“You don’t have to convince me.” Em flops backward and stretches, her shirt riding up over her already-golden stomach. “I’m a convert. Oh, I’m dreading getting back to the cold.”
“Sucks to be you,” I agree. She laughs.
“I still can’t believe this is the first time we’ve met! I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
“I know!” I exclaim, stripping down to my navy bikini. “I was scared this would be totally awkward. I worried all the way on the flight I’d hate you.”
“Me too,” she confesses, peeling off her skirt. “Or that we just wouldn’t click, and then we’d be stuck in a hotel room together all weekend.”
“Watching pay-per-view and raiding the minibar just for something to do,” I finish. Then I look at her scarlet bikini and shake my head. “I still can’t get over how different you look. There were photos of you up on the Raleigh website, and now . . .”
“I know.” She blushes. “But I think I like it. People treat me differently now; they don’t just assume I’m serious and boring.”
“Right! And now guys act like I have an actual brain instead of just br**sts.” I pause. “Or, at least, the ones who haven’t caught the video do.”
“Oh, Tash.” Em reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Will was a bastard, but they’re not all like that.”
I shake away all thoughts of him. “Say that again.”
“Bastard? Oh, not you too!” She makes a face. “Ryan loved making me swear. I don’t know what it is about my accent.” Her eyes get kind of sad, but she keeps talking before I can say anything. “Anyway, is Tash OK? Or do you prefer Natasha?”
“Natasha is best,” I decide. “Or Tash. But Tasha is like someone else now. It’s weird, how it just stopped feeling like my name.”
“I think it’s great.” Em lies down, a hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “You get to reinvent yourself, how other people see you.”
“And what about you — is it Em or Emily?”
She pauses. “I don’t know if I’ll get a choice, but for now I like Em. Em’s the girl who has the fun, spontaneous adventures.”
“Like taking off for spring break in Key West.” I hold up my hand for fake high fives. She whoops and hits my palm.
“Spring break, baby!”
We fall back down, giggling.
“But seriously” — Em props herself up on one arm — “what exactly are we doing here? It seems rather extravagant just to take a holiday.”
“But we need it,” I insist. “I need the time to recover, and you need the time to figure out you’ve got to take the internship in L.A.”
“Tash!” Em’s eyes cloud over again. “We’ve been through this. I want the law job!”
“I know.” For somebody so smart, she sure is being dumb. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t want the film gig too.” And I have forty-eight hours to convince her, before she goes back to Oxford and snaps into old Emily mode. I have a feeling I wouldn’t like old Emily much.
“You of all people should understand,” she scolds me. “I can’t pretend to be somebody I’m not. That was never the point of all this.”
“I know,” I repeat, my voice totally sweet. “Which is why you need to admit you want to explore the film thing more. So you’re not lying to yourself.”
I wanted this vacation as breathing space for me, but the minute Em filled me in on her career crisis, I knew I had to do something. She may not see it yet, but this weekend could set her whole path in life. It’s up to me to make sure that path leads to happiness, cute boys, and creativity, and not a nervous breakdown by the time she’s twenty.
I fix her with my best knowing look. She doesn’t budge. “Whatever.” I roll over and make like I don’t care. “But you’re the one who keeps telling me about how this switch makeover thing is about finding new sides of our identity and, like, not letting other people’s expectations define our identities.” I’m quoting her own emails back at her, and she totally knows it. “So I’m just going to chill here, and then we’re going to dinner and maybe a club. But if you feel like emailing Lowell and telling him you’ve changed your mind, just let me know.”
Em scowls. “I won’t.”
“Whatever you say.” I hide a grin. She’s totally going to crack — I can tell.
I bust out my blue dress again for our night out, safe in the knowledge that what was kind of trashy by Oxford standards is practically a nun’s habit when it comes to Key West.
“And, anyway, who gives a damn about being sexy or not,” Em declares, linking her arm through mine and pulling me into the bar with nothing more than a quick flash of our fake IDs. “It’s not like we’re going to pick up a guy and take him back for a threesome!”
I giggle. “Tell that to them! Drunk college dudes aren’t exactly rational.”
We blink, adjusting to the dim light. I figured the bar was kind of upscale, in sleek blue and silver, but still it’s packed with rowdy groups of guys downing shots and girls stripped to bikini tops gyrating on the dance floor.
I pause, the noise and loud hip-hop beats overwhelming me. Everywhere I look there are flashing lights and drunk, squealing girls. “Maybe I should have rethought this whole spring break thing.” I was only away a couple of months, but somehow I forgot it was like this. Guys looking you up and down so blatantly, girls glaring at the competition. I gulp. “We could do that pay-per-view thing and —”
“No way.” Em pulls me firmly toward the bar. “We’re reacclimatizing you to your old habitat.”
“We’re what?”
“This is the horse, and you’re getting back on it.”
I should have figured Em wasn’t to be disobeyed; she has us perched at the bar with a couple of drinks in under ten seconds.
“Nonalcoholic,” she yells at the campiest barman I’ve even seen. His shirt is sheer and stretched so tightly across his chest you can see every ridge of muscle. Em turns to me. “No offense, but this isn’t the sort of place I want to get drunk in.”
I clock at least three jocks in football shirts looking at her hungrily. “Good call.”
“So what shall we toast to?” Em looks at me over the fruity cocktails, her face flushed and glowing. I’m struck by how far she’s come — not far enough, for sure, but still she’s got a look in her eyes I swear I never saw in any of those old photos: happy, relaxed.