Page 12 of Cruel Summer

SIX

They made it to Santa Clara around two thirty. Logan was a ruthless navigator who kept all stops to the bare minimum.

“Because we’d hate to miss the stunning attractions in Bakersfield?” she asked dryly.

“Because we need to get there at a reasonable time, to get up early, to get on the road,” he said, as if he were talking to a child.

Then again, he usually did this with Chloe.

When they pulled into visitor parking, he texted and waited for Chloe to give them the okay before they started to head up to her room.

Before they did, he took the box out of the trunk. “What did you bring her?” she asked.

“Just stuff.”

She rolled her eyes as she followed him into the building and tried not to think about how weird it was that she was visiting Chloe in her dorm.

She could remember when she was a little girl, and yes, all her boys were grown too, but it was weirder sometimes when it was someone else’s child you’d known forever.

She hadn’t gone to college, but she’d now moved all three of her sons into dorms and knew they were all like this, even if they looked totally different. Filled with school pride, and also the naked resentment of said school pride, teenage panic and hormones.

She didn’t miss being young.

Because being older is so much better?

It had been.

Shit, now she was basically a teenager in a forty-year-old body.

Yet again, she questioned Will’s sanity.

Why would you sign up for debilitating insecurity and unexplainable neck pain?

She was also old enough to know life wasn’t made to order. She was still human enough to resent it.

They got into the elevator and took it to the second floor, where Chloe’s room was.

There was a living area up there with kids lying on the cheap furniture.

It didn’t remind her of college. It reminded her of being a poor newlywed, with the perfect combination of cheap furniture from box stores and free furniture from family members and elderly people in the neighborhood.

She and Will had had a pair of shocking-looking floral couches that they’d gotten from an older man down the road when his wife had died.

They’d tried their best to put slipcovers on them, but the slipcovers were—by necessity—cheap, and they never stayed.

In hindsight, the couches had looked like they were sloppily covered in black blankets.

The floral couch would have been better, but she’d thought they were old lady, and at the time she was so committed to this life she was making.

The one where she was an adult. She wouldn’t have flower garlands and roosters and the things her mother thought were cute that Sam thought were dust catchers. She’d been all about sleek things. Black and red. Then brown and teal.

She’d been nothing if not a victim of early 2000s style.

Her thoughts were pulled away from her poor decor choices when she realized that Logan hadn’t paused, but was walking quickly down the hall, so she scampered to keep up.

He knocked firmly on one of the doors, holding the box with only one hand, and it only took a second for it to open. Bright, redheaded Chloe was there, and immediately threw her arms around Logan.

His face changed.

He smiled when Chloe wasn’t around, but it was always sort of cynical—at least in Sam’s presence. This was a real smile.

“What did you bring me?” she asked as soon as he let her go.

“Let me in to see if you’ve trashed the place yet and I’ll show you.”

She moved to the side, and Logan walked past her, and that was when Chloe’s eyes met Sam’s.

“Hey!” Chloe moved out of the doorway and gave Sam a hug, and Sam felt fragile right then.

Because Chloe reminded her of afternoons after school when she’d had all the kids home, and she’d made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

She wanted peanut butter and jelly all of a sudden.

“Good to see you, Chloe,” she said.

“You too.” Chloe was about half a foot out of her room, and there was something hesitant in how she was looking at Sam. “Um. Why are you with my dad?”

Right, so, sadly for Sam, Chloe wasn’t the myopic, selfish nineteen-year-old Logan had tried to write her off as, and had simply realized her dad wasn’t fertile ground for interrogation.

Sam had always felt close to Chloe. She’d talked to her about periods and first dates and birth control. God, had she ranted at her about birth control. Even if you don’t think you’re going to do it, Chloe!

She didn’t have a daughter. Chloe didn’t have a mother.

They’d always been close, and of course Chloe was picking up on the weirdness here. Sam also wasn’t going to lie to her.

“I’ll tell you, but you can’t text Ethan about it. He’s overseas, and it’s just not…not a good idea. I’ll tell him when I get a chance to call.”

Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe they could go the whole summer without it coming up.

Chloe’s eyes went slightly round. “Um. Okay.”

