Chapter Text
The transition from sleep to consciousness wasn't a gradual fade-in; it was a collision. One moment, I was safe in the weightless dark, and the next, the reality of the previous night rushed back in, heavy and unwanted, like a tide reclaiming the shore.
My head felt heavy, my eyes were scratchy from the ruined eyeliner I'd scrubbed off at 2:00 AM, and my heart felt like a bruised peach—tender, easily damaged, and slightly sour.
It was that specific type of exhaustion that feels almost like a hangover, even though the only thing I'd "over-consumed" was the bitter taste of rejection and a few too many breaths of humid salt air.
The morning light felt too aggressive, slicing through the gaps in my blinds like a reminder that the world hadn't stopped spinning just because my ego had been bruised on a sand dune by a boy who couldn't stand up to his friends.
The house was eerily quiet, a stark contrast to the chaotic symphony of the past few days.
Usually, the Cousins house lived and breathed with the sound of slamming doors and the constant thrum of teenage energy. But today, the specific roar of the grandparents and the swarm of cousins had dissipated; they'd all headed back to Philadelphia and Boston for the week, promising to return with reinforcements and more fireworks for the Fourth.
I dragged myself downstairs, my bare feet padding softly on the old wood floor, to find only my mom and Denise in the kitchen.
Denise was hunched over her laptop at the kitchen counter, typing away with a ferocity that suggested she was either solving a global crisis or finishing a very long email that required several exclamation points. Mom was humming a tune I didn't recognize—something old and soft—as she moved around the kitchen.
"Morning, sunshine," Denise said, not looking up from her screen, though the corner of her mouth quirked. A mischievous smirk played on her lips. "How was the big bonfire? I heard the smoke was visible from the main road."
"Good," I muttered, sliding onto the stool next to her and resting my chin on my palm. The granite of the counter felt cool against my skin, a small mercy for my pulsing forehead.
I wasn't in the mood to dissect the wreckage of last night, especially not with the resident expert on social dynamics who could probably map out exactly where I'd gone wrong without me saying a word. Denise had a way of looking at a social disaster and seeing the structural flaws, whereas I just felt the debris.
My mom turned around, sliding a bowl of granola and berries in front of me with a precision that suggested she'd been tracking my descent from the stairs.
"Just good?"
I shot back a look of pure betrayal at the ceiling. "I'm just tired, Mom. Can we not do the interrogation before I've had anything to eat? My brain isn't even online yet."
My mom leaned against the counter, sharing a knowing look with Denise—the kind of look that said they were perfectly fine waiting me out. They had the patience of predators who knew their prey was trapped by its own hunger.
"Summer is a girl who is smart, but of very few words. Conrad does the same thing when he's over-processed a situation."
"I'm not over-processing," I lied, staring into my cereal as if the blueberries held the secrets to the universe. "I just didn't get any sleep last night."
The truth was, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mason's face—not the boy who had been kind and vulnerable on the beach a few nights ago, but the stranger who had laughed while his friends whistled at me like I was a prize heifer at a county fair.
It didn't feel right. It felt like I'd been reading a beautiful, atmospheric book only to find out the last ten chapters were written by a completely different, much meaner author who hated the protagonist and wanted her to suffer for the sake of a cheap plot twist.
It was a betrayal of character, a narrative whiplash that I couldn't quite shake, and it made me wonder if I'd been the one misreading the story all along. Maybe the boy on the beach was the fiction, and the boy at the bonfire was the reality. Or maybe people just have layers of ugliness they only show when the light is right.
"Well, maybe this will wake you up," Mom said, her voice dropping into a tone that was both excited and slightly cautious, the way she sounded right before she suggested a major life change.
She slid a thick, white envelope across the marble.
It was heavy, high-quality vellum, with my name written in perfect, formal calligraphy: Summer Susannah Fisher.
I frowned, picking it up. "What is this?"
"Open it," Mom urged, her eyes bright with a spark I only saw when she was talking about the traditions of Cousins.
I tore the seal, the paper crisp under my fingers.
Inside was an invitation to the Cousins Beach Debutante season. My name was printed above with two tick boxes below it: accept or decline.
"Mom, you didn't."
The word Debutante felt archaic, like something out of a Victorian novel or a high-society fever dream where people still used fans to hide their expressions and discussed the weather as if it were a high-stakes sport.
"The Deb Ball? Seriously? Isn't this... I don't know, slightly outdated? Like, 'corsets and arranged marriages and dowries' outdated?"
