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

“Because you hoped…” God, I feel slow. And yet my pulse is racing. “Jasmine. Why didn’t you say anything? You had a billion chances!”

“Did I?” she says, and maybe I’ve been breaking her heart, but the sadness in her voice cracks mine wide open. “It feels like I never had one at all.” She turns to walk away, and I don’t know what to say, but I know I don’t want her to go.

Then she turns back.

“Look, I should tell you—I’m bi. I was questioning it for a while, but when you came along this summer I felt like I finally knew for sure. And maybe for you, it was liking the taste of my cherry ChapStick or whatever. But even though this has all hurt like hell and honestly kind of sucks, it’s good to know for sure who I am. So, thank you, I guess.”

She sounds so certain. She’s been certain, while I’ve been floating along, thinking we were both in the same weird and nameless territory of summer.

I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know what to think.

I don’t know what I am.

And it doesn’t matter, because she’s gone.

Chapter Twenty

I don’t go back into the dance. I can’t see Chase now, can’t prance around in a tiara, and I definitely can’t see Jasmine. Luckily, when someone does surface to find me in the hallway, it isn’t either of them—it’s Kiki.

“You know,” I say.

“I know.”

“You always did, didn’t you? How?”

Kiki taps her nose. “I have pretty excellent powers of deduction. Also, you stare at each other a lot when you think no one’s watching. Like, a lot. And a few of the things you’ve each said about your summers line up, and that fire pit picture you texted us—Jasmine has a really similar one on Instagram. Finally, I looked up her dad. It wasn’t hard from there.”

“Kiki’s on the case.”

She smiles proudly. “Always.” Her face turns serious. “Look, I know Chase has been the dream for literally ever, but … how do you feel? Unless you don’t wanna talk about it.”

Do I wanna talk about it?

How do I feel?

THEN

Carter’s end-of-summer party is a lot like his beginning-of-summer party, which doesn’t have anyone complaining. On the beach laughing and drinking and dancing and staring into the bonfire with everyone else, I know this is going to be the summer I think about a billion years from now. I can’t believe I’m leaving tomorrow. I can’t believe I won’t be living steps away from the ocean anymore. I can’t believe I’ll never fall off Derek’s Jet Skis again or get destroyed by Keisha and Carter at spades or have spa nights complete with Brea’s sheet masks.

I can’t believe this is it for me and Jasmine.

As much as I’ll miss everyone, it’s killing me that we’re spending our last night with a billion other people. I keep trying to make eye contact with her, but every time I do, she’s swept away by someone wanting her to play flip cup, or I’m yanked into a selfie by Owen or Brea. I keep wanting to drag her close, to imprint the feeling of her skin on mine, but I don’t have any excuses. My mind can’t come up with a single justification for why I need to grab her hand right now, or how to pull her away for a walk along the water, just the two of us.

We’re all about the excuses, the setup, the ways we happen to fall onto each other’s mouths and hands. It’s just what happens when you’re hanging out alone and watching a movie, or swimming, or lying in the hammock together, or spreading out on the grass to watch the stars, or taking pictures of sunsets, or feeling lazy in a canoe.

It’s just what happens for us over and over again and it’s so good I can’t stop thinking about it, wanting to kiss that spot on her neck, wanting to touch the incredibly soft skin on her shoulder blades, wanting to feel her hands tracing my hipbone on a path to making me see stars.

How can I not have an excuse for our last night?

Watching her flirt with Carter certainly isn’t helping any, so I decide to give myself a little breathing room and take that walk on the beach myself. I have my phone to keep me company, and I scroll through pictures hoping the sight of Gia smiling hugely from a pyramid at cheer camp or Shannon posting a picture with yet another cute Parisian guy will get me excited enough about what I’m going back to that I’ll stop being sad about what I’m leaving behind.

But it’s Kiki’s latest post that stops me. She’s been working on her lettering, writing cheesy quotes in funky fonts and posting them to Instagram. Her newest is “Seize the Day,” written in swirly hot pink gothic letters, and it’s such an un-Kiki quote that it makes me laugh.

I’m still laughing when I take its completely cliché advice and retrace my steps on the beach right back to the party, to Jasmine, and whisper in her ear.

“Look, I don’t have a clever way to say this, but it’s my last night, so I’m going to set the bullshit aside. The only thing I want to do tonight is go back to your house and take our clothes off. Can I say that?”

For the longest minute in the world, I brace myself for a literal or metaphorical slap in the face, or worse. The words came out easily enough, but my entire body is trembling. Then she squeezes my hand and like magic it stops, long enough for me to make my rounds hugging and kissing everyone goodbye when Jasmine announces that we’re heading back. I make promises to text and otherwise keep in touch but I barely even know what I’m saying because I’ve just flat-out told a girl I want to have