“Pretty much.” She tips her head so she can meet my eyes. “But it sounds really ridiculous when you say it out loud.”
I cup her cheek, sweeping my thumb over her lower lip. It trembles when I make contact with it. “You’re not stupid, Summer. You have a learning disability. There’s a difference.”
“I know that.” The lack of conviction in her tone thoroughly troubles me, but she doesn’t give me a chance to probe any deeper. “There. Now you know something truly embarrassing about me. It’s your turn.”
When I don’t respond right away, she pokes her hand out of the blanket and laces her fingers through mine.
“Share something, anything. You promised me something real, Fitz.”
I did promise. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to give it to her. “I…” I grumble with frustration. “I’m not holding back on purpose,” I tell her. “It’s just…a habit.”
“A habit.” Her forehead creases. “Holding back is a habit?”
“Yes. I don’t talk about what I’m feeling.”
“Why not, though?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I…got used to whatever I said being used against me.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
Discomfort creeps up my spine, until the back of my neck feels cold, tight. The instinct to flee is strong, but so is Summer’s grip on my hand. I draw a breath.
“Fitz?” she prompts.
I exhale. “My parents went through an ugly divorce when I was ten. My dad cheated. Though if you ask him, it’s because my mom drove him to it. Either way, they couldn’t stand each other back then, and they can’t stand each other now.”
“I’m sorry. That sounds rough.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Until I turned twelve, they had joint custody. And then Dad started dating some woman Mom despised, so she decided to sue for full custody of me. Dad got pissed and decided he deserved full custody. And that’s when the head games began.”
“Head games…?”
“The custody battle was even uglier than the divorce. They used me to hurt each other.”
Her eyes widen. “How so?”
“Whenever I was alone with Dad, he’d try to coerce me into saying bad shit about Mom. She did the same thing. If I complained to Dad that Mom wouldn’t let me play ball hockey with my friends until I cleaned my room, suddenly there’d be a social worker coming by and asking me if I felt ‘socially isolated’ by my mother. If I told Mom that Dad let me eat sugary cereal before bedtime, a different social worker would show up interrogating me about everything Dad fed me. It was all being documented too. Every word I said went right back to the lawyers.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s awful.”
“They were throwing out accusations of neglect, emotional abuse, ‘nutritional deprivation.’” I shake my head in disapproval. “And I couldn’t tell them how I felt about it. About anything at all, in fact. Otherwise the blame game would start.”
“The blame game?”
“If I was sad about something? It’s your father’s fault. If I was mad? Your mother’s fault. I was nervous about the school play? It’s because your dad didn’t run lines with you. If something scared me? It’s ’cause your mom’s raising a pussy.” I let out a breath as I remember how exhausting it was to have a single conversation with them. Hell, it’s equally exhausting now.
“Did you go to court and tell the judge which parent you wanted to live with?” Summer asks curiously. “Wouldn’t that have solved the whole custody battle?”
“You’d think. I did go to court. Well, it was more of a conference room with a bunch of tables, but there was a judge.”
I cringe even thinking about it. I remember holding a social worker’s hand as she led me into the room and asked me to sit down. My parents were seated next to their respective lawyers. Mom was pleading at me with her eyes. Dad gave me that encouraging look that said, ‘I know you’ll make the right decision.’ Everyone was staring at me. It was fucking brutal.
“The judge asked me to describe my routine at each of their houses.” I absently rub Summer’s knuckles. “She asked me questions about what I ate, whether I enjoyed playing hockey—a bunch of questions that made me realize they’d told the lawyers everything I’d ever said to them. And then the judge asked me who I wanted to live with.”
Summer’s breath hitches. “Who did you pick?”
My lips twitch in amusement. “I pleaded the Fifth.”
Her jaw drops. “You were twelve, and you pleaded the Fifth?”
“Yup. I think I saw someone do it on CSI or some shit.” I snicker. “The judge said I couldn’t do that and urged me to pick. So I said both. I wanted to live with both.” I offer a wry smile. “She awarded them joint custody, which was what they’d started off with. She said she felt it was better for my mental and emotional wellbeing to spend equal time with both of them.”
“Did things get better after that? Did your parents settle down?”
“Nope. They kept trash-talking each other to me. Still do to this day, though not as bad as before.”
She frowns. “How’d you deal with it when you were growing up?”
“By becoming invisible,” I say roughly. “I mean, there was one rebellious phase where I got my first tat behind their back and dared them to pay attention to me, but mostly I hid in my room. As long as they couldn’t see me, they weren’t able to poison me against each other.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
I shrug.
“You’re doing it again,” she teases with a smile. “Okay, listen. I know you’re used to having your feelings twisted into something negative, but I promise you, anything you tell me will stay in our sacred trust circle. I will never, ever report it to the judge.”
I find myself smiling back. “I’m sorry. Bad habit. I’ll try to break it.” I shoot her a stern look. “But only if you promise to stop being so hard on yourself. You’ve got to stop telling yourself you’re stupid.”
“I’ll try,” she says, and I suppose I can’t ask for more than that. “Are you hungry? I never ended up having dinner.”
I want to ask her why not, what happened on the date with Hunter, but I tamp down the urge. I really don’t want to kill the mood by bringing up another guy. That can wait till tomorrow.
I want tonight to be about just me and Summer.
25
Summer
“My French girls have got nothing on you,” Fitz informs me three nights later.
From the floor of his bedroom, I lift my gaze off the papers in my lap and stick my tongue out at him. And then I realize he’s not joking. A mixture of awe and appreciation shines in his brown eyes as he stares at me.
“You’re stunning,” he insists.
“Stop,” I order. “You’re going to make me blush.”
“Yeah right. Compliments don’t make you blush. You love ’em.”
Well, sure. I do. But the intensity on his face is a tad unnerving. We’ve gone back to our he-draws-me-while-I-write-my-essay routine, but usually he doesn’t say much while he sketches, and he certainly doesn’t throw around words like “stunning.”
I tend to do most of the talking, reading bits of my paper aloud to him and trying to vocalize my thoughts before I put them down on the page. His presence helps my concentration, if I’m being honest. It’s as if it creates a sense of accountability for me. The midterm is due in a few days, but I’m actually feeling good about it. Not saying it’s A-material, but I’d be perfectly content with a B or C.
Fitz studies his sketch. His biceps flex as he shifts one arm and scrapes the pencil over the page to add another detail.
Lord, he is hotter than a five-alarm fire. In appearance, and in body temperature, I’m discovering. He stripped off his T-shirt ten minutes into our study/sketch session, taunting me with his ripped chest. I honestly don’t know how my ADHD brain has managed to remain focused on my schoolwork.
“Stunning,” he says again, this time mumbling it under his breath. “I can see why other women are threatened by you.”
I feel the blush rise in my cheeks. “Nobody’s threatened by me. You’re nuts.”
“No? Remember the girl at the bar?”
“She was threatened by Brenna, not me.”
“Naah, it was both of you.” He examines his drawing again. “Jesus. I can’t get over it. You’re beautiful, but it’s the kind of beauty that’s so…unattainable. It’s otherworldly.”
I snort. “That’s very poetic of you, sweetie.”
But inside, Selena Gomez and I are doing an entire cheerleading routine’s worth of cartwheels and flips. Nobody has ever called me otherworldly. I think I like it.
When footsteps echo in the hall, we both stiffen. And this is something I don’t like—the awful cloud of tension that’s fallen over our household. If we’re in my bedroom or Fitz’s, the tension fades away. The conversation flows, and there’s an ease between us that I’ve never experienced with another guy before.