17
My teenaged dream walked in half an hour later, after I’d let Cassie dab some foundation on me and gloss my lips and, okay, yeah, hide my scar a little. I didn’t want him to see me like this, because I knew he would pity me, and pity is my least favorite thing in the world to deal with besides, like, falling off a building or unrest in the Middle East or whatever. But I also wasn’t going to keep him waiting alone outside like a bitch, and there was yet another thing, too – I was excited to see him, in this weird and giddy and destructive little way. I missed him.
He appeared in the doorway, staring at the floor and looking somewhere between terrified and exhausted. The brave, golden boy of this summer was gone, replaced by this ghost, pale and scared in his Polo. He was still beautiful, though, his dark stubble enhancing his already-perfect bone structure. And that’s when I realized it was official: my eyes would never get used to him.
“You look like a hangover,” is the first thing I said after he walked in, and he finally looked up at me.
“Ha. Hey, kid. Sorry, it’s been a rough day or two.”
“Tell me about it.”
The machines beeped and the nurses murmured outside, but he said nothing. I decided to push him along. “So, um, yeah…you wanted to talk?”
He swallowed hard and finally sank down next to me, onto one of those weird reclining chairs upholstered with the world’s cheapest vinyl that hospitals seemed to order by the boatload. “First of all, how are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“Ugh. I…yeah. Well. What can I say?” The silence stretched between us again. “I can’t even really describe what an idiot I feel like, Summer, facing you after our last…meeting, or whatever that was.”
“It’s okay, Cooper. I understand.”
“No you don’t,” he said, and when I tried to interrupt, he raised a hand. “Look, Sum. I am so sorry. All I could think about for the past few days was my meltdown that night, and what I said, and how stressed I got you, and…yeah. You have no idea. I’ve been blaming myself over and over, and if you didn’t make it, I would’ve…I couldn’t have…”
I waved him off. “Stop, Cooper. It’s not your fault. I’ve been sick for a very long time.” I laughed a little. “And now you know that, thanks to Autumn.”
His face fell, literally fell, that’s how pronounced his frown was. “Don’t be mad at her, please. It’s not her fault. I basically pulled it out of her, and-”
I waved my arm again. “Trust me, she’s called six thousand times in the last hour, but I don’t care. I’m too exhausted to keep being mad. Someone needed to tell you anyway, I guess. It is, as they say, what it is.”
He slumped even further. “Well, I still feel like a pile of shit, and I want to make this right.”
I paused, the words I couldn’t say hanging in the air. What was it about hospitals that made you want to pour out your soul and lose your words in your mouth all at the same time?
“Cooper,” I began, “you don’t have to – it’s fine. I understand. I get it. None of this matters anymore. I don’t need some pity trip. Shit hit the fan for me, and it sucks. And I lied to you, and it wasn’t fair. But this isn’t your problem. You have your whole summer in front of you, and I have hospital visits and surgeries and feeding tubes and-”
“You’re right,” he said, nodding and sitting taller. “You do have all that to deal with. But you also have me, no matter what I said the other night, and I want you to prove that to you.”
I just stared at him again, confused. “What? With all due respect, Cooper…no. Just, no. You don’t get it. You will never know how this feels. I am…different. I am other. And you’re not. And it’s not fair. It’s been fun, but you don’t have to do…this, whatever this is. And I don’t want to do this to you.”
“You don’t want to do what to me, Summer?”
I met his eyes as the bottom fell out of my stomach. “I don’t want to do me to you.”
He frowned, exhaled, and then scooted the chair closer, motioning at the room around us.
“Hey. This hospital room. It’s nice, huh?”
“What?”
“The room,” he repeated. “It’s nice. Pretty spiffy, huh? Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I mean…yeah, as far as hospitals go, it’s okay, I guess.”
“Okay. Well, why don’t you just stay here forever, then?”
“What?”
A ghost of a smirk crawled across his beautiful lips. “Like I said, it’s nice. So just stay. You’re safe in here – no germs, dim lights, comfortable bed. It’s easy in here. Nobody can mess with you, or, say, fall into your soul and destroy you.”
I gasped. What was with this boy and his gasping powers?
