We'll Always Have Summer Page 9

  “Forever,” I echoed happily. Forever I could do. Me and Jere.

  chapter twenty-five

  On my way out to meet Taylor at the mall the next day, I stopped by my mother’s office. “I’m going to look for a dress,” I said, standing in her doorway.

  She stopped typing and looked over at me. “Good luck,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I supposed there were worse things she could have said than “good luck,” but the thought didn’t make me feel any better.

  The formal-wear store at the mall was packed with girls looking for prom dresses with their mothers. I didn’t expect to feel the pang in my chest when I saw them. Girls were supposed to go wedding dress shopping with their mothers. They were supposed to step out of the dressing room in just the right dress, and the mother would tear up and say, “That’s the one.” I was pretty sure that was the way it was supposed to be.

  “Isn’t it a little late in the year for prom?” I asked Taylor. “Wasn’t ours in, like, May?”

  “My sister told me they had to push back prom this year because of some scandal with the assistant principal,” she explained. “All the prom money went missing or something. So now it’s a grom. Graduation-prom.”

  I laughed. “Grom.”

  “Also, the private schools always have their prom later, remember? Collegiate, St. Joe’s.”

  “I only went to one prom,” I reminded her. One had been more than enough for me.

  I wandered around the store and found one dress I liked—it was strapless, blinding white. I’d never known there were degrees of white before; I’d just thought white was white. When I found Taylor, she had a whole stack of dresses on her arm. We had to wait in line for a dressing room.

  The girl in front of me told her mother, “I will freak out if someone wears the same dress as me.”

  Taylor and I rolled our eyes at each other. I will freak out, Taylor mouthed.

  It seemed like we waited in that line forever.

  “Try this one on first,” Taylor ordered when it was my turn.

  Dutifully, I obeyed her.

  “Come out,” Taylor yelled from her chair by the three-way mirror. She was camped out with the other mothers.

  “I don’t think I like it,” I called out. “It’s too sparkly. I look like Glinda the good witch or something.”

  “Just come out and let me see you!”

  I came out, and there were already a couple of other girls at the mirror, checking themselves out from the back. I stood behind them.

  Then the girl from earlier stepped out in the same dress I had on but in a champagne color. She saw me, and right away she asked, “Which prom are you going to?”

  Taylor and I looked at each other in the mirror. Taylor was covering her mouth, giggling. I said, “I’m not going to prom.”

  Taylor said, “She’s getting married!”

  The girl’s mouth hung open. “How old are you? You look so young.”

  “I’m not that young,” I said. “I’m nineteen.” I wouldn’t be nineteen until August, but nineteen sounded a lot older than eighteen.

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought we were, like, the same age.”

  I looked at us in the mirror as we stood there in the same dress. I thought we looked the same age too. I saw her mother looking at me and whispering to the lady next to her, and I could feel myself blush.

  Taylor saw too and said, loudly, “You can hardly even tell she’s three months pregnant.”

  The woman gasped. She shook her head at me, and I gave her a little shrug. Then Taylor grabbed my hand, and we ran back to my dressing room, laughing.

  “You’re a good friend,” I said as she unzipped me.

  We looked at each other in the mirror, me in my white dress and her in her cutoffs and flip-flops. I felt like I was going to cry. But then Taylor saved it—she made me laugh instead. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out sideways. It felt good to laugh again.

  Three more stores later, we sat in the food court, still no dress. Taylor ate french fries, and I ate frozen yogurt with rainbow sprinkles. My feet hurt, and I was already wanting to go home. The day wasn’t turning out to be as fun as I’d hoped it would be.

  Taylor leaned across the table and dipped an already-ketchupped french fry into my frozen yogurt. I snatched the cup away from her.

  “Taylor! That’s disgusting.”

  She shrugged. “This coming from the girl who puts powdered sugar on Cap’n Crunch?” Handing me a fry, she said, “Just try it.”

