The Summer Switch-Off, page 1
About the Author
Beth Reekles is the author of the bestselling YA series The Kissing Booth (now also a hit trilogy on Netflix) alongside several other rom-com novels. Her tenth book and debut adult novel Love, Locked Down was published in 2022. A self-confessed nerd and rom-com fan, she is now a full-time author and shares movie reviews on her Instagram.
Contents
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Chapter 1: Luna
Chapter 2: Rory
Chapter 3: Jodie
Chapter 4: Luna
Chapter 5: Rory
Chapter 6: Jodie
Chapter 7: Luna
Chapter 8: Rory
Chapter 9: Jodie
Chapter 10: Luna
Chapter 11: Rory
Chapter 12: Jodie
Chapter 13: Luna
Chapter 14: Rory
Chapter 15: Jodie
Chapter 16: Luna
Chapter 17: Rory
Chapter 18: Jodie
Chapter 19: Luna
Chapter 20: Rory
Chapter 21: Jodie
Chapter 22: Luna
Chapter 23: Rory
Chapter 24: Jodie
Chapter 25: Luna
Chapter 26: Rory
Chapter 27: Jodie
Chapter 28: Luna
Chapter 29: Rory
Chapter 30: Jodie
Chapter 31: Luna
Chapter 32: Rory
Chapter 33: Jodie
Chapter 34: Luna
Chapter 35: Rory
Chapter 36: Jodie
Chapter 37: Luna
Chapter 38: Rory
Chapter 39: Jodie
Luna Guinness created the group chat
Acknowledgements
For the Physics gang: Amy, Katie, Harrison, Jack and Emily. You dorks changed my life for the better. Stay stellar.
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CHAPTER 1
Luna
‘No,’ I say, pushing my printed confirmation across the counter, ‘see? I booked hold luggage. It’s right there.’
‘I’m sorry, miss, it’s not on our system.’
I gulp. What kind of useless, cheapo airline is this? Well, not that cheapo, since they’re currently trying to charge me again for my supposedly unbooked hold luggage.
My palms are sweating. I hate stuff like this. I hate arguing over stuff like this. If there’s one thing I normally avoid like the plague, it’s confrontation. But I am not paying that money. Liam would’ve dealt with it so well; he was great at stuff like this – especially because he knew I wasn’t.
I get a pang in my chest just thinking about him, and push that feeling deep, deep down. I’ve got the entire week ahead to get my head around that. Right now, I need to deal with the fact that this woman wants to charge me £58 for luggage I’ve already paid £23 to put on the plane.
She’s smiling at me as if she’d like to load me onto the conveyor belt just to get rid of me, clearly waiting for me to cave and pay the money.
Come on, Luna. You can do this. You’re almost twenty years old. You’re an adult now, and adults know how to handle these things.
I inhale a deep breath through my nose and tap the paper on the counter. I’m so glad Mum insisted I print everything out ‘just in case’ now.
‘But I paid for it. Look, it’s – it’s right here. Confirmation of payment, see? That’s what it says.’
The woman suppresses a sigh, but gives me a too-wide, toothy smile and says, ‘Let me go find my manager, and we’ll get this sorted for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, but I don’t let myself feel relieved yet – I’m already mentally drafting an email of complaint demanding a refund, just in case this all goes south.
(Confrontation is a lot easier on the other side of a screen, after all.)
I stay on tenterhooks, feeling pissed off and more than a little bit tearful until I’ve had the same argument again with the woman’s manager, who looks my booking up on the system just to tell me I need to pay the fee, and I try not to lose it as I push my printed email towards her, too. I can hear other people in the queue behind me grumbling because I’m causing trouble and taking so long.
Don’t worry, I want to snap at them. The plane won’t leave without you.
Even though I know I’d be doing exactly the same in their position.
And even though I am also worried the plane might leave without me at this rate.
Eventually, the manager concedes that I have in fact paid the fee due and lets my baggage through. My boarding pass is handed back to me with a smile. ‘So sorry about that. It must be because you booked through a third party. Have a safe flight, miss.’
‘Thanks,’ I mumble, praying I don’t have the same trouble at the hotel, too. Maybe booking this whole thing when I’d had a few drinks wasn’t my smartest move …
Then again, there are a lot of things that make the ‘Luna’s Completely Lost It’ list lately – and a solo trip to Spain isn’t even the most drastic of them.
I turn away, examining my boarding pass and checking my seat number for the billionth time. I’m so focused on it that I walk right into someone trying to get to the counter to check in.
‘Oof!’
‘Sorry, sorry! I’m so sorry,’ I say as the girl starts apologizing too. ‘Totally my fault,’ I tell her.