He put a hand on my arm, and for probably the first time, I didn’t take it away. “That’s why I lost my mind the other night, Summer. You came in a few months ago and turned my world upside down, and it terrified me. I was so used to everyone in my life leaving me that I made a safe little spot in my mind where nobody else could reach me, and I told myself I’d just be alone forever. My dad walked out, my friends disappeared, even my mom leaves me more and more a little day, as her health fades. But you came in and got close and wrecked all that, and…well, when I talked to Autumn and she told me what was up, the scared little boy within me got all frantic that you were going to leave, too, and I just…well, lost my fucking mind, to be honest. I didn’t think I could deal with that again.” He locked eyes with me, and I was knocked senseless by the burning intensity of them, like those wispy clouds that huddle in front of the sun at sunset and catch fire from the inside out. “But then I remembered something important: I’m in love with you.”
I looked away and swallowed as hard as my broken throat would let me.
“I’m not afraid of speaking that truth anymore,” he told me, and I could feel his eyes on my face. “Not after all this. I’m in love with you, Summer. I know that now. You know that now. That’s not going to change. So get over yourself. We’ve been through the wringer already and we won’t stop now. This won’t be easy – you lied like crazy all summer, and I was a huge fucking douchebag who broke your heart. And it’s not just that. I’m clingy and I need you too much sometimes, and you let me in and then push me out again, and that’s just what we do. It’s our Thing, like smoking cigarettes on the porch is my mom’s Thing and farting in the kitchen was my dog’s Thing and lying like a bastard is a politician’s Thing and, oh God, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore, but I’m in love with you and I’m not leaving.”
“Cooper,” I breathed, “I’m-”
“So you’re facing some problems,” he said, sitting even taller, looking like he was bracing himself for a hurricane. “So what? I’ve found someone I want. You’re it. That cake you made for my mom, the way you acted at that support meeting, the way you always know the right thing to say to pull me out of myself, the general way you carry yourself through this fucked-up world…I’ve found what I want, so who cares about what comes next? Who cares about the odds? Statistically speaking, it’s perfectly possible that you could walk down the sidewalk tomorrow and get run over by an ice cream truck – does that mean I’m gonna stop loving you all of a sudden? Does that mean I need to step away? No. I need you too, you know. And I know you need me, no matter what you tell yourself. So let yourself be happy, Summer. Stop doing this. Let love destroy you – God knows life is going to, anyway.”
I had to grip the metal bar along my bed to steady myself. He knew my favorite Saviour poem about love and destruction? How were all these similarities between us even possible?
“Okay, Cooper, let me process what I can process,” I began, gulping for air. “You just referred to Hadley in the past tense. What happened?”
He nodded sadly. “Yeah. It happened late last night, after I got home. But it was peaceful, and it was just like she fell asleep, between me and my mom’s wheelchair, down in the garage.”
“Oh, no…God, I’m sorry.”
His eyes filled up with the past. “It’s okay. She was happy. She was a happy girl. She had a good life.”
“I’m really sorry, Cooper.”
He shrugged, and I waited for him to get his thoughts together. “And that book…God,” he finally sighed. “It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. I have it in my pocket, actually. I’ve been reading it over and over again in the waiting room. I can’t believe my words are on a real page.” He took it out and looked down at it almost reverently. “This is a dream, Summer. A real-life dream. I had let go of those when I met you. With my depression and my mom’s issues and – with all that going on, I thought life had beaten my dreams out of me. But seeing my words in real, physical form – I could never repay you for the feeling this book gave me. Never. You’re making me want to fight again, and that’s huge.” He exhaled again. “And honestly, the dog situation affected me, too. When we took her in for cremation this morning, the vet told me not to cry, because although she was only around for part of my life, I was her whole life. And it really got me thinking.”
He got all weird and serious and watery-eyed and took my hand again, acting like he’d rehearsed this moment – which he probably had, I realized. “So, look, Summer. I know this might be the end of the road for you. You can’t hide that from me anymore. But I’d like to be here for the rest of your whole life, however long that may be, and it would be an honor to only have you around for part of mine.”
For the longest moment I just stared up at him. Finally I laughed and wiped my nose.
“Cooper, that was beautiful, but did you just compare me to a dog?”
He set his jaw. “Maybe I did, but it was goddamned adorable and you know it, so you’d better get over it and let yourself love me – or else.”
I looked out of the window at the oaks, and that’s when I finally got over the obstacle plaguing me and accepted the unthinkable: Cooper loved me back. It was true. He wasn’t just some beautiful Spark prankster, trying to fool me into some one-sided summer affair, and this wasn’t Travis Gibson And His Bet, version 2.0. Cooper Nichols loved me. He couldn’t run from this any more than I could.
