Summer graduated from Berkeley on her twenty-third birthday. She beamed with pleasure and pride as she walked across the stage to accept her diploma, and gave a wave to the five people in their seats that meant everything to her: Seth, Sandy and Kirsten Cohen, Ryan Atwood and Marissa Cooper. Kirsten was already dabbing at the corners of her eyes, the last of her little adopted darlings was graduating. Sandy was taking an obscene amount of photos, while Seth and Ryan, seated on either side of him, rolled their eyes in quiet derision. Seth had taken plenty of his own private photographs the night before, committing the sight of his lover's body to his memory forever. Marissa was unusually morose, but tried hard to smile when she knew Summer was looking.
Neil Roberts had left a message on Summer's cell phone the night before, explaining just how much he wanted to be there. So much so that he couldn't even cancel his vacation to come home to see his only child wear her cap and gown. Summer erased the message without listening to it. As long as he footed the bill, she was content to maintain the status quo; lucky for her that her father never ran out of guilt.
What did her father know about her anyway? When she was sixteen years old he told her that Seth Cohen was nothing but a big kid, and that he'd spend his life coasting on his grandfather's good name. When she was seventeen, he told her flatly that her mother had never wanted children, thus besmirching forevermore the memory of his late wife, Fadia Yousef Roberts; the woman she'd spent almost fifteen years fantasizing about. When she was eighteen, he came home just in time to apologize profusely for missing her high school graduation. Summer hadn't spoken to her father in so long that she sometimes forgot the way his voice sounded. She wasn't sure she could even regret that.
After the graduation ceremony, Seth and the Cohens took her to dinner at her favorite little Italian restaurant, offering many red wine toasts to her fame, fortune, success, beauty, and to anything else that came to mind. Spontaneous though they were, they were also the most genuine people she'd ever known in her life; such an anomaly in Newport Beach, and she could only thank her lucky stars they hadn't been swept under the tide of superficiality and vanity. She also thanked, bountifully, whatever deity that had given her Seth Cohen.
Seth held her hand under the table, stroking the back of her fingers gently, listening to his father wax poetic about his own activist days at Berkeley.
"Yeah, Dad, you're a real warrior," Seth jabbed.
"Hey, now, don't knock his revolutionary spirit," Kirsten warned playfully. "I never would have noticed him if he hadn't been standing out on the Quad protesting Vietnam with tape over his mouth."
"That wasn't Vietnam, that was Iran-Contra, geez," Sandy elbowed his beautiful wife in the ribs.
"How am I supposed to keep all that straight?" Kirsten dismissed with a wave of her hand. "You people staged protests every other week."
"You people?" Sandy turned to his sons. "See how the mighty have fallen. And in a record fifteen seconds."
Summer just sat back in her seat and watched the camaraderie, hoping with all of her heart that she and Seth would create a family as loving, as inclusive and as genuinely devoted to one another as the Cohens were.
Though she had been expecting a proposal from Seth for months, her eyes still filled with tears and her heart swelled to bursting when, after desert, in front of his parents, Ryan, and the entire restaurant, he offered her a ring and his endless devotion. Seth had been offered a year-long art internship in Italy at the end of which he was to come home and make her his bride.
Seth took her home that night and made love to her as tenderly as she had ever let him, all the while whispering that he loved her, that they would always be together, that he would never leave her.
It's funny how life works sometimes.
"So my mother has been bugging me to come home for the Labor Day weekend, but I'm just not in the mood to make nice with her and the new husband for five days." Marissa had been complaining about her mother for the last fifteen minutes, Summer was drifting in and out of the conversation, occasionally muttering an "uh huh" or "what a bitch!" She was in deep concentration, painting her toenails with what she hoped was a dark cherry lacquer.
"Why don't you just tell her you don't want to come?" Summer frowned.
"She's like, a poisonous spider, or something," Marissa complained, "she would find a way to punish me for it in the long run. Maybe if I told her you'd already invited me to come to the City…"
Summer rolled her eyes. "You know you're always welcome," she shook her head, amused. "Is Caitlyn still away at school?" Summer asked, switching the small bottle of polish from one hand to the other, repositioning the receiver so she could hear better.
