Page 1 of Cruel Summer

ONE

“I think we should see other people.”

Samantha Parker dropped her fork, right onto the salad she was eating, and looked across the table at her husband of twenty-two years.

At that familiar face saying the most unfamiliar words.

Will Parker was her soulmate. She’d known that since she was sixteen years old and he’d kissed her on a school field trip to the Rock Museum.

She had never cared much about rocks.

But she’d cared a lot about whether or not the boy she considered one of her best friends liked her liked her, like she did him. She’d only had to wait a breath between her confession and his kiss—her first kiss and his—to have the answer.

That they felt the same.

They had felt the same every day since then.

She’d written W + S 4 Eva on her binder. So had he. He’d taught her to drive a stick. And well…he’d…taught her to drive a stick .

When they’d guiltily broken all the rules of their churchy upbringing and had sex for the first time at seventeen, they’d both owned that choice. They’d both wanted it.

When they’d found out at eighteen that their passion had actually been recklessness and Sam found herself pregnant, they’d been united in knowing what choice had to be made.

They’d had a small wedding with only family, and at their high school graduation, they were a married couple with a baby on the way and a mountain of small-town gossip and disapproval buzzing around them.

But they were together, so it had never mattered.

Every choice, every fork in the road, every moment, Samantha and Will had been one. Because they were soulmates.

When Will had said he wanted to go to dinner tonight, she’d been certain it was an affirmation of sorts.

Their youngest child, Ethan, had told them he wasn’t coming home this summer because he was doing a study abroad program.

Sam had been sad about that, initially. There was something…

good about it too. Ethan was launched. They’d done it.

She and Will were empty nesters. They’d crossed a finish line, and they’d done it at forty, because that was what happened when you did everything early.

It had been hard sometimes, no doubt about that. But they’d been fine with it because they’d weathered it together.

Together.

Like always.

So why wouldn’t she think they were going out to celebrate a job well done? A life well lived? Finally going on an extended vacation like they’d planned to do when they’d graduated, but hadn’t because they were having a baby, and they were young and broke anyway.

Then they’d been raising three boys and growing businesses and organizing life.

They were still young, and not broke, and didn’t have kids at home to worry about, so it was the ideal time to travel, and she’d been absolutely sure that would be the topic of discussion for the evening.

Not…

That.

She…laughed. And laughed and laughed. She didn’t mean to, but what else was there to do? It was a joke. It had to be a joke.

She decided then and there that it was, and that was how she would respond.

“Yeah, sure. Seeing other people. How about Elysia? She might be ready to date again by now.”

He did not laugh. He looked…worried. Her stomach went so tight she could hardly breathe.

“Sam… I’m serious.”

He could have just punched her. She would have been less shocked. But Will would never punch her. He would never hurt her.

This hurt .

It made her feel like she didn’t know anything. About herself or about the man she’d been sure she knew better than anyone else on the planet.

She cleared her throat for something to do and looked at her salad. “Why… What? ”

“Sorry, it didn’t come out right.”

She tried to imagine a way it could mean something wholly different if he rearranged the words, or it came out right .

“I hope it came out in all the entirely wrong words.”

“Not…entirely wrong.” He closed his eyes and let out a hard breath, and she couldn’t remember her husband ever making exactly that face before.

“We’ve had that perfect life.” Well, she agreed with that.

“We raised our boys, and we had a stable home for them. We transcended all the…the shame people tried to heap on us when you got pregnant in high school. We made a life so normal and so conventional the kids never faced any kind of scrutiny.” He let out an uncomfortable-sounding breath.

“But have you ever thought about why we did it?”

She couldn’t answer his question with sincerity. “Why we went to Texas Roadhouse? Because I like the rolls, Will. I thought that was why.” Except right now she just had a salad, and she really needed bread and butter.

“No, why we got married.”

She felt like she’d been doused with a bucket of ice water. “No. I have never wondered that. I know why we got married.”

“That isn’t what I mean. Why marriage? We did that because it was the only thing we could do to avoid being shamed.

To make our mistake right. Why did it even feel like a mistake?