“Tell me,” he said, “do you remember the lyrics to Freedom by Saviour?”
“It’s only my favorite song in the Milky Way and several other galaxies,” I whimpered. He recited them as I listened:
“My father once told me freedom was being in charge of your own destiny
And that my glory would be solely of my construction
But I just smiled and reached for his whiskey
Because I knew freedom was really being in charge of my own destruction.”
“I’m sad about this, Summer,” he said, biting his lower lip. “And I’m a little mad. I can’t lie. I wanted more time with you. Real time, not hospital time. And I wish you would’ve prepared me for this. But what rips me up even more than my anger is the idea of turning away and not having you around. So if destruction is what this is, if that’s what we’re headed toward, then I’m happy, because I really wouldn’t mind destruction at your hands, Summer Johnson. Not at all. Remember that scene from Battle Bride, where the girl says the only way to find happiness is to risk total destruction? You’re worth the risk, and I’m all yours. Be careful with me.”
“Ugh, Cooper,” I said, feeling heavy as a burden and light as the wind all at once. “You are such a writer. Can you stop being so damned poetic for a second? It is so distracting.”
“Speaking of that, I’m gonna write a book for you, to return the favor. A new book. I’m not confident enough yet to write one for publishers or anything, but I would totally write one just for you in a second.”
“Okay,” I smiled, “but make it about a girl named Summer, and make her super hot, and super smart, and the funniest person on Earth, and-”
“I will,” he said blankly. “That’s what it’s gonna be, if you want.”
“I was kidding!”
“We’ll see,” he said seriously. “You gave me a book, and now it’s my turn.”
Suddenly he pulled away and looked down at me. It was still so hard to maintain eye contact with him – he dazzled me so thoroughly it was like staring into the sun – but I tried.
“Can we just start over?” he asked. “No more secrets, no more evasiveness, no more whispers in the dark – just us?”
“Sure.” I held out my hand. “Hi, my name is Summer Johnson, and I’m twenty-four. I like Funfetti cake even though I can’t eat it, I often think myself to the point of craziness, I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up even though society tells me I’m already there, I hate the way my sentences always curl upwards at the ends like I’m asking questions, and, oh, yeah, I might die soon. And who are you?”
A glimmer in his brown eyes, he bent down and took my hand. “Hi. My name is Cooper Nichols, and I am absolutely swimming in love with a girl named Summer Johnson.”
He stood up and picked up a bag I hadn’t noticed him bring. “And now that we’ve made our introductions, I think I’ll settle in before you have another change of heart. And even if you do, I’m much bigger and stronger than you are – especially now – so you can’t get rid of me now even if you wanted to. These four walls contain everything I need, including you, and I am staying here indefinitely, so now if you’ll excuse me, I have to fucking pee before I humiliate myself any further by acting like a begging, groveling bitch for one additional second.”
He turned, marched into the bathroom, and slammed the door behind him.
~
The next day I had a videoconference with Steinberg and Dr. Dill, the specialist from Alabama who’d volunteered to do the surgery under Steinberg’s supervision, to go over the new plans. Listening to them talk about my possible death was on a level of awkward that I did not even want to comprehend, so I tried not to. But Dill did talk me through everything he’d be doing, and on a rational level at least, it all made sense. My impression of Dill, the man who was going to cut my body open and try to save my life, was…nothing, actually. He was being so clinical and using so much medical-speak that I couldn’t really get any glimpse of his personality at all, which wasn’t that unusual. He was going to split my flesh with a scalpel, not meet me for coffee and some gossip. Doctors were there to fix you, not befriend you. Steinberg was just a rare, friendly gem, and I didn’t expect his level of personality from the others. And in the end, it was decided: because my health was plummeting so quickly, we were out of time, and the surgery would happen in eight days. In eight days I would undergo the procedure that would determine my fate. I could not stop shaking for the life of me.
“You understand the stakes, and what you need to do, right?” Steinberg asked me afterward, during a private moment.
“I think,” I said, and his eyes narrowed.
“No, really. We are going to move heaven and Earth to save you in eight days, Summer, and things are actually looking much better than they were before, but still, this is a maybe-goodbye thing. I want you to know that, and be ready for it.”
