Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter twenty-one

Connor and I are so alike people usually think we're siblings. The Martin genes are strong in us: tall and sporty, dark eyes, mid-brown hair that can't decide if it's wavy or frizzy or straight. I am my mom. Connor is his dad. Ashley, however, is entirely her mom, Aunt Jessica, like her dad didn't even get a say: she's tiny, barely five two, with a pond-green eyes and halo of natural blonde curls that fall to her shoulders. But what she lacks in size, she makes up for with everything else about her. She explodes out of Connor's car like a rocket, hurtling up the porch steps and knocking me against the door with the force of her hug.

"Charlotte fucking Miller!" she cries out, squeezing me so tight I gasp. "It has been too goddamn long since you bossed me around in this town."

I'm too choked up to say anything. I hug her tighter and try to get a handle on my emotions but my throat is tight and I know my voice will crack if I try to use it.

Connor joins us on the porch, wrapping his arms around both of us, his voice a low comfort when he says, "Hey, Charlie. Fancy seeing you here?"

He's like a bear: so big and strong from the manual labor he does at Yellowstone, yet so soft too. He scoops both of us against him with ease and my eyes are wet when the hug ends.

"It's so weird being back," Ashley says. "We didn't stop in Fisher but, god, the place has barely changed." She glances to the left, to the cabin that used to be ours, and she sighs. "So weird."

When I get my words back, I lead them through to the kitchen where I have a jug of coffee in the fridge and a pot brewed in the machine. "I figure after, like, nine hours on the road, you could probably do with a coffee," I say to Connor. As the crow flies, Fisher is less than two hundred fifty hundred miles from West Yellowstone but thanks to the wilderness of east Idaho — mountains and thick woods; the Salmon-Challis National Forest and the Lemhi mountain range cutting us off — the drive is double that.

"At this rate I think I might start peeing coffee," Connor says. "Gimme more. Can't let all this caffeine wear off yet. The crash is gonna be bad."

He's grinning though, showing off the chip in one of his incisors that he got our last summer here, when it was absolutely pouring with rain and we challenged each other to run down the dock and jump into the lake. I went first, naturally. Ashley shrieked the whole time as she followed me. Connor was last, and he absolutely ate shit before making it to the water: he skidded on the wet dock, lost his balance, went down like a sack of potatoes and smacked his head on the wood. How he managed to only chip a tooth is beyond me. Aunt Jessica reamed us out for being irresponsible idiots, yelling as us for being bad influences on the younger cousins and for making dangerous, ill-informed decisions. That's beyond me too, how she still had the energy to care after so many years of our mishaps.

"This place is sweet," Ashley says as I fix us three iced coffees and grin to myself when I see Lou has stocked up on oat milk. "Look at you, acting like you own the place. Where's the lady of the house?"

"Lou's with her parents for the night; she figured we had a lot of catching up to do."

"She's just ... letting us be in her house? Alone? Without her?" I can feel her eyes on me. When I turn around with her coffee in a tall glass, her piercing gaze meets mine. "That's awful trusting considering you've only been in town for, like, ten days."

"Well, we've, uh ... we've got pretty close."

"I knew it!" Ashley slaps the counter so hard her glass jumps. "You guys are fucking, aren't you? Oh my god, you are!"

"Ash," Connor says like he's about to tell her to take a chill pill, until he sees my face and breaks into a wider grin. "Oh shit. She's right, isn't she? You're totally fucking Lou."