Page 24 of One Last Summer
“Plus,” Mack added, “you’re way more fun to hang out with than teenagers. Don’t tell my fifteen-year-old self that, though.”
“Oh my god, was your letter as painfully earnest as mine?” Nick asked.
“Yeah, man, I had a lot of feelings.” Mack made a horrified face, and though I laughed along with everyone else, I was secretly dying to know what he’d written in his letter.
“Mine was just a list of everything I’d accomplished,” Eloise said, head bobbing as Linus massaged her shoulders. “Not to brag, but there were quite a few things.”
“Sam, you’re a real hero for saving those.” Nick clapped in her direction as she took the tiniest bow.
“I only had to move them across the country like two times and remember not to throw them out for twenty years,” she joked, digging back into the marshmallow bag to pop one in her mouth.
“Well, it was worth it, thank you,” Nick said. “Even if I did have to relive my decision to write my letter as a poem.”
“Aw, Nick!” I cooed.
“The drama,” he replied with a shake of his head.
“Every teenager is dramatic,” Eloise said. “They’re all hormonal and depressed and emotional. It would be weird if you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t,” Linus said, his chin nestled on Eloise’s shoulder. “I started my first business in the tenth grade.”
“Everyone but you, honey,” she said sweetly, twisting around to give him a kiss on the cheek.
“Oh my god, I have the best idea.” Nick gasped, eyes wide with his sudden stroke of genius. “We need to read them to each other, out loud.”
My stomach dropped at the suggestion. I’d let Lydia read it, sure, but her degree in Clara Millen history only went back a couple of years. Everyone sitting around this campfire knew me then, and the thought of revealing my teenage self’s hopes and dreams, only to contrast them with the current mess of my life, was terrifying.
“Clara, did you ever get yours?” Sam asked, and before I could really put a plan into action, I felt myself shaking my head.
“It must have gone to my old address,” I said with a shrug and a smile, as if my insides weren’t quaking with nerves. It wasn’t a lie, not exactly, but the words tasted sour and wrong in my mouth.
“Well, mine’s back home in Brooklyn,” Eloise said. “Otherwise I’d definitely be reminding you of how many blue ribbons I got that year.”
The collective quiet that fell over the group told me that Nick’s idea had hit a mutually agreed upon dead end, and my shoulders sagged with relief.
“Maybe they won’t go through with it,” Nick said finally, and we all knew who—and what—he was talking about.
“Oh, honey,” Sam said sympathetically. “We all want that, but they already have.”
“Eventually everything good has to come to an end,” Mack said quietly, in a stoic tone I’d never heard him use before. “It’s time to move on.”
I looked at him across the flames, but he was staring off toward the lake. His elbows were on his knees, hands clasped, and I traced the muscular shape of his arms with my gaze, strengthened from days spent hefting kayaks out of the water and dragging boats ashore. His hands were almost certainly rough and calloused, and my skin prickled at the thought of what they’d feel like pressed against me. I gave my head a little shake, clearing out the lusty thoughts.
“Jesus, Mack, enough with the nihilism,” Nick scolded. “It doesn’t go well with your boyish good looks.”
Mack chuckled at this and tossed a stick in the fire. “Welcome to my dark side, buddy.”
“Enough of that,” Nick scolded. “Positive vibes only!”
My eyes drifted over to Trey, and for a moment he looked utterly annoyed with Nick, scowling like he found every word coming out of his mouth insufferable. But then I blinked, the smoke wafting in my direction and stinging my eyes, and when I opened them again Trey was back to his even-keeled, content self.
“Y’all, we need to do something to send this place off,” Nick continued, peeling the label off the edge of his beer bottle. “Something big. Fun. Stupid fun. Anyone?”
He glanced around at us expectantly.
“What if we just became campers again for a few days,” I said, an idea forming out of the bits and pieces of memories in the back of my mind.
He pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned forward. “I’m listening.”
