One Night at the Lake Read online

  One Night at the Lake is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Bethany Chase

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Title page art from an original photograph by Freeimages.com/Blyth McManus

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Chase, Bethany, author.

  Title: One night at the lake : a novel / Bethany Chase.

  Description: New York : Ballantine Books, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018059387 | ISBN 9781524796341 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781524796358 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Romance / Suspense.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.H37923 O54 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018059387

  Ebook ISBN 9781524796358

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Misa Erder

  Cover illustration: Jingqiu Liao/Getty Images

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Leah

  Chapter 2: June

  Chapter 3: Leah

  Chapter 4: June

  Chapter 5: Leah

  Chapter 6: June

  Chapter 7: Leah

  Chapter 8: June

  Chapter 9: Leah

  Chapter 10: June

  Chapter 11: Leah

  Chapter 12: June

  Chapter 13: Leah

  Chapter 14: June

  Chapter 15: Leah

  Chapter 16: June

  Chapter 17: Leah

  Chapter 18: June

  Chapter 19: Leah

  Chapter 20: June

  Chapter 21: Leah

  Chapter 22: June

  Chapter 23: Leah

  Chapter 24: June

  Chapter 25: Leah

  Chapter 26: June

  Chapter 27: Leah

  Chapter 28: June

  Chapter 29: Leah

  Chapter 30: June

  Chapter 31: June

  Chapter 32: June

  Chapter 33: June

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Bethany Chase

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  I DREAM ABOUT HER ALL the time, you know.

  It’s always the same dream. I’m standing on the roof of the old apartment building, staring at the stars. As I stand there, face turned up to the sky, I’m wondering if maybe, when the earth eventually gets swallowed up by the ravenous, dying sun and everything goes supernova, she and I will find each other again. It’s a thought she would have liked. “My carbon will bond onto your carbon,” she would tell me, slipping her arm through mine to illustrate the link.

  I smile, and try to believe that it’s enough.

  1

  Leah

  Seven years ago

  I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE PRETENDED to be at least little bit sad about my best friend’s breakup, but it was a tough ask considering I knew all along the guy was a mallet-faced shitweasel. And besides, it’s not like I’ve ever been shy about speaking my mind. June knew what she was in for when she called me.

  “Babe,” I say, “Rick Bergstrom has the personal charisma of a boiled carrot. Are you seriously telling me that you’re upset to be done with him?”

  “Noooo, I guess not. But if I got dumped by a boiled carrot, then what does that say about me?”

  I pinch my phone against my shoulder as I load my laptop into my bag and close the door to the neurobiology lab behind me. “It doesn’t say a damn thing about you. What it says is that he thought he was just dating a hot artsy Asian girl, and he was shocked to find you in possession of both a spine and a mouth.”

  “But getting dumped suuuuuuucks,” she groans.

  “I know it does.”

  “No, you don’t,” she fires back, and the zinger makes me smile. June says I’m cocky about relationships because I’ve never been on the receiving end of a breakup; I prefer to think I’ve just been lucky.

  “Listen to me. You are way too good to be moping over this little turd. He is so not worth your time that I’m insulted I even have to remind you.”

  She snorts. “Thanks, I guess?”

  “I mean it. But if you are going to mope, do you want to do movie night? Clueless and ice cream?”

  “Aren’t you meeting up with Ollie?”

  “Yeah, but I can cancel. I’d rather hang out with you if you’re bummed.”

  “Ah, you’re the best. I’ve actually got dinner plans with Pooja, but thanks for volunteering for breakup therapy.”

  “Always, my cherub. Hasta mañana. Say hi to Pooja for me.”

  The warm summer evening hugs me when I step outside, along with the rush of the city. I remember hearing that a lot of people didn’t like Columbia’s new science building when it first went up, and it’s true that the glass-and-steel tower looks like a futuristic Tetris block slammed down amidst the old brick grandes dames that surround it. But I love it. The whole point of science is to push forward, even if it offends some sensibilities along the way. To me, this building is about discovery and innovation. And that’s the way it should be.

  My stomach is grumbling by the time I reach the bar where I’m meeting Ollie. This place is nothing fancy, but it has the most delicious burgers in Ollie’s neighborhood, possibly even the whole city—and we’d know, because we’ve spent the last four years surveying. Noise lunges at me as soon as I open the door: the roar of a hundred conversations, all competing with the squealing guitars of whatever classic rock song is blasting from the speakers. The song sounds vaguely familiar, which means it’s got to be one of Ollie’s favorite bands; I couldn’t begin to guess at which. Ollie has four thousand favorite bands. They all sound vaguely familiar.

