Read Online Falling for Summer by Bridget Essex - Free Book Online

whatever ridiculous movie you were going to see,” said my mother then, setting her mouth in that thin, hard line, the line that told me, in no uncertain terms, that the door to the argument we were participating in had closed. 
    I groaned in frustration and turned and flounced out of the room.  I was wearing  my little rocker tutu that I'd just gotten from this cute new store at the mall, and I'd been so excited to show it to Monica—and have Monica take it off of me.
    That makes it sound like we were fast movers, which really wasn't the case.  But we'd been together for three months now, which meant that things were starting to get heavier between us. 
    Honestly, I'd often wondered if Monica was the one.  I was seventeen, and somehow I'd gotten lucky enough to find another girl like me in my little town, and we were actually attracted to each other—something that, years later, I would think probably wasn't true.  But when you're seventeen and living on the edge like I was, I thought it was a certainty that I was attracted in every way to Monica Robinson. 
    So with the slim odds of having found each other in such a small town, of course I wondered if Monica was my soulmate.  This was the age of rock ballads about undying love, all of which I taped carefully onto cassette tapes to play in my boom box as I rested on my bed and daydreamed about Monica.  The problem was that I was beginning to think that Monica didn't exactly feel the same way as me. 
    We both knew that, at the end of the summer that was just beginning, we were both going to go away to school—schools that were situated on opposite sides of the country.  There's no way that a relationship, a high school relationship, could survive those odds.  I know that now, but I had no clue about it then.  I thought our love could totally stand that test of distance, and Monica had said she wanted to try a long-distance romance for a little while, to see if we could make it work.
    So I believed her, and I kept feeling these waves of adoration for her that I was beginning to think were transforming into love.  Like, actual love.
    I really couldn't cancel on Monica that night.  I couldn't tell her that I was unable to meet up with her because I had to babysit my stupid little sister and her stupid slumber party friends.  Monica was so stressed out because of the family reunion, and I wanted to help relax her.  The truth is, I'd missed her desperately that week.   
    I wanted to see her so much that it was a need, building inside of me.  A need that would prompt me to do anything to fix this.
    “Okay, I'll watch them,” I told my mother begrudgingly, with a roll of my eyes.
    But, behind my back, I crossed my fingers.
    Mom and Dad left a little bit after seven, after all of the kids who were supposed to be at the slumber party had already shown up.  There were eleven of them, all girls, and all as loud and as obnoxious as I'm sure I was at that age.  They were already hopped up on sugar, and Tiffany was bouncing up and down on her bed along to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” two of her posse bouncing right alongside her.  She had her hair drawn up in two pigtails, and she was dressed entirely in pink.  Pink was her favorite color.
    “Mandy, Mandy!” she'd called to me, sticking another piece of taffy in her mouth.  She wore a wide, infectious grin that I instantly caught.  Tiffany's smile was like that—you couldn't help but smile back at her when she turned that bright grin on you.  “Can you make us some popcorn?” she asked me in a shout.
    “Yeah,” I told her, then grabbed her hand and dragged her into the kitchen.  If I remember correctly, Summer was right behind her, the quiet girl with the long black hair. 
    “Listen, Tiff,” I told her, as I got the pot going for the popcorn, my voice low, “I promised Monica that I'd meet up with her tonight.”
    “Mom said you were supposed to watch me,” said Tiffany, her smile huge on