Loving Summer (Loving Summer Series) (11 page)

            I force myself to say it. “He said that you were sick. Diabetes.”

            Her smile freezes and then disappears. “I guess I shouldn’t have thought I could keep it a secret.”

            “So it’s true?” I ask, moving to sit across from her. “Astor didn’t make a mistake?”

            Aunt Sookie shakes her head. “He didn’t make a mistake. I have a rare form of diabetes. I’ve probably had it for a while…a combination of genetics and my lifestyle. You see, after my divorce, which hit me hard, I had let myself go with eating badly, gaining weight, not sleeping, not exercising and not taking care of myself for years. I mean I wasn’t very heavy, but for my body type I was, and that combined with genetics helped contribute to what I have.” Aunt Sookie smiled.  “Thank God for you kids. You guys helped get me out of bed in the mornings. I looked forward to having all of you every summer because of all the fun we would have. Nadine and your mom thought it would be the thing to snap me out of the state I was in.  You know…it worked!  But I already had some of the conditions, and haven’t treated it.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, Summer. I’m trying to get better, and with treatment, I’ll be fine.”

            “But that’s…”

            She reaches across the table to put a hand over mine. “This is why I didn’t tell you. You don’t need to get upset, Summer. I don’t want to ruin your summer. I don’t want to ruin the Donovan kids’ summer. Nat, Drew and Rachel are already going through enough with Nadine and their father. Hearing about him cheating on their mom must be like him cheating on them. It’s hard enough for them without adding this to it.”

            “But they’ll want to know,” I insist, looking around the office. Looking anywhere but at my aunt, because I think if I keep looking at her I’ll start crying.

            “They might,” Aunt Sookie admits. “But look at how upset you are right now, Summer. I never wanted to hurt you like that. I don’t want to hurt them like that either.”

           
 
I shake my head. “What hurts is that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was going on with you. Did you think that I wouldn’t want to help?” I stare at her. “Did you think that you were just going to do this whole thing alone? I mean, you’re sick, and I… I’ve just been enjoying myself when I could have been helping you.”

            Aunt Sookie moves around her desk then, perching on it and putting a hand on my shoulder. “I
want
you to enjoy yourself, Summer. I’m not going to let some stupid illness take over your life when I don’t even want it to take over mine. Okay, so there are some tough moments, but I’m trying not to worry too much.”

            “Trying not to worry?” I shake my head, hardly able to believe it. “You’re seriously ill. How can you not worry?”

            Aunt Sookie hugs me then, holding me close for several seconds. “I’m not worrying because there’s no
point
in worrying. I’m going to do everything I need to in order to get better, and although diabetes is potentially very serious, it isn’t impossible to cope with. I’ve already had a round of surgery for this, so it’s mostly a question of recovering and seeing how it goes.”

            “Surgery?” I look at her in surprise. Aunt Sookie has had surgery and she didn’t tell anyone?

            “Sometimes, with some forms of diabetes, surgery can help,” she says. “In theory, it might even cure me. If it doesn’t, then it’s just a case of making sure I stay on the right drugs to manage it, and either way it goes, I’m going to have to make a few changes to my lifestyle and diet.”

            “Which explains all the health food in the fridge,” I say. “And why you haven’t been eating the things Nat and Drew have put together.”

            Aunt Sookie smiles then. “Well, it isn’t exactly the healthiest food, is it?”

            I can’t help smiling back at her.

            “This isn’t the end of the world, Summer. It isn’t even the end of me having a good time. I’ll just be more thirsty and tired physically, but it’s just something I have to deal with.”

            I nod. “You have to take care of yourself, though,” I say. “Take things slowly. Do whatever the doctors say. I can help with the school. I guess Drew, Nat and Rachel can help too. I know you want to treat everything like it’s normal, but you can’t keep putting in the hours you have been if it’s just going to exhaust you. You have to give yourself the time to recover.”

            “I’m trying to take things a little easier,” Aunt Sookie admits.

            A thought comes to me. “What about Mom? Does she know about this?”

            Aunt Sookie shakes her head. “No. I didn’t tell her. I don’t want to worry her either.”

