Summer Lovin'

Chapter Five

Jesse came home and nodded at Dana who was still folding clothes and squeezing them into suitcases. He went to the kitchen and unloaded the groceries.

He took the box of razors quietly into his room and set them on his desk. He looked at Summer curled up on his bed. Her hair was loose and hung into her face.

Jesse went over to her and brushed the softness away from her face. He studied her face as he had studied her picture many times. Summer looked a little older now, but she was still the same beautiful girl he had fallen in love with all those years ago.

He would watch the video Dana had sent him over and over just to hear Summer's voice. To see her smile at the camera and laugh so sweetly, who demanded so charmingly for the photographer to put the camera away.

Summer was the reason he avoided going to visit Dana at all. He didn't know how to handle it. He'd never been in love before and it happened when he made a phone call to Dana.

After a year of torturing himself, he put the videotape away in the back of his closet and didn't take it out again. Jesse went on with his life, his heart aching terribly at first, but it eased over the years.

Jesse still thought about her. Dana would mention Summer every once in a while and he was glad that she was doing well. He would then think about her for a little while and when it got too much he put her in the back of his mind again.

That part of his life had been over. He couldn't continue loving Summer if he wanted to live at all. When he loved her, she was all he thought of, all he wanted, and it killed him not to have her.

Jesse missed their phone conversations. He had avoided calling Dana and Summer's dorm room line after Dana kept pressing him to go after Summer, when she already had a boyfriend. He couldn't bear hearing Summer's voice, knowing that she was with someone else. He called Dana more often on her cell or sent emails. Occasionally, he would still call the dorm line just so it wouldn't look like he was avoiding calling her.

He had admired Summer's things when he was at their dorm with Dana. The framed pictures of her family on her desk, the small little glass knickknacks of animals. He'd slept in her bed and breathed her glorious scent in. It was imbedded in his blood.

And here she was now, years later, sleeping on his bed, looking as gorgeous as ever and smelling as she did, pulling at what was already deeply implanted in him.

Jesse touched her shoulder lightly, just to feel her for one second. Summer's skin was cold. He noticed goose bumps across her shoulders and arms, which were partly crossed in self warmth.

He shook his head at her shyness of not actually getting into his bed. Jesse went to his closet and took a dark blue fuzzy blanket off his top shelf. He opened the blanket and slid it gently around her. Summer pulled it to her in her sleep and didn't wake. Jesse left the room and shut the door behind him. He crossed over to Dana's room.

Dana smiled when he entered. "Hey."

"How's the packing going?" he asked, avoiding her eyes. Dana knew when something was up with him, she always did, and he hated it. One look into his eyes and she was all over him.

Maybe by talking about her trip she would be too preoccupied about that to notice how desperately he wanted her friend.

"Horrible. How am I supposed to pack for three whole months in only two bags?"

"Take less clothes," he answered, flopping onto her bed, and laid back onto her dozen pillows. He closed his eyes.

"We're talking three- whole -months," Dana looking at her clothes in frustration.