Graduation and Gifts (Untouchable Book 8)

by Heather Long

  “There is no need for it to be a subject. What’s his name is no longer even a factor in my life.”

  My heart hurt for her. “I still want to beat the crap out of him.”

  “I love you too,” she said, before tossing a rolled up straw paper at me. “Now let it go. Today is not gonna be about idiots…well, at least not about ex-idiots. We’ll make an exception for current idiots.”

  I rolled my eyes, but held my response as our lunches arrived. We’d both gone for the big and thick burgers to go with our shakes. In a lot of ways, this was a farewell meal. Yes, we’d be back, but this place that had been so important to me for the last few years was going to be a memory.

  “Stop it,” Rachel ordered as I went to take bite of my burger, and I hesitated. “No, not the burger. Eat that. I meant stop being so maudlin.”

  I made a face. “I just feel weird,” I admitted, then sank my teeth into the burger. Rachel let me eat in peace while she took a couple of bites of her own.

  “I get it,” she said finally. “There’s been a lot of changes this year. And we’re looking at even more. You more than most.”

  “Not all the changes have been bad.” It sounded defensive, even to me. “Yet I can’t shake the feeling that even when we come back, nothing will be the same and that’s okay, but it’s still weird. I don’t even know if I can explain it.”

  “You’re moving out of a place you’ve lived for most of your life,” Rachel supplied. “And you’re moving in with the four Peenketeers.”

  Thank fuck I’d swallowed that bite before she’d said that, or I would have choked. I glared at her, and she smirked before pointing a French fry at me.

  “Yes, you’ve been living with them for months, but they’ve been living with you in your apartment. Now you’re going to move into a place that will be all of yours and you’ll be living together for real, like as more than a default but as an open choice.”

  The evenness of her voice coupled with the directness of the statement robbed it of any kind of patronizing tone.

  “That’s a lot. For anyone, that would be a lot. You’re basically committing to four guys and agreeing to live with them in a joint space, and there’s so much to that. Trust me, there are like eleventy hundred people that live in my house or have over the years. You think you know a person until you cohabitate, and then you discover that some eccentricities that are cute when they live elsewhere are downright fucking annoying when they are in your space all the time.”

  “You’re a barrel of sunshine.” But I appreciated the bluntness too.

  “I know.” She smirked.

  “And I like living with them. Yes, it’s taken some juggling, but—”

  “But,” Rachel interjected, “they can leave to go back to their parents’ places right now. That won’t be an option in New York. It will be all five of you, all the time. That would make me nervous. Hell, it makes me nervous now, so being nostalgic makes sense. Everything works here, right now, and you’re asking yourself, is it going to keep working when you’re there?”

  “Well, I wasn’t before,” I argued. “God, Rachel. I was going to ask you about moving in, if we get a big enough place…”

  “Nope, I’m good. I’ll get a dorm room and an irritating roommate who will hopefully be hot, so the scenery is good. But I don’t need to hear you guys fucking on every surface or wondering if I’m sitting somewhere you had a screaming orgasm.”

  My face flamed, and Rachel dug into her burger with a happy smile.

  “Bitch,” I grumbled, and she nudged my foot with hers.

  “You love it.”

  “I love you, there is a difference.”

  “Ha,” she said with a chuckle. “You say po-tay-to, and I say po-tah-to. It’s all the same when it’s deep fried.”

  Head back, I stared at the ceiling.

  “Besides,” she soothed. “You’re not so maudlin now that you’re picturing strangling me.”

  “Clearly,” I retorted and flipped her off before taking another bite of burger.

  “As for living with you, you’re sweet, but no, I really don’t want to move in, thank you so much. It’s kind of like when you wanted me to ride in the limo to homecoming and I skipped out on that…”

  “By texting Archie and the driver, instead of me.”

  “You didn’t even notice I wasn’t there.”

  To be fair, she wasn’t wrong. We said we’d get her, and then I was just caught up in the guys all the way to the dance. “Okay, fine, I’m the worst.”

