“Oh, honey.” She sighs. “This is why you pulled away from your friends, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” I say, because really how much worse can it get? Public humiliation? Broken heart? Trailer park showdown? “No one could know about it.”
“Why did he come here?”
“To get me back, I guess. He wants me to go on the trip to France with him.” I dare a glance and the hard, shocked look before has softened.
“What a jerk.”
“He is a jerk. When his fiancé confronted me, I had no idea she existed. He snuck me around under the whole big secret of our age difference and the rules about student/teacher relationships. That’s true, of course, and I agreed knowing it was wrong, but I was completely shocked when I finally met her.”
“Ouch.”
“She was furious and I was just embarrassed. But then he chose her over me and all that time I spent with him, everything I gave up; spring break, prom…all of that stuff was wasted. I don’t know if he thought he loved her or if he thought she’d keep the secret. But now that I’ve graduated he changed his mind, I guess, and wants me back.”
She jerks the car onto the side of the road and hardly has it in park when she leans over the middle and pulls me into a hug. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I ask into her hair. “This one’s on me, Mom.”
“For letting this happen. I should have been there—I should have noticed! For giving you such bad role models for men in your life. For dragging you all over to research serial killers. Warning you off guys like Justin Hawkins and those other beach bums, a little too late. I did a crappy job teaching you on this subject. Probably because I suck at it myself.”
I pull away. “Mom, you don’t suck. And I wasn’t looking for a guy like Dad, it just kind of happened. He said all the right things and we had a lot in common. The one thing you taught me though, is cheating is a deal-breaker. Once I found out I walked away, no matter how difficult it was.”
This makes her smile. “I guess I wasn’t a complete failure.”
“Not at all,” I say, hugging her again. She restarts the car and pulls into the road. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I know it’s one of the guys checking in. This prompts me to say, “And as far as Justin goes, give him a break. He’s not such a bad guy. Neither are the others.”
“Sometimes they do mature, although it may take a decade or two.” It’s an odd thing to say but not an argument, so I let it go. We ride the rest of the way back to the house in silence, absorbing the emotional turmoil of the day.
Chapter 15
It’s Monday and my mother heads down to the campground cocktail party at the same time I hop in the passenger seat of Justin’s Jeep to ride over the bridge to the beach. Pete and Nick are crammed into the backseat, a guitar takes up the space between them.
I love the feeling of Justin’s open roof, the noise of the wind and the sense of freedom. The boys fight over the radio and we have to come to a crawl on the main road because tourists are all over the place.
“It’s weird,” I say suddenly.
“What’s weird?” asks.
“I was thinking of these people as tourists, when I’m one of them, too.”
The boys laugh and Justin tips his head back.
“What?”
Pete calls from the backseat. “You’re not a tourist, Summer. That ship sailed weeks ago.”
“Face it,” Nick says. “You’re one of us.”
The feeling warms my soul in an unexpected way.
We finally get through the traffic jam and Justin parks the car under the house. Pete grabs his guitar and Justin lifts a cooler out of the back. Nick waits and gives me a hand to get out of the Jeep. I don’t need it but I take it anyway, just to touch him for a brief moment.
“I missed you today,” I tell him.
“How was it? Your mom said she didn’t need me.”
“It was rough. And Mom was right, she probably wouldn’t have learned the information we needed if a man was there.”