Last Summer Read Online Free Page A

virgins.

3
    Her first night in Maine, Ella Tuttle tied the ribbons on her platform espadrilles and inhaled the familiar smells of the cottage all around her. It smelled like the beginning of every summer as far back as she could remember: wooden and salty, old and comforting.
    What did not smell familiar was the sunporch, where Ella was being forced to sleep this summer. Ella looked around the strange space that she’d never spent too much time in as she got to her feet. This was the guest area in her father’s cottage, and aside from making out with Stevie Lewis on the couch once when she was thirteen, Ella had never really paid it much attention. But Kelsi had brought a friend with her this year—Taryn—which meant Ella got to pretend to be okay with being banished from her summer bedroom.
    Ella might have appeared cool with the situation, but the truth was, she missed Kelsi. Kelsi was so wrapped up in her new college life during the year that she’d bailed on family functions and hardly had time to call or e-mail her little sister anymore. Ella had been looking forward to the summer as a chance for her and Kelsi to play catch-up.
    At least, the whole extended Tuttle family was in Maine, too, so Ella knew she could turn to Beth or Jamie when Kelsi was off entertaining her friend.
    Ella ran through the cottage, waved a good-bye at her dad as he sat with his mystery novel in the armchair by the fireplace, and then burst out through the screen door and into the Maine evening.
    “Take it easy!” her dad called, but she ignored him.
    She couldn’t take it easy—she was too filled up with love.
    She loved the pine needles that crunched beneath her totally inappropriate yet undeniably kick-ass wedge heels. She loved the pine trees themselves. She loved the sweet, salt smell of the coming dusk and the not-so-far-off sound of the waves in the bay hitting the sand of the beach. Her family had rented cottages in this small clearing for as long as she could remember. Ella felt as if she’d finally come home, after the long year with all its Catholic school restrictions and annoyances, strict nuns, and dreary detentions. She’d always loved Pebble Beach, but tonight it seemed as if that love had tripled in intensity.
    She loved everything about Maine, she decided, but especially the fact that her long-distance boyfriend, Jeremy, was now just a few minutes’ walk away. Not a couple of hours away in Philadelphia. Not a phone call here or there. Not a text message or a weekend. Just down the road and up the hill. A few minutes.
    A few minutes that should, Ella felt, begin immediately. She felt that restlessness inside that she’d always thought was just uniquely her , but now she knew could be focused.
    In this case, on to Jeremy.
    She hadn’t seen Jeremy since he’d dropped her off at her dad’s cottage earlier that afternoon. That was a whole handful of hours they’d been apart, and it was too long. They’d already spoken on the phone twice. Ella loved the little buzz it gave her to know that he was every bit as excited as she was to have the whole summer to enjoy each other—a whole summer without the ticking clock that had been the focus on all those weekends during the school year. It was like the summer was a long, hot bath of Jeremy-time, and Ella couldn’t wait to start soaking.
    All she had to do was motivate her little posse.
    Ella headed toward the picnic tables out on the lawn that served as the central area of the Tuttle family’s collection of cottages. Kelsi sat on one of the tables, surrounded by their cousins and the college friend she had brought with her for the summer. Ella enjoyed looking at her family, all togetherthe way they were supposed to be, laughing at some story Kelsi was telling, looking like they all belonged in an Abercrombie ad, only with slightly less bare skin. No one was off at any summer programs this year, Ella noted approvingly. She preferred all the Tuttles present and accounted