She fixes her sunglasses, perched artfully on top of her head, where her blonde hair is piled into a messy bun. ‘No worries, hon.’
She looks so zen, a pale blue travel wallet clutched between fingers with lilac nail varnish on long nails, a small and lazy smile on her face. She’s wearing a white camisole tucked into grey linen shorts with a long, almost see-through white cardigan with a fringe that brushes her knees. The look is tied together with a chunky turquoise necklace and giant cork wedges with brown suede straps that match the brown leather bag hanging from her elbow.
For a moment, all I can think is: She’s so Instagramable. In spite of the fact she only looks about my age, I wonder for half a second if she’s some popular influencer because my next thought is: Who dresses like that to travel? She’ll have to take those shoes off when she gets to security, and I bet that necklace buzzes when she walks through. And how can she fit her hand luggage in that handbag? It looks mostly empty.
As I get out of the way so she can wheel her small suitcase to the check-in desk, I take another look at how glamorous she seems. She’s joined the back of the queue and is holding her travel wallet between her teeth, bags on the floor, as she takes a video of herself wiggling her passport in the air for the camera.
I feel like such a slob in my most comfortable leggings and T-shirt, with my big rucksack, Vans and thin hoodie. We always dressed comfortably to go on family holidays, and it’s a habit I’m apparently not breaking anytime soon. Travelling alone is nerve-wracking enough without suddenly throwing new habits into the mix.
Well, the joke’s on Instagram Girl, I think, hiking my rucksack higher up onto my shoulders and heading towards the escalator to make my way through security. Her legs will be cold on those aeroplane seats.
It takes me forever to get through security. I remember being tempted, in my moment of madness (or rather, drunkenness) by the security fast-track option, for however much extra money. I’d talked myself out of it then, but standing in the queue in front of a man in a suit talking loudly on his phone, and behind a family with a screaming toddler and a little boy who keeps running under the ropes, I regret it.
The line crawls along. I get my phone out, clicking out of my boarding pass now that I no longer need it and instead tapping aimlessly across social media. Not much on Twitter catches my attention, and my headphones are in the bottom of my bag somewhere so mindlessly scrolling TikTok isn’t much of an option. I have one rubbish email promoting a make-up brand, which I delete, and just as I’m about to check Instagram, my phone buzzes.
Liam.
For a second, my heart stops. Then it launches into a somersault, leaving me feeling queasy in the pit of my stomach.
Saw on Insta you’re off on holiday. Hope you h ave a good time x
I stare at the message for a while – long enough that Mr Noisy Talker behind me taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘Excuse me, could you move forward?’
I do, and before I can even decide if I should reply or not another text comes through.
Roger brought my stuff over. I’d have come to get it if I’d realized you were moving out early. Thanks though
The dots reappear while he types another.
They disappear.
They come back again.
I miss you
The guy behind me clears his throat, pointedly enough that I look around to see him nod irritably in front of me, and I shuffle along into the space between me and the family.
What am I meant to do about that? What am I meant to do with an ‘I miss you’?
Especially when I’ve spent the last couple of weeks wallowing in regret because I’ve realized I miss him too?
I knew Liam was The One from the second I met him. We were introduced through friends a few years ago. He went to a different school, but we spent practically all our time together since we were fifteen. I was thrilled when we both got into Newcastle University, so I didn’t have to worry about what the stresses of long distance might do to our rock-solid relationship. I thought things would only get better for us.
Usually, I was more sensible than to believe in things like love at first sight, but Liam ticked every one of my boxes. He was smart, funny, popular among our friends and even his tutors – and he was close with his family. I liked that most about him.
His laidback attitude was at complete odds with my compulsion to control everything, but we worked; we balanced each other out. He was tall where I was short, lean where I was curvy, outspoken when I was reserved and thoughtful. He pushed me outside of my comfort zone and helped me have a busy, vibrant social life when I might otherwise have wanted to stay in.
And he loved me.
It was always so easy to picture my future with Liam: we’d graduate at the same time, find jobs near each other, rent a place together while we saved for a house deposit. We’d be on each other’s car insurance, share a Netflix account, argue over what to call the cat we both wanted. He used to laugh when I’d say things like, ‘I want to be married by the time I’m twenty-five, and have kids by the time I’m thirty,’ but then he’d kiss me and say that was good to know – he’d keep it in mind, block out his calendar so he’d remember to go ring shopping in plenty of time.
We were going to be in the same house-share next year at uni; it would be good practice for when we lived together, just the two of us.
He was supposed to be my forever.
