Page 112 of Faking it For Summer

“What?”

“Let’s go look at the stars. Let’s look at the moon. I think it’s a full moon tonight, right? And that’s our thing.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you in thirty minutes.”

“Thank you.” My heart soars.

Mia is waiting under a coconut tree; her profile bathed in moonlight. Once I get to her, she turns to look at me, but she doesn’t wave, and she doesn’t smile. She looks like the Mia I remember from our teenage years, the Mia I remember from endless nights hanging out at the beach.

“Hey,” I say. “I brought two Cokes.”

“I brought two Cokes as well.”

We laugh because that was our thing. We’d go down to the beach, drink Coke, eat chocolate, and stare at the stars. We both take a seat in the sand, timidly at first, like this is a first date or a breakup meeting.

“Do you know that I have not gone stargazing in forever, not since you left town?” she says.

“Well, I guess I was the one who always told you the constellations,” I say.

“Yeah, you were.” She lets out a long sigh, and we sit in the silence for a bit.

“This feels really nice, being here with you. Thank you for meeting me.”

“I think we’re stuck in the past,” she says. “I think we have such a beautiful friendship, and we are so close, and we’ve spent so much time together through the years. I think we’ve both spent too many years reminiscing about how great and how perfect everything between us was, and I think we’re stuck. I think we need to move past that.” She plays with her fingers, and her foot taps in time to a song that I can’t hear. I can feel her fading away from me. It feels like she’s describing a memory of another lifetime. Like we no longer exist. Like we’re no longer Lukey and Mi-Mi.

My heart sinks because it feels like I’m losing her, her friendship, and the part of me that makes us, us, and I don’t want to lose it.

I can’t lose it. I will fight for her.

I will fight for us.

I will fight for the melody that has provided the soundtrack to our lives.

I don’t say anything. Instead, I watch as a crab crawls along the sand and digs its way into a hole. I look over, and she’s staring at me—her face beautiful, innocent, kind, angelic. I want to grab her hand and hold it. I just want to touch her. I want to feel that connection with her, but I don’t know what to say. Words will not come because a part of me agrees with her. Those years were the best of my life. She was the best part of my life, and yet I don’t know how to tell her that.

“You want to go for a swim?” I ask, standing up, needing to move, not wanting to remain stagnant, not wanting the feelingsto build up—to make me upset, to make me hurt, to make me lash out.

“Swimming? It’s night,” she says.

“So? Let’s do it.”

“I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“We don’t need a bathing suit.”

“You really asking me to go skinny-dipping?”

“Well, I’m not asking you to fuck in the ocean for the first time,” I say, laughing. “But, yeah, let’s go skinny-dipping.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I dare you,” I say. “I double-dog dare you.”

“You can’t double-dog dare me, Luke. That’s not fair.” She shakes her head. “You’re really not going to say anything to what I just said?”

“Maybe I’ll know what to say after I dip in the water.”

“Fine,” she says.