The Boiling Point | ✔️

35 | ...comes around

ASHTON

"That all went down over two months ago now. Ella hasn't spoken to me since," Summer says next to me, her head hung low. She's barely looked at me this whole time.

I glance around the parking lot, processing. Puzzling. "I don't get it."

She lifts her head, showing me her crestfallen face that stings my heart. "What's not to get?"

"You said you slept with your sister's boyfriend, but you didn't. He wasn't her boyfriend."

She shakes her head, tucking her legs up to cross them on the hood we're still sitting on. "I know, but that's the closest thing..." She pauses, releasing a sigh. "The betrayal was the same. It felt just as bad."

"Summer, you were single, he was single. At the core of it, two single people hooking up is all that it was," I firmly tell her. "You don't deserve bad karma for living your life."

"Ashton," she says with a tired breath, like she's about to argue, but then her face goes thoughtful. "Nick is your best friend, right? Would you say he's like a brother?"

"Sure. The closest thing to it, anyway."

"Okay, I want you to close your eyes and imagine this." She turns to me, waiting until I've shut my eyes before she continues. "Imagine you're ten-years-old, you meet a girl, and it's like, this instantaneous connection. You grow up together, you're best friends. You could be in the deepest pit where all you want to do is sleep all day, but when you wake up and you think about her, you can't get out of bed fast enough. You're so in love with this girl it hurts. And even though she looks at you and still sees a friend, you know with every fiber of your being that you're going to marry her one day. You never lose that hope."

"All right," I say slowly, settling into this hypothetical I've never had. I've never been in love with a childhood friend. I've never been in love, period. But I feel it through her words, as much as I can imagine what the real thing feels like.

"Now, throughout all these years of loving her, Nick is there along the way," she continues. "He's watched it all. He's been there to listen to you on the good days when you just need to tell someone how crazy you are about her, and he's been there for the bad days when you see her looking at another guy the way you've always wanted her to look at you. There's no one else in the world who knows this story better than Nick. And he never tells you to give up and let her go, he tells you it's going to work out. That you and this girl are made for each other. He's your biggest supporter, and there isn't a second where you don't believe him. You and this girl are inevitable. He said it himself."

So far, I've been picturing a faceless girl in this scenario. But at that word, inevitable, I get a flash of reality mixing into this. Of me and Nick in his room, of me pouring my guts out to him about a very real girl. Him telling me we were inevitable. And suddenly, this faceless girl turns into Summer.

Her voices brings me back. It's softer. Sadder. "Everything goes on like that. It's a constant, secure loop. And then one day, out of nowhere... you walk in on Nick in bed with this girl. Him, your brother, having sex with the only one you've ever wanted. The only one he knows you wanted. Taking her from you."

I see it. I see it so vividly I have to take a steady breath. It's as clear as watching it on a TV screen - Nick having sex with Summer. Naked. Kissing. Fucking. Not even taking into account the hypothetical history of the scenario, this single image makes my blood boil so violently that the darkness of my closed eyes turns to red, and the urge to turn around and punch a hole through the windscreen rushes over me.