NOTE BEFORE READING: The next 3 chapters are set in the months before Summer goes to culinary school, and they provide important backstory for her. Keep in mind that Summer is telling Ashton about this in the present, so please don't skip over these just because they happened in the past. It's all relevant to the story ♡

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SUMMER

Andrew Hollis was the boy I thought my sister was going to end up happily ever after with.

Inseparable since elementary school, Ella and Drew were best friends, as close and in-tune as any other couple who had known each other for that long would be. They spent so much time together that everyone assumed they harbored secret feelings for one another. And Ella did.

She was so hopelessly in love with him that she was in a constant state of self-torture. She'd hold back from any boy who pursued her, and her heart would break every time Drew pursued someone else, watching from the sidelines and giving relationship advice to the one she ached the most for. Masking her dejection every time she did.

So where did I fit into all of this? Simple: I was just the little sister who tagged along for the ride. They were only two years older, but I longed to be in their sophisticated world from the start. I idolized the ground they walked on, in awe of their maturity. But back in the beginning, I was eight years old, and the world looked a lot shinier than it did when I grew up. My parents were superheroes, my big sister knew it all, and Drew Hollis was otherworldly to my starry-eyed self.

As the years went by, the shine faded, but Drew's shine only brightened. I developed a childish crush that didn't mean anything. He was older, he was cool and kind and treated me like a friend.

I liked how his teasing was never mean. I liked the way his sandy blonde hair curled in tufts behind his ears, how his middle part made his bangs flop over either side of his forehead. I liked how the dark blue shade of his eyes resembled the ocean at dusk. I liked the freckle above his lip and how it would stand out against his flushed skin on hot days. I loved hearing his laugh echo through the halls at home, alerting me to his presence. But after another handful of years, my world expanded beyond Ella and Drew.

At fourteen, that was when I started to come into my own. And that was when Drew started looking at me differently. The first time is burned in my memory.

I was at a tennis lesson, and he stopped by the courts after football practice to offer to walk me home. I had just started high school, I didn't know the route yet, and Ella would be held up in her piano lesson for hours. 

Maybe it was the heat that day, maybe it was watching me fan out my sweaty shirt, watching me stretch in that tennis skirt, maybe it was the ferocity in which I smacked that ball. Whatever it was, the shift in him was subtle. But I noticed that entranced look in an instant, because I had never seen that look on Drew before. And I definitely hadn't seen it anywhere near my sister.

But it wasn't even the look that had struck me that day. It was his loss for words. The foggy state I found him in, like I'd just woken him from the deepest sleep of his life and he couldn't quite place me. His usual sharpness, his brainpower, it's why him and Ella made such a good team. And I had singlehandedly turned that brain to sludge.

Our dynamic slightly changed from that point, but how could it not? A lot of kids who grow up together go through the same things. I had a few entranced moments of my own. A prominent one being in the summer before my sophomore year.

At a public pool, I watched Ella and Drew in a chicken fight with their friends. I watched how effortlessly he lifted her on his newly broadened shoulders. How his latest growth spurt seemed to have stretched out his body overnight. How droplets of water clung to his lean muscles when he got out of the pool. The waft of sunscreen and chlorine I got when he flopped down next to me. His wet skin glistening in the sun.

It was a good day.

But as always, I believed that Ella and Drew were meant for each other. That he was hers, and one day he'd look at her and get a rush of realization about his feelings. Theirs would be a perfect love story they could tell their future kids. I had, for the most part, outgrown my childhood crush.

By that time, newer crushes came into play, and Aaron was the one who stuck. He ticked off a lot of my firsts, including my first heartbreak. And Drew was the first person I saw after Aaron dumped me.

I had spent the night at Aaron's place while his parents were away. I thought it was romantic, little did I know that night was my own sendoff. I didn't even know I was having breakup sex for the first time, too. When I left his house in the morning, I walked the streets in a daze, the breakup gliding over the surface of my mind. Refusing to sink in.

"Sun!" A car pulled up next me. Drew was leaning over the seat to the open window.

Sun was a nickname that stemmed from when I was a baby. My parents said I barely cried, that I was just a little ball of sunshine. Ella took Sun and ran with it, and Drew scooped it up along the way, often switching it out for his own variations. Sunny-girl, Sunflower, Sunshine, Sunnyside-Up. I loved each one he spun.

At that exact moment, seeing him was a clash of comfort and dread. His face was the warmth I needed but didn't want. All I wanted was to be alone.

"Drew. You're here," I remarked, detached. Since he was meant to be in New York at college, he seemed like a figment of my imagination.

