Page 31 of One Last Summer
I opened my mouth to remind him that he’d just ignored my question about his silence all those years ago. But then he tilted his head lower, eyes locked on mine, so close that I could see a hint of stubble on his chin, remembering the sensation of it scraping the edge of my cheek just moments ago. I couldn’t have found my words if they were printed on a paper in front of me.
Luckily, I didn’t have to. “And then you followed me in here just to let me know that we shouldn’t have kissed?” he prodded.
I could feel the entire gravitational pull of the earth through Mack’s eyes, so intense that his pupils seemed to disappear altogether.
“I’m just saying, maybe it’s not the best idea.”
My voice was a raspy whisper, and I stepped backward, bumping into something. Sure, I’d once jokingly advised my adult self to take lovers, have some sort of passionate, sex-filled affair. But pursuing whatever the hell this was with Mack didn’t feel like an actual solution to my problems. It felt like the match that could light everything in my world up and then burn it all down.
“Okay.” Mack nodded, crossing his arms. “That’s fair. Because we’re friends.”
“Because we’re friends who drive each other crazy,” I clarified, flustered. “Be honest. Haven’t you always found me annoying? Isn’t that what the whole race thing was about tonight? You proving some sort of point about me?”
“So you’re saying you find me annoying,” he said, not answering my question. Again.
“No, that’s not what I said!” I sighed, exasperated. “I just… It’s like, we haven’t seen each other in person in years and we’re already going around in circles like this. It’s been like this for as long as we’ve known each other.”
“You make me crazy, Millen.” He dragged his hands across his temples and through his hair, gazing up at the ceiling as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me.
“Yeah, dude.” I threw up my hands. “Same. So let’s not make it worse just because we’re, I dunno, horny.”
He let out a clipped laugh. “So that’s what this is? We’re… horny?”
I nodded, trying to hold my ground.
“Okay,” he said with an exasperated shrug of his shoulders. “We will never kiss again.”
It was exactly what I’d said I wanted, and I waited for relief to kick in. But all that was left was a strange, heavy sadness that sat on my chest, as if I’d lost the thread and had no idea how to get it back.
“It’s pinelake1933, by the way,” he said, his face steady. “All lowercase.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them, the sorrow I’d felt just seconds ago now shifting into something that prickled with embarrassed anger. “The wireless password is pinelake1933.”
“Yes,” he said, like it was obvious. Because it was. There was no scramble of letters and numbers, no endless symbols. It was just the name of this place, and the year it was founded.
He’d gotten me again.
“Which you have memorized,” I said, my voice pitching louder. “So you could have just told me, right when we got here.”
“Oh, come on, Millen, you’ve been gone for five years. I had to mess with you a little bit.”
The edge of his mouth crooked up, as if he knew I was fuming with humiliation. No, as if he liked it.
“You’re a real dick sometimes, you know that?” I hissed, pushing away from the wall and heading toward the door.
“Only when I want to be.” He waved a hand toward the door with his usual half-smile, as if he were daring me to leave.
Something had shifted out there on the dock. When we kissed, it felt like we’d traveled through time to another dimension, where our bodies made sense together. But now we were firmly back in the present, where this truly was a bad idea. Or maybe we were still stuck in the past, forever trapped in our who-could-annoy-who-more cycle. Either way, I needed to get out of here.
“Good night, Mack!” I chirped, my voice purposely cool and clipped. “Thanks for the swim! It was a delight.”
“Any time, Millen.” Through hooded eyes he watched me as I took off through the screen door and into the night, enjoying the sound of it slamming behind me.
And then I tromped through the now-damp grass up to Sunrise, alone.
15
EVEN IN THE dark cover of night, I could still make out some of the larger signatures on the ceiling above me. I’d been lying here for hours now, tucked into my sleeping bag. I’d tried all the things I normally did when I couldn’t fall asleep, which was often these days. Counting backward, half-assed attempts at meditation, a breathing exercise I’d learned thanks to a TikTok video Lydia had sent me.