  I push up on my tiptoes to scan the room for him. Crowds activate my barely latent short person’s rage, especially because I detest high heels, the universal short girl’s coping mechanism. I had a guy tell me once that I ought to consider wearing heels if I was going to bitch so much about being short. I told him he ought to consider dating other people.

  Swaying like a car dealership tube man on the tips of my Chucks, I finally spot Ollie at the far end of the room, leaning on his elbows against the dark wood bar. And I’m sorry, I don’t care what anyone says; my boyfriend is the dreamiest thing I’ve ever seen. Now, to be clear, it’s not like I’m facing opposition on this front; it’s just that any time I mention in passing how hot he is, June rolls her eyes. Which—okay. June rolling her eyes probably has more to do with fatigue with me talking about Ollie than it does with her opinion about Ollie himself. She does put up with an awful lot of it.

  But look at him
, for god’s sake. Although the overall effect falls under “boyishly handsome,” his face has this amazing contradiction to it: fair Germanic skin, scruffy brown hair and friendly chin, paired with high cheekbones, sharply hooked eyebrows, a long, narrow nose, and thin lips that can look severe when they’re not curved into his usual devilish smile. And he’s got the most amazing eyes—the gray-blue of chambray cloth, with a ring of dark slate at the edges. Tonight, he’s wearing his usual getup for his job as an advertising account manager—dark jeans and a vintage T-shirt that his shoulders fill out to perfection. He is, quite frankly, delicious. And because he’s so absorbed in his phone, that means I can sneak up behind him and give him a righteous slap on the ass.

  The phone drops to the bar with a clatter, and then he spins around and I shriek because all of a sudden my feet are off the ground.

  “Put me down!” I squeal, but he just grins up at me and keeps his arms clamped around my hips while I attempt to pry myself free.

  “That’s what you get,” he says, then turns to smile at the girls next to us, who are giving us the stink eye. “Excuse us. Just need to punish my girlfriend a little bit here.” Once they get a load of him, they giggle as if they’d rather like him to punish them, too.

  “Bad idea to keep a hungry woman away from food, Oliver,” I say, pushing at his chest until he lets me slide down.

  “Good point. Come on, I staked out a table in the back.” He gives me a quick kiss and takes my hand to lead me to the open two-top. Which turns out to be a bar-height table. With barstools. At which I cannot reach the footrest.

  Ollie makes innocent eyes at me when he catches my glare. “What? You can totally make it this time. I think you might have grown,” he says, hovering his palm over my head as if he’s measuring me. I smack his hand away and flounce into the seat.

  Over burgers and beer, we catch each other up on the past few days. The conversation turns, inevitably, to the plans for our upcoming trip to his family’s house on Seneca Lake in western New York. We’re leaving next Friday afternoon, and I’m so excited to ditch the city for a week of boating and bonfires and laying out and grilling that I can barely function.

  “Oh hey,” I say to Ollie, “I wanted to ask you something. Is it okay if June comes with us? She was supposed to go with Rick the Dick to his Hamptons share, but that mosquito of a relationship just met its speeding windshield, so now she’s gonna be stuck in the city over the holiday.”

  “June in a Hamptons share?” He cranes an eyebrow. Ollie can make an entire point with a single eyebrow. When I attempt it, I look like I have a tic.

  “Your skepticism correlates with the windshield splat,” I say, pointing a French fry at him. “And thus ends June’s I-banker experiment.”

  He shakes his head, bemused. I will admit that, because we have been together for four years, Ollie and I can be a little smug. But honestly, the guys June has been dating in the three years since we left college seem to befuddle her as much as they do us. It’s like she says yes to anyone who asks her out without caring whether she’s actually interested.

  “So, is that cool with you if she comes with? It would be super fun to have her along.”

  Ollie glances down at his plate, lip pinched in his teeth. “Um, I guess so. Let me check with my mom, though.”

  “You guess so? Babe, you know she’s not going to mind. There’s nobody else staying with us besides Caleb, right? So June can have the guest room.”

  “Mm. Unfortunately, June would be sharing the guest room with you. We’re going to have to do the late-night tiptoe routine again.”

  “Still?” I screech. “For god’s sake, we practically live together!”

  “I don’t like it either, but it’s my parents’ house, so…”

  “Oh good lord, Ollie,” I say, slumping back in my chair. “You are a twenty-six-year-old man without a religious hair on your body. Your mother seriously expects us all to participate in the delusion that you’re a virgin?”

  This time he puts both eyebrows into it. “Well, I don’t exactly want to argue the case. I’m not sure she’s ever recovered from walking in on Cal and his high school girlfriend.”

  I sigh, knowing I’m defeated. I’ve always loved how close Ollie is with his mom, so if the flip side of that means he humors her bizarre insistence on separate bedrooms, then it’s a small price to pay. And despite Ollie’s hesitation about June coming up for the week, I know Rachel won’t mind.