Because we were told it was by our youth pastors and by our parents.

We didn’t think we were making a mistake.

” He let out a hard breath. “We did it to please everyone around us.”

She rejected that. Hard. “No, Will, I married you because I loved you.” Oh, God.

She was that woman. That forty-year-old woman who didn’t have kids left at home and whose husband didn’t want her anymore.

They weren’t special at all. They were cliché and terrible and…

and… “Are you… Is this a midlife crisis? Are you asking me for a divorce?”

“No.” He put his hand out across the table and rested it over hers. A wave of calm washed over her. She felt safer, just like that. His touch had always done that for her.

She looked at him, at his light brown hair, pushed back off his forehead. His face, lined now and not as boyish as it had been. But there was still something in his smile that would always be sixteen-year-old Will to her, no matter their ages.

She could breathe again.

He was Will. He wasn’t a stranger.

That reminder, that mantra, helped her get through the next few seconds at least.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you as much now as I always did. But I… I’m not happy.”

She picked up her iced tea and tried to take a drink, but her throat was too tight. She had to put it down while she coughed, her eyes watering, and she was sort of glad because she might cry. The choking gave her plausible deniability.

“I don’t…” She tried to force the words out through her raw throat. “I don’t understand. How can you love me and not be happy?”

“Sam…it’s not you. It’s about me and what… We’ve lived a whole life. We’re forty, and we’ve already lived a whole life . The kids, the mortgage, over twenty years of marriage. After Ethan left for school last year, I started asking myself what other… lives there are.”

Other lives. Lives that weren’t their boring, normal lives?

Lives where men in their forties went windsurfing and got to have sex with whoever they wanted?

Lives like…

She didn’t need to think about anyone else, or make it about anyone else. She started to stand up because she didn’t know what else to do, and Will tightened his grip on her.

“I did this wrong,” he said. “The most important thing here, and the thing I should have said first, is that I love you. None of this is about not being with you. I just… We have lived a life that looks exactly like everyone else in town.”

She settled back into her seat. “I don’t… It’s…the American dream, isn’t it? Slightly more kids than average, but we have our own businesses, we have a house, we’re a family, we…”

“Yes, but we can keep all those things and also try something new. We can keep those things, but explore different aspects of who we are. I want to try having an open marriage.”

“You want…” Her mind went blank for a moment while she tried to make sense of what he was saying.

That was what he’d meant, from the beginning of this conversation. He wanted to have sex with other people. That was what he meant. He wanted…to see her and see other people. He wanted to date other women.

Now that she’d had his children, raised them.

She’d loved him when he’d had a ridiculous mop of curly hair that covered his eyebrows and couldn’t last longer than two minutes during sex.

She’d taught him how to touch her, and he’d gotten very good at it.

He’d gone from dopey teen boy to hot man and she’d been there every step of the way.

This version of him, forty, good at conversation, good in bed, was supposed to be her reward for loving him all this time.

Now he wanted to give this to someone else?

Now that he’d aged into himself like the finest of wines, he wanted to be with other women.

She had trained him. Honed his skills.

She’d had his babies, cleaned his house, done his laundry, and not like he hadn’t done his share of household chores. Not that he wasn’t a wonderful father. It was just that they’d done the hard part. They’d done the things that broke people up.

Financial stress and buying houses and starting new careers and finding out your middle child was failing math and smoking weed.

They’d done all that and been just fine.

All through the years, they’d chosen each other. That’s what a happy marriage was. It wasn’t that there were never struggles, but she…she chose him every time, even when it felt hard.

They’d gone from teenagers to mature adults together, and now that they were…like the very best versions of themselves, he wanted to share that? The version of him she’d helped create? That she’d earned ?

“Why…are you telling me this in public?”

He pursed his lips, cleared his throat—which always meant he was about to say something she didn’t like, but that was probably also true. “I wanted to actually talk to you and not the bedroom door.”

“I don’t think I would have walked away from this conversation. Frankly, I’m riveted.”

“You would have.”

She would have.

“You don’t like conflict,” he continued.