That Summer Sun

It was your first summer together when you picked up a mickey job house sitting off the Oregon coast through friends of your sister's. It was only a few hours from Portland and the cities, and closer to the mountains. You started the summer hiking every weekend, swimming in the frigid waters of the beach. The house was large, a remnant from pioneer days, a mine profiteer's mansion handed down through a spoiled family. You both thought you were reclaiming something the house had stolen from the workers' blood that it had fed on.
Everyday you would work the garden, play in the woods until you were both covered in grime and sweat. Your cheeks were stained brown from the play. Her hands would always find yours. She let her small hand play in yours and you fancied yourself her guardian. She looked at you with gleaming honey brown eyes, and skin the color to match and swore that this summer you needed no one else, nothing else but the two of you. It felt good to believe her, to hold her and dance to the sound of the water lapping against the shore, no light but the dying sun over the water.

It only took a month before she wanted to spend more time in Portland, so you would both make your way out to the city, eventually you met up with some other college kids and hooked up with them for the summer. Every night was a party, so much so that the living stipend the homeowner gave you wasn't enough. You both began to pick up the slack and started dealing for friends, nothing big, just an extra five dollars here and there.
It was mid-August when you went to the Lakehouse for a weekend. This was another house being held by the friends you'd made. It had a reputation for a sort of wild that set both of you off.
You fucked down the road from the house before you got there, an unspoken seal against what might happen that night. She held your face and smiled, both of your eyes tight on each other. You nodded and she wrapped her arms around you. When you pulled up she gave your hand a squeeze and you knit your brow. She smiled, It's all right. I'll always love you.

Sometime after one in the morning you noticed that you were scared by the crowd still drinking and doing anything they could touch. There were girls that made moves, but you couldn't think clearly. You wandered from room to room before making your way outside. While the open air cut the stink of sex and drugs that hung around the party it still felt like the air was thick and sticky. You watched the various revelers and smiled happily to yourself. When you saw her curled up on the lakeshore with someone else, letting herself be held the way you held her, you couldn't help the bile that rose to your throat. You found a place to relieve yourself and collapsed to your knees.

Sometime the next day she found you and got you up. She tried to smile but the girl she'd been with was also there, helping you wake up. You felt that bile again, but choked it back.
The ride was long and you kept your forehead against the cool glass of the window. She tried to touch you, but all you could feel was a knot in your stomach. It was the same that night, and the nights after. It got so bad you started sleeping in the hammock in the side-yard of the house. She came to you and tried to apologize, to bring you back, but it was too late. You'd settled into yourself too much. She cried, assured you it was nothing, but you didn't hear it. You shouted, you threatened. Whore! you cried, Slut! It hurt to hear those words aloud and you knew as soon as they came out that nothing could be the same. You wanted to take it back, but you knew, the way your throat was tight, but only in the back, that that was not happening. Your stomach twisted up and knotted and you couldn't look at her. Now was your turn to try and apologize.
You went to bed together that night, but you slept on the far sides of the bed. The next night she came to you, but you still cringed from her, pained at how you had hurt her. The night after you tried to hold her, to open up again, but she curled away from you. The next morning you packed up the house and cleaned it up. You locked it and left the keys with the neighbors and drove back East for school.