"Yeah, me and El drove down for the weekend," he said. "I actually just left your house, but I can swing back and drop you off. Hop in."

I wavered, toying with the strap of the gym bag I had taken to Aaron's. "Um... that's okay. I don't mind walking."

He eyed me, his head tilting. "You all right?"

I nodded and continued along the sidewalk, not stopping for the slam of a car door or the footsteps catching up with me.

"What's wrong, Sun?"

And with that, the breakup sank in and I sank into his chest, blubbering into his shirt. He hugged me tight and stroked my hair, and when I finally calmed down and he drove me home, Drew said something that stirred my childhood crush from its dormant depths.

"I never liked that asshole."

I stopped wiping my never-ending stream of tears. "You didn't? How come you never said anything?"

"Because he made you happy, and I wasn't going to mess with that." He shrugged, turning onto my street. "But he wasn't good enough for you... I don't think anyone ever could be."

The crush was stirred, but that's all it would be. Until one year and two months later.

A couple of weeks after graduating, I went to a party with my friend Zoey. We had been savoring our new freedom out of high school, going to familiar parties with our class, but this one was different.

In a suburb I didn't know, with college kids I had never met, Zoey dragged me along to meet up with some older guy she was into. Twenty minutes in, she ditched me for that guy. And twenty minutes after that, I was being fed vodka shots by a handsy frat boy. Inhibitions lowered; sloppiness heightened.

It's not like he forced me to drink. I had my nose buried in books my entire senior year, putting boys on the back-burner in favor of getting my grades up for culinary school. Sure, I had been on some bad dates and kissed a couple of guys, but that was it. I had basically been living in a desert since my last night with Aaron. But it was summer, I was tired of being parched, and I was open to quenching my thirst. 

The space in which the following happened was so fuzzy I only remembered it in snippets later on. I remembered hot breath on my ear, my body being held up, guided to the staircase with a hand groping my ass. I remembered being called babygirl, being told how hard I was about to be fucked. I remembered hearing a familiar voice cutting through the crowd.

I remembered being pulled out of the frat boy's hold, feeling overjoyed at the sight of Drew materializing next to me. How out of place the contorted anger looked on his face compared to my bubbly energy. I remembered hanging onto him while he lashed out at the frat boy, hearing the words "she's with me".

Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the backdoor steps with Drew, being fed sips of cold water. It felt like an eternity, but my sense of time slowly reset as my brain cleared.

"You don't have to babysit me, you know. I'm not a kid," I said, making out his stern features in the dark.

The air was balmy, and that might have been why there was a sheen of sweat on his neck, but I could tell he was still worked up. I had never seen him like that. Like he would have knocked out that guy if I hadn't been hanging on his arm.

"I know you're not," he said with a sigh, "but you'll thank me in the morning."

"For cockblocking me? I dunno..."

He puffed out a laugh. "God, a minute later and I would've missed you. Ella would rip my nuts off if she knew we were at the same party and I didn't get you away from that dude."

"Mm, so you're working on Ella's behalf," I hummed, nudging my knee against his. "A cockblocking apprentice."

"El's behalf or not, I wasn't gonna stand by while you drunk smashed that walking STD," he said dryly, taking a sip of his beer.

My nose scrunched. "Well when you put it like that... thanks for stopping me." I scraped my hair back, exhaling hard. "Now I feel stupid."

He gave me a soft smile. "You're not stupid, Sun. You just turned off your brain. Sometimes it leads to bad mistakes, like getting with that guy would've been, and sometimes it leads to good mistakes. Hard to tell the difference when you're having fun, though."

"Good mistakes. I like that." I smiled, watching a line of ants disappear into a crack in the concrete. "I haven't hooked up with anyone since Aaron, you know? I guess I was just feeling a little... reckless."

We both sat in silence, as silent as it could be with music pumping from inside the house. Until I turned to Drew when I felt the weight of his gaze on me. He had that look. That focus I'd caught glimpses of over the years.

"What?"

"I do forget sometimes. That you're not a kid anymore," he said thoughtfully. "But then I look at you and it really hits me, and it's just like..."

It happened so smoothly that every beat of my heart rolled into one. Drew leaned in, our lips touched, and he kissed me. Although it was fleeting, and soft, and quiet – it ripped the air straight out of my lungs. That crush wasn't stirring anymore, it was spinning into a whirlpool of frantic butterflies.