"What are you doing?" Marissa asked when Summer's muffled voice came through the line.
"Trying to paint my toenails. I'd been looking for another bottle of Candied Cherry forever, and Anna found one yesterday so she picked it up for me," Summer bit her lower lip in concentration as she scraped off excess polish.
Marissa silently wondered how Summer was getting along without being able to see what she was doing, and Summer picked up on her wordless cue as if she could read Marissa's mind.
"See, Anna takes the label maker, and labels all my bottles with the names of the colors. I pick out which one I want, and then just paint them. I use a Q-tip with remover to clean up the polish that gets on my skin, and if all else fails, she'll tell me if I've missed a spot."
"That's impressive. I should try that sometime, painting my toenails with my eyes closed."
"It takes practice," Summer warned with an easy laugh that didn't quite reach her heart.
"So," Marissa said casually, "are you going home for Thanksgiving?"
Summer snorted. "Yeah, right, Coop. Spending a week in that big ol' empty house bumping into shit sounds like a great time."
"I was just thinking it might be nice for you to come stay at the house with me," Marissa lamented in her soft, passive way.
Summer sighed. "I think Anna and I are going to stay in the City, rent movies. Do the dinner thing here. Kurt's a really good cook."
"The Cooper-Nichol-Cohen-Whoevers are having another huge Chrismukkah party this year, are you coming home for that?" Marissa asked.
"No."
"Are you just going to avoid Seth for the rest of your life?"
"Planning on it," Summer retorted dryly.
This argument was old-hat for them, so Marissa relented, didn't pursue it further.
"I guess I'll just take the train up in a few weeks for Labor Day."
"Okay, call me Monday," Summer instructed before clicking the phone off and dropping in next to her on the carpet. She carefully finished painting her nails and recapped the bottle. She rolled onto her back and extended her feet into the air, flexing her toes.
Anna would be home any minute, and tonight she was going to teach Summer how to make spaghetti. Somewhere deep in her bratty little teenaged soul, Summer had always known that one day she would have to learn to cook, and clean and fend for herself, but it just never seemed very pressing at the time. Her father had more than enough money to keep her in maids, and cooks, and gardeners, and everything else her whimsical little heart desired. Before moving in with Anna, Summer didn't know how to clean out a bathtub, or fix her own meals; she barely knew how to make her own bed. Sure, she could put her toys back where they belonged, but really cleaning was completely foreign. And strangely, that felt good. For once her helplessness didn't have a thing to do with being blind.
After the accident, Summer had wallowed in a lugubrious depression. She holed up in her room, in bed, and ordered the housekeepers around like a spoiled princess. She drove her once-distant, now-absent father crazy, and she refused to learn anything new or do anything for herself. She had always been a stubborn ass, but after the accident she'd honed her mulishness into an art form. Summer would never forget the way Anna found her, or how guilty and selfish she had made Summer feel. Anna hadn't known what had happened…the fact was, no one knew what had happened. Sure, everyone had known that the Roberts girl had been involved in a near-fatal car accident, but no one knew that the stroke she had had on the way to the hospital in the ambulance had taken away her sight.
The doorbell rang, and Summer hid in her room as she usually did when company came around. She hadn't received any visitors save Marissa, whom she'd sworn to secrecy. She sat on her duvet, waiting for the weary housekeeper to come up and tell her who had been by, the way Summer had demanded that she do. When she heard Anna's voice resonating in the enormous foyer, coming closer by the second, she panicked. She lurched off the bed, tripped, fell and sprained her ankle.
"Summer, I…" Anna stopped short in the threshold of the doorway, struck by how silly Summer looked sprawled out on the floor. She bit back a laugh, but grew solemn when she saw Summer's tears. Anna knelt next to Summer with every intention of helping her up gently, but Summer lashed out, hit Anna square across the chest.
"Didn't they tell you I didn't want to see you?" she cried. She continued to flail her arms, but Anna grabbed them and held them still, pinning Summer down, more out of fear that she would hurt herself, than actually hurt Anna.
Summer's sightless eyes darted back and forth, terrified, and in a single, deafening moment, realization crashed over Anna like a wave.