  Flicking a French fry at me, she scowled. “I wasn’t telling you that to make you feel bad, I was just pointing out that some things are meant for the five of you and I don’t want to be the outsider looking in.”

  All at once, my irritating vanished. “Rachel…”

  “Oh my god, Frankie, go back to calling me a bitch. This is not feel sorry for Rachel day. Bless your heart, but I am fine. Besides, dorm living could be a blast. I’m hoping it’s coed so my pool widens for easy hookups.”

  I groaned, but no matter what I did, Rachel wouldn’t let me apologize. “You’re really fucking annoying,” I said when we were finally done with the meal and heading outside.

  “Thank you,” she declared as she slid her sunglasses into place. At least I’d managed to pay the bill before she had, much to her irritation. I’d done it when she went to pee. A fact to which she’d cried foul when she figured it out.

  Too bad, so sad.

  Outside, the heat of the day wasn’t so bad yet. At least it wasn’t the wet slap it would be by this time the following month. The breeze was still cool, and the sun was hot. It was kind of the perfect day to go swimming, but Rachel and I had other plans.

  Girlfriend plans.

  Nails.

  Hair.

  Then laser tag.

  We didn’t invite the guys and I might get in some serious shit for it later, but this was Rachel-time—her words, not mine—mostly because she left for Europe in three more days and the guys would likely spring their surprise on me by then, and well, it could be two months or more before Rachel and I got to see each other again.

  In that vein, I let her pick out my nail polish, a fuck me red as she labeled it, and I let her talk me into a temporary color streak in my hair. She’d wanted me to go all Madison Kate pink—her words, not mine—but I elected for Torched blue. The single streak filled out a curl from my roots to the tips. We snapped a selfie, and I fired it off in email to KC.

  I hope she enjoyed the tribute. Rachel threatened to post the same shot, but I promised retaliation if she did. I didn’t want the guys to see it on social media before they saw it on me. As it was, they weren’t gonna necessarily be thrilled with me coloring my hair. They’d all been rather impassioned when I suggested dying the whole thing blue.

  The lady at the hair place said it would probably last about a month, but it would fade rather quickly if I didn’t take care of it. I liked it. I wasn’t sure I was the girl who could pull it off, but I liked it nonetheless.

  At the laser tag place, we got geared up and waited for our numbers to be called. There were a lot of younger kids there. Okay, so freshmen and sophomores weren’t that young, but they were still in the other queue. We’d drawn blue team, and Rachel rolled her eyes at me. The red team we’d be facing was a group of four, three boys and a girl. They were too busy picking on each other to pay attention to us, and some of that nostalgia might have hit me again watching them.

  Rachel snorted and shoved me ahead of her into the chute. I hadn’t played laser tag in forever, but thankfully, I’d also played with the ruthlessly competitive snots who were forever trying to take each other out, so I had learned some skills. Rachel, as it turned out, was pretty ruthless herself. She got all three of the boys in the time it took me to stalk and take out the girl.

  We went three more times, and each time, they offered to let us add more players to our team, but Rachel and I were having too much fun on our own. As it was, we
lost only one of those three games, and I was comforted by the fact that Rachel got taken out almost as fast as I did. Still, by the time we were done and turned in our stuff, we were both ready for a break.

  The laser tag place included a bowling alley and the best chips and queso known to man at their food bar. The rest of the food was shit, but their queso was to die for, so we got an order along with some sodas and found a spot. When Rachel side-eyed the bowling lanes, I snorted.

  “Talk to me about Europe.”

  She gave a little shrug. “Not much to say other than I wish you were going with,” she admitted. “But it’s gonna be fun. I’ll send you postcards from everywhere. I guess I can mail them to Archie’s place here and they can make sure they are forwarded on to you—you know, wherever you might be.”

  “Since you know, you’re probably just gonna send them to my supersecret destination.”

