Page 11 of One Last Summer
I looked back down at the paper and groaned. Of course.
“What?” She leaned closer, her eyes lighting up with curiosity.
“It’s time for the Mack portion of the letter,” I said, dreading whatever was to come.
“Yes,” Lydia hissed, enthralled. “Boathouse boy.”
“I’m already cringing. ‘Mack is here too, farther down at the end of the dock, but I’ve been ignoring him all week. Did I want to end my last night avoiding the person I’ve had a crush on since I was ten? No. But I also didn’t expect us to kiss and then for him to not talk to me for days, so screw him. And the worst part, after all this stupidity—of us being Color Week captains, and the kiss, and then him completely blowing me off—is that I still can’t bring myself to hate him. Also, can I just say—I can’t believe Steve and Marla expect us to share the Color Week Captain medal?! He can stick it up his ass, as far as I’m concerned.’”
“Oh my god, Mack, what a piece of shit player!” Lydia screeched.
“The worst,” I said, surprising myself with how hurt I still felt over something that happened so long ago. Our kiss had been an eruption, burning everything in its wake. And then his silent treatment had followed, a harsh blast of ice.
“And because our teams tied during Color Week competition and we were both captains, they made us share this stupid winner medal with each other. We’ve literally never once talked about how we kissed, but we still send that medal back and forth to each other.”
“Wait, still?” Lydia’s mouth dropped open. “It’s been twenty years! You and hot boat boy have been long-distance flirting over a medal for two decades?”
“Oh, stop.” I could feel my cheeks heating and took another sip of wine for cover. “It’s just a way to annoy each other.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” She was looking at me through narrowed eyes. “And where is it now?”
“I sent it to him up at Pine Lake when I moved out of my place with Charles,” I explained. “And I didn’t give him my new address, so I assume he still has it.”
The medal was like a yearly reminder of our make-out session, and it got under my skin more than it should have.
“He probably sleeps with it under his pillow,” Lydia joked.
“When Sam got married, to her ex?” I continued. “He wore it to their fucking wedding. Then he left it at the front desk of the hotel we were all staying it. He paid them to give it to me when I checked out.”
My mind immediately pulled me back to memories of that night in Brooklyn all those years ago. Charles and I had just started dating, but work had kept him from joining me at Sam’s wedding, and Mack’s gaze had lingered on me the entire night, like he was constantly waiting to see what my reaction would be to that dumb medal dangling from his neck. So I’d done what I always did when I really wanted to piss him off: I ignored him.
“Okay, I’m going to need you to keep reading.” Lydia tapped her finger impatiently on the table.
I nodded. “‘But Sam made the very important point that we are feminists, and so I’m not going to let one immature guy get me down. Especially not MACK.’”
I paused to turn the paper over as Lydia squealed with delight.
“Oh my god, little feminist Clara!” She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout, hand at her heart. “I love her.”
“‘Sam told us to write to our older selves and remind them of who we are now, who we want to be, and how we want our lives to go. So if she does remember to send this to you in twenty years, I want to make sure I do exactly that. I’ve decided—and this is very me, I know—to make a list of the things I want to do by the time I’m thirty-five.’
“Oh god, I can’t read this.” I pushed the paper across to Lydia, grimacing. “This is mortifying.”
“It’s adorable,” she said firmly, grabbing the letter out of my hands. “I love that you were making checklists for yourself all the way back then.”
She straightened out her shoulders with an exaggerated “ahem” and kept reading.
“‘Please check off each one that you’ve completed, and if you haven’t done them yet: what the hell are you waiting for?’ Are you ready for this, Clara? Your teenage self is bossing you around from the past.”
I pressed my palms against my temples and nodded, overheating with embarrassment. This all felt too revealing, like snooping through a diary. Except that was almost always a betrayal of trust. This was something that the teenage me had wanted me to see.
“Okay, so, number one,” Lydia said. “‘Do something meaningful with your life. Don’t waste it.’ So sweet, teen Clara!”
“Ugh. It’s so clichéd.” I groaned. “Please just keep going so we can get this over with.”
“Oh my god!” She squealed, her face lighting up. “Listen to this. ‘Two. Get a dog.’ It’s a sign.”
“Well, clearly I need to get on that,” I muttered with a wave toward the flier on the fridge.
