“Yeah, I’m ready.” She gives one last wave, and they walk out the door.
It’s weird. I came with Summer, and now I’m the one leaving alone. Watching her walk out the door with Justin sucks more than it should.
My mom whips around with an accusatory finger pointed at me. “Caleb John Davidson!”
“What?” My brows drop as I look back and forth between my parents. “What did I do?”
She walks toward me, and I feel like I’m twelve years old again, when she found out I jumped off the roof into a pile of mattresses. Her finger hits my chest with more force than a tiny sixty-year-old woman should have. “What’s going on between you and Summer?”
“Nothing.” I shrug.
“First, you show up to the house naked in the dead of winter.”
I roll my eyes. “We were not naked. We had a four-point rack.”
My mom ignores my joke, still hitting me with her finger. “And then you spend the rest of the night flirting with Summer right in front of your brother.”
“Whoa.” I straighten. “I was not flirting with Summer.”
“You were looking at her.” She turns to my dad. “Don, was he looking at her?”
“You were looking.”
“Looking at someone is way different than flirting with them.”
“No, you were looking at her with bedroom eyes. That’s how you were flirting.”
“I was not.” I throw my arms up, knowing this is one battle with my mom that I’m not going to win. “She was sitting across from me at the table. Where else was I supposed to look?”
“And I don’t like you impersonating Justin.”
“It was his idea. Not mine.”
“Well, you didn’t have to go along with it.”
“They needed my help. What was I supposed to do?”
“It’s just asking for trouble.” My dad shakes his head. “Summer is his girlfriend, not yours.”
“I know that. You don’t have to worry.” I push off the back of the couch and start walking toward the kitchen.
My mom follows behind. “When you show up at our house naked after spending the day together, I’m going to worry.”
“I was teaching her how to ice climb. She’d never been before.” I face my mother, placing both my hands on her tiny shoulders. “I promise. Summer and I are just friends. And she could really use a friend right now with how much Justin is working.”
I feel her shoulders lower, releasing some of her pent-up tension. “Alright, but promise me you won’t cross any lines or even get close to the lines. That’s when bad things happen.”
“I promise.”
But even as I say the words, I know in my heart that’s one promise that’s going to be hard to keep.
twenty-two
SUMMER
That night,after Justin dropped me off, I went down the Caleb Davidson rabbit hole. I’m so far down it I wouldn’t be surprised if I ran into Bugs Bunny down here.
There are hours of videos of him doing death-defying tricks. BASE jumping, sky diving, rock climbing, hang gliding, zip lining, bungee jumping. You name it. If it’s dangerous, Caleb has probably done it and done it in style or shirtless or in a way that’s incredibly appealing.
