by Beth Reekles
June laughed, sipping her coffee. “Oh, you’ll get there, sweetie. I’m not saying you need to decide now what you want to do with your life—God knows your mother and I had no idea, and she applied to about thirty different jobs before she found one she liked the sound of. But it’s worth thinking about what you might like to do. Working with kids, running a business, journalism…” June leaned back to squint thoughtfully at me. “I could see you doing something creative. Something crazy. Look at what you guys did with the kissing booth! The whole summer bucket-list thing! Just look at what you did with race day!”
It was my turn to laugh now.
“What, you think I’m going to make a career out of Mario Kart?”
“Well, hey. You never know. Stranger things have happened.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Our final days in the beach house were either miserably somber or we were almost manic in our mission to make the most of it. Everything from near-silent days as we moved around, packing things up, to a midnight feast our final night on the beach, which ended in Amanda going skinny-dipping and then immediately regretting it. She shrieked that she was “freezing her ass off” and raced all the way back to the house, butt naked.
On our last morning at the beach house, it was a somber kind of day again.
I’d been back in my old bed, sharing the room with Amanda, these last few days while Noah was back—it seemed silly to make him stay on the couch or for him to keep making the drive back and forth between the beach house and his parents’ place. This morning, I crept out of bed before Amanda woke up and went to make myself some breakfast.
I stood in the kitchen, not tasting any of the Froot Loops I was slowly munching on, and surveyed the place.
It felt so wrong.
The cupboards were almost empty. Boxes sat piled up, half full and waiting to be closed. The couches looked so bare without the colorful assortment of old throw pillows and blankets. Noah had taken the TV home two days ago, leaving a gaping space against the wall. We’d scrubbed the floors to within an inch of their life, but I didn’t think they’d ever looked so old and worn. And despite all our efforts to be careful, they were already sprinkled with sand again. All the walls had been repainted. They looked too clean, too bright.
The place practically sparkled in comparison to the start of the summer.
I’d never seen it in such good shape. I’d never seen it so clean.
Even with all the old, sagging furniture, it held a shiny appeal.
I hated it. It was wrong, all wrong.
Like the life and soul had been stripped right out of the place.
The sale was closing in three days. Today we would move out. Tomorrow, someone would come and take away the furniture. Then June and Matthew would be handing over the keys.
The soft, muted sound of footsteps creeping down the hallway pulled me out of my head. I looked up to see Rachel, already dressed, hair curling softly around her shoulders. She gave me a small wave and mumbled, “Hi.”
“Hey.”
I stepped out of her way as she got herself a drink.
“You’re not having breakfast?”
Rachel shook her head. “No. I think I’m going to just head back home. Honestly, I don’t have much of an appetite. I packed all my things yesterday and I’m taking some of these boxes back with me. There are so many of them.”
I looked at her in surprise. “You’re not going to stay and help pack the last of the stuff? Not that you should or we’d expect you to. I mean, it’s not like this place is really your responsibility, and you’ve already been a huge help, and—”
She gave a quiet laugh, grinning at me, and shrugged one shoulder as she gestured out at all the boxes. “Everything is pretty much packed anyway. Besides, you’re right. This place doesn’t really have anything to do with me. You guys should have the chance to say a proper goodbye. I don’t want to get in your way.”
There had been times when “in the way” was exactly what Rachel was, as far as I’d been concerned. I’d wanted to spend time with Lee, but no, he was with Rachel. I’d thought we were hanging out, just me and the guys, but no, there was Rachel, and some of the girls along with her.
But over the last year and a bit that she’d been dating Lee, she’d really become a part of my life, too.
“You wouldn’t be in the way.”
She smiled, with so much emotion in her eyes that I wondered if she knew I wasn’t just talking about today. “Thanks, Elle. But I think this is something you guys should really do by yourselves.”
“Hear, hear.”
We both jumped, startled, and found Amanda smiling at us. Her hair was frizzy on one side, flat on the other, where she’d slept with it wet after skinny-dipping. Her eyes were a little bloodshot. It was the closest to looking less than perfect I’d ever seen her.
Although how she managed to look cute in ratty old Harry Potter pajamas, the logo almost faded off completely, was beyond me.
“I’m with Rachel,” she said. She began to clatter about the kitchen, examining the leftover food and then searching for utensils. “We were talking about this yesterday. Oh bugger, where’s the icing sugar?”
“The what?”
“The…oh, you know…What do you call it? The powdered sugar!”
“I think we packed it in that bag.”
“Everything to make French toast except the bloody icing sugar. Honestly.” Amanda pottered over to the bag I’d just pointed to and rooted through it. “Anyway. Me and Rachel were talking about it yesterday. We think we should get out of your hair, let the three of you have some time to say goodbye to this place. We’re not the ones who’ve been coming here every summer for our whole lives. Besides, my dad’s flying back today. I said I’d go see him off before he goes to the airport. Oh, where’s my phone?”
Dumping the powdered sugar, Amanda left to go collect her cell phone and Rachel turned to me again.
“I know we haven’t had much chance to talk about the whole…you and Noah thing, but…are you okay?”