I nodded as some ancient sense of purpose settled into me. “Right. A maybe-goodbye thing. I understand. I do. I promise.”
If things had felt surreal before, the next few days were in dream territory. I literally didn’t even have time to think, things were happening so quickly. I didn’t know how to prepare myself for what was coming because I didn’t know how to prepare myself – getting ready for an eighty percent chance of death was not something I was not exactly accustomed to. I assured my mom over and over that I was young and strong and would perhaps emerge from the surgery in one piece, but her theatrics knew no bounds, the parameters of logic included, so I just dealt with it.
Most of my time was taken up by the army of well-wishers that descended on me like mosquitos at sunset. (Well-wishers – what did that phrase even mean? Who would show up at a hospital and not wish the sufferer well, except if they were an evil stepmother with a billion-dollar will or something?) Anyway, aunts, cousins, neighbors, all sorts of family members I had forgotten existed – and not to mention my boss, awkwardly – either called or came to the hospital, and greeting them all and pretending like I remembered meeting Aunt Linda’s new husband and that yes, I totally noticed the Facebook news about Cousin Gina having twin granddaughters, was a total blur. How had so much gone on while I was wrapped up in Cooper Nichols world?
But through it all I sat there in my bed, often with Chase, helping him with Fast Track, the online program he had to do over summer because his reading wasn’t yet on par. Why I cared about something so trivial, I had no idea – I just did. In the eye of the storm, sometimes you reach for anything you can, no matter how small. I guess I just needed to know that something, somewhere out there was real and normal and not revolving around My Problems. Autumn groveled her way into the room and apologized in five thousand different ways, saying she’d spotted Cooper at the beach after a day of drinking at the pier and flagged him down to talk. Her mom had just told her the big news that morning, and, totally heartbroken, she’d blabbed to Cooper and tried to take solace with him about how I’d kept it from them both. I told her I didn’t care, and that I wasn’t mad, because for the most part I really wasn’t. He needed to know, and besides, I wasn’t going to spend my last week before the surgery being angry at people.
Speaking of Cooper, he didn’t leave my side the whole time. Literally: he wouldn’t leave the Plastic Recliner of Uncomfortability beside my bed. Steinberg had confined me to a wheelchair for good, which was fine because A: I was quickly becoming so weak and thin that walking anywhere was becoming crazy difficult, and B. I’d had enough surgeries and been in a wheelchair enough times to know that although it is extremely fucking annoying, it’s also a great way to get people to reach for things for you. And Cooper had to reach for a lot of things. I felt ten kinds of terrible that our time together had gone from sitting in the sun to lying around in a fluorescent hospital room, but what could I do? He was an absolute godsend, shooing Shelly away when I needed a moment, acting as a middleman between me and the rest of my huge extended family when I needed to be alone. Our time together had an eerie urgency to it now, and I didn’t really know why. I could guess, though.
When he wasn’t helping me he sat in the corner scribbling away into some notebook that he said was his diary. I didn’t question it. His constant presence created some awkwardness, for sure, and he let his lingering anger about my Summer of Lies slip out more than once. I didn’t question this, either – after all, I was lucky he hadn’t sworn me off forever that night in the garage. He also had to pretend he didn’t see a lot of things he did see, like the nurses stripping me down to perform tests, changing my catheter, and walking me to the bathroom where I would vomit for twenty minutes straight. Being sick wasn’t like what you saw in the movies, where an actor in full hair and makeup lay in a rosy, well-lit hospital room surrounded by flowers and cards and loving family members. In the real world sickness was a messy, gruesome, disgusting, and above all embarrassing business, not for the faint of heart or stomach. It was humanity at its most basic level, which wasn’t even really humanity at all, just animalism. We are animals, and there’s nothing to remind you of that like spitting bile onto your chest because you didn’t have time to grab a cup. But since humans fear oblivion above anything else, we’ve elevated ourselves in our own minds to these God-like creatures in order fool ourselves into thinking we’re headed for somewhere better than the rest of the beasts walking the Earth. After all, why do you think people found fart jokes and poop stories and husbands’ horrified tales about witnessing their wives’ C-Sections so funny? Humans hate being reminded that they’re just animals, carcasses made of water and melanin and bone and blood, and so they laugh nervously at the fart joke to avoid that little voice that reminds them oh God I’m no better than the animals in the safari videos oh God I’m gonna die one day and nothing will be left of me but this rotten carcass Oh god it’s all futile just kill me now. We want to believe we are gods walking a doomed planet, both originated from and heading for somewhere else, and so we dart our eyes around and laugh about the joke reminding us we’re animals with organs suspended in blood headed for oblivion. We’re nothing but monkeys toiling away on a watery rock we decided to name Earth, and nothing can save us from that non-fate.