"Summer, you've…Oh, God…you're blind," she whispered breathlessly.
"Yes, I'm blind!" Summer spat. "I'm blind and I don't want you to be here, so just leave!" She continued to cry, more out of embarrassment than fear or pain. She struggled against Anna's grasp fruitlessly.
"Stop it!" Anna commanded, fighting the urge to slap Summer silly. "I'm not here to hurt you!"
"Leave me alone," Summer repeated, still struggling half-heartedly. She finally stopped trying to squirm away and Anna's kiss against her sticky cheek caused fresh tears to spill.
"Summer," Anna pulled her close and Summer really cried for the first time since she was a child. She sobbed, wrapping her arms around Anna as if Anna was the mother she'd needed so desperately the last few months. Anna didn't let her go until she had cried herself to sleep.
Summer shook herself out of her memories when she heard Anna's key in the door. She'd long learned the familiar habits of her roommate, soft steps to the door, a jangly rummaging at the bottom of her enormous ugly purse looking for her house keys, and then a sing-song "I'm home," as Anna came through the door.
"Hey," Summer came hobbling in from the bathroom, the blue Styrofoam toe-separators slapping against her feet noisily. "How do they look?"
"Like you painted them in the dark," Anna teased, before bending over to inspect Summer's toes. She straightened and hugged her friend. "They look perfect, as always."
"Gnarly," Summer shuffled over to the bar that cordoned off the kitchen from the living room and hopped up on one of the stools. "So, spaghetti…"
"Spaghetti," Anna agreed. "And an egregious amount of wine, just in case we fuck it up."
Forty-five minutes and three glasses of wine later, Anna could barely stand, and therefore was perched on the stool, her elbows propped up on the bar and her chin in her hand, watching Summer stir the spaghetti.
"Where's the potholder?"
"Eighteen inches to your right," Anna instructed, before blithely continuing her story. Summer grabbed it and opened the oven door, wrapping her covered hand around the warmed loaf of bread.
"…I have another meeting on Friday," Anna finished. Summer frowned, she hadn't been paying close enough attention.
"So did they make you an offer?"
"I'm holding out until Friday to see if I can get a little more," Anna said decisively.
"Keep holding out and they're going to pass you right by," Summer warned.
Anna stuck her tongue out, though Summer couldn't see her, of course. "Is that going to be done sometime tonight?" she ribbed instead.
Summer opened her mouth to retort, but stopped short when she heard the front door swing open and a loud "Hey hey!" boom through the living room.
"We're in here!" Anna called over her shoulder.
Anna's boyfriend Kurt came sauntering around the corner from the foyer, dropping his briefcase and overcoat on the floor next to the sofa.
"Wow…it smells like a garlic press exploded in here," he wrinkled his nose as he approached Anna from behind and wrapped his arms around her waist. Anna elbowed him ruthlessly. "Good," he blurted. "It smells…good, just…um, garlicky."
"Yeah," Anna laughed, tipsy. "Summer went a little nuts."
"In my defense, it's not like I can see what I'm doing," Summer bit back, jovially. "Besides, I like garlic."
"It's good for the heart," Anna announced. "So is wine," she clinked her nearly-empty glass against Summer's and downed the remaining few sips in one healthy gulp.
"One glass: good. Three glasses: alcoholic," Summer remarked wryly, rolling her eyes.
"Garlic may be good for the heart, but it's bad for the looooooove," Kurt drawled, laying a noisy kiss on Anna's neck.
"Ew! No macking in the kitchen!" Summer protested, her nose wrinkling.
"Yeah, Kurt! Ew!" Anna laughed.
Despite her protests, Anna and Kurt continued to kiss and giggle, and Summer turned back to her pot, pretending to concentrate on stirring. She knew Anna wasn't trying to rub it in, but sometimes it stung to feel how happy she and Kurt were together.
Stop it, Summer chastised herself. You had that kind of love, once. You had your chance.No one ever said you deserved any more than what you've already had. You've been luckier than a lot of people. A lot of people never get the chance at that kind of love, not ever...
Her heart ached as she listened to the sounds her friends made, and she wondered if she would ever be happy again.
To Be Continued...