I’ve not heard from Liam since I broke up with him a few weeks ago.
I guess I don’t have much right to wish he’d get in touch when I was the one who ended things, but it still hurts to go from having my whole world wrapped up in him to – nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing, because any time I opened an Instagram Story from one of our friends, bam, there he was. Out with everyone. Having fun with everyone. Not wallowing at home, heartbroken, his entire future in tatters, like I was – if only because nobody had invited me along to give me another option.
I was the one who asked our mutual friend Roger to come and grab the things he’d left in my room. I was too much of a coward to face Liam myself because I knew if I saw him, I’d end up breaking down in tears and begging him to take me back. Which I would’ve done already if he hadn’t been out with all our friends, carrying on as if everything were the same. As if the last four years just meant … nothing.
Until that text, I hadn’t even known he missed me.
I shove my phone in my pocket; I can guarantee that given half a chance I’ll get drawn back in, trying to win him back when I’d already tried so hard all of last year just to keep him. I think about the vision board I threw in the bin, the pages I tore out of my journal in a flood of drunken tears the night I booked this holiday. I think about all the time I wasted being with him, and the time I’m about to waste trying to get over him.
A lump forms in the back of my throat, and I choke it down.
The last thing I need right now is to dissolve into floods of tears at the airport, for God’s sake. I can even hear my brother in the back of my mind, teasing me for being so sensitive.
(Although he was pretty devastated when I told him about the break-up. He really liked Liam.)
I draw a shaky breath and square my shoulders.
Get it together, Luna.
I slip my phone out of my pocket. Liam’s text is still up on the screen.
Going from seeing him every day to not even sending him a video I think he’d like has been torture. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lonely.
There’s no reason we can’t be friends, I think, once we’ve both moved on. I’d like to be. Isn’t that what grown-ups do? And we are grown-ups now. And if we can be friends, then everyone else will stay friends with me, too.
‘Miss?’
I look up, fingers hovering over the onscreen keyboard, ready to tell him I miss him, too. But instead I’m being beckoned forward towards the empty trays behind the security belt.
‘Please place all electronic items in the tray separately. Any liquids …’
I tune out but follow the instructions, placing my phone in the tray next to my iPad and Kindle.
By the time I’ve gone through the metal detectors and picked up my tray to begin putting everything back into my rucksack, my phone screen lights up with an incoming call from Liam. My heart stops.
Is it because he thinks I’ve moved on if I’m going away on holiday without him, and wants to patch things up before I leave? Or did he just find one of my textbooks while packing up his room and wants to know what to do with it? No – no, he misses me, he still loves me, this is all just a horrible mistake, a big mess and …
I stare at the screen for a second, hardly even able to breathe for hoping, but then I’m being jostled along by other people coming through the security scanner, and when I snatch my things out of the tray I accidentally cut off his call.
I wince, but … maybe it’s for the best. I broke up with him for a reason, didn’t I? And this holiday was supposed to be a chance to have some space and get over him. Or, at least, stop me from running back to him.
Standing out of the way, I cradle my phone in my hands, and put it on mute.
Sorry, Liam. But this week is all about me.
CHAPTER 2
Rory
My big sisters are way too good to me, I think, breezing past the people in the hideously long security queue with the fast-track pass my eldest sister Hannah bought me without a second thought.
‘I don’t need that,’ I’d told her, watching her click the box as she booked my holiday. If I were a nail-biter, my nails would’ve been in shreds at that point. I should stop them, I kept thinking. I shouldn’t let them do this. I should just grow the fuck up and take some goddamn responsibility for my shitty life.
But I was: I was letting them do it. I was even recommending the resort and pulling up a promo code from an Instagram ad I’d seen about it. I was far too excited by the idea of running away from all my problems for seven days in paradise.
(A little less excited about having to give up social media for a week, but …)
‘Oh, please,’ my other sister Nic had scoffed. ‘It’ll give you more time to nose around in duty-free or grab a coffee.’
‘You know I can’t afford flavoured syrup in my coffee, right, let alone anything in duty-free?’ I’d pointed out to them – but now my travel wallet is thick with euros that my parents gifted me. It’s a total pity gift, but I think they prefer the idea of me jetting off to get some sun rather than moping around in my childhood bedroom, withdrawing even more than I already have.
All this makes me feel spoiled and bratty, and I know I should be guilty as hell, but I’m just not.
I’m about to spend a week in the Spanish sun, in a luxury beachside resort, sipping on mojitos and nibbling at tapas, with no responsibilities other than ‘having a break’, and I feel pretty damn great about it. Who wouldn’t?