Then it was over, and I was speechless. But not frozen. I stumbled up and paced inside, pushing through walls of people, finding the first empty room to process the opposing emotions splitting my brain in half. Not five seconds after I shut the bathroom door, Drew's voice was on the other side of it.

"I'm sorry, Summer. That was so stupid," he urged, rapping on the wood. "Really fucking stupid. We can just forget it happened, okay?"

As soon as he said that, I knew I didn't want to forget. I opened the door, pulled him inside, and kissed him so hard I got a blinding headrush.

It felt like an awakening. Like whatever I had with Aaron was a mere flicker, while Drew ignited the fireworks. In his lips and his touch and his breath. That whirlpool of butterflies captured me and dragged me under. I was locking the door, taking off his shirt, taking off mine. He was hoisting me up, kissing my neck, burning me alive.

One thing led to another, and in a flurry of heat and hunger, I did the most reckless thing I had ever done in my life: I had sex with Andrew Hollis on a bathroom sink.

It was nothing like I had ever felt before. Nothing like the impatient fumbling I was accustomed to with Aaron. I had never experienced something so intense and ground-shaking, so mind-bendingly incredible.

But when it was over and I came down from the high, the guilt that gripped my stomach was so strong I thought I was going to be sick. I got dressed barely looking at him, I told him we could never speak about it, and I took a cab home with Ella in the forefront of my mind.

The next morning when she asked me how my night was, I had a moment of impulse where I was going to tell her. I had to. But how was I going to tell her I was the worst sister in the world? That I slept with the guy she'd been in love with for a decade. I couldn't. She'd be crushed, and it was never going to happen again, so what was the point? I decided to take it to my grave.

So I pasted on a smile and told her the party was uneventful before I retreated to my bed. I ignored Drew's calls and texts all day, going back and forth between reeling in shame and daydreaming about every steamy second in that bathroom.

The day after that, I went for a run to try and clear my head, and it kind of worked. Until I came back and found Drew waiting for me on the window seat in my room. I jumped when I saw him, catching my breath as I ripped out my earpods. It wasn't unusual for him to be at our house, but there was no one home and I knew he must have swiped his mom's spare key she had for emergencies.

"Lurking in my room is a little stalkery, don't you think?" I huffed.

"Like I had a choice," he retorted, holding up his phone. "We have to talk about this, Summer."

"Ugh, there's nothing to talk about!" I stormed over and pulled him up, dragging him to the door.

He spun me around to hold my waist. "I can't stop thinking about you."

"Drew..."

"And I know you've been thinking about me. Sex like that doesn't just happen, Sun. It's us. We can't bury something this good."

"It was a mistake, okay?"

"Yeah... a good mistake. The best mistake."

"Don't," I breathed, feeling myself weaken as his hands dipped under my shirt, roaming my back. "Please don't make this harder than it is."

"It doesn't have to be."

"Yes it does."

"Why?"

I rallied the power to push away his tingling touch. "Because you're Drew! You're Ella's Drew!"

"God, no I'm not! I know everyone thinks I am. I know you think we're gonna get married or something... I know how she feels about me." He let out a heavy sigh, running his fingers through his hair, his expression somehow hard and soft at the same time. "And I love her. I do. But not the way she wants me to. I look at her and I see my sister, that's all I've ever seen. It's all I'm ever going to see."

"Well I'm her sister, so what does that make me?"

He gave an exasperated shrug. "I don't know. It doesn't make sense, but I just don't see you that way. Maybe I did when we were kids, but it changed a long time ago. One day I just started wanting you, but I never let myself go there. I locked those thoughts in a vault for Ella's sake, and now that door's been blown off its hinges and I can't put it back the way it was. Please... please don't make me go back."

My heart squeezed as he looked at me with those dark oceans. Dark, but so open. So transparent, laying all of these unspoken thoughts in front of me. Thoughts I had locked in my own vault for years.

"Sunshine," he exhaled, reaching for my hips, drawing me in again. "Me and Ella are never going to happen. But us... we can't not happen. We just can't."

I didn't pull away when his mouth met mine. I closed my eyes and I succumbed to all those years of withheld feelings. And kissing him in that moment, being in his arms, tasting him again, I felt it deep in my gut – the rightness of it all.

Despite the conflict and guilt, nothing had ever felt so right. And nothing could have prepared me for what was about to become the most beautifully chaotic summer of my life.

a/n: so as you can now tell, it's going to be a bit more different and complicated than what you might have thought. I hope you liked getting a look at summer's life before cloverbrook, remember there's still 2 more chapters of her, drew, and ella's story - and how it all went wrong. 

see you soon!