  I dipped it into the cup, careful not to get any sprinkles on it, because that would just be too gross. I popped the fry into my mouth. Not bad. Swallowing, I said, “What if we can’t find a dress?”

  “We’ll find a dress,” she assured me, handing me another fry. “Don’t get all Debbie Downer on me yet.”

  She was right. We found it at the next store. It was the last one I tried on. Everything else had been only so-so or too expensive. This dress was long and white and silky and something you could wear on the beach. It was not that expensive, which was important. But most important of all, when I looked in the mirror, I could picture myself getting married in it.

  Nervously, I stepped out, smoothing the dress down on my sides. I looked up at her. “What do you think?”

  Her eyes were shining. “It’s perfect. Just perfect.”

  “You think?”

  “Come look at yourself in this mirror and you tell me, beotch.”

  Giggling, I stepped up on the platform and stared at myself in the three-way mirror. This was it. This was the one.

  chapter twenty-six

  That night I tried on my dress again and called Jeremiah. “I found my dress,” I told him. “I’m wearing it right now.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “It’s a surprise. But I promise, it’s really pretty. Taylor and I found it at the fifth store we went to. It didn’t even cost that much.” I ran my hand along the silky fabric. “It fits me perfectly, so I won’t have to get alterations or anything.”

  “So why do you sound so sad, then?”

  I sat down on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. “I don’t know. Maybe ’cause my mom wasn’t there to help me pick it out. . . . I thought buying a wedding dress was supposed to be this special thing you do with your mom, and she wasn’t there. It was nice with Taylor, but I wish my mom had been there too.”

  Jeremiah was quiet. Then he said, “Did you ask her to go with you?”

  “No, not really. But she knew I wanted her there. I just hate that she’s not a part of this.” I’d left my bedroom door open, hoping my mom might walk by, might see me in the dress and stop. She hadn’t so far.

  “She’ll come around.”

  “I hope so. I don’t know if I can picture getting married without my mom there, you know?”

  I heard Jere let out a little sigh. “Yeah, me either,” he said, and I knew he was thinking of Susannah.

  The next morning, my mother and I were eating breakfast, my mother with her yogurt with muesli and me with my frozen waffles, when the doorbell rang.

  My mother looked up from her newspaper. “Are you expecting someone?” she asked me.

  I shook my head and got up to see who it was. I opened the front door, figuring it would be Taylor with more bridal magazines. Instead, it was Jeremiah. He had a bouquet of lilies, and he had on a nice shirt, white button-down with faint blue checks.

  I clapped my hands over my mouth in delight. “What are you doing here?” I shrieked from behind my hands.

  He hugged me to him. I could smell McDonald’s coffee on his breath. He must have woken up really early to get here. Jeremiah loved McDonald’s breakfasts but he could never wake up early enough to get one. He said, “Don’t get too excited. These aren’t for you. Is Laurel here?”

  I felt swoony and dazed. “She’s eating breakfast,” I said. “Come on in.”

  I opened the door for him, and he followed me inside to the kitchen. B
rightly, I said, “Mom, look who’s here!”

  My mother looked astonished, her spoon halfway to her mouth. “Jeremiah!”

  Jeremiah walked over to her, flowers in hand. “I just had to come and greet my future mother-in-law properly,” he said, grinning his impish grin. He kissed her on the cheek and set the flowers by her bowl of yogurt.

  I was watching closely. If anybody could charm my mother, it was Jeremiah. Already I could feel the tension in our house being lifted.

  She smiled a smile that looked brittle, but it was a smile nonetheless. She stood up. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to the both of you.”

  Jeremiah rubbed his hands together. “All righty. Let’s do this. Belly, get over here. Group hug first.”

  My mother tried not to laugh as Jeremiah gave her a bear hug. He motioned for me to join in, and I came up behind my mother and hugged her around the waist. She couldn’t help it: a laugh escaped. “All right, all right. Let’s go into the living room. Jere, have you eaten?”