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t weird, being around him but not snuggling up to him, not kissing him. No casual touches, no lingering smiles. Both of us fighting hard not to fall into the easy way we bickered and flirted. I’d caught him looking at me a few times when he thought I wouldn’t notice, but then, I was sure he’d caught me looking at him just the same.
Thinking about it now, though, I told Rachel honestly, “I’ve been worse.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Elle.”
I gave a half-hearted shrug instead of an answer. I was sorry, too.
Rachel gave me a fierce hug, so suddenly and so forcefully it made me stumble backward. Laughing, I hugged her back. “What was that for? It’s not like summer’s over just yet. You’ll still see me.”
“I know,” she said, and I was shocked to find tears in her eyes as she drew away. “It’s just…I know I’ve only been here for this summer, but leaving this place, it really feels like it’s all ending. Don’t you think?”
My throat tightened. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does.”
“I’ll see you around, Elle.”
I heard her pass Amanda in the hallway and the two of them said a brief goodbye.
“I’m heading back home the day after tomorrow,” Amanda told me. “I fly back with my mum. Dad decided he couldn’t so much as be in the same airport as her for a few hours, so…” She sighed, eyes watering. She blinked rapidly to clear the tears away. “It’s fine. It really is. They’ll get over themselves once they get this whole thing sorted out. The divorce, I mean. Is it bad that I’m glad I’ll be at Harvard again next year and far away from all of it?”
“Sounds like exactly what you need,” I told her. “I’m…I’m sorry it’s so rough for you with them right now.”
“It i
s what it is. It’ll be fine. Eventually.”
She set to making herself some cereal, the French toast apparently all forgotten. Maybe she’d lost her appetite, too.
“It looks so weird, don’t you think? Without all your stuff in it.”
I nodded. “I barely recognize the place.”
We stood in silence. I rinsed my empty bowl and repacked the pots and whisk that Amanda had gotten out to make her French toast. She gave up on her cereal halfway through the bowl, too.
“I heard Rachel talking to you about you and Noah. Elle, I know it’s really not my place to say and I don’t know if this will help or not, but…I know how much he loved you. I know how hard that was for him, to let you go like that.”
Let me go. Like he’d done some great, big, noble act. Like I’d needed him to do that for me.
Then I realized—maybe he hadn’t done it for me. Or at least not only for me.
He’d done it for him.
Whatever retort I’d been about to bite back at Amanda, it died on my tongue and I swallowed the words back down. “Yeah. Yeah, I know that. It was hard for me, too. But like he said—I guess loving each other isn’t always enough.”
“Guess not.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “I know you’re working tomorrow and you’ve got plans with your family, so I don’t think I’ll see you before I go to the airport. I know we had, um…Well, I think it’s safe to say we didn’t exactly get off on the best foot, but I’ve really loved getting to know you, especially this summer. And I think you’re really bloody brilliant, Elle Evans, so even if things with you and Noah are a bit weird at the minute, please stay in touch. And we’ll hang out next year, yeah? When you’re at Harvard.”
I gave an awkward smile and decided that was a conversation for another time. I was honestly touched by her little speech—and Amanda was, even after everything last Thanksgiving, a good friend.
“Next time I’m in Boston,” I told her, “I’ll look you up.”
* * *
• • •
With the beach house stripped almost bare, Rachel was right: it did feel like it was all ending. The front door was open, and Lee and Noah were going back and forth loading up the cars with boxes—or trash bags, which we’d had to use to pack up all the bedding after we’d realized we didn’t have any boxes left.
I left the rumpus room after giving it one final sweep to check we hadn’t missed anything, not even a pen cap, and stood in the hallway with an empty box, surveying the wall of framed photographs.
My breath shuddered as my eyes roamed over the wall, drinking in each and every photo. I knew we weren’t just tossing them out, but I also knew that June had no plans to re-create the gallery wall back at their house.
Our whole lives, right here on this wall.
I looked at each photograph, watching us grow up. Baby Brad, toddler Brad, all the way up to a ten-year-old Brad holding a jellyfish on the beach, beaming at the camera, Noah kneeling next to him and June with a stiff smile, looking warily down at the creature. My dad, standing with his arm around my mom, then without her, the lines quickly appearing on his face, then some of the grief on his shoulders disappearing as the years went on. Matthew and June, that one summer they were particularly frosty toward each other…
And each year, a photograph of me, Lee, and Noah. The three of us down on the beach. The start of summer, Fourth of July, the end of summer, some random day that meant nothing and everything—every summer of our lives, immortalized on this wall.
I blinked away the tears and sniffed.
Today I was determined not to cry.
(Lee had cried. Several times. Noah or I just handed him tissues each time—or toilet paper, when we discovered we’d packed the last box of Kleenex.)
At a noise in the doorway, I tore my gaze away from the photographs to watch Noah stepping onto the porch. He stretched his arms over his head and cracked his neck. Long, strong limbs and a flash of the skin of his toned abs as his shirt rode up. His hair shone in the sunlight.
