Chapter 18

Twelve Years Ago-Age Thirteen

Daddy was letting me redecorate my room. He had said I was a teenager now, that I was old enough to have a new room and design it myself. It was such a cool idea and very sweet, but I wasn't like the other girls at school. I didn't hang out at the mall on weekends and polish my nails pink and giggle over boys. As a matter of fact, my only two friends were boys.

He'd bought me a subscription to Teen magazine, too, for my birthday, but that really wasn't helping either. All it did was make me feel more alienated from my peers. I'd asked Rick and Ian what they thought, but they'd shrugged and said, "I dunno," in unison. Boys.

I should've probably just left it alone. What was wrong with my pink frilly bedspread and matching curtains? Nothing. Who saw it but me and the boys and Daddy anyhow? No one.

Except it seemed like I was letting Daddy down by not doing something, and he must have thought a long time about the gift idea. Maybe I should call Ian's mom. She'd know about this stuff. What did normal teenage girls' bedrooms look like?

"Summer, look!" Ian emerged in my bedroom doorway.

Rick came in behind him, sat in a chair by the window, and started playing with my ballerina snow globe.

Ian was busting at the seams, his grin wide. "I was at the mall with Heather and-"

"Who's Heather?" I couldn't remember him mentioning her before.

Rick laughed and answered in a sing-song voice. "Heather is Ian's new girlfriend."

What? Ian had a girlfriend? Did that mean I wouldn't get to hang out with him? Chances were, she wouldn't like me and then he'd maybe not like me anymore.

Ian shot him a glare. "She is not. Anyway, I was at the mall and I saw this poster."

He handed me a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting. I'd always liked the brush strokes of his work and I related to the helpless, whimsical feeling in this particular painting.

"So, you've been into art and painting and stuff lately," Ian went on. "I thought you could get a bunch of these artsy posters and hang them up for your new room. You could have your dad paint the walls a light purple, since it's your favorite color." He frowned. "Or something."

It was a great idea!

Five minutes ago, I had been sitting here, close to tears and wondering what to do to redecorate. And here came Ian and Rick to fix it, to make me feel better. I should have known they knew me, got me, and would make everything all right.

Present

I pulled my Cavalier into the circular driveway just off of Seasmoke Road, made up of a combination of crushed clam shells and pea gravel. I shut the car off, staring for a moment at the two-story stone cottage with shutters the color of an ocean swell. Flower boxes were attached under the spherical windows, with petunias and pansies poking out for cheer. The roof peaks were curved slightly toward the ground, designed to be a softer composite than the harsh, clean lines of the city homes. A wrap-around porch gleamed bright in the sunlight with a fresh coat of white paint, the matching, wooden rocking chairs still and calm, waiting for someone to sit.

The summer after Ian's parents had bought the house, hurricane Hugo had swept through with brutal force and left wreckage of massive proportions in its wake. It had followed an earthquake fault straight up through Charlestown and into Charlotte. I remembered residents carrying chainsaws in the bed of pick-ups to cut away trees and debris just to get through the roads. But this house had made it. Not many had. It had suffered roof and minor external damage, but nothing like what had littered the coast around it. I'd been just an infant when they'd bought the house, but this place always felt like a safe haven, like coming home.

Before the Memmers had closed on the property, they used to rent a condo farther into south Myrtle with my dad. Rick's parents, the O'Callahauns, would come down, too. We'd met Matt's folks, the Holcombs, that first year, as they had been renting one of the other condos on the beach. All our families had vacationed together every summer ever since.

Nostalgia set in, heavy and intense. I could almost see our parents sitting on the porch, drinking sweet tea and reminiscing about how it was just yesterday that we kids were in diapers, where the time went, or how bad the next storm was going to be. My daddy would gesture for me to come over and sit in his lap.

How easy things seemed then. Daddy had been there to protect me from everything, even myself. Who would do that now? Who would tell me what to do about Ian? Matt? My mother?

The sandy beach was around back, where the roll and lull of the ocean called upon the memories of us playing as children. The long, gray grass was gone from the side of the pier and replaced with large geraniums potted in our old sand buckets. Mrs. Memmer always was a crafty lady. She had left the grass by the dunes, though.

I had no idea how to act around Ian, what to say. It was a mess. A great big catastrophic mess. We'd never had tension like this between us and I wasn't even sure of the root cause. Matt and I were together. He was the stable, solid choice. I don't know what had come over me the other night when I'd kissed Ian but, logically, nothing could come from it except chaos. I had to wonder if I was just one more conquest for him.

I bit back the tears rising in the back of my throat and opened the car door. Breathing in the salty sea air to calm the frazzled tatters of my nerves, I grabbed my bag from the backseat. The heat and humidity pummeled me immediately. It was a scorcher today.

I glanced over at Matt's place next door, farther down the beach, and didn't see his car yet. Matt. Dear God, just last week I'd been contemplating whether or not we should move in together. What was I supposed to do now? Call things off? Wait it out?

The screen door snapped shut, knocking my thoughts more out of whack. Dee barreled toward me, squealing, with no apparent intention of slowing down. She plowed me over with a hug, knocking us both to the ground with a thud.

I wheezed. "Good to see you, too, Dee. Though, it's only been a day." I laughed. "What are you? Five years old? Get off of me!"

Dee harrumphed and brushed her dark curls from her eyes, straddling me. "We're here!"

Rick's face appeared over mine, haloed by the sun. "Girl on girl action. Very nice."

Dee shook her head. "You wish." She took my bag inside while Rick helped me to my feet.