  “Who says there’s a supersecret destination?” she countered.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And even if there was, who says they have mail?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Anyway… What are some of the things you’re going to be doing? You are always so careful with the details. I swear you’re a vault.”

  “‘I’m going to see the sights, and not just the tourist ones, but actually spend time staying in each of the cities and kind of going about my day. I want to take pictures and walk until I find myself.”

  Impulsively, I reached over the table to take her hand. “Promise me that you’re really all right and that you going on this grand adventure is just that—an adventure?”

  “Or what? You going to buy a ticket and come with me?”

  Studying her, I grinned because… “You know what, I totally can do that.”

  Her jaw fell, and she gaped at me. Shocking Rachel did not happen easily, and I was always delighted when I managed to get her.

  Eyes narrowed, she stared at me. “You’re serious.”

  “Yes, I am,” I confirmed, and I really was. Frighteningly enough… “I can afford it. So, if you really need someone…”

  “Girl, I love you,” Rachel said. “But I am not dealing with those four following us everywhere, or worse, mooning over the fact you’re with me instead of them. So no, as much as I adore that you would do that for me, I’ll be fine. I’m really looking forward to being a stranger in a strange land with only my itinerary and myself for company. I need the break from my family, from people…from everything.”

  I blew out a breath. “If that changes, for any reason, you call me. I’ll be on the next flight I can book. You know what, Archie owns interest in an airline. We’ll charter a flight. The boys can survive without me for a few days.”

  “You sure about that?” But her whole demeanor softened, and her eyes warmed. “I really do adore you.”

  “Right back at you,” I confirmed. “I hate the idea that I’m not going to see you every day this summer.”

  “You didn’t see me every day this spring,” she pointed out dryly, and I sighed.

  “You really just had to go and ruin it.”

  “Not ruining anything, just pointing out the logic. Besides, you’re going to be busy with your guys and residence hunting in Manhattan, which I’m going to guess is going to be a lot easier for you than I thought. Especially since my girl is loaded.”

  I tried to shrug it off, but she wasn’t wrong. Wrapping my head around that much money still seemed wildly impossible, and yet in that moment of offering to fly to Rachel at a moment’s notice? As crazy as it sounded, it felt good I was in that position.

  She squeezed my hand. “How about your dad? Any movement on that front?”

  “Actually…I talked to my little sister.”

  My little sister.

  Yeah, that wasn’t gonna get old anytime soon. Rachel listened to my story about Chloe and her three-part argument about why I should video chat them first. Her smile turned indulgent when I also told her that Hank had texted me every single day since he left, no matter what, he texted. Even if it was just a hi, how are you kind of message.

  “This is gonna sound a little strange, but I think that’s the part of him I like the most at the moment. I can count on the exact time he’s gonna text me every single day. Maddy, she disappeared for days at a time, and I never knew when I’d hear from her. I hate that there are days that I still miss her or the idea of her. But at the same time, there’s this guy who really wants to know me just for me. He wants to know what I did in my day, if I had fun, what are my plans. He sometimes just wants to say hi and that he’s thinking of me.”

  “Good,” Rachel said. “That’s what a parent is supposed to be, and trust me, I have a very annoying mother who texts me all the time. Just a word of advice, if he texts and you don’t answer him right away, be prepared for him to call in the National Guard after about an hour.”

  I laughed. “He promised to give me two hours and only after he texted the guys. He has all of their numbers now too.”

  She chuckled. “He is such a dad.”

  A grin stretched my mouth wide. He really was a dad and he was mine, and I was loving having one that it still made me want to pinch myself. “I love him, Rachel. I want him to be as real as he seems to be. It’s like a Hallmark movie moment, and I don’t want it to turn into some made for TV true story turned into a Lifetime special.”

  “I think you’re in good shape, besides, Archie hasn’t lost his shit, right? And if I know Rich Boy, he’s done a full background check and crossed all his t’s and dotted all his i’s. Besides, if he turns out to be at all fake, I’ll kick his ass.”

