T H E S U M M E R L I S T
One summer can change everything.
At least, that’s what Naomi has heard. Personally, she’s not interested in changing anything. With the start of university looming like the Ghost of Adulthood Yet to Come, Naomi is ready to spend the most uneventful summer of her life house sitting for her dad’s boss.
Her friends might be making epic summer bucket lists, but to Naomi, two months alone in a giant mansion sounds like just the escape she needs from the anxiety that’s spent her whole life telling her change can’t be anything but bad.
Andrea is ready for a change. Sure, she might have taken things a little too far by dumping her boyfriend, quitting her job, and breaking into her dad’s seemingly empty house to spend the summer plotting her next move, but Andrea has never done anything by halves.
When she discovers the house is not, in fact, empty, and that the mysterious house sitter with the biggest blue eyes she’s ever seen is hiding a secret summer bucket list, Andrea hatches a plan to tick the items off together.
It’s the perfect trade: Naomi gets an accountability buddy, Andrea gets an excuse to avoid planning her own future for just a little longer, and once the list is complete, they go their separate ways.
It’s simple, it’s effective, and it definitely doesn’t leave room for them to fall in love—no matter how many times they stay up all night talking, or how good it feels when their hands touch, or how much they both wish September would stay far, far away.
One summer can change everything...for better or for worse.
E X C E R P T
“I’m his daughter,” I repeat, my voice shaking with what I realize is shock. “That’s how
I got in the house. I’m…visiting. I didn’t know they had a cat sitter. You’re the cat sitter, right?”
I glance down at where one of the cats has now lain itself across my feet to start purring. The other one slips back under the fridge door and takes off towards the woman.
“Oh. Oh. They didn’t tell me you were coming.”
I can’t help smirking. “Yeah, it was, um, a last minute thing.”
“Oh. I see.”
Her voice has turned so quiet and reedy I start to worry she might be about to faint.
“Oh my god, I almost attacked you,” she says in a horrified whisper.
“Yeah, uh, about that. You think I could close the fridge without provoking your wrath?”
She lets out a squeak I interpret as a yes. I take a slow step back from the fridge and then swing the doors shut.
My eyes are still stunned from the glare of the fridge light, and I have to blink a few times before I can see her in the near-darkness. Once I get my first good look, I can’t help it.
I grip the fridge handle for support as I laugh so hard my knees go weak.
She doesn’t have a gun. She has an ornamental table lamp clutched in one hand and what I’m pretty sure is a miniature version of the Venus de Milo in the other.
She blinks at me with huge, round eyes while I laugh, which just makes me crack up even harder.
I only realize just how much tension has built up in my body over the course of this insane day when I feel it seeping out of me as I laugh and laugh and laugh. I’m not even laughing at her anymore. I’m not even laughing at anything funny.
I’m laughing because I’m nineteen and everything I own in the entire world is sitting in two garbage bags on the floor of my dad’s house. I’m laughing because five hours ago, I had a boyfriend, and now I don’t. I’m laughing because I thought I loved him, but it only took a few seconds of looking at him—really looking at him—to realize I never did.
I just wanted to believe I’d finally found something that mattered to me.
“Sorry,” I choke out when I can speak again. “Weird day. Also, what were you gonna do with those? Venus de Milo me to death? Strangle me with a lamp cord?”
A rogue snort explodes out of me at the thought. The girl’s eyebrows pinch together like I’ve offended her.
“They were the closest blunt objects to my bed.”