"It's about tradition, Summer," my mom said, sitting down across from me and folding her hands. Her voice took on a softer, more reflective quality. "I've been helping out with the committee at the Country Club for a few years now. It's for charity—you could raise money for the local marine conservancy or the children's hospital. But more than that, it's a way to connect with the community here. It's not about being a 'lady' in the old-fashioned sense—it's about the experience of stepping into the world as yourself, supported by your family. Susannah would have wanted this for you more than anything."
Just then, the mudroom door banged open with a familiar, jarring rattle that echoed through the kitchen like a gunshot.
Taylor and Charli marched in, both smelling of coconut sunscreen, salt air, and ambition.
"Is she doing it?" Taylor demanded, pointing a bronzed finger at me with the intensity of a prosecutor closing a high-profile case.
"I don't know," I said, looking at the invitation. "It feels weird. The idea of a 'coming out' as if I haven't lived in Cousins my whole life?"
"I was unsure too," Mom said softly, her eyes drifting toward the window, "but it was one of the best decisions I ever made. That one summer... everything changed. It was the moment I realized I wasn't just a kid anymore, tucked away in the shadows of my brother and the Fisher boys. It's where I really grew up. It's also where I met Gigi, Mason, and Felix's mom. It's a bond you don't really understand until you're in it. You're not just wearing a dress; you're wearing a legacy. And honestly, Summer, it's the only time in your life it's socially acceptable to act like a princess without being mocked by your siblings."
The mention of Gigi made my heart prickle with a strange mix of curiosity and dread.
If I did this, I'd be in the same orbit as her, which meant being in the same orbit as Mason and Felix.
"Fine," I reluctantly agreed, more out of a sense of duty to my grandmother's memory than anything else.
My mom always said how Susannah had loved the Deb Ball; she saw it as the height of Cousins magic, a time when the town felt most like itself—glittering, exclusive, and filled with promise.
"I'll do it. But I'm not wearing a hoop skirt."
"Great!" My mom said as she clapped her hands, her relief evident. "Because we're going dress shopping this afternoon. Taylor, Denise, you're coming. We'll make a day of it."
"I wish," Denise groaned, tapping her laptop with renewed vigor. "I have a deadline that's currently screaming at me. Pick the most expensive one, Summer, and send the bill straight to your dad."
"Can I come?" Charli asked, hopping on one foot, her eyes wide with the promise of sparkles and fancy mirrors.
"When you're seventeen, babe," Taylor said, ruffling her messy, salt-stiffened hair. "Today is for the big girls. It requires stamina to come dress shopping with us."
The dress shopping experience was a blur of white, ivory, and shades of "eggshell" that all looked identical to me after thirty minutes of standing on a velvet pedestal.
Taylor moved through the racks with surgical precision, dissecting lace patterns and boning with a level of expertise that was honestly a little intimidating. She spoke about "silhouette integrity" and "movement potential" as if we were designing a spacecraft rather than a ball dress, inspecting the stitching with a hawk-like focus, clearly determined to prevent even the slightest wardrobe malfunction during the ball.
My mom was being more sentimental, touching the fabrics and tearing up every time I stepped out of the dressing room, her mind clearly replaying her own fitting decades ago in a shop that probably didn't exist anymore.
She kept adjusting the straps and smoothing the fabric over my shoulders, her touch lingering in a way that felt like she was trying to hold onto me before I drifted too far into adulthood.
I tried on a princess gown that made me look like a giant, sentient cupcake. "Hard no," Taylor said, not even looking up from the rack. "You're being swallowed by tulle."
I tried on a stiff, high-collared Victorian number that made me look like I'd just been cast in a period drama. "Too repressed," Mom sighed. "I feel like you're about to ban joy from a local village."
I tried on a bias-cut slip dress in a shade of champagne that matched my skin tone with alarming accuracy. "Wait," Taylor called out, squinting from across the boutique. "From this distance, it's a coin toss on whether you're wearing a dress or just a very expensive tan. Absolutely not."
Finally, we found it. A dress that was simple but ethereal, with delicate straps and a skirt that moved like water over sand. It was made of a silk so light it felt like wearing a cloud.
It didn't feel like a costume; it felt like a version of me that I hadn't met yet. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't see a "the quiet girl" or a Fisher daughter; I just saw a girl who was finally ready for something to happen.
