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

her until dinner. She isn’t avoiding me, I don’t think, and I’m not avoiding her, but we aren’t going out of our way to spend time alone. In fact, this is the first time I’ve seen her in days without a camera in her hand and a bag of gear in mine.

“She’s probably not your thing,” I say, embarrassed to be caught devouring so many romance novels. Shannon flashes through my head with her “guilty pleasures is a stupid concept” mantra, and I sit a little straighter. “But she’s my favorite romance author. She has a new book coming out in September and I’m rereading everything of hers before it comes out.”

“Can I see?” She motions for me to move over in the hammock and I do, aware of every single micro-inch of her bronze skin brushing mine. I hand over the book, refusing to cringe at the hot-pink cover, and she accepts it with a hint of a wicked grin. “Wait, this is a boring scene in an office. Where’s the good stuff?”

“You know romance novels have actual plots, right?” I say dryly. “The characters do real things and have brains and stuff?”

“Oh, I’m teasing. But not about the good stuff.” She keeps a finger where I left off and flips through the rest until she finds something to her satisfaction. “Ah, here we go.

“‘If this is what yardwork does to your body, I need to shake some more leaves from my tree,’ said Zoe, sliding a perfectly manicured red fingernail down the line bisecting Drew’s pecs and following it with her lips.

“‘Baby,’ Drew breathed, ‘I’ll be happy to shake it all for you.’ He lifted her in his strong arms and pressed his mouth to hers, inhaling her like the spicy scent of wood smoke on a crisp autumn morning. But his lips weren’t content simply to taste her mouth. He rolled her so she was beneath him and left kisses all over her cheeks, her throat, her shoulders, that magnificent collarbone, and the velvety soft pillows of her breasts.” Jasmine hands the book back. “You really like that stuff?”

I realize my entire body is clenched tight in reaction to her reading, as if I were trying to stop myself from responding. I relax my limbs, take the book back, and give her an honest answer. “I really do. I’m a sap. I’ve always been a sap. I never got to grow up seeing my parents sneak kisses or grab each other’s butts or whatever it is parents who actually like each other do in movies. Sometimes I think my mom’s sad she never had that too, not even for a little bit like your parents. But it’s not something everyone who wants it gets, even if they’re awesome and put themselves out there. I figure, if I never get it in real life, at least I get it here.” I hold up the book. “The way she writes lets you put yourself in her main characters’ shoes, because they’re not these perfect women; they’re messy and not always perfect-looking and they don’t all have incredible jobs. They struggle with different shit, but find love anyway. And that’s what I want.”

I don’t look at Jasmine until the words finish rushing out of me, and the teasing smile I expect to see is gone. She’s looking at me like … I don’t know, exactly. But she’s taking me seriously and not about to make fun of me for spilling my silly, romantic guts, and I’m grateful.

Her lips do curve again, but there’s no real mocking in their tilt. “So, you put yourself in Zoe’s non-Louboutins, huh? Do we have to find you a Drew to do yardwork?”

My mind flashes to Chase, who definitely has Drew’s defined pecs but I’m pretty sure also has a gardener. I open my mouth to mention him but what comes out instead is, “We’re already shaking leaves here.” I indicate the trees holding up our hammock. “So.”

“Good point. What’s next for Zoe, then?”

And because I am half out of my mind, and her low voice reading the excerpt is ringing in my brain, and though we haven’t talked about it, I can’t get the night of the bonfire out of my head, I say, “Well, you read it.” And I drag my decently manicured green nail down to the edge of her tank top and follow it with a kiss.

I spend the longest second in the world waiting for her reaction, gripping the side of hammock in case she rolls out of it with a quickness and I go flying, but finally, she laughs and says, “I did.”

And she presses her mouth to mine, inhaling me like the spicy scent of wood smoke on a crisp autumn morning.

NOW

The memory is so clear in my head that I can still hear her voice, and I realize a moment later when a tray slaps down next to Shannon that I am literally hearing her voice. “Hey. What’s with the spreadsheet?”

Gia may be a little flighty, but she is a master organizer. She turns her laptop to Jasmine so she can see the page with all eight of her chosen colleges listed. “This is where I’m applying,” she says, “and here are deadline dates, which schools use the common app, and—well, stuff like that.”

She swivels her computer back around, but not before Jasmine catches a glimpse of the last column. “What’s DFBC?”

We try really, really hard not to laugh into our food as Gia blushes. “It’s, um, Distance from Boston College. That’s where Tommy’s going. Everyone in his family has gone there for three generations.”

Jasmine catches her jaw drop quickly, but I don’t miss it, and I’m pretty sure Gia doesn’t either. “Oh, that’s, uh … thorough planning.”

“There are a lot of good schools in Boston,” Gia says quickly, dragging her fork around her Cobb salad. “It’s not like I’d be following him there or anything. I’d be lucky to go to BC, or BU, or Tufts, and