  I wasn’t even going to argue that point. Archie was gonna Archie. We finished our queso and chips, drained our drinks, and left the bowling alley and laser tag center arm in arm. “I’m kind of jealous, though.”

  “About your dad?”

  “No,” I said, bumping her with my hip. “Of you, and by jealous, I mean envious. I love that you’re going to go to Europe, that you’re going with you, and that you’re going to do the pictures and the touristing. You’re gonna be this independent woman, and I love that so much for you.”

  “Then plan your own trip,” Rachel told me. “You have the money and fuck knows you have the intelligence.”

  “I would, but…”

  “You don’t want to be away from your guys for that long.”

  “It’s less not wanting to be away from them as much as wanting to share it with them. Kind of like I want to share it with you.” I made a face. “I guess I’m kind of a greedy bitch.”

  “Yeah, but you’re my greedy bitch, and I’ll cut anyone else that calls you that.” She pressed a smacking kiss to my cheek, and we both laughed, pulling apart when we got to the car. “Ice cream, you bottomless beauty?”

  “Hell yes, and drive out to the lake?”

  Head back, Rachel let out a little whoop. “Hell yes.”

  We’d taken Rachel’s car, so she drove. I checked my phone when we got to the store. The guys had all checked in subtly via our group chat by rambling in it.

  Cute.

  It also let them see when I read their messages.

  Amused, I let them know Rach and I were heading out to the lake and promised to text when we were heading back.

  “You are so hopeless,” Rachel teased when she caught me and read some of their messages over my shoulder. “Why do they have to put the furniture back where it goes?”

  “They probably moved the sofa and the chairs to set up for optimal video game playing.”

  “Uh-huh. Like I said, hopeless.”

  I chuckled, tucking my phone away as we headed back out with our purchases. “You know what, I’m okay with being hopeless. They picked me, and I picked them. It works.”

  “Yes, sickeningly so,” Rachel agreed. “And for that, I am beyond grateful.”

  We drove out to the lake and found our way to the same picnic table we’d sat at before. This was so much nicer than that night we’d driven out here aft
er Ian and I broke up. Well, after I broke up with him. It might have been the first time I’d really leaned into the friendship with Rachel, but I was happier with where we all were now as opposed to then.

  “How are you really doing?” Rachel asked, turning the question back on me that I had been asking her all day. “With everything? Your mom? Archie’s dad? The arrival of Hank and his ready-made family that seems too good to be true? Graduation? College? Four boyfriends? Did I leave anything out?”

  I considered it. “Relocating?”

  “Right, moving.” She bumped my shoulder. “And discovering that you’re basically an heiress with wealthy grandparents who want to give you everything? I mean, there’s gotta be a psychological malfunction related to that.”

  I laughed. “I’m doing amazing. Every time I get nervous or scared, the guys are there and they listen. They talk to me. Archie sat me down about finances this week. Ian has me singing. I’m running with them. I’m doing all kinds of things that I never thought possible. I mean, Jake and Coop keep giving me tips about being the oldest sibling. Course, I’ve been around their sisters forever.”

  “You’re happy,” Rachel said with some satisfaction.

  “I am. Even when I’m scared, I’m happy.”

  She grinned. “Cool. That’s the best, really.”

  “I’m gonna miss you, Rach.”

  “Not for long,” she promised. “Come autumn, we’ll be in New York together. Broadway. Central Park. The Statue of Liberty. We’re gonna have a great time, and we’re going to catch up on everything we did over the summer. And like your new dad, if you don’t answer my texts, I’ll do more than call out the National Guard. I’ll come hunting you myself.”

  “Hmm,” I said as I spooned out some more ice cream.

  “Girl, you do not want me coming to find you just because.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It might be fun.”

  She laughed. “Bitch.”

  “Yep,” I agreed, and we pretend clinked our pint cartons together.

  We sat by the lake and talked for hours. It was almost midnight before we went home, and my boys were waiting up for me. There were exclamations and side-eye over the blue streak, but Archie summed it all up with a, “Huh, I kind of love it.”