So, like I said: shit was embarrassing. One night I looked back and realized I had left the bathroom door open as I wretched horrifically, splattering whitish bile all over the tile walls. Cooper was crying as he watched me.
I pretended I didn’t notice him.
But through all this, I was grateful, even though I would never admit it because I know it would just piss him off. I loved to feel his warmth and his presence next to me, I loved to wake up in the middle of the night all disoriented and hear the comforting sound of him snoring on the little day-bed across the room, and I loved to watch the nurses flirt with him and then see him refuse them and pay attention to only me, as miserably childish as that sounds. The forced intimacy of it all made us closer than ever before, and he told me all kinds of things about his family and childhood that made me feel like I knew him that much more.
A few days into my stay I did try to say something, though. It wasn’t lost on me that he was wasting his summer with me. I felt sort of guilty and dirty and heavy; like a lawyer or a reality television star or a mom who fights loudly with her children in public without trying to hide it, or any other garbage human. He was playing Scrabble next to me on his iPad, a habit he’d just picked up from me, and I reached over and touched his arm.
“Hey. I just want to say, like, thanks, or whatever. You don’t have-”
He held up a hand as he returned a text from Kevin. “Stop. No mushy stuff. That’s my rule.”
“No, Cooper,” I said. “Listen to me, seriously. You don’t have to do this, and it’s not your problem. You should go home and take a shower or something. Have some fun, and-”
“Take my phone,” he said, barely looking up, as he placed his phone into my waiting hand. “Now break it.”
“What?”
“Break it. Throw it on the ground and shatter it to pieces.”
“No!”
“Why not?” he asked, looking up at me. “I’m sure you could put the pieces back together if you tried.”
“Yeah, but it still wouldn’t work the same after that,” I said, and his expression turned to stone.
“There. Now do you get it? Now do you understand what you’ll do to me if you push me away again?”
I just thought for a moment. He put his arm up and held it next to mine. “I am you, Summer. You are me. You’re not a problem, you’re a gift. A gift that talks about emotional stuff too often, is a bit too stubborn, and snores extremely loudly, but a gift nonetheless.”
“Oh my God,” I said as I covered my face with my hands. “I really snore?
“Pretty badly,” he nodded. “I could barely sleep sometimes.”
I clasped my fingers together harder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know, I thought it was funny.” And then: “You may have farted a few times, too.”
My mouth fell open, and then I reached over and pawed at the wall for the nurses’ button.
“Okay, you can take him out now, Cassie.”
~
By the next day, cabin fever was setting in. My room was getting hot and crowded and it smelled faintly of rotting flowers left in the sun, Shelly was starting to annoy the hell out of me, and Cooper, bless his heart, was starting to get fed up with Chase’s constant requests to join him in playing racing games on my TV set’s XBOX. At around lunchtime I excused myself to get some coffee and have some time alone, and on the way back one of the nurses from my floor looked up from the break area and approached me. Her name was Noelle and she couldn’t have been much older than me, and she had a no-nonsense air about her that I really liked.
“So what are you doing with Last Great Hope?” she asked offhandedly as she scanned a dry erase board.
“Nothing. We denied them, pretty much. I said to save the Cinderella stuff for someone who-”
“That’s not what I heard,” she interrupted.
“Oh. Well, what did you hear, then?”
She studied me with mascara’d eyes. “They sent over a dossier this morning. It says you’ve requested a trip.”
“Oh.”
I bit my lip as I thought of my mother going over my head to arrange some dramatic Last Trip To Disney World for me. If I wasn’t in the stupid wheelchair, I would’ve marched to her and yelled at her right then and there. Noticing my agitation, Noelle came closer and sank down to my level. It didn’t seem so much an act of condescension as an attempt to, well, level with me.
