Summer by Summer (22 page)

“Hey, Summer,” Bray said, voice drifting through the bedroom door from his spot in the living room.

“Yes?”

“You writing?”

My face flushed hot. If he only knew what I’d been thinking about. “No. Too dark in here.”

“There’s moonlight.” His voice sounded groggy, as if he’d almost fallen asleep.

I turned on my side and stared at the door, sliding my hands beneath my head. “I, I couldn’t think of a story.”

“Once upon a time . . .”

I laughed.

“Do you want to hear this story or not?” I heard the clicking and popping of his mattress — louder than mine because only half of its cover remained intact. Bray must have turned onto his side as well — that’s what I imagined. Him, right there on the other side of the wall.

“Yes, I want to hear the story.” There was no disguising the smile in my voice.

“Once upon a time, there was an enchanted kingdom with a very, very,
very
handsome prince named Bray.”

I giggled.

“One day, a maiden rode into town on a black stallion so beautiful, it made the town folks cry.”

“Wait. Who was beautiful? The maiden or the stallion?”

“The stallion. No one knew what the maiden looked like because she was covered from head to toe in chainmail and leather. The prince called for her to come to the castle because the town was in such an uproar about the amazing horse.”

“This is a strange story, Bray.”

He ignored me. “But the prince didn’t have much time because he was putting an army together to go out and hunt a dragon who’d been terrorizing the town and burning the crops. But when the prince saw the maiden, saw her face, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe.”

“She was that ugly, huh?”

“No. She was beautiful. With hair the color of autumn streaked with gold and pale green eyes so alarmingly gorgeous, he couldn’t look away.”

“Let me guess. She gave him the strength to go slay the dragon.”

“Wrong. She was in fact, a dragon slayer herself. The best in the entire world.”

“Oh! I love this story.” I scooted my hips so that I was more comfortable and settled in to hear the rest. “What happens next?”

“Hmm.” I heard him yawn. “Let me think.”

I waited, but didn’t hear anything else from the other room.

“Bray? Bray, what happens next?”

Silence.

I sighed. After a moment’s consideration, I swung my legs off the bed quietly and slipped to the door. My hand fell on the knob and clicked it open. There on the mattress on the floor lay Bray, shirt off, one knee bent, flat on his back, one hand resting on his stomach. I listened for a few seconds and heard the faint rumble deep in his throat. My head fell against the doorjamb and for a short time, I watched him sleep. It was his first night on a real mattress. I smiled. My own personal angel, too exhausted to stay awake.

I tiptoed over to him and knelt down. With a butterfly touch, I moved the hair from his forehead and swept it aside. His exhale became a moan. I ran a finger gently across his eyebrow and he stirred, so I lifted my finger quickly, not wanting to wake him. Just wanting to watch him. More deep breaths, so many, my eyes were getting heavy from the constant hum of his breathing. But then, his face pinched into a frown. His shoulder jerked. He pulled a lungful of air, and on the exhale mumbled, “Summer. Be careful.”

My eyes filled with tears. Even in sleep he was watching over me.

CHAPTER 13

Summer

The next morning, I wrote a story about a handsome prince and the young woman who’d come to his kingdom to slay a dragon. When I left my room, I could smell coffee.

Outside, Bray was stoking up the fire and lifting a pot from the grate we used as a stovetop. “Ready for a cup?”

My eyes closed and I pulled the morning into my being. The sun rose slowly off to the side of the lagoon, but the beach remained cool. A hint of fog lay around like a transparent blanket, making everything dreamlike. I took the coconut shell from Bray and lifted it to my lips. He’d made this one specifically for coffee by only whacking off the top quarter of it and hollowing out the meat. No easy task, but it was that or drink coffee from a small saucepan — which would have been fine with me, but he said this would seem more normal. The only problem with the coconut was that you couldn’t really set it down. But I had to admit, coffee tasted great in it. Rich, kind of nutty.

After a long swallow I said, “I wrote a story this morning.”

A slow smile formed, and he pointed to the swing. “Tell me about it.”

We sat and he instantly set the swing in motion. “Nope.”

The seat screeched to a halt. “No?”

“You have to read it.”

The swing started moving again. “Even better. Is it done?”

“Almost. I’ll finish it tomorrow and give it to you.” I took a long drink of coffee, steam rising from my island mug and clouding my view. Around us, the island awoke with all the sounds and sights of a living, breathing ecosystem. Fish jumped, seagulls and pelicans searched for breakfast. A crab left crisscrosses in the sand as he navigated the shoreline. Neither of us spoke about the boat men. I sensed that Bray wanted to steer my attention away from the horror, and I appreciated that.

“Bray.” Even as I said his name, a cold chill passed over me. I cared about Bray. So much. And inside I was terrified of what our future held. He must have noticed the tightness of my voice.

He turned and searched my face, eyes crinkling slightly at the edges. “What, Summer?”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

A strong arm slid around my shoulders. “You mean if we don’t get rescued?”

I couldn’t answer.

“We’re alive, Summer. We have shelter, water.”

“But our food will eventually run out.” This wasn’t what I’d meant, but it needed to be discussed too. What if they never found us?

“I’ve been thinking about the food situation. I’m going to try to repair an old fishing net that I found in the toolshed. Also, I’m carving a spear for spear fishing. I’ve made a couple while you’ve slept, but the wood hasn’t been strong enough. If we can fish, we can live.” He swallowed. “Long-term if necessary.”

“It’s probably stupid, but I’m not concerned about if they
don’t
find us. What happens if they
do
?”

He blinked, dark blue eyes settling on me. “We go home.”

My heart ached. “Home,” I mumbled. Him back to his world and me back to mine.