  Now all I’ve got to do is convince June to join us.

  2

  June

  Present day, seven years later

  PERHAPS I’M WRONG ABOUT THIS, but I do not believe that any good news has ever followed the words I need to talk to you about something.

  It’s true. I know it’s true. No one has ever said those words and then followed them up with “I won the Powerball earlier today, and after I split the pot with the rest of the accounting department, we are coming into six point two million dollars. What do you think we should do with it?” Nobody’s something has ever been that a mysterious benefactor has paid off the credit card debt. Something is never that the doctor interpreted the test results wrong.

  So when my fiancé says those words to me over dinner in our Brooklyn apartment one innocent evening in the middle of May, my mind stumbles. It’s not a sensation I’m used to, feeling anxious with Ollie.

  I set my glass of Chardonnay down on my faded linen place mat and study the person across from me. He appears serious, and not in the way that makes him look like the insides of his cheeks are itching, which is what his face does when he’s failing at deadpan. The gray checked dress shirt he wore to work today is in order, cuffs rolled up his forearms like usual, and his hair is minimally tousled on top, which means he hasn’t been running his hands through it in agitation. There’s a crease between his smoky blue eyes, and his long fingers are spinning his wine glass on his place mat. But I would not go so far as to say he’s upset. So far, so good.

  “Okay, love—what’s up? Is everything okay?”

  He smiles and reaches for my hand across our tiny dining table. As soon as his thumb finds its rhythm over my knuckles, the anxiety eases. “Everything’s fine. But it’s my mom’s birthday in a few weeks—her sixty-fifth. And she wants us to come up and visit the week of the party.”

  “Of course,” I say. “Why would that be something to talk to me about in particular?”

  “Well…it wouldn’t be in Rochester. It’s a couple of days after July Fourth, so we’d spend the week at the Seneca house.”

  I jerk my hand away from his so fast that I smack my wrist bone against the edge of the table. Eyes watering from the pain, I pin my hands together between my thighs. I am completely unprepared for this. Seneca, again. After all this time.

  Ollie leans toward me and rests his forearms on the table. “I know, baby. You see why I wanted to talk to you. I want you to be honest with me—if you’re not up for it, I totally understand.”

  I take a deep breath, then another, while I try to claw my way back to solid footing. “The whole week?”

  “Yeah. The Fourth is a Monday, and Mom’s party is Thursday the seventh. Mom and Dad will be there the whole week, and Caleb and Leslie and Eli too.”

  The thought flickers through my mind that I could send Ollie without me, but I discard it as quickly as it came. I wouldn’t do that to him, even if he would let me. We’re going to be a family, so that means we stick together. No matter what. And disappointing his parents is not an option.

  “Yes,” I say, making the word sound strong despite the frantic kicking of my heart. “Let’s go. I want to be there for your mom.”

  He narrows his eyes at me, then turns one hand palm up on the table. “Come on, you’re breaking the rule. Cough it up.”

  I grit my teeth, extract my right hand from its safe space and place it in hi
s. After the first time we got screaming pissed at each other and then forgot whatever we’d been arguing about as soon as he tackled me onto the bed, we agreed never to have a serious discussion or a fight without touching each other. When it comes to fights, it’s a good rule. Reminds you that you do in fact love the hell out of the person who’s torturing you at that moment. The I-need-to-talk-to-you-about-somethings, though, I’m not as sure about. Sometimes I’m not certain I want him to read me as clearly as he can when his fingers are twined between mine.

  “Are you sure about this?” he says softly. “I almost told Mom straight up that we couldn’t make it, but I didn’t want to speak for you. But seriously—if you’re not comfortable, we can skip it. Mom and Dad will understand.”

  “They would understand, but they’d be disappointed, and I don’t want to let them down.” My conviction swells as I speak, pushing words out of my mouth. “And honestly, I think it will be for the best. We can’t avoid the place for the rest of our lives. Your parents love it there, and I don’t want it to be a point of tension. We can go. I will be fine.”

  Slowly, Ollie sits back in his chair and lets my hand go. “Okay. If you’re positive. But just so you know, you don’t have to be fine. I’m not always—”

  “I will be.”

  “But I’m trying to say that it’s okay if you’re not. I’ve been going back there for years, and it still hurts every single time.” He pauses, lets his gaze drop to the table before he raises it to meet mine again. “I loved her too, June.”

  It’s like a sudden gust of wind slams open a door inside me that I’d thought was safely closed; the impact shudders down my spine. Slowly, I push my chair away from the table and stand looking down at my fiancé. “That is something I am unlikely to ever forget.”