We'll Always Have Summer (Summer #3) - Jenny Han Page 0,8
who was pre-med. Conrad was the one at Stanford, working a part-time job at a lab. Jeremiah was the one who told people he majored in beerology.
He stared. “What the hell does that mean, ‘inferiority complex’?”
“Forget it,” I said. Too late, I could see things had gone farther than I had intended. I wanted to take it all back.
“If you think I’m so stupid and selfish and wasteful, why are you even with me?”
Before I could answer, before I could say, You’re not stupid or selfish or wasteful, before I could end the fight, Jeremiah said, “Fuck it. I won’t waste your time anymore. Let’s end it now.”
And I said, “Fine.”
I grabbed my book bag, but I didn’t leave right away. I was waiting for him to stop me. But he didn’t.
I cried the whole way home. I couldn’t believe that we had broken up. It didn’t feel real. I expected Jeremiah to call me that night. It was a Friday. He left for Cabo on Sunday morning, and he didn’t call then, either.
My spring break consisted of me moping around the house, eating chips, and crying. Steven said, “Chill out. The only reason he hasn’t called you is that it’s too expensive to make a call from Mexico. You guys will be back together by next week, guaranteed.”
I was pretty sure he was right. Jeremiah just needed some space. Okay, that was fine. When he got back, I would go to him and tell him how sorry I was, and I would fix things, and it would be like it never happened.
Steven was right. We did get back together a week later. I did go to him and apologize, and he apologized too. I never asked him if anything happened in Cabo. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to wonder. This was a boy who had loved me my whole life, and I was a girl who believed in that love. In that boy.
Jere brought me back a shell bracelet. Little white puka shells. It had made me so happy. Because I knew that he had been thinking of me, that he had missed me as much as I had missed him. He knew like I knew that it wasn’t over between us, that it would never be over. He spent that whole week after spring break in my room, hanging out with me and not his fraternity brothers. It drove my roommate Jillian crazy, but I didn’t care. I felt closer to him than ever. I missed him even when he was in class.
But now I knew the truth. He bought me that stupid cheap bracelet because he felt guilty. And I was so desperate to make up, I hadn’t seen it.
chapter six
When I closed my eyes, I saw the two of them, together, kissing in a hot tub. On the beach. In some club. Lacie Barone probably knew tricks and moves I’d never even heard of. But of course she did.
I was still a virgin.
I’d never had sex before, not with Jeremiah, not with anybody. When I was younger, I used to picture my first time with Conrad. It wasn’t that I was still waiting for him. It wasn’t that at all. I was just waiting for the perfect moment. I wanted it to feel special, to feel exactly right.
I’d pictured us finally doing it at the beach house, with the lights off and candles everywhere so I wouldn’t feel shy. I’d pictured how gentle Jeremiah would be, how sweet. Lately I had been feeling more and more ready. I had thought this summer, the two of us back at Cousins—I thought that would be it.
It was humiliating thinking about it now, how naive I’d been. I’d thought he would wait as long as it took for me to be ready. I really believed that.
But how could we be together now? When I thought of him with her, Lacie, who was older and sexier and more worldly than I’d ever be, at least in my mind—it hurt so bad it was hard to breathe. The fact that she knew him in a way I didn’t yet, had experienced something with him that I hadn’t, that felt like the biggest betrayal of all.
A month ago, around the anniversary of his mom’s death, we were lying in Jeremiah’s twin bed. He rolled over and looked at me, and his eyes were so like Susannah’s, I reached out my hand and covered them.