Lee was carrying one last box past him and paused to say something. Lee, with his mischievous, easy smile and dancing eyes, looking so like Noah and yet so not, his hair a mess and his nose red with sunburn.
Just like that. The blink of an eye, and they were all grown up. We were all grown up. With fall and college and new beginnings and new adventures on the horizon, this glorious, golden summer—it was ending.
“Hey,” I yelled, and the Flynn brothers I’d loved so differently and so deeply both looked at me. “What do you guys say to one last photo?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
We still had time before summer was over, but not much.
With the beach house behind us, today felt like The Day for tying up loose ends. It was still pretty early when I got home. Two cars were in the driveway: Dad’s and a shiny dark blue one I guessed was Linda’s.
Inside, I found the three of them chattering in the lounge. Brad was jumping about as he told a story, a plate of half-eaten snacks and empty glasses on the table alongside a pack of cards, some game they’d abandoned.
“And then—pchwwwww!” Brad scrunched up his face, arms swinging. “He hit it right out of the park!”
Linda gasped. “Whoa! No way!”
Dad was laughing, and then spotted me in the doorway. “Elle! We weren’t expecting you for another hour. Did you guys finish up early?”
I nodded.
His face fell. “Everything okay, bud?”
“Sure. Sure it is. Hi, Linda. Hi, Brad. Um, could I just…Dad, can I talk to you for a minute? In the kitchen?”
He got a look on his face, like he was bracing himself for bad news. My stomach fizzed, like a bath bomb that had been set off and wouldn’t stop. I fidgeted with my hands, hearing my dad’s sharp intake of breath as he followed me to the kitchen and closed the door.
“What’s this all about?” he asked me gravely.
“It’s about college.” I took a deep breath. Today was a day for saying goodbye to things and looking forward. Today was a day to put everything right. Or as right as it could be. I closed my eyes for a second to compose myself, and then met Dad’s serious, worried gaze before launching into the speech I’d prepared in the car.
“I’ve decided not to go to Harvard. I know you’re going to be disappointed, but I’ve made my decision. I didn’t pick it for the right reasons and I don’t think I really even want to go there. And it was the same with Berkeley—I didn’t pick it for the right reasons. But I’ve looked into it, and I’ve put in a late application to USC. I can start in the fall. Majoring in video game design. I know Berkeley and Harvard are great schools, but I really think this is what I want to do, and USC is the top school in the country for game development. Plus, I’ve already spoken to May and I can keep my job at Dunes while I’m studying, and I’ll be around to help out here when you need, around my class schedule. I’ve got it all worked out.”
There were several long, awful moments of silence when I finally stopped for breath. Dad blinked owlishly at me from behind his glasses, his mouth slack.
I bit my lip, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “Dad? Dad, come on, please say something. I know it’s not what you were expecting—”
“I’ll say!” he interrupted with a burst of laughter that caught me completely off guard. He sighed, shaking his head. “Elle, the look on your face, acting so serious…I thought you were going to say you were pregnant! God!”
“Oh my God, no.” My cheeks burned.
Placing his hands on my shoulders, he said, “Bud, listen. I’m proud of you for getting into Harvard, of course I am, but you go to college wherever you think is best for you. Hell, if you hadn’t wanted to go to college…well, I wouldn’t have been happy, but there’s not much I can do, hmm? USC’s a great school. And video game design…I m
ean…it does sound right up your alley.”
“So…so you’re not mad? You’re not mad I turned down Harvard?”
“Absolutely not. Although this will be fun to explain in the office. I might have bragged. A lot.”
I laughed, but felt my body sag with relief. Ever since my conversation with June, she’d gotten me thinking—and after she’d planted the ridiculous idea in my head that I could make a career out of Mario Kart, I hadn’t been able to let go of the idea. It made me excited for college in a way I hadn’t been yet.
Lee would love it. Especially since it’d mean we’d both be in California and it’d be so much easier to hang out.
“This isn’t just because Noah and I broke up,” I told my dad. “I don’t think I was ever really a fan of leaving you guys to fend for yourselves. I know you’ve got Linda now, but…”
“Oh, bud. Come here.” He pulled me in for a bear hug and laughed again. “We’re perfectly capable of ‘fending for ourselves,’ but it’ll be nice to have you around from time to time. I’m really proud of you, you know that?”
“Even though I turned down Harvard?”
“Especially because you turned down Harvard.”
* * *
• • •
Levi still wasn’t answering my calls, so I pulled out the big guns and called his landline. His dad answered with a cheerful, “Elle! We haven’t heard from you in a while! How’s everything?”
He told me Levi was at work, so after dinner with my family and Linda, I got in the car and headed out to the 7-Eleven.
There he was, behind the counter, slouched over his phone, not even looking up at the sound of someone coming in.
I grabbed the nearest bag of candy and walked up to the cash register. I slid the candy across the counter and cleared my throat. Levi glanced up and did a double take, his eyes bugging wide.
“I come in peace,” I said.
“Elle. I…I didn’t…What’re you doing here?”
“Visiting one of my best friends, because he’s been ghosting me for the last, like, month?”