"You all right? Is my wife too rough for you? I'll make her put the whips away."

I laughed and started to say yes, but my gaze flitted from Rick to the house and stalled.

Sweet Lord.

Ian filled the doorway, a towel around his waist. Droplets of water from either a swim or a shower trailed down his well-toned, tanned chest, stopping at the slight ripples in his abs. The muscles in his defined biceps shifted and bulged as he crossed his arms and leaned against the jamb. His hair, messy, dark, and damp, was complete bedhead, and the shadow on his unshaved jaw gave him a sexier, bad boy image. Such perfect bone structure, that man. He held my gaze, unsmiling, as if trying to reach inside my brain.

I swallowed slowly, my throat dry. My girly parts wept while my nipples pebbled painfully as if it wasn't a hundred degrees outside.

This was it. The blinding pang I'd been waiting for all my life. The proof there wasn't something wrong with me, that I wasn't a defect. In fact, I was very, very capable of feeling lust, it seemed. And our kiss the other night hadn't been a fluke.

I wheezed air through my lips, trying to make my brain work. Apparently, desire shut down all other functions. Heaven help me, I was lusting after Ian. Look away! Abort.

I grabbed my flip-flops from the front seat and faced him again, keeping my gaze on his eyes and not the man candy body. "Put some clothes on. You'll scare the pedestrians."

There. That was normal. That was like us.

He stared at me another few beats, jaw ticking. Unnamed torrents of emotion shoved between us, too fast to nail down. Then, he nodded. Slowly. He turned on his heel and retreated inside.

I sucked oxygen like a woman dying. Maybe I had died because my chest ached something fierce.

Rick cleared his throat and lifted his eyebrows.

Damn it. I'd forgotten he was there.

"Like planets colliding, you two." An amused smirk quirked his lips.

This wasn't happening. Determined to shut this...chemistry down, I played stupid. "What?"

Rick laughed. "Save the act for someone who can't read your mind. Or body language. You two kissed the other night and, judging by the incineration in your little exchange, I'd say Ian wasn't the only one who got turned on."

So Ian had told Rick. I didn't know what to read into that, if anything. "I have a boyfriend." Which I really, really needed to remember. Open relationship or not, Matt was a good guy and was looking for more from me. Ian would move on to his next conquest before the sheets had time to cool.

Rick looked disappointed and irked at the same time, an expression only he could pull off with ease. "And?" He crossed his arms over his gray shirt, head back, looking down his nose at me.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who'd lost my mind. "That's crap, Rick." I fisted my hands. Sucking in a breath, I glanced at the house to be sure no one heard. "You want me to break Matt's heart and lose something potentially great for the sake of sex? You know Ian as well as I do. He'd be bored in under a week. You're my friend, too. You're supposed to-"

What? What exactly did I expect him to do? He was stuck between two of his best friends and it was wrong of me to put him there. I glanced heavenward, closing my eyes against the bright sky.

When I returned my gaze, Rick looked like I had just sucker-punched him. Guilt collided with shame. God. What was I doing? Blaming him? Mortified, and yet reluctant to let go of the anger, I stared him down, chewing my lip.

Helpless, awful fear swirled in my gut. It was a kiss. Granted, it had been an amazing, knock-my-socks-off kiss but, between Ian, myself, and now Rick, we were making a mountain out of a mole hill. Getting ahead of ourselves. Assuming facts not in evidence. Still, the fear clawed inside me. I had the terrifying sensation that nothing would be the same again. Everything had gotten so murky with one kiss.

"I don't know what I'm doing, Rick."

His understanding eyes leveled on me and the sincerity in his gaze rocked the foundation from under me. "None of us ever know what we're doing, Summer. We muddle through."

"Don't give me your Yoda crap right now." I rubbed my forehead, close to tears. First Ian, now Rick. They were all I had, damn it. "I'm scared."

He skimmed his hand down my hair. "I know. There's nothing wrong with that. But you wouldn't be having this reaction if you loved Matt."

The fact he was right only made the acid in my stomach burn harder.

His gaze shifted away, but his stance remained solid, as if trying and failing to hold me inside the truth or ground me.

I couldn't do this now. Ian and I needed to hash this out. I needed to have a sit down with Matt. None of what had happened between Ian and I could amount to anything, but Matt deserved to know I was conflicted about us. Hard fact? Didn't matter if Ian made my toes curl. His friendship was more important than a temporary attraction. If we didn't get a handle on this now, we'd blow apart our intimate circle of friends, and I had the sinking suspicion I'd be the one left stranded.

Briefly closing my eyes, I let out the breath I'd been holding. "I'm going inside to get settled." I got exactly three feet.

"You're lying to yourself," he said to my retreating back.

Limit? Reached.

I spun around so quickly it almost knocked him off his feet. Pushing him in the chest, I got nose to nose with him. "Don't you do that. Don't you dare, Rick. Not you, of all people. Don't make me feel bad for wanting to be happy. Matt is a good guy. He loves me. He can give me what Ian never will, and you know it."

He froze, made a sound of duress, and grabbed me by the wrists. He hauled me against him, wrapping his arms around my back and pinning me to his chest. As if jarred as much as me, he shook, tension knotting his shoulders. His reaction quashed the rage and hurt simmering inside me. We were solid. He had my back, always.

His heavy sigh ruffled my hair. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." His kissed the top of my head. "Just talk to Ian, okay?"

I nodded, still pinned against his chest.

"Things will work out. Don't worry, okay? I'm here."