Great, then hear me know… I will be your last Ray, your only, your forever, and I will wait that long if I have to. We have time, so be my friend today, so you can be my forever tomorrow.” I held out my hand.

  And surprisingly she took it. “What about yesterday and—”

  “We’re both stubborn, volatile, and dealing with our own shit, so we deal with it, together, without ripping each other’s clothes off every time one of us gets too angry to see straight.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you saying…?”

  “Friends don’t kiss, they also don’t fuck every chance they get in the shower, on the bed, ground, against walls.” It was going to be a long forever. I suddenly realized why Jackson looked so helpless. “I won’t do any of those things — I won’t kiss you until you ask me to.”

  “And what if I never do?”

  “Then that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” I thumbed her lower lip and took a step back, wanting to kiss her so bad that I felt my hands start to shake at my sides. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see at least a dozen cold showers in my future.”

  She laughed at that.

  And I realized that this was one of the first times since she’d been here that we’d talked and not ended up naked.

  And yet I felt high as I walked to the showers.

  Even when I turned it on full blast and clenched my teeth against the cold water pelting my back, I smiled.

  The high of sex wore off, didn’t it?

  The high of friendship on fire? Didn’t.

  And that was what we deserved. Friends and Lovers.

  HE KEPT HIS promise.

  That was the first thing I thought every morning I woke up with him beside me. It’s as if he wanted to be on my turf instead of his, he even started keeping clothes in my cabin. It wasn’t until the weekend, when all the campers’ parents were starting to drive in that it hit me.

  We
weren’t having sex.

  We were talking more than we’d ever talked in our adult lives.

  And he was fulfilling something I didn’t even realize I needed fulfilled.

  Friendship.

  I’d had that with Kieren when we were kids, and I’d felt so lost, and then this dirty, angry little boy told me we were going to be friends and I got a part of me back that day.

  Not realizing how precious it was until I lost it, traded it in for what I thought would fulfill me, and only ended up being poison to my soul.

  “I can feel you staring at me,” Marlo said in a bored tone as he grabbed another case of bottled water and carried it over to the picnic table by the lake. We were hosting an outdoor barbecue before the dress rehearsal.

  The campers were freaking out.

  They knew they weren’t ready but honestly this is what they needed in order to get their focus back, we only had three more weeks of camp, three more weeks to perfect what was a half-ass attempt at Dirty Dancing.

  “I wasn’t staring.” I scoffed, “I was just wondering if the water was too heavy since you were grunting.”

  He tucked his chin and raised his eyebrows in a “really?” look before opening up a bottle and taking a few sips then holding it out to me.

  I reached for it.

  He jerked it back.

  It was my turn to glare. “Are you twelve?”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “For insulting your big muscles?”

  “And somehow that just seems more insulting when you say it that way?”

  I laughed as he held out the water again. Then he was pulling it back with a teasing glint in his eyes.

  “No!” I backed away. “Marlo, I just washed my hair!”

  “I know, it’s too pretty, we need to rough you up a bit.” He laughed and then chased. I stumbled and ran but he was faster, stronger, sexier — he was all the “ers.” He caught me by the arm and pulled me against his chest. This is the part of the story where the girl and guy kiss passionately in front of everyone while the onlookers roll their eyes.

  Instead, he sighed as he gazed at my mouth and then whispered. “Open.”