The Boiling Point | ✔️

23 | tar

SUMMER

The more I try to make sense of it, the more nonsensical it becomes.

Yet somehow, any other outcome would be an illogical one, right? Ashton Banks treats everything like a challenge he has to win. So why should I be any different? The challenge was to get in my pants. He won.

The simplicity of it is right there, but accepting it is admitting a defeat so excruciating that it eats me from the inside out.

I'm in the kitchen prepping a bolognese sauce. Mrs. Villa left the ingredients out with a Post-it instructing me to have dinner ready by seven. Still not a fan of the notes, but at least this one was less demanding and included a 'please'.

I cleaned up my blotchy face and watery eyes, but I'm still reeling. A hot iron brands his stinging words on my brain over and over, the callous look on his face sewn into the fabric of my mind. It's as if I never left that parking lot at all.

The echo of the front door travels to the kitchen. "Denise, you home? My flight's moved up tomorrow so I'll have to leave a little earlier than—oh. Summer."

Mr. Villa stops sorting through the mail as he walks in, and I drop my focus to the onion I'm chopping.

"She'll be back at seven."

"Great," he says slowly. "Everything okay?"

I nod to the board, keeping my chopping pace. "Yeah. She wants spaghetti bolognese for dinner so—"

"I meant, are you okay?"

My eyes are burning from the onions, but I feel my own tears welling. On the verge of exposing every emotion I'm fighting to suppress.

"I'm okay."

"Summer... look at me."

"I'm fine." I sniff. "It's just the onions."

I want him to believe me, but he's walking closer, and my vision is blurred from the tears on the edge of spilling. A sharp pain suddenly slices across my thumb. I drop the knife with a gasp, a line of crimson breaking through the blur.

"Shit," he says, dumping the mail on the marble island. He takes my forearm, guides me to the sink and runs cold water over my thumb. "Don't move, okay? I'll be right back."

I blink, letting the silent tears go. My bones are rusted and stiff. I can't move even if I try.

When he comes back, he turns off the faucet and looks closer in the dusky light. "All right, not that bad. You won't need stitches or anything."

He opens a first-aid kit and picks out what he needs.

"You were right," I confess through a sniffle. "About Ashton. He was just using me."

His mouth tightens as he dabs disinfectant on the throbbing cut. "You know I didn't want to be right, Summer. I'm so sorry I was."

"But I should have... I don't know. I should have seen it coming."

"He told you what you wanted to hear. It's not your fault."

I shake my head, the air cold on my wet cheeks. "It is. I let myself fall into it when I knew how manipulative he could be. It's my fault for thinking he was actually capable of being a stand-up guy."

Mr. Villa presses a band-aid in place, then moves to squeeze my hand. "You wanted to see the good in someone. He convinced you it was there, that it was real. Grabbing onto something real does not make it your fault when it turns out to be a work of fiction."