“Will and I are separated. We aren’t getting divorced,” she added quickly. “We’re like…on a break. I needed something to do, and your dad hired me to do the cross-country drives this summer.”

Chloe looked oddly perplexed but also…relieved by the explanation.

“It’s nothing… It’s not personal. Me traveling with your dad,” she said, her stomach going tight. “He had a job opening, and I suddenly have a weird amount of time.”

“You’re not getting a divorce?” Chloe asked.

“No. It’s just…you know, we got married really young. We’re basically just taking separate vacations.”

When you put it like that, it didn’t even sound like a big deal. When she ignored the fact that he’d be sleeping with other women, it was like…so not even a thing at all.

“It’s going to be fine,” Sam said, trying to project a confidence she didn’t really feel. “I’d love to see your dorm.”

She smiled. “Come on in.”

The room was sparse, with beds against both walls, a small stretch of counter with a rice cooker and a hot plate, and brightly colored tapestries covering the walls.

“Looks great in here, and you don’t even have all my forks stashed in a cup on your desk,” said Logan, continuing to unpack the box he’d brought in.

“I’m not going to your house to get a fork,” Chloe said, “so obviously not.”

“Well, I still consider it growth. Do you have time to go to late lunch?”

“Sure,” she said. “If you have time.”

“I have all the time in the world.”

“I’m not hungry,” Sam said quickly. “You guys should have lunch together. I’m happy to go…shop or something.”

“You’d probably like Santana Row,” Chloe offered.

“Great. I’m happy to cool my heels there. As you know, shopping options are limited at home.”

Chloe laughed. “Yes, I do know.”

When they got outside, Sam offered Chloe shotgun, even though Chloe protested.

Sam watched the ease between Logan and Chloe from her position in the back seat.

She knew Logan was a great dad. She’d seen him with Chloe any number of times, and in many different circumstances.

But maybe it was just having been with him alone for all these hours and seeing how different he was now in contrast that made her so aware of it.

He wasn’t easy with her. It wasn’t all in her head.

“This is where all the shopping is,” Chloe said, pointing at a row of very nice-looking stores.

“Great, you can dump me out here.”

“There’s tons of food just like two blocks up,” Chloe said. “We can eat here.”

She got out of the car and waved, leaving them to debate that while she headed for the first store.

Was she so fragile that she couldn’t handle being around someone whose family was in order?

They were a smaller family unit. Not one without tragedy.

But they were them, like always, and maybe that was part of why she’d suddenly felt uncomfortable.

She started idly taking clothes off the rack and draping them over her arm. Then she took a bikini off one rack.

She never wore bikinis.

She often made an exercise of looking at all the women on beaches who did.

She thought they looked good. Whether they had toned abs, visible ribs, or bellies on proud display, she could see how a bikini worked for them.

She tried to apply that same love for her own body and had never been able to manage it.

This was pivotal, she realized, because she could fold in on herself here, die inside over the fact that her body wasn’t enough for her husband. Her body that had given him three children and years of sex, but was somehow not as exciting as the unknown bodies he might find outside their marriage.

Yeah, she could hate her body for that. Easily.

It would be a short sidestep on the trail of uneasy confidence she already walked.

But she’d left him in Oregon.

Her body had gone with her. It always would.

It was hers.

She stood there, feeling wholly undone by that realization. She’d felt part of a couple for so long. They’d given each other easy access to their bodies. She’d trusted him, so it had been easy.

Plus she’d had three kids. They’d come out of this body. She’d fed them from her body. Been pulled on, tugged on, puked on for years.

Now the kids were grown. The husband was gone.

She had herself.

Her body was hers.

Normally she asked Will if he liked what she chose. She took selfies in the dressing room because she wanted him to like it. He wasn’t controlling. It was her. She was so dependent on his approval that she asked him for it when he probably didn’t care what she did at all.

She’d been a child who asked her parents. A teenager who asked her friends.

A woman who asked her husband.

She’d gone straight from her parents’ house to Will’s.

She went into the dressing room and started trying things on and asking herself if she liked them. Which was really hard, and it took a lot of willpower to not at least text things to Elysia and Whitney, but she was trying to marinate in her revelation.