Page 26 of One Last Summer
“Oh, will you shut the fuck up?” I hissed as he stuck his tongue out with a laugh.
“Fine,” he said, his eyes staying put on my face. “What about Color Week then? It’s the most important tradition here.”
He pointed a finger at his chest, and then tilted it toward me, brows raised, like it was a challenge.
“No way.” I pressed my lips together tightly, giving my head a deliberate shake. “Color Week has approximately fifty billion different activities. Are we going to do them all with, like, seven people?”
“Fine, we can pick one thing from Color Week,” he goaded, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “The relay. Let’s have a rematch.”
“Oh my god, you and your fucking rematches!” I snipped, though I begrudgingly liked the idea. The relay was the final competition of Color Week, a hodgepodge of ridiculous challenges. It was absurd and silly but also legitimately hard, which made it sort of perfect for our final week at Pine Lake.
“How else am I going to get you to hang out with me?” he asked, and the playful tone of his voice sent me spiraling back to the visions I’d had earlier. A new thought sizzled in my brain; this time it involved his mouth against my ear, teasing me in an entirely different way.
“Fine!” I said finally, throwing my hands up. “You help me plan it, and we’ll do the relay.”
“Done and done, Millen,” Mack said with a pleased nod.
Sam pushed herself up to stand with a groan, pressing her hands into the sides of her waist.
“I love you all, but I’m exhausted. It’s past ten. I’m going to head up to bed.”
“Wait, so when do we start?” asked Eloise.
“Why not tomorrow?” I said with a shrug. “All we need for Capture the Flag are the flags.”
“We have, like, a billion handkerchiefs,” Mack said. “I helped Marla pack up a bunch last week. They’re in the storage room off the office.”
“Perfect,” I said with a confident nod of my chin. “Noon tomorrow.”
“Literally the hottest time of the day,” griped Trey.
“Yes, but everyone can sleep in, pound coffee, and then sweat it all out and nap after,” I said, plopping back down in my chair, satisfied with how easily I’d set our week into motion. Maybe I wasn’t the best at experiencing joy—yet!—but I sure did know how to make shit happen.
If only the Alewife pitch had fallen into place that easily.
I dug my phone out of my pocket, attempting a quick scroll of my inbox to see if anyone had sent over any updates. But even with one bar of cell service, my emails wouldn’t load.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. I wasn’t used to being cut off like this, and unlike Sam, I felt wired and wide awake, like I was ready to start the day, not end it.
“Everything okay?” Mack was suddenly standing in front of me, hovering. His hair fell in his face, forming a soft halo around features that had sharpened since I last saw him.
“I need that Wi-Fi info from you.” I waved my unusable phone in his face. “I have spotty cell service, and I need to be able to monitor what’s going down at my office. Can’t you do that thing where you share the password from your phone?”
“Yeah, sure. But my phone’s in the boathouse.” He took a couple of steps back. “Just swim out to the diving dock with me first.”
He lifted his T-shirt over his head and flung it on the back of a chair. Do not look at his chest, do not look at his chest, I thought as I immediately looked right at his chest, broad and smooth in all the right places.
“Do it, do it, do it,” Sam chanted as Trey and Nick picked up empty bottles, tossing them into the recycling bin that lived by the dock.
“Oh my god, Mack.” I shook my head, silently willing my eyeballs to focus on his face. “I don’t want to swim now. It’s late.”
“Come on, Millen, what happened to making memories during our last week together?” He reached a finger out, poking me playfully on the shoulder. “You don’t think you could win that senior girls’ race now? Eloise? Thoughts? Fighting words?”
“I think she’ll kick your ass!” Eloise said as she pushed herself off Linus’s lap, joining in the cleanup efforts.
“See?” I channeled whatever affection was bubbling up for Mack into a pointed glare as I tossed my paper plate into the trash and walked toward him. “Even my former competitor agrees with me.”
“I’d be interested in seeing who wins,” said Linus diplomatically.