            “But she’s your sister,” I say. “She deserves to know.”

            “And I’ll tell her, in my own time.” Aunt Sookie’s expression is serious and she pulls back, going back to her seat behind the desk. “Summer, this is going to be fine, you know. Pretty soon, we’ll all be wondering what the fuss was about while I go skydiving with you, or surfing with the boys, or on a trip to Paris with Nadine and your mom, or something.”

            I hope that she’s right. I know that diabetes isn’t as serious as some illnesses, but I also know that it can still do serious damage. It can even be fatal. I’m worried that my aunt is so busy trying to pretend that everything is fine that she might not do everything she needs to do in order to get better.

            “I’m serious about helping out more at the school though,” I say. “I can handle a lot of the classes here. The ones that aren’t too advanced, at least. Even some of those, maybe.”

            “I don’t doubt you could do the advanced ones if you wanted,” Aunt Sookie says, “but remember that a lot of the time, those students are paying for my teaching. I’ll keep going with those, and the rest until I decide otherwise. Summer, I’m not just going to sit at home all day.”

            I know I’m not going to be able to argue with her on this, so I nod. “Okay, but please,
ask
if you want help. You shouldn’t have to do something like this alone.”

            “Oh, darling, I’m not alone.” Aunt Sookie smiles as she looks over at me. “I have a wonderful trio of young people back in my house, all of whom are like family to me. I have you here, and you’re more like a daughter to me than a niece. Who cares if I’m sick? I have everything I could ever want right now.”

Chapter
13

I
go running with Drew as usual the next morning, but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything usual about it. I was expecting Aunt Sookie to just announce her illness to the others the moment she got home last night, but she didn’t. Maybe it was because we got back pretty late, and Rachel was out with Ryan for a lot of the evening, so it never seemed like there was a good time, but it means that I have the knowledge of Aunt Sookie being sick bubbling up inside me. I need to tell someone about it.

            For now though, I just run with Drew, starting out on the route we normally take but then heading down towards the spur of rock where I found Nat writing the other day. I’m not sure why I go that way. Maybe I just want to do something different, or maybe it feels like a good place to talk things over. Either way, I’m concentrating so hard on what I’m going to say by the time we get there that I’m not paying attention to my footing.

            I slip on the soft sand, and for a moment, I tumble towards the rocks. When I’m falling towards them, they look a lot more jagged than they did when I was just running. I brace myself, trying to stop myself hitting my head on that brutally hard surface, but I know that it isn’t going to work. This is going to hurt.

            Strong arms wrap around me, catching me. Drew lifts me up completely, carrying me a little way further up the beach, away from the rocks and the soft sand, turning me as he puts me down, so that we’re just inches away from one another. I can feel the adrenaline pumping through me, my heart beating faster even than it was during the run. Drew’s the same, his breathing coming quickly for a second or two.

            If Drew hadn’t been there…

            “Thanks for saving me,” I say. It doesn’t feel like enough somehow.

            Drew seems to think it is though, pulling me down gently to sit by him on the sand. “You don’t need to thank me. Are you okay?”

            I nod.

            “I don’t just mean with the rocks,” he says. “You’ve been distracted by something since we started running. Is it Sookie, and how ill she is?”

            I look at him, my eyes widening slightly. Drew takes my hand in his.

            “I pay attention,” he says, “and I got the rest out of one of her students. I just want you to know that you can count on me.”

            “I know I can, Drew,” I say, still surprised that he knows. Did everyone know but me? “Actually, I wanted to ask you…”

            “If you need me to help out at the school, I can.”

            That’s almost exactly what I was going to ask. I nod. “She’s so determined to keep going, but I figure that if we take over some of her classes for the rest of the summer, that will give her the time to recover.”

            Drew puts an arm around me then. “I’d love to do it, Summer. Sookie’s okay with us teaching her classes?”

            I nod. “She thinks we can do it.”

            Drew smiles. “That’s good to hear. I mean, it’s a big responsibility.”

            And from what I’ve seen of Drew, he doesn’t do responsibility. This is a whole other side of him.

