The Summer I Turned Pretty (Summer, #1)

by Jenny Han

My whole life was measured in summers. Like I don’t really begin living until June, until I’m at that beach, in that house.

It was a summer I’d never, ever forget. It was the summer everything began. It was the summer I turned pretty. Because for the first time, I felt it. Pretty, I mean. Every summer

up to this one, I believed it’d be different. Life would be different. And that summer, it finally was. I was.

Moments, when lost, can’t be found again. They’re just gone.

When you walk on the beach at night, you can say things you can’t say in real life. In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.

I had just had my first kiss. In front of people. In front of my brother.

I couldn’t believe that Jeremiah had stolen my first kiss like that. I had been waiting, wanting it to be special, and it had happened during a game of truth or dare.

I wondered if this was the way old crushes died, with a whimper, slowly, and then, just like that—gone.

“You’ve always been my best friend. But now it’s more. I see you as more than that.” He continued, scooting closer to me. “You’re cooler than any other girl I’ve ever met, and you’re there for me. You’ve always been there for me. I… I can count on you. And you can count on me too. You know that.”

I said the first words I thought of, the ones that had been on my heart since the beginning. I said, “I’ve loved you since I was ten years old.”

“You’re the only boy I’ve ever thought about. My whole life, it’s always been you. You taught me how to dance, you came out and got me the time I swam out too far.

You know everything about me, even this, which is that I really love you.”

Conrad tried to shrug him off. “Why don’t you leave me alone? How about we try that instead?” But Jeremiah wouldn’t let go. He said, “We’ve been leaving you alone. We’ve left you alone this whole summer, getting drunk and sulking like a little kid. You’re supposed to be the older one, right? The big brother? Act like it, dumbass. Freaking man up and handle your business.”

“She’s sick. She has been for a long time. The cancer came back. And it’s—it’s aggressive. It’s spread to her liver.”

“You’re the most selfish person I ever met,” I said slowly and deliberately. I let each word puncture the air. I had never wanted to hurt somebody so bad in my whole life. “I can’t believe I ever thought I loved you.”

I kept getting caught in this current—first love, I mean. First love kept making me come back to this, to him. He still took my breath away, just being near him. I had been lying to myself the night before, thinking I was free, thinking I had let him go. It didn’t matter what he said or did, I’d never let him go.

Can you just be here with me?” I nodded. I was afraid to open my mouth. I took his hand and squeezed it, and it felt like the most right thing I had done in a long time. We sat there in the sand, holding hands like it was something we’d been doing all along.

I loved Conrad and I probably always would. I would spend my whole life loving him one way or another. Maybe I would get married, maybe I would have a family, but it wouldn’t matter, because a piece of my heart, the piece where summer lived, would always be Conrad’s.