Sex, Not Love

Summer flashed an impish smile. “Planning on taking yours the rest of the night, unless that’s a problem.”

“No problem here.”

I took five minutes to sort out my head before returning to the couch. I glanced over at my brother with his arm around Emily—he looked happy. He’d pined over Summer for six more months after that party. Now that he’d seemed to move on, was the ban lifted? Jayce had no idea anything had ever happened between Summer and me—and truth be told, not much had. But was it ever okay to go for a girl your brother was once crazy about, even though she’d never returned the feelings? I wasn’t sure my moral compass always pointed me in the right direction.

Summer hadn’t moved from the couch when I returned. I sat, cracked open a new beer and took a sip before passing it to her. “My turn. Truth or dare?”

She took a long chug from the can. “Dare.”

The challenge exited my mouth without any real thought. “Text the guy you’re seeing and tell him you’re done with seeing him.”

Summer looked back and forth between my eyes before digging into her purse and pulling out her cell. She scrolled through her contacts and typed a message. When she finished, she turned the phone toward me so I could read the text she’d typed to a guy named Gavin.

Hey. Sorry to do this via text. But I need to end what we have going on. Have a nice summer break!

After I finished reading, she hit send.

I drank from the beer. “Gavin’s day just got shitty.”

We smiled at each other as her phone pinged with a response. I loved that she didn’t bother to open it and ignored the sound of a dozen new messages over the next half hour we sat together.

When the party was in full swing, Summer and I separated, each spending time talking to our friends and hanging out with Jayce. But there wasn’t a second of the day that I didn’t know exactly where she was. My eyes were like a magnet to her. And it didn’t appear I was the only one. Sometimes our eyes would meet, and we’d smile. Other times, one of us would look at the other, mid-conversation with someone else, and even though our eyes couldn’t connect, our hidden smirks said we were on the same page.

At one point I was talking to my brother when I felt her eyes on me. I still hadn’t worked out how anything between Summer and me would sit with Jayce, so I decided to feel things out.

“You and Emily look happy.”

“She’s great.” He had a bottle of seltzer water in his hand, and I noticed a shake when he raised it to his mouth, almost a tremor. Considering our mother had had Parkinson’s, it was something we both noticed.

“What’s going on there?” I lifted my chin toward his hand.

“Just a little too much to drink last night.” He tipped his bottle to me. “A little too much graduation celebration. Sticking to seltzer today.”

What college guy who lives in a frat house hasn’t had those nights? I thought nothing of it, seeing as I’d had shaky morning-afters myself. So, I went back to poking around.

“Emily going to grad school?”

“Not right away. She’s taking her nursing boards but wants to work for a while before doing a graduate degree.”

“How’d you two meet anyway?”

“Tutoring.” He smiled warmly. “She sucks at math.”

“Ah. Like Su…Pearl. How’s she gonna make it through her last year of college without you around to tutor her?”

Jayce looked over my shoulder. I knew by the look in his eye who he was gazing at. “I’ll make the time if she still needs help. I’d never turn down an opportunity to spend time with Pearl.”

Shit. “Better not let Emily hear you say that.”

He shook his head, still staring at Summer over my shoulder. “Yeah. No shit. No one likes to find out they’re second choice.”

***

I drank too much.

The party was winding down, and I wasn’t the only one who had overindulged. Jayce, who’d said he wasn’t drinking today, had just tripped over his own two feet, and his tipsy girlfriend laughed so hard, she fell down on the floor with him when she tried to help him up.

Needing some fresh air, I sat on the front porch alone, nursing a beer and licking my wounds. I’d done my best to ignore Summer after my earlier conversation with my brother. Then the front door opened, and she sat her fine ass down next to me on the step.