  I answered for him. “Egg McMuffin, right, Jere?”

  He winked at me. “You know me so well.”

  My mother had already stepped into the living room, her back to us.

  “I can smell McDonald’s on your breath,” I told him in a low voice.

  He clapped his hand over his mouth, looking self-conscious, which was rare for him. “Does it smell bad?” he asked me.

  I felt so much tenderness toward him in that moment. “No,” I told him. “Not at all.”

  The three of us sat in the living room, Jeremiah and I on the couch, my mother in an armchair facing us. Everything was going so well. He had made my mother laugh. I hadn’t seen her laugh or smile since we’d told her. I started to feel hopeful, like this might actually work.

  The first thing she said was, “Jeremiah, you know I love you. I want nothing but the best for you. That’s why I can’t support what you two are doing.”

  Jeremiah leaned forward. “Laur—”

  My mother held up her hand. “You’re just too young. Both of you. You’re both still gestating and becoming the people you will one day be. You’re still children. You aren’t ready for a commitment like this. I’m talking about a lifetime here, Jeremiah.”

  Eagerly, he said, “Laurel, I want to be with Belly for a lifetime. I can commit to that, easy.”

  My mother shook her head. “And that’s how I know you’re not ready, Jeremiah. You take things too lightly. This isn’t the kind of thing you undertake on a whim. This is serious.” The condescension in her voice really pissed me off. I was eighteen years old, not eight, and Jeremiah was nineteen. We were old enough to know that marriage was serious. We’d seen the way our parents had screwed up their own marriages. We weren’t going to make the same mistakes. But I didn’t say anything. I knew that if I got mad or tried to argue, it would only prove her point. So I just sat there. “I want you two to wait. I want Belly to finish school. When she graduates, if you two still feel the same way, do it then. But only after she graduates. If Beck was here, she’d agree with me.”

  “I think she’d be really happy for us,” Jeremiah said.

  Before my mother could contradict him, he added, “Belly will still finish college on time, I can promise you that. I’ll take good care of her. Just give us your blessing.” He reached out and touched her hand and gave it a playful shake. “Come on, Laur. You know you’ve always wanted me for a son-in-law.”

  My mother looked pained. “Not like this, hon. I’m sorry.”

  There was a long, awkward pause. As the three of sat there, I could feel myself start to tear up. Jeremiah put his arm around me and clasped my shoulder, then he let go.

  “Does this mean you aren’t coming to the wedding?” I asked her.

  Shaking her head, she said, “Isabel, what wedding? You don’t have the money to pay for a wedding.”

  “That’s for us to worry about, not you,” I said. “I just want to know, are you coming?”

  “I already gave you my answer. No, I won’t be there.”

  “How can you say that?” I let out a breath, trying to keep calm. “You’re just mad that you don’t get a say in this. You don’t get a say in what happens, and it’s killing you.”

  “Yes, it is killing me!” she snapped. “Watching you make such a stupid decision is killing me.”

  My mother fixed her eyes on me, and I turned my head away from her, my knees shaking. I couldn’t listen to her anymore. She was poisoning our good news with all her doubts and negativity. She was twisting everything.

  I stood up. “Then I’ll leave. You won’t have to watch anymore.”

  Jeremiah looked startled. “Come on, Bells, sit down.”

  “I can’t stay here,” I said.

  My mother didn’t say a word. She just sat there, her back ramrod straight.

  I walked out of the living room and up the stairs.

  In my room I packed quickly, throwing a stack of T-shirts and underwear into a suitcase. I was throwing my toiletries bag on top of the heap when Jeremiah came into my room. He closed the door behind him.

  He sat down on my bed. “What just happened?” he asked, still looking dazed.

  I didn’t answer him, I kept packing.

  “What are you doing?” he asked me.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Okay, but do you have a plan?”

  I zipped up my suitcase. “Yes, I have a plan. I’m staying at the Cousins house until the wedding. I can’t deal with her.”