The next day, I found myself standing in the foyer of the Cousins Beach Country Club for the introductory afternoon tea. The building looked out over a perfectly manicured golf course that was green enough to be fake, like a giant sheet of emerald velvet stretched over the coast.
The air inside was thick with the scent of lilies and the quiet hum of air conditioning fighting the coastal humidity—a battle the AC was clearly winning.
My dad loathed the place. To him, the membership was little more than a monthly tax on a lifestyle he found exhausting; he avoided the grounds as if they were radioactive.
It was really only my mom and Sabrina who kept the membership from going to waste. Mom loved the social posturing of it all, while Sabrina viewed the pool chairs as her personal stage. She rarely came here just to swim; she came when she had a new bikini and felt the need for an audience while she tanned.
I was wearing a floral midi-dress and a small fascinator that Taylor had insisted on. I felt like a middle-aged lady heading to the Royal Ascot, or perhaps a minor royal attending a garden party.
"Do I look eighty?" I whispered to my mom as we walked in, the heels of my shoes clicking rhythmically on the polished wood floor, sounding like a ticking clock counting down to my social doom.
Every click echoed off the high ceilings, announcing my arrival to a room full of people who had been here since birth.
"You look elegant," Mom corrected, though she was stifling a smile. "It's called 'Country Club Chic.' Just keep your shoulders back and pretend you own the place. Everyone else is doing the same thing; they're just better at the acting part because they've been rehearsing since preschool."
The club was sweltering with history—the walls were lined with photos of generations, girls frozen in their most polished, white-clad moments. It was like a museum of high-society expectations, where every smile was perfectly measured, and every strand of hair was in its assigned place.
The room was filled with past debs, including Gigi. I tried to hang back, terrified that Mason or Felix had told her about my bonfire breakdown, but she spotted us immediately, her social radar as sharp as a shark's sensing blood in the water.
"Belly! Summer!" Gigi cried, pulling Mom into a hug that smelled of expensive floral perfume, gin, and old money.
She turned to me, her eyes warm and assessing, lingering on my face as if searching for a familiar ghost. "Summer, you look absolutely gorgeous. You look just like your mother did at your age. I was just telling the committee how lucky we are to have another Conklin girl in the ranks. The history books would have felt incomplete without you, sweetheart."
She and my mom started reminiscing about their year—the scandals involving forbidden drinks shared around during tea time, the dancing until their toes bled, and the boys they'd asked to be their dates for the ball.
"I only had boys," Gigi joked, leaning in as if sharing a grand, tragic secret. "The only way I get to participate is if my sons act as escorts. But honestly? Neither would ever do it. Mason takes everything so seriously now that he's in college. And Felix... well, Felix never takes anything seriously. He'd probably try to do the waltz in flip-flops and convince the band to play indie rock instead of the traditional orchestra."
My heart sank. If Mason wouldn't do it, and Felix wouldn't do it... who was I going to walk with?
The realization hit me like a cold wave: I had to find an escort, and after last night, my chances with the only boys I knew were less than zero.
I felt a sudden, sharp pang of jealousy for the other girls, who seemed to have their entire lives scripted out by their parents' social calendars, with their "boy next door" escorts ready to go. The social committee was already handing out rehearsal schedules, and the "First Waltz" required a partner I currently didn't possess.
My mom and I drifted toward the food table, seeking refuge in the buffet.
Mom immediately bypassed the dainty cucumber sandwiches and grabbed the most chocolatey-looking tiny dessert she could find, popping it into her mouth with a rebellious grin that reminded me why I loved her.
We both stood there, giggling like schoolgirls, hiding behind a large floral arrangement that smelled overwhelmingly of lilies and social anxiety.
"Look," Mom whispered, nudging me. Across the room, two women were talking near the grand piano. One was tall and striking with dark hair and a sharp, intelligent gaze; the other was polished to a high shine, wearing a designer suit. They looked like they had stepped out of a high-fashion editorial, standing amidst a sea of pastel linen and pearls.
"That's Nicole," my mom whispered, her voice tinged with a complex mix of nostalgia, old tension, and something that sounded like respect. "Your dad's ex. And that's Shayla, Steven's ex."
My jaw nearly hit the floor. "Wait, Dad, dated a deb? And Steven? Did everyone in this town date each other? Is there a chart I should be looking at? Because this is getting statistically improbable."
"Oh, it was a very busy summer," Mom said, her eyes twinkling with a mischief I rarely saw at home. "I haven't seen them in years. We did the season together. Nicole was actually my 'Big Sister,' meant to show me the ropes and keep me out of trouble. Didn't go so well considering you're dad and I shortly started dating after they ended things."
