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

was ten,” says Summer, her mouth curling up at the corners as she leans down and brushes her lips over my skin.  “But after that night...” she whispers against me, “I mean, after you left, I...really didn't think I'd ever see you again.”
    I sigh, stare up at the ceiling as Summer pillows her head on my shoulder and I draw her close.
    “You know, I honestly had no intention of ever coming back to Lake George,” I murmur, tracing a circle on Summer's sculpted bicep.  The warmth of her skin radiates into my fingertips.  “I just couldn't bear to think of it.  I loved Lake George so much, but it had just become the place where my sister died.  After she drowned, everything felt transformed,” I whisper.  “But...it's been twenty years.  I thought it was... fitting to come here now, this week.”  I manage to choke the words out, and then I'm shaking my head again.  Fitting .  Fitting to visit on the the twentieth anniversary of my sister's death.
    Summer breathes out, reaches up, and then she delicately fingers the gold chain around my neck, her fingers scooping up the little locket that's resting at the hollow of my collarbones.  “This...this is familiar,” she whispers, holding my gaze.  “Have I seen it before?” 
    “You must have,” I whisper tiredly.  “It was Tiffany's,” I manage to tell her, and then a single tear leaks out of my eye and traces its way down my cheek, leaving a trail of salt behind it. 
    For a long moment, neither of us says anything.  And then Summer nods, clears her throat.  She reaches up her hand and spreads her palm open to me, pressing her thumb to the ring on her left hand.  “It's not my great-grandmother's,” she says then, her words soft, almost defeated-sounding.  “Tiffany gave it to me when we decided that we were best friends,” she tells me, her tone rueful.  “It was just this tin ring that we got out of a vending machine, so I've had it expanded, had it covered in gold...  I just was never able to take it off.”
    She trails off, her words pain-filled, and then she closes her eyes, a single tear squeezing past her long lashes before she opens her eyes again, looks at me.
    I hold her gaze, surprised. 
    I have, for my whole life, been entirely in my head about my sister's death.  I saw how my parents dealt with it, how they shut themselves off from the harshness of her death by ignoring the pain they were feeling and shutting it all away.  I learned how to deal with it myself from their not dealing with it.  But I never really thought about how anyone else was managing with the fact that Tiffany had died. 
    Yes, Tiffany was my sister, but she was also Summer's best friend. 
    I can't imagine having my best friend die, right in front of me, when I was ten years old.  I'm sure that scarred her in a lot of ways.  And I, of all people, understand those scars.   
    I'm not really sure what to say for a long moment.  Then I think about the only thing that helped me deal with the pain, if just a little bit.
    “The thing that I always forget—and you think it'd be the most obvious thing, the thing I would always remember—but I don't,” I whisper, as I hold Summer close, resting my chin on the top of her head, “is that it was an accident .” I get the words out, take a deep breath as my voice quavers.  I keep going.  “Tiffany died because of an accident .  She was in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.  She wanted to go for a swim that night, and she was a good swimmer, but it was all the wrong conditions...  That's what the detective said,” I tell her, my voice catching.  “The wrong place at the wrong time.  It was an accident,” I repeat.  “I don't know...  Sometimes, that's given me a little bit of comfort,” I tell her then, brushing my fingertips over her shoulder, “but most of the time it hasn't.  I blame myself completely for her death.  That night that I wanted to go out with Monica