Read Online After Summer by Hailey Abbott - Free Book Online Page B

that he sounded legitimately upset. “I think we should just…end things.”
    For a moment, Ella felt frozen in place. She could hear Jeremy’s voice saying her name, but it seemed to come from very far away. She had to struggle for a moment to breathe.
    And then a tiny voice inside her whispered that maybe Jeremy was right. Maybe she’d been kidding herself.
    Because she was Ella Tuttle. And just maybe she was the one who’d had enough—enough of pretending to be satisfiedwith silly e-mail quizzes, late-night phone calls, and an absentee boyfriend. She had lost her head in this Jeremy situation, she realized. She didn’t need this long-distance shit. She needed someone right in front of her. Someone real, and fun, and exciting.
    Someone more like her.
    “Ella?” Jeremy sounded worried. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine,” she said. She took a breath and then let it out. “You know, I’m glad you said something. This long-distance thing doesn’t really work for me, either.”
    “Well, maybe we should talk more—”
    “I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” Ella said smoothly.
    She didn’t feel frozen anymore. She knew how to do this part. She was excellent at breaking up, actually. All her cousins said so. It was a skill, like anything else. She knew it was best to hit them with it quick and then get out of the conversation even quicker.
    “Ella—”
    “I’ll never forget last summer,” she said, and then she clicked off, because she’d never seen the point of hanging around talking things out when someone (usually her, of course) had decided to go. There was nothing left to say.

9
    “Okay,” Taryn announced on Friday night. She marched over to the closet, took out Kelsi’s peacoat, and tossed it at her. “Let’s go. I told Bennett that this time you would absolutely be there. He’s beginning to think you’re my imaginary friend.”
    “I don’t know,” Kelsi said, folding her hands in her lap as she sat on her bed. “Tim said the pledges might get out of their secret thing on the early side—”
    “Which means anywhere between midnight and two a.m.,” Taryn cut in. “Come on, Kels, you have time to come over and watch the movie. Bennett and his friend from high school spent all summer filming it. Even if it sucks, we’ll have fun, which”—she gave Kelsi a significant look—“you could use.”
    She was right.The truth was, Kesli thought as she got up, put on her coat, and followed Taryn out the door, she was glad to have the diversion. She and Tim hadn’t really talked things out after their fight outside his frat’s party. They’d just sort of…kept going. Pretending everything was the same. But a coldness had grown between them. They hadn’t even fooled around once since The Fight.
    Sneaking a glance at Taryn as she climbed into the car, Kelsi knew what her roommate would say: that Kelsi and Tim needed to hash it out. Taryn was a big fan of hashing things out. She was as free and forthcoming with her emotions as she was with her sexuality. Kelsi both admired and feared that.
    Kelsi knew she should talk to Tim, but that felt so heavy, like some object she had to roll out of the way before she got to what she really wanted—which was simply to kiss and curl up beside him again. To be easy with him again, the way it had been before.
    Half an hour later, Kelsi was sitting in Bennett’s dorm room with him, while Taryn parked the car. His room was as small and cramped as the room her cousin Jamie had stayed in over the summer while taking a writing course at Amherst, but it was decorated with amazing, brightly colored artwork and band posters.
    Kelsi thought of bringing that up to Bennett—aboutJamie having gone to Amherst. Anything to break the awkward stillness in the room. Bennett, sitting in a chair across from her, was simply studying Kelsi’s face.
    “It’s really nice of you to share your movie with me,” Kelsi finally said nervously. She thought maybe