Page 86 of One Last Summer
I chuckled, playing with the piece of wood in my hands. “Look, I support whatever you need to do right now.”
I leaned closer, nudged him with my shoulder. “Seriously, though. You okay?”
“Honestly? Yeah, I am.” He nodded, a relieved look on his face. “I mean, I didn’t intend for it to explode like that. We’ve just been dancing around the topic forever.”
“I don’t understand. If you knew things weren’t good between you guys, why didn’t you bring it up with Trey?” I asked as I fiddled with a stone on the ground before tossing it into the water. “I know I haven’t seen you in a while, but if there’s one thing I know about you, Nick, it’s that you’re good at talking things through.”
“Yeah, that’s been, like, the whole problem in our relationship. I’m too good at talking.”
He let out a sigh, but nothing about him seemed resigned. He looked content. At peace, even. “I just needed him to own his feelings for once, you know? And speak them out loud. I’ve been talking for the both of us for way too long.”
“Yeah, I got that when you yelled at me about his sneakers,” I said, nestling my head against his shoulder for a brief moment.
“In my defense, they are practically brand-new,” he said, chuckling. “So in this case, I think my yelling was pretty valid.”
“Look,” I said, finally managing to eke out a laugh. “The saying goes, ‘All’s fair in love and food fights.’”
We sat in the quiet for a moment, swatting away mosquitos and deer flies and all the other creatures who came out to drink human blood as night fell.
“I’m sorry I’m leaving you in the lurch,” I said. “I said yes to my boss and didn’t even think about how you guys are going to get back to the airport.”
“Eloise is on it,” he said. “She and Linus are going to give us a ride.”
“Good.” I nodded. “But I’m also sorry for not being around these last few years. For falling out of touch. For being MIA from our friendship.”
“Hey,” Nick said, reaching out for my arm. “Do you know what my letter said?”
I shrugged, and when his expectant stare didn’t leave my face, I gave in with a smile.
“Live laugh love?”
He cackled at this, shaking his head. “Look, the poem was horrible, I’ll admit it. But then, at the end, I wrote, ‘It’s okay if you mess up a lot.’ And I remember writing that poem, but I don’t remember writing that, or even why I wrote it. But that’s the thing that has stuck with me since getting it back.”
“Maybe we were all a lot wiser as teens than we gave ourselves credit for,” I mused.
“No one expects you to be a perfect friend, Clara,” he said gently as he stood with a stretch. “Just a good one. So try to be kind to yourself. You’re only human.”
Be kind to yourself. Number five on my list. “That is exactly what I told myself to do in my letter,” I marveled.
“See?” he said, his face brightening into something big and beautiful, just like his heart. “You were on to something then. You should listen to yourself more often.”
We were interrupted by a shriek, and I spun around to find Linus down on one knee in front of Eloise, who was clutching her bright pink face.
“Oh my fucking god!” I gasped, scrambling to stand. “Did you have any idea?” I whispered to Nick, who was now standing next to me, mouth agape.
“Linus may have asked Trey and me when a good time to propose might be,” he said. “But he was supposed to do this tomorrow night, so I didn’t realize he had changed plans.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t tell him to do it during the dessert party,” I joked.
He choked back a laugh, and then grabbed my hand, squeezing it as we watched Eloise and Linus embrace.
“I’m so happy for them,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
Mack was standing directly behind Linus, and he caught my eye, his mouth in a giant O.
“Holy shit,” I mouthed to him, laughing. He shook his head back at me in disbelief, beaming with the kind of shock that only came after moments like this.
Linus was now back on his feet with Eloise wrapped around him, kissing him like it was their last and first time together, all at once.
