Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

The idea of Shannon and Jasmine being friends is an immediate appetite killer.

My relationship with Shannon is complicated, but she’s still my best friend. She’d drag someone over broken glass for hurting me, and yes, I do say that from experience. She may like to keep her friends in line, but she would also do anything for us, and I don’t exactly have a lot of people like that in my life. (Shout-out to my dad, wherever he is these days!)

So, yeah—the only thing I might hate more than the idea of losing Shannon to Jasmine is the idea of losing Jasmine to Shannon.

And if the two of them get close and start sharing secrets about me, I might lose them both.

I am so not letting that happen.

“When did you guys become so tight?” I ask as casually as I can manage while I squeeze back in next to Chase, sitting a little closer to him than before. “I didn’t realize you’d hung out. You don’t think she’s a little weird?”

I honestly don’t even know what about her I could play off as weird, but desperate times, etc., etc.

“We talked for a while at the party,” Shannon says, “and I didn’t get a weird vibe. She’s pretty cool. She speaks French even better than I do and she’s been, like, everywhere. All the jewelry she was wearing came from a trip to Morocco.”

My brain immediately corrects this piece of information. She was also wearing the emerald ring her grandparents gave her for her sixteenth birthday, bought for her in Paris. Plus, she always wears her hamsah-and-Jewish-star necklace underneath her clothing, and that was a bat mitzvah gift from her mom. They’re silly facts, but knowing them reminds me that it’ll be a while before Shannon can surpass everything I know about Jasmine. Because, apparently, I’ve created a competition in my head, and I’m not going down without a fight.

“Why don’t I invite her here?” Shannon continues, pulling out her phone. “Keith can lay on the charm right now.”

The only part of me that doesn’t want him to call her bluff is the part that wants to know if Shannon really has Jasmine’s phone number. Thankfully, Keith is a total coward and says his romantic moves are not meant for a greater audience. While everyone’s teasing him, the food arrives, and thankfully, the conversation changes to things like scouts, college applications, and Homecoming. I swear Chase squeezes my thigh when the latter comes up.

Homecoming on Chase Harding’s arm? I’m not sure I’ve allowed myself to dream that high. (That’s a lie—I have quite literally had this dream many, many times, and I always wake up in a terrible mood when I realize it’s just the work of my horny brain. It is item number two on my high school bucket list, right behind “prom on Chase Harding’s arm.”) But now he’s here, ordering me a fried chicken sandwich with extra slaw and squeezing my thigh and making no secret of the fact that he’s interested. It’s all so fast I’m starting to get paranoid Shannon’s behind it, like she’s paid him to make my senior year special or something. Which is ridiculous, because honestly, I don’t really lack for confidence, but how else do I explain such a huge change?

“You still up for ice cream after this?” His low voice tickles my ear and beyond, and suddenly, I wouldn’t care if my own mother was paying him for this.

“Absolutely,” I say, and this time when his hand squeezes my thigh, it stays put.

As expected, I get an eyebrow waggle and a mouthed “Call me” from Shannon when Chase and I take off after dinner. It’s surreal that I’m already getting to know his car, like the way the AC vents need to be jiggled and how classic rock always fills the air within seconds of him starting the car. That he’ll tap the beat on the steering wheel any time a Rolling Stones song comes on, and he won’t do air guitar when it’s Black Sabbath, but his fingers will twitch like he wants to and is controlling himself in front of me.

So many things to learn about this boy I’ve been observing for as long as I can remember.

I know he’s gonna get vanilla with rainbow sprinkles because I’ve seen him here with his friends and that’s what he got both times. He doesn’t disappoint. I get the same because I spent the whole ride thinking about how I knew he was gonna get it and by the end of the five-minute ride to the Ice Palace, I couldn’t get the craving out of my head.

“You know, everyone else teases me about how boring I am,” he says as we sit down on one of the benches outside. “You didn’t have to get the same thing to make me feel better.”

“As it happens, I think vanilla is extremely underrated,” I tell him as I lick a stray drop off my finger, knowing he’s watching me do it. I actually do think vanilla is underrated, but yeah, under normal circumstances I probably would’ve gotten cookie dough or one of those flavors with seventeen kinds of candy bar in it. “And so is a little colorful brightness on dessert.”

“Thank you,” he says, a huge smile breaking out onto his face. “How do you not get in a good mood eating something covered in bright colors? My little sister taught me that.”

God, I wish he hadn’t mentioned Kira. My crush on him grows three sizes whenever he does. #onlychildproblems.

And then my stomach twinges again because “hashtag onlychildproblems” was something Jasmine and I used to say all the time.

I’d been so upset at the thought of Shannon calling her when we were at Benny’s, but why didn’t I just do it? My mom’s right, at least in part—I did depend on Jasmine for friends in the Outer Banks. Shouldn’t I be making it up to her for introducing me