Every Summer: Book One In The Love Through The Seasons Series

Chapter 4

SONG(AGAIN): Underdog- Spoons

Dave's POV

We don't talk at all for the next three days, Jeremy and I. If I walk into a room, he walks out. He eats dinner either before or after me, Jem never lingers inside, and he always has an excuse to slip outside. I'm not a very confrontational person, but when he literally jumped behind a thornbush to avoid me, I had to draw the line.

"Jeremy?" My confident voice is totally at odds about how awkward I feel saying this, especially after three days of silence.

"Yes," he answers, cleaning off his hands on a checkered rag, walking towards me. My voice gets caught in my throat and not just because the sweat is clinging to his biceps all too attractively, or that the dirt smeared on his temple makes Jem look like the god of the earth, but because I don't know what I was really planning on saying. He looks at me impatiently and dips his neck, raises a brow, telling me to hurry up in body language. It doesn't take a social scientist to see that Jeremiah's uncomfortable too.

"Um," I look up into the scorching sky and try to find the right words. "Did I do something? To like, make you hate me?..Like not that I care or anything," I quickly recover. "But, if you have something against me- could you just tell me?" I look into Jem's eyes totally expecting him to lie. Which he does.

"What?" His voice goes up an octave and his face is in a horrible impression of surprise. "No." This time he speaks much lower. "I ain't got a thing against ya." I tilt my head and raise my brow in doubt, the sun now making direct contact with my neck.

"Oh, really?" Jem nods profusely. "Do you jump into bushes to get away from people you 'ain't got a thing against'?" I feel a stroke of pride when I see that Jeremiah has the decency to blush in embarrassment. I even know what to say. "Just so you know, I'm not easy avoid, Jeremiah." The pink spreads down to his muscular neck. "And if you think Clarabell is scary, then you should be terrified of me." I turn on my heel and strut out of the hedge surrounding the straberries that now match the color of Miah's face.