Page 42 of That Summer Feeling

Pulled by guilt, I followed her, my soggy clothing dripping rivers behind my every step. “I didn’t mean for that tohappen,” I told her. Adrenaline had me walking too fast and talking too loudly, but I still couldn’t catch her. “I’m really sorry.”

“I don’t understand what you were trying to do,” she said.

“I wanted you and Mason to have a chance to talk.”

“Why? I’m not the one who saw a happily ever after with him.”

“I don’t think it wasmyhappily ever after that I saw.” I paused, letting that concept linger. It landed with substantial intrigue, slowing Dara’s steps. “I think I saw yours.”

This made her stop completely. We collided, and her towel fell from her shoulders. She scrambled to pick it up. The sandy dirt that formed the campgrounds’ walking paths had already coated it with a thin layer of grime. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I don’t think I’m the one who is meant to be with Mason. I thinkyouare.”

She took off again, now holding her towel over her arm. Her shoulders shook as she blazed down the path. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” I forced calmness into my voice so she’d take me seriously. “I don’t feel anything for him. It’s because he’s meant to be with you. I mean, think about it. You were the one who’d held on to my bracelet all those years.Thatwas the bracelet he picked up in the airport. It had all kinds of Dara energy all over it instead of mine. You know? It makes sense.”

My logic wouldn’t work on many people, but it would on her.

“There’s only one problem,” she said. We were in the space between our cabins, lingering on the pathways.

“What?”

She jogged up the steps of Cabin Six. “I don’t feel anything for Mason either.”

“Maybe not yet. You have to give it time,” I said. She did not dignify me with so much as a glance. “You’re always so closed off to love,” I continued. “Open your heart up a little! Let that tall, blond Swedish man make a home there!”

“No,” she said decisively, turning toward her door.

“C’mon! How can you know if you don’t at least try?”

She kept her back to me as she said, “Because I want to be alone, Garland.”

“No, you don’t,” I told her. “You’re just saying that because you’re scared. You can’t avoid love forever.”

“I’m not avoiding love, or whatever else it is you seem to think I’ve been doing for the last thirty-four years of my life. Being by myself is not a flaw. It’s afeature. So no, I’m not the one who will be falling in love with Mason. End of discussion.” She opened and closed the door of her cabin, locking it before I could so much as come up with a single word in response.

She’d always been the one to tell me that true love existed. That we could find it. And now she’d told me she didn’t want it, and she didn’t even seem to be apologetic about it.

I’d never get to give her the heart-promise bracelet? For as seriously as we took it, she didn’t want it? From now until forever, I’d be holding on to two people’s unfulfilled hopes and wishes?

It didn’t hurt as much as make me hollow. So much of me had been filled up with the beliefs Dara and I shared. In mydarkest moments, they were the foundation pieces I clung to, reminding me of all the good that awaited me in the future. And Dara had snapped her fingers and vanished all of it in one clean break.

Defeated, I went to Stevie’s hideout by the edge of the lake. I’d given three solid days to following my initial rule—trying it all, being open to risks. For all the courage I thought I was demonstrating, all I’d done was create a mess in other people’s lives. It was time to close the door. There would be no reinvention here. I had to keep myself from causing any further harm.

With the blanket of trees far above my head and the gentle hushing rock of the lake beyond my feet, I lay down on the hardened dirt. I wanted to be alone. Truly alone.

I couldn’t hurt anyone where no one could find me.

19

When I woke up, the trees blocked the light of the stars, enveloping me in a darkness so absolute I went hot and panicky. I couldn’t even see the outline of my own body. The gentle lapping of the water was all that kept me sane. I knew the entire camp had been built around the lake, and I’d never be lost so long as I stayed near it.

Crawling on all fours, I moved toward the swooshing sound until my palms were wet. I patted all around me, feeling for the seam of the shoreline so I could follow it.Why did I do this?I asked myself over and over. Another case of me trying to do the right thing and making a mess. Though I was the only one paying for it right now, lost and alone and terrified in a way that drenched me to the core.

My speed could not have been much faster than a snail’s. At some point, the darkness broke enough for me to see things like the shape of my own fingers, but it didn’t help calm thefear. At once, a bright, piercing light shone into my eyes, rendering me immobile.

“What the hell have you been doing?”