Endless Summer

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Forget Kevin Ye. Sean would be easier.”

“I knew it!” Adam pointed at me. “You were trying to get Sean this whole time.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you saying? I pla

“You don’t fool me. You play dumb, but you made an A in trig. You’re diabolical without even trying.” I folded my arms on my sports bra. “I’m pretty sure that’s a contradiction in terms, but remind me to look up ‘diabolical’ later.” He put his fists on his hips, which made the bare, ta

“What is this business with Sean?” I insisted. “I thought you and Sean worked everything out. I saw y’all talking Saturday night.”

“Worked everything out? I guess. We agreed that he would not interfere when I tried to get you back, and I would not interfere when he tried to get Rachel back.”

“Oh.” I’d thought they’d talked about something more meaningful and brotherly, like how Sean had mistreated Adam for sixteen years and how Adam had begun to strike back in a big way. I’d hoped they had, because it would have meant Sean might help Adam and me out of our latest predicament. But this was too much to ask.

Before that night, I’d never seen Sean and Adam voluntarily have a talk with each other. Ever.

“Well, fine,” I said. “I won’t go out with Sean either.”

We both jumped when a bird burst from a dogwood near us and soared away. Adam watched it as it went. I watched Adam. He tracked the bird with his eyes, chin lifted as if he’d regained his dignity. I expected the next thing out of his mouth to be an apology for doubting me.

What he said was, “Who’s your next choice? Cameron?”

Brilliant! I hardly even registered the sarcasm in Adam’s voice. I snapped my fingers. “at’s not a bad idea. Cameron’s three years older than me. He’s about to be a sophomore in college. My dad will pass out. He’ll be so happy to have me dating a high school junior again! Even if it’s you.”

“Plus, you and Cameron are so familiar with each other anyway, since you’ve already made out.” His blue eyes accused me. This time his sarcasm was hard for me to gloss over.

Exasperated, I put my hands in my hair, which was a mistake because it was up in a ponytail. I only managed more of a tousled, cornered-by-my-boyfriend’s-superior-logic look before putting my hands down. “Adam, we did not make out. We kissed once, when I was eleven. I should never have told you that.” I really never would have told him if I’d had any idea he would be my boyfriend a week later and he would throw it back in my face. “I am trying to solve this problem for both of us, and all you can do is be unreasonable and furious about everything.”

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to not want you to date my brothers or a freaking convicted felon,” Adam said. “What did Kevin Ye get arrested for, anyway?

Didn’t he steal a car?”

“He stole the driver’s ed car.” I laughed. Then I saw how Adam was looking at me. “He gave it back.”

“They make you give stuff back, Lori, after they arrest you for stealing it.”

I opened my mouth to respond. I was going to say something about Kevin passing driver’s ed the third time he took it, despite his brush with the law. But now Adam was giving me a look that said, I know you are not about to defend Kevin Ye. I closed my mouth.

Adam sighed through his nose, disgusted. “I can’t believe you’re trying to plan your way out of this. What we do together is none of our parents’ goddamn business, and if you try to work around what they say, you’re just giving in.”

“I’m not. It’s a means to an end. You have to think like them, Adam.” I poked at my head to signify thinking. “ink like a middle-aged man with OCD, a dead wife, and a teenage daughter. Think like a woman with three teenage sons who once ran a golf cart into the side of their granddad’s house.”

“Cameron and Sean shouldn’t have let me drive,” Adam said in his own defense. “I was seven.”

“You shouldn’t have asked to drive. You were seven.”

“And I don’t see why we can’t just run away to Montgomery.”

is idea sounded as ridiculous now as it had when he’d first suggested it last night. But the sentiment behind it—that was very sweet. As we’d argued, Adam had moved several feet away from me across the forest floor, and I’d backed against the tree. When we stood this far apart, it was hard to remember we were arguing because we wanted to be together.

Boosting myself off the tree with one ru

He looked down at my hand on his arm and muttered, “I’m not graduating from high school anyway.” I stepped even closer, put my other hand on his arm, and fluttered my eyelashes at him. I was getting good at this, if I did say so myself. “I told you I’d help you in chemistry next year.”

Stubbornly he held onto his anger. He didn’t touch me. But he didn’t back away or shake my hands off his arm, either. He said, “Even if your plan worked and they let us date again, the next time we did something wrong—”

“Why would we ever do anything else wrong? We would be very careful.”

“Lori. This is you we’re talking about. And me.”

I laughed. “I see your point.”

“The next time we did something wrong, they’d just tell us again that we couldn’t date.”

I stroked my thumbs across the golden hair on his ta

“I’m not sure we are anymore.”

I looked down at the diamond and pearl ring that my mother had left to me, which my dad gave me for my birthday yesterday. Of course we were meant to be together.

My mother had seen this and as much as told me this before she died. It had just been a matter of me seeing this for myself. But if Adam didn’t believe it anymore… I looked up at him in confusion. “You’re not?”

“Not if you’re that desperate to go out with Sean.”

I pulled my hands off his arm. “So this is what it’s about. You’re still mad about Sean. What happened to what you told me a few days ago, that you’ve been in love with me forever?”

“You’ve been in love with Sean forever, and you expect me to believe you’ve switched from him to me in the past week, just like that?” I’d had enough of this. If he didn’t trust me when I said I wanted him and not Sean, what kind of boyfriend was he? I would tell him we should break up, as if my dad hadn’t broken us up already. ings would be so much easier this way. We could enjoy the rest of the summer. Our dating ban wouldn’t matter anymore, and we could go back to being friends and pretend we’d never gotten together. I hoped. Someday.

And then, something happened. e sunlight filtering through the leaves shifted on his face. He looked different. is boy I’d been staring at in disbelief and deciding to break up with… I knew it was Adam. I was in the middle of an argument with Adam. But in the dim forest light, he didn’t look like Adam. He didn’t even look like Sean, who was so much like Adam in appearance but was two years older.

is time, as Adam pierced me with those light blue eyes and privileged me with the full view of his ta

Boys I’d considered so dreamy and so much older than me that I’d never have a chance with them, so why try?

It occurred to me that August football practice did begin in six or seven weeks. School would start a few weeks after that. With Sean a freshman off at college, Adam would be out of his shadow for the first time—the only Vader brother left in town. Adam would likely start for the varsity football team. He would get noticed. And he would no longer be my property all day every day like he was during the summer. I would have to share him with the other girls in my high school, including every flirtatious ditz in the lower sections of math, where he always got stuck.