  Jeremiah sucked in his breath. “Are you serious?”

  “You heard her. She isn’t changing her mind. This is the way she wants it.”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know. . . . What about your job?”

  “You’re the one who told me I should quit. It’s better this way. I can plan the wedding better in Cousins than I can here.” I was sweating as I heaved up my suitcase. “If she can’t get on board this train, then that’s too bad. Because this is happening.”

  Jeremiah tried to take the suitcase from me, but I told him not to bother. I lugged it down the stairs and to the car without a word to or from my mother. She didn’t ask where we were going, and she didn’t ask when I was coming back.

  On the way out of town, we stopped at Behrs. Jere waited for me in his car while I went inside. If I hadn’t just had a fight with my mother, I never would have had the nerve to quit like that. Even though people came and went all the time at Behrs, especially students . . . still. I went straight back to the kitchen and found my manager, Stacey, and told her I was sorry, but as it turned out I was getting married in two months and I couldn’t keep working there. Stacey eyed my stomach and then my ring finger and said, “Congratulations, Isabel. Just so you know, there’s always a place for you here at Behrs.”

  Alone in my car again, I cried loud, ragged sobs. I cried until my throat hurt. I was mad at my mom, but bigger than that was this overwhelming, heavy sadness. I was grown up enough to do things on my own, without her. I could get married, I could quit my job. I was a big girl now. I didn’t have to ask for her permission. My mother was no longer all powerful. Part of me wished she still could be.

  chapter twenty-seven

  We were half an hour from Cousins when Jeremiah called and said, “Conrad’s been staying in Cousins.”

  My whole body went stiff. We were at a stoplight, and Jeremiah’s car was in front of mine. “Since when?”

  “Since last week. He just stayed after the whole thing at the restaurant. He came back once to get his stuff, but I think he’s gonna spend the summer out here.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Do you think he’ll mind that I’m staying there?”

  I could hear Jere hesitate. “No, I don’t think he’ll mind. I just wish I could be there too. If it wasn’t for that stupid internship, I could be. Maybe I should just quit.”

  “You can’t. Your dad will kill you.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I heard him hesitat
e again, and then he said, “I don’t feel right about the way we left things with your mom. Maybe you should go back home, Bells.”

  “It won’t work. We’ll just fight again.” The light turned green. “You know, I actually think this could be for the best. It’ll give us both space.”

  “If you say so,” Jeremiah said, but I could tell he didn’t completely agree.

  “Let’s talk more when we get to the house,” I said, and we hung up.

  This news that Conrad was in Cousins left me feeling uneasy. Maybe staying at the summer house wasn’t the answer.

  But then, when I pulled into the empty driveway, I felt such incredible relief to be back. Home, I was back home.

  The house looked the same, tall and gray and white. It made me feel the same. Like I was right where I belonged. Like I could breathe again.

  I was sitting in Jeremiah’s lap on a lounge chair when we heard a car pull up. It was Conrad, getting out of the car with a bag of groceries. He looked taken aback to see us sitting there on the deck. I stood up and waved.

  Jeremiah stretched his hands behind his head and leaned back onto his chair. “Hey, Con.”

  “What’s up,” he said, walking over to us. “What are you guys doing here?”

  Conrad set down the grocery bag and took a seat next to Jeremiah’s, and I just sort of hovered above them.

  “Wedding stuff,” Jeremiah said vaguely.

  “Wedding stuff,” Conrad repeated. “So you guys are really doing it?”

  “Hell yeah we are.” Jeremiah pulled me back onto his lap. “Right, wifey?”

  “Don’t call me wifey,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Gross.”

  Conrad ignored me. “Does that mean Laurel’s changed her mind?” he asked Jere.

  “Not yet, but she will,” Jeremiah said, and I didn’t correct him.

  I sat perched there for about twenty more seconds before I twisted out of his arms and stood up again. “I’m starving,” I said, leaning down and poking around Conrad’s grocery bag. “Did you buy anything good?”