Page 2 of A Summer Thing

“Where are you?” she asks, but she’s only asking because she knows exactly where I am. “Quinn,” she adds softly, concern drifting across the line.

“Yeah,” my voice hitches on the word.

She’s quiet for a little while, before she says, “He’d be proud of you, you know.”

“I know,” I breathe, swallowing back another wave of tears.

“I hope you told him I miss him, too,” she says with a hint of humor, but I can hear the sadness in there, too.

“He knows.” My lips twist into something that resembles a smile, despite everything. That’s the magic of Addy.

“Okay, good,” she says. “Now get your ass to me so I can hug the shit out of you.”

That pulls a soft laugh out of me. “On it.”

“Drive safe, babe.”

“I will. See you soon.”

“See you soon!”

______

It’s 3:33 a.m. when I finally turn the engine over, and it feels like a good omen.

A sign of better things to come. I don’t close my eyes or make a wish or anything like that, because if wishes came true, my life would look a hell of a lot different than it does right now. But it feels… good. Or right, somehow.

Pulling away from the cemetery, I can feel how much Quinn is still with me, and I let go of some of the weight I’ve been suffocating beneath all night.

And the farther I drive, the lighter I feel.

Like maybe I really can start again, start over.

Like maybe I can blow through the blockages and find that better version of myself and hold onto her for dear life.

I like that. It feels real. It feels possible now, too, driving away from the city that hasn’t felt like home for far too long.

All I have to do is get to Addy in one piece.

Eighteen hours of driving ahead of me with too many things on my mind and a lump in my throat I can’t seem to get rid of, but I’m doing it. Despite my guilt, and despite all of my fears, I’m doing it.

No matter all the wild scenarios my mind conjures up—suddenly jerking the wheel and flying off a cliff, being targeted by some psychopath on the road and getting kidnapped and murdered, being obliterated by a semi-truck, getting swept up in a tornado, potentially making all the wrong life decisions from here on out and regretting them for the rest of my life—I know I will make it there in one piece.

Maybe. Probably.

It sounds bizarre, I know it does, but I’m not joking. I wish I were. My mind can be a terrible place when it wants to be.

But I focus on the fact that once I get there, I get to see Addy, my best friend in this whole goddamn entire universe, and spend all summer with her—and then the next four years, and maybe a lifetime after that.

It’s enough to ease some of my internal chaos as I merge onto the next freeway, flipping off the past in my rearview mirror.

______

I’m here. No trauma, no carnage. I made it in one piece. And despite the fact that I’m running on zero sleep for the past thirty-seven hours, I do an exhausted little happy dance in my seat, and then I jump out of my car when I see Addy running down her driveway.

She crashes into me, throwing her arms around me. Her arms form a protective barrier from the world, and I already feel a lifetime away from everything I left behind.

Cicadas are buzzing, humming in the humid summer heat, and I release a relieved breath. I’ve missed this sound, this heat, this house, my best friend.

Ever since her parents uprooted them from California in the ninth grade and replanted them out here, in Oklahoma, I’ve spent a few weeks of the summer with them, every summer.

All thanks to the kind hearts of Cal and Stacy, Addy’s parents, for flying me out here, and no thanks at all to my own parents who fought me tooth and nail to be able to come.

I think the only reason I won in the end was because they wanted to spend a good part of their summers without me more than they wanted to hate me, which was more than fine by me.

Truth be told, I love Addy’s parents like they’re my own. More than I can remember ever loving my own. And they’ve certainly parented me more from four states away than mine ever have.

But I’m not weighing myself down with those thoughts anymore.

I squeeze the crap out of Addy, and I swear to God, her hugs feel like slipping into the coziest bed after a long and exhausting two days. A long and exhausting five years.

“You’re here! And I get you all summer this time!” she squeals.

I breathe a laugh into her embrace. “And the next four years at NYU?” I elbow her in the ribs, and she keeps an arm around me, leading me up her driveway while squealing all over again.

“I know! I’m just so excited! I can’t freaking wait for college, too. But then we’ll be bogged down by all this schoolwork and responsibility, you know? But right now? This is our summer of freedom!” she says excitedly, and I can’t help but crack a smile.

“How much trouble are we getting into this summer?” I nudge her with my shoulder.

“Not much.” She snorts, and we both fall into a bout of laughter, hers louder and more heartfelt than mine, but she shushes us as she opens her front door. “Mom and Dad are asleep. They really wanted to wait up for you, but it was getting late, and Dad has an early morning.”

“Oh, that’s okay.” I wave her off. I would’ve loved to have seen them, but I get it. Besides, I feel like I’m about to fall over from exhaustion anyway. And I’ll have all summer with them.

Addy leads me upstairs, and we drop my bags into the guest room next to hers, heading straight into her room.

We talk and laugh and cry the night away, catching up on the last year of our lives into the early hours of the morning like we don’t talk every day, and make a whole bunch of plans for the future.

When I finally fall asleep, sprawled across the guest bed, I’m out like a light.