His fingertips made circles on my shoulder. I reached up with my free hand, touching his for a moment, and then clinging to him. Going home meant me returning to the Summer I was and him returning to the Bray he was.

“It’ll never be the same,” I barely whispered.

He squeezed, drawing me even closer in that safe place I knew so well. “Of course it will. You’ll see.” He tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and pulled a deep lungful of air.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced over at me with one eye open. “I’m capturing it. I learned that from you. At Cory’s party.”

Bleah
. Did he have to bring up the party?

“I didn’t understand what you were doing then. But I do now. Everything is so much richer and, I don’t know, more real, since I met you.”

I almost choked on the words, but they needed to be said. “And you’ll take all that home with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Summer, don’t you realize what you mean to me?”

Panic set in because I knew what I meant to him here, on the island. I popped up off the swing, sloshing my coffee. “What about the girl at the party?”

Confusion ran over his face. “What? I hardly knew her.”

“Right. And you hardly knew me until we got here. You seem to switch gears pretty quickly.” Would he return home and forget everything that happened here? Could he turn his emotions on and off so quickly? I couldn’t, and I was falling fast and hard for a guy who would soon leave me, just as suddenly as Michael had, of that I was certain.

“Summer, I
care
about you. I didn’t care about her.”

“You cared enough to step in and punch that guy when he started hitting on her — the guy who’d been hitting on
me
— you punched him in the face as soon as he turned his attention to her.”

Bray rubbed a hand over his face and looked out at the lagoon. “You don’t know anything about it, Summer. Please drop it.”

Anger scalded my throat. “I think I have a right to know. As far as I could tell, you guys had just met earlier that day, but she was sooooo important that you had to protect her honor. You certainly didn’t do that for me. The guy had been bugging me for about fifteen minutes.”

Bray stood and faced me. “Stop it, Summer. Just stop. You want to know why I punched the guy?” Flames lit his eyes, and I didn’t know if they came from the fire or some combustible thing within. “Because of you.”

I took a step back.

“I punched him because of you, okay? I saw him when he first approached you.”

“You did not. You were all entangled with your beach bunny.”

Heat rose off his body in such palpable waves, it made me want to move farther away from him. But I stood my ground.

“Really?” he said. “That’s what you think? I saw
everything
, Summer. You were standing down at the water’s edge, and he’d been watching you for about ten minutes. After a few shots of liquid courage, he went down there. Tried to put an arm around you, but you ducked. When he wouldn’t leave, you spun and headed for the house, but had to go back to get your shoes.”

I was speechless. Bray really had seen what happened.

He grabbed my arms, my coffee mug sloshing again between us. “It drove me crazy, Summer.” His face was red with heat, eyes hard and ablaze. “And the fact that I even
cared
drove me crazier.”

What could I say to that? “You didn’t even like me.”

“I know.” His hands on my arms softened marginally. “But even
back then, I wanted to protect you. Even then, there was something . . . inexplicable between us. You had to feel it too.”

Did I? Had I felt anything for Bray besides animosity? I didn’t really think so. I’d hated him on sight. “You were so much like Michael.”

“Stop it!” he ground out. His hands tightened for an instant, hurting, and then he released me with such force, it caught me off guard. “Stop blaming Michael. Stop blaming me. Stop hiding, Summer. You didn’t die in that wreck. Stop acting like you did.”

A dark, dark cloud passed over me, so tangible that for a moment I thought it had blotted out the sun. But the burning ball still hung in the sky, and I realized this wasn’t a physical cloud. It was an emotional one. All this time, all that had happened, and Bray thought I was just hiding behind Michael’s death. Which indicated that all the things he’d said to me about giving me time to get over Michael, maybe he hadn’t meant. Maybe everything I was feeling, the hope of a life after the island, the hope we’d even get rescued at all . . . maybe it was just a pipe dream. And maybe Bray’d tricked me. As that dark blanket of self-security closed over my heart, I made a promise I’d never let him trick me again.

The fact was, he was Bray and I was Summer, and once we returned home — if we returned home — we’d both go right back to who we’d been before the island. Him, a party boy. And me, the girl who’d lost both her faith and her hope.

“I’m tired,” I said almost mechanically. “I’m going to go lie down.”

I shuffled into the house quietly and found my way to my bed. I lay down and closed my eyes, feeling more alone than ever in my life. Michael was gone and Bray was right here on the other side of the wall. But I’d lose him too. He’d be just as dead to me as Michael was because one day we would be rescued.

Bray

Summer hadn’t emerged from the house, so by late afternoon, I went to check on her. She was sound asleep, or acting like she was. I filled a coconut shell with water and perched it on the floor near her bed, propped by oyster shells.

Once out of the hut, I constructed a spear out of heavy wood and retraced our conversation, trying to decide where it had gone so wrong. It all started with me saying we would go home. Something about that had panicked her. Or something right after. I didn’t know. All I knew was Summer looked at me with hurt and suspicion — just like she used to. And I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Well, except maybe for blaming her for hiding behind her dead boyfriend.

In the early evening, the air cooled and I made a pan of tomato soup. I took a coconut bowl into Summer’s room. The water sat untouched on the floor. That alarmed me. You just couldn’t go without water here. Careful not to spill soup on her, I used my free hand and shook her shoulder. “Summer,” I said quietly, but when she didn’t rouse, the panic caused my voice to constrict and get louder. I turned her to face me. She moved easily, and when her heavily lashed eyes fluttered open, I breathed relief.

Her stare was blank.

“You need to eat. I brought you some soup.”

Her eyes closed, slamming me out. “Not hungry,” she mumbled.

I shook her lightly. “Summer, you can’t go without food.” When she didn’t respond, I rose from the side of her bed and replaced the soup with the shell of water. “Here.”