“Guess someone was meddling, then,” she said. “I figured. But Summer, seriously, I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, and don’t tell anyone I said this, but if the worst happens, like, you don’t want any unfinished business to be left behind. Not that ‘the worst’ will happen, anyway – this is an excellent hospital, and I’ve heard all good things about Dill. But you know what I mean. Wanna know what I recommend? Just to help you, like, deal with things, mentally speaking?”
“Alcoholism?”
“Nice try,” she smiled. “No, you really do need to go somewhere. Escape for a day or two. Or I would, at least. Somewhere close, but where you still feel comfortable. Your mom will probably be a lot to handle before surgery, no offense, and you’re gonna need a break from the action.”
“Okay, um, I get what you’re saying.”
“Good. And Summer?”
“Yeah?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Bring that boy. If you don’t, then one of the nurses is going to snatch him up, and I am including myself in that hypothesis. He is magnificent.”
Five minutes later I wheeled into my room to find Shelly and Cooper sharing a Subway foot-long on the daybed in the corner. They stopped talking immediately when I entered.
“Shelly, why did I just get asked about Last Great Hope filing papers with the hospital?” I said, and they exchanged sweaty glances. I didn’t want to throw a fit in front of Cooper, but at the same time I was kind of beyond caring by this point. “See, this is exactly what I didn’t want. You going over my head to send me off to Epcot, treating me like a sick little child, giving me anxiety with your theatrics. I told you the first day this happened, please, just let me act normal and keep all this out of my head, and-”
“It wasn’t me,” Shelly interrupted, and I paused.
“What? Then…who?”
Slowly she looked over at Cooper, whose face was as red as the meatball sub on his lap.
“Wait, really? You?”
“Well,” he said, “we weren’t gonna tell you yet, but…I just thought it’d be great to get you away from the hustle of the hospital for a few days, and so I called them the other day…it’s nothing crazy, no penthouse in New York, but…”
“Listen, Cooper,” I said, trying to let him down softly, “that’s sweet of you, it really is, but like I told my mom the day all this day started, I really don’t-”
Just then Steinberg turned into the room, focused on the clipboard in his hands.
“Steinberg, is this true?” I asked. “Have you all been conspiring behind my back?”
He halted and began to back up the way he’d come.
“Please, someone just tell me what’s going on,” I whined, even starting to annoy myself. “I’m not mad, I just hate surprises.”
“Yes, well, uh, unfortunately,” Steinberg stuttered, “Dr. Dill won’t be available until next Thursday, and so that leaves us a bit of grey area in between, so when Mr. Nichols here came to me, I was, uh, obliged to listen to him.”
I swallowed, or tried to, at least. “But…my hair is falling out, and my ribs are showing, and I can barely wheel myself to the bathroom – how can I leave?”
Steinberg smirked. “Indeed, all that is true. You are very fragile, and you’re being watched very closely, and as you’re one of the oldest living Intresia patients, several doctors around the country are very interested in your case and don’t want you stressed before the surgery. However, I have a feeling that I am about to forget to request that the nurses forward me your visitor logs every day, as I have been instructed to do. Furthermore, as long as you cooperate with me on the no walking or eating rules, I have a hunch that I will continue to not care who you admit into your room, or who leaves your room, as long as you are within an hour’s drive of me. And coincidentally, the place you’ve requested is just under fifty-five minutes from here.”
I tried not to smile at the man who saved my life every day. “But where am I going?”
“I’m afraid that’s up to Mr. Nichols,” he said, and I turned to see the most dazzling smile I’d ever seen on Cooper – and considering that this was Cooper Nichols we were talking about, that was saying a lot. I thought I saw a strange look of understanding flow between him and Steinberg, too, but maybe I imagined it.
“It’s a shame you can’t eat right now,” Cooper said, “because I heard from someone very close to me that the bakeries down in St. Augustine are absolutely to die for – no pun intended.”
“Cooper – really?”
He walked closer and bent down to shield our words from our prying public. It was awkward to be so intimate with him in front of all these people, but I tried to meet his completely overpowering gaze. “Summer, I want to take you somewhere, and I know you want to bust out of this joint. It’ll make me happy, and besides, if I smell one more whiff of lavender disinfectant spray, I will lose my mind. But please give me this. Whatever this is, whatever is happening between us, I want to finish it.” He wiped my eye and smiled. “Hey, remember when I told you how many seconds of summer there were?”
I nodded.
“Well, get your bathing suit ready – I think I just gave us a couple hundred thousand more.