            “It’s going to be okay with Sookie,” Drew promises, and he’s so confident of that it’s hard to argue with it. I love the way his arms around me feel then, so strong and safe, so that I feel almost tiny pressed against him. I know I should say something; change the subject somehow.

            “Are you still mad at Rachel for sleeping with Ryan?” I ask, because it’s the only thing I can think of.

            Drew shakes his head. “I guess she’s right. I was kind of a hypocrite about that one. I think what made me so angry… well, part of it is just that I’m pretty protective when it comes to Rachel. I mean
I
know what guys can be like.”

            “Yes,” I say, “you do.”

            Drew ignores that. “I was also pretty worried she was sleeping with him for the wrong reasons. I think she was just lashing out at Mom and Dad getting a divorce, and that’s a terrible reason. I know about that, too.”

            He looks at me and I feel a wave of sympathy for him. I know how hard it must have been for him. Him and Rachel. “For me,” he continues, “sleeping with different girls was just a good way to avoid commitment. I mean, if my parents’ marriage can fail, how can anything else work? I mean we’ve been together as a family for all of our lives. Now this? It was pretty bad for all of us.” He pauses. “I guess it’s even worse for Nat.”

            “Because he’s the one who found out about your father?”

            Drew nods. “I don’t think I could have handled seeing Dad with his secretary the way Nat did. I don’t think I could have handled telling Mom. It should be Dad feeling all the guilt for the divorce, but Nat… I think he feels like it’s his fault.”

“Oh, poor Nat,” I say. “I didn’t know you all went through that.”

I can see that Drew is trying to be strong and not show any emotion, and I want to comfort him, so I let him hold me. The problem with doing that, of course, is that he’s Drew. He only knows one way to interpret that kind of touch. He pulls me in closer to him so that I’m pressed tight against him, his hands drifting over my skin.

“It feels so good to hold you like this, Summer.” His lips are so close to mine.

“Drew…”

“I want you to know that since Disneyland, I haven’t touched another girl. I haven’t
wanted
any girl, except you.”

            I pull back from him, trying to make a joke of it. “Really? And what happened to the Drew Effect?”

            Drew looks torn between his pride and the truth then. “Don’t get me wrong, girls still hand me their numbers and come up to me, but I haven’t slept with anyone since.” He looks at me intensely with his blue eyes. “I don’t want to, not anymore.”

            I put a hand on his arm. “I’m proud of you for that, Drew.”

            He reaches out, touching the seashell pendant Astor gave me. “Don’t be. I should have done it earlier. That way, I wouldn’t have you and Rachel seeing me as…”

            He doesn’t finish it, but he doesn’t have to. I look him deep in the eyes. “When I look at you, Drew, I see the kid who cried when he was six because he had scraped his knee. I see the ten year old who used to let me win when we played volleyball. I see the thirteen-year-old who promised to write me every day when we were apart, even though his family moved to San Francisco. I see all of that every time I look at you. I see a wonderful friend I care so much about.”

            “Friends?” Drew moves in close, kissing me before I can pull away. It’s a fast, deep kiss that sends my heart pounding even faster. It’s passionate, like white hot fire, but brief, and enough to send a shot of electricity through me, making my toes curl. I blink a couple of times, while he pulls back, holding my shoulders tightly. “Summer, when will you get it? When it comes to you, I can’t just be friends. I’ve tried and tried, but when I look at you, all I want to do is kiss you, to hold you, to make you mine. Mine, Summer. Not Rachel’s. Not Nat’s, but mine.  I always have. Even when we were younger. Even before you were this incredibly beautiful. I loved the you inside and out. You make the world better just by being in it. You make
me
better.”

            I sit there, stunned. I can’t believe he’s doing this now. “So why didn’t you say anything, then?” I demand. “You’ve had years, Drew. Why now, when I’m getting serious with Astor?”

            “Because seeing you with him has made me realize just how desperate I am to be with you,” Drew says. “When I heard you’d gone to his place the other day, I was so terrified about what might happen. I actually thought about going there and bringing you back.”