Summer kills

Jaxon, who'd had his back turned to them, soared to the pool surface as his ears perked up.

"Oh, you guys are talking about Sabrina?" His voice pitched up like he was asking a question-but Evelyn wasn't naïve to his tone of address. That was how people talked when they want to wrench a secret without drawing attention to their nosiness.

See? Evelyn wasn't the only one who liked to dig beneath the dirt.

Resting her Miu Miu sunglasses atop her cheekbones, she sighed, "They were spending s

much time together when they went official. You could practically say they were glued to each

other's hips and now, we get so carried away with our plans that even I forget to scroll through my messages.

Maddie frowned in the distance. "Glued to each other's hips would be an understatement."

Her eyes widened as she clamped her lips out of shame. And there it is, Evelyn smirked to herself. The fire was burning.

Maddie scrambled to say, "I didn't mean to be shady or anything! It's just, the months before

we went to the Hamptons, she was basically hogging Liam the whole day...and the crew is never the same when it isn't all 6 of us hanging out. She seemed nice and all, btu it's cool that we got our special time to spend together uninterrupted, 'ya know?" She giggled nervously while tucking a damp lock behind her ear.

"I don't know why you guys are always like this. Sabrina is one of us. You guys act so snobby to anyone who wants to get close to us, and it's getting pretty damn tired." Liam spat. Jaxon chuckled, "Hey man, I stayed quiet because I know you and Sabrina a have your own

thing going on and I don't mind my brother splitting off because he's getting it behind the curtains,

if 'ya know what I'm talking about." His flimsy wink in Liam's direction was cut off by a shove to his back.

"Seriously?" Maddie snarled. Jaxon stuck his tongue out at her, refocusing on Liam's glare.

"Little blonde over here has a point, though. We talked about this a gazillion times-like, if

Sabrina showed up right now, she'd already be taking you down to the wine cellar so she could gossip about what shitty, bad influences we are."

Liam folded his arms over his chest. "When has she ever gossiped about you guys?" Upon seeing his friends' raised eyebrows, he pivoted, "Okay, how would you act around a group of people who make you the butt of every single joke and call you a prep school bitch?"

"You know we're never that serious when we're bantering with each other. Everyone gets

ragged on a little bit, it's called being brought back down to earth. Which apparently a world your girlfriend doesn't like to live on." Jaxon jibed.

Cheeks flared up, Liam jumped off the pool ledge and swam to where Jaxon floated. His neck

chain almost nicked Jaxon's chest as he stared him down viciously. "Don't you talk about my girl friend like she is some dirty object."

Jaxon parted his lips, appearing to be in shock. And quickly after, stretched them into the

widest grin imaginable. Bitter laughter trickled from his mouth; "Oh, I'm so sorry, Eric-I forgot your precious little Ivy-track girlfriend is off limits to us high school peasants. Tell me, what university is it that she's doing summer school at again-Harvard? Cornell? 'Cause I'm really curious to know what business she has there that's gotta do with thirst trap she posted on Snap."

Liam tensed up. "That's none of your business." As coarsely as he spoke, a crack in his voice

betrayed the presence of uncertainty. He, too, was thrown off by Sabrina's "accidental" leak on Saturday. But there'd be more on that later. Evelyn wasn't keen on pressing on the lapses of a girl who thought owning two pairs of Jimmy Choos made her the cul-de-sac's elite. She was a middle-class girl who was strangulating herself to be anything but the plain, run-of-the-mill brunette she was-Evelyn had figured out as much the second she laid her eyes on her, and all she needed to confirm was that Liam suspected the same, too.

She floated towards the pool ladder as Jaxon shot back at Liam. "That's none of my business? Liam, you're the one who started barking at anyone who said anything less than blatant worship about your girlfriend."

Liam spat, "Again, none of your frickin' business." At this point, Liam was fuming. Evelyn

had rarely seen him this angry-except, of course, when he decided to harangue her with one of his moralistic lectures on why she shouldn't ask the questions everyone else was burning to. "Instead of focusing on my love life, maybe you should focus on the girlfriend you haven't seen for a whole damn year."

Gasps filled the frigid air. Liam just went there. He pulled the Kennedy card.

And nobody was supposed to touch that emotional tangle.