Nicole and Shayla both turned at the same time, their eyes widening as they spotted my mom, the tension of twenty years ago still shimmering in the air like heat over asphalt.
The conversation around us seemed to dim as they approached, the weight of their collective history pressing down on the polished floors.
"Belly?" Shayla called out, her posh British accent cutting through the room's chatter with effortless clarity. It was a voice that commanded attention without even trying, vibrating with an elegance that made my floral dress feel cheap, and my fascinator feel like a joke.
Mom hurried over, and for a few minutes, it was a flurry of hugs and high-pitched squeals that drew the attention of half the room.
I stood back, feeling like a time traveler watching a reunion of old soldiers who had survived a war I only knew from stories.
"And who is this?" Nicole asked, looking at me with a curiosity that felt almost clinical, as if she were searching for a resemblance she wasn't sure she wanted to find. "Is this... is this you and Jeremiah's daughter? How is he? I heard he's now running his own restaurant."
The air in the circle went momentarily still, the ghost of an old love triangle suddenly present in the room like an uninvited guest. It was a reminder that my parents' history wasn't just theirs; it was public property in Cousins, a story people still whispered about when the drinks got low, and the nostalgia got high.
"Actually," my mom said, her voice steady and proud, her hand finding my shoulder and squeezing it gently. "Conrad and I are married. This is Summer, our oldest. We have three girls. We're a full house!"
The shock on Nicole and Shayla's faces was palpable, a brief flicker of history being rewritten in their minds.
"Married?" Nicole breathed, her eyes darting between my mom and me. "Last we heard... Well, you were engaged to Jere. The whole town thought that was the endgame."
"Life is full of surprises," Mom said, brushing it off with a practiced ease that suggested she'd had this conversation a thousand times. "We're very happy. And Summer is following in mine and Susannah's footsteps this year. We're keeping the Fisher name in the program, even if the girl wearing it is a bit more reluctant than I was. She's got that Conklin spirit buried deep."
Nicole looked at me closely, her expression softening into something like genuine admiration. "You have your father's eyes, Summer. But you look exactly like your mother did at sixteen. It's uncanny. You're like a perfect creation of the most famous summer in Cousins history."
"And Steven?" Shayla asked, her voice carrying a hint of something—a ghost of the girl she used to be. "How is he? Is he still... well, Steven? Still obsessed with being the smartest person in the room and winning every argument? I remember he could talk his way out of anything."
"Married Taylor," my mom said, a small smirk playing on her lips. "Two kids of their own. We all still stay at the summer house together every year. It's loud and messy and perfect. Taylor keeps him humble, or at least she tries her best."
Shayla looked toward the door as if expecting Steven to burst in at any second with a volleyball and a joke that was twenty years out of date. "That's... lovely. Truly. I'm glad to hear they're still together. They always were quite the pair."
The conversation moved to their lives, a frantic catching-up of missed years: Nicole had a twenty-year-old daughter who was a junior at Yale and a twenty-five-year-old son in law school. Shayla had a fourteen-year-old girl and a husband whose name I recognized from the Forbes list.
They had both decided to spend the summer in Cousins this year, lured back by the same magnetic nostalgia that kept our families tethered to this stretch of sand like ships in a harbor, unable to truly sail away from the place that defined them. It felt like the "old guard" was reclaiming the beach, and I was the latest recruit.
As the afternoon wound down and the tea grew cold, Mom turned to me, her expression soft and knowing.
"So, are you having fun being a deb so far? Or do you want to make a run for the parking lot before the next course of scones and social obligations? We can be home in ten minutes if we leave now, and I'll even let you pick the movie tonight."
I looked at the room full of history, ex-girlfriends, and the looming threat of having to find an escort in a town that seemed to remember my parents better than I did.
I looked at Nicole and Shayla, realizing that these women were the living blueprints for the drama I was currently embroiled in.
I reached out and took my mom's hand, feeling the small, comforting warmth of her palm against mine.
"I think I'm going to need you for all of these things," I said truthfully. "I don't think I can navigate this new world alone."
My mom squeezed my hand back, a solid, grounding presence in a room full of silk and expectations. "Don't worry, Summer. If I survived my own debutante season, you'll be fine."
She nudged me toward the dining room. "Now, let's go find those scones with the strawberry jam and cream."