Chapter 2: Summer

“Hello?” I said, struggling to keep the resignation out of my tone.

“Summer?” The familiar voice on the other end was a mixture of both worry and relief.

“What is it, Aaron?”

“I’ve been calling you for days.”

“I know. I just—there wasn’t anything left to say.”

He paused. I wasn’t sure if it was because he knew I was right or hadn’t really expected me to answer the phone in the first place. “So nothing has changed then?” he asked quietly. “You still want this … us to be over?”

I knew his words, the very sound of his voice, should tug at me, make me feel something. Aaron and I had been together two years, after all. But I felt nothing. That, in itself, was my biggest clue I’d done the right thing in breaking things off before graduation.

“Nothing’s changed,” I confirmed.

Aaron was silent. I pictured him squeezing his eyes shut, trying to find the right words. But there weren’t any. None that would make me change my mind, anyway. I needed to make him see that without hurting him in the process. Well, more than I already had.

“You and I were good together, Summer,” Aaron said. “We got along, never fought, we had fun. I was happy with you. I thought you were happy with me too.”

“I was … sort of.” How in the world could I explain it to him when I couldn’t fully make sense of it myself? “This thing with my parents has made me think.”

“Think about what?”

I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice, but it crept in. Just like it did any time I tried explaining to someone exactly what the divorce had done to me. No one ever got it. My friends at school had worn blank looks, my dad didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I’d avoided anyone else who might ask just so I wouldn’t have to face the strange looks when I tried to make them understand. “I don’t want to ‘get along’ or ‘have fun,’ Aaron,” I said. “I want to live. I want to feel it. I want it to matter.”

“I thought I did matter.”

“I …” I’d already said it once and that had been hard enough. Why was he making me say it again? I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered, “I just need to go my own way.”

Heavy silence hung on the line.

“If it’s space you want, I’ll give it to you,” he said, his words clipped. “Enjoy the wide open. But Summer?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not your mother.”

“I know that,” I said. Then I hung up.

I took my time unpacking, carefully choosing what to store and what to keep out. Space was limited, but I didn’t mind. I needed the dilemma the shortage of space provided—it distracted me from problems that had no easy answers. Like Aaron. And my mother.

I knew Aaron was working through disbelief and heading for anger. And he had a right. We’d had no real issues, no obstacles that would raise a red flag in the relationship. He was nice. Took me on dinner dates. Remembered birthdays. He laughed at my jokes. Listened—mostly—to my rants about the literary research papers I had to write, and about my professor with a crooked nose and nasally voice that you couldn’t hear unless you sat in the front row. Aaron was patient, always understanding when I couldn’t see him because of a test to study for. He was predictable. Steady. Calm.

I’d actually liked those things about him at one point. Even the predictability. It meant something you could count on. Both were things I wanted in a boyfriend. Both were things I’d seen in my own parents’ relationship. Until I’d come home for winter break and my parents had said they were separating. Not a trial basis, but the first step toward the d-word. Papers were filed. My mother had already moved out. Gotten a little apartment in the city. And from the way my mom had smiled when she’d said it, I knew it was really over. It grated on me—that smile, that happiness.

It made me furious.

If the two people who seemed the most stable in the entire world couldn’t make it last, what chance did I have?

I’d gone back to my last semester of school without an answer. Aaron had complained that I was distant, but when I brushed him off, he let it go. That was his way. And I’d realized it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. A connection so tight the other person couldn’t possibly ignore the other’s hurt. Or distance. Or pulling away. Did that exist? I thought it did, but after seeing my parents split, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was all a fairy tale.

In my mind, it wasn’t worth finding out. The hurt I saw in my father was all too real.

The day I’d graduated, I broke it off with Aaron and told my dad I was coming home, business degree in tow. I would pick up the slack Mom had left behind, do the books for Heritage Plantation—her job up until six months ago. And maybe figure out what it was I wanted in the process. The big city—the rest of my life—could wait.