Page 87 of One Last Summer
“There’s no ring,” he said to her when she finally pulled away. “Because you’d kill me if I picked out something that you hated.”
“Oh my god, he’s so right,” Eloise gushed as Sam immediately embraced her in a hug. “And because we’re about to spend all that money on the van.”
“What van?” Nick asked, perplexed.
“We just put an offer on a sprinter van we found, near here actually,” Linus explained. “We’re thinking of quitting our jobs to travel.”
“Wait, you’re doing hashtag van life?” Mack could barely hold back the look of shock on his face. “You two?”
“Yes, Mack.” Eloise stuck her tongue out at him, but the rest of her face was ecstatic, like her freckles might start sparkling at any second. I was so used to her containing her emotions that the sight of her like this still startled me a little. “Weren’t you just rattling on about change being necessary the other day? Well, this is me doing that.”
Mack acquiesced with a bow of his head, clapping his hands.
“You all need to see what my wish was!” Eloise squealed, still a fountain of utter delight.
Next to her, Linus, so stoic and serious, glowed in a way that seemed beyond human, like all the love he felt was causing him to ignite from the inside out.
She flipped over the small wooden block in her hand, where she’d written “ENGAGED” in all caps.
“You beat me to it,” she said, grabbing him for another kiss, and the rest of us awwwwed in unison.
Across from me, as everyone else gathered around Linus and Eloise, Mack motioned in my direction. He took off down the beach, away from the boathouse, and I followed, a few steps behind him.
He waited for me at the edge of the water, wish boat in hand.
“What are you wishing for?” he asked, staring at me intently as I laced my fingers through his.
“For you to finally be humble,” I teased, glancing up at those bright, kind eyes, that long nose with the little bump, and that hair still sticking up all over the place.
“Too late for that.” He chuckled, leaning forward to place a soft kiss on the bridge of my nose as he let go of my hand.
“I know,” I said, poking him in the ribs with the corner of my wish boat. “A real waste of my wish.”
“Come on in.” He beckoned, shuffling slowly into the water, his eyes never leaving my face. “The water’s warm!”
I gave one glance back to the shore and then fixed my eyes on Mack’s shadowy figure in front of me and followed. Soon the water was just below the edge of my shorts, his body inches from mine.
“Made it,” I declared, dipping my free hand into the water and flicking it onto his face. He ducked, but a few drops still landed on his forehead, and on instinct I reached up to wipe them away, tracing my fingers along his creased brow, down the firm line of his cheekbone to those soft lips that were always, always smiling.
“See?” He said it as if running fully dressed into the lake was the most obvious choice we could make. “I knew you could do it.”
I didn’t need a letter from the past to know how fifteen-year-old Clara would want this goodbye to go. She’d tell me to profess all my feelings to Mack right now, honest and raw and muddled, and demand I throw my car keys into the lake and drag him back to his bed, all my good logic and reasonable life choices be damned.
But I didn’t trust that she knew what was right, any more than I trusted myself now, at thirty-five.
And so I did what I knew how to do best: I went along with the plan.
“I should hit the road soon,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, sure.
“Here,” he said, flicking a lighter in his hand, the flame appearing like magic as he brought it to the tip of his candle. “Let’s make our wishes.”
I cupped a hand around my candle as he leaned closer, kissing his candle to mine until the wick sparked and caught fire.
I had written something on the bottom of my wish boat, something that hadn’t appeared on any of my previous lists. It was, I realized now, the thing I wanted more than anything.
“Do you think they’ll come true?” I asked, knowing full well that mine was impossible, completely out of reach.
“I’m not sure I believe in wishes,” he said finally. “I always tell my campers that I think it depends on how badly you want them.”
