I don’t move.
“Anna? Come on, you just need some fresh air, then you’ll feel better.” Elise smiles, reassuring me, “It was the fifth shot, wasn’t it? What am I always telling you? You’ve got to pace yourself.”
I nod, and follow her out toward the exit. She grabs a bottle of water from the bar as we pass, and then the night air is cool against my face. I pause, disoriented, as the blast of music and voices recedes behind the closed doors, replaced with the hum from other bars on the main street—traffic and passers-by, and the distant crashing of the ocean.
“Easy there,” Elise murmurs, steering me carefully across the concrete walkway and onto the sand. “Give me some warning if you’re going to barf, okay?”
She bends, undoing the straps of my wedge sandals in turn and gently lifting my feet out of them as I lean on her for balance. She straightens. “Rule one: Suede and vomit don’t mix.” She grins at me, and I blink back, still dazed. In the dark out here, her eyes are almost violet, large and luminous.
Elise rolls them good-naturedly. “Man, you really went hard tonight.” She kicks off her own shoes and then scoops both pairs in one hand, taking my arm in the other. “You good to walk?”
I nod again, and we slowly strike out across the sand, heading toward the dark stretch of ocean.
“Nik texted me again,” Elise chatters, swinging our sandals back and forth. “I swear, it’s like the tenth time tonight. Wanting to know where we’ll be, what time I’ll get there . . . It’s kind of tacky, I mean, he seemed kind of cool to begin with, that whole ‘lord and master of all he surveys’ thing, but I don’t know, he kind of gives me the creeps now.” She pauses. “You know he did this weird role-play thing, when we were hooking up? He got off on the whole domination thing, you know, holding me down, trying to make me beg. I mean, I like getting thrown around as much as the next girl, but this was different. I don’t know . . .”
We come to a stop just on the shoreline, where the soft, cool sand turns damp from the slow sweep of the waves. Elise crumples to the ground, her legs folded beneath her. I sit, hugging my knees to my chest. “Feeling better?” she asks, concerned. “Here.” She unscrews the cap and passes the water bottle to me. I take a sip. It’s warm but clear in the back of my throat.
“So . . .” Elise pauses. She sifts sand through her fingertips. “You going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“What?” I flinch. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Elise fixes me with an even gaze. “C’mon, Anna. You can’t pull this with me. Something’s been up with you all day. You barely said a word on the beach, and then you took that nap all afternoon—”
“I had a headache!” I protest weakly.
“And now you’re drinking like you want to pass out,” Elise finishes. “I know you, remember? Better than anyone. This isn’t you.”
I don’t speak for a minute, watching the dark shadows of the waves. The words are there, jumbled up in my mind, but I can’t bring myself to say them out loud. To accuse her, based on what—a bad feeling in the base of my spine, a mixed-up necklace, a shiver? It’s crazy. They wouldn’t do this to me. She wouldn’t do this.
“I guess I’m just stressed,” I say at last, looking down. I trace circles in the sand, pushing the grains into spiraling shapes. “College, and school ending. What happens after, you know?”
“That’s ages away.”
“It’s not.” I shake my head. “Graduation’s in a couple of months, then we all go off in different directions. This could be the last time we’re all together like this.”
Elise reaches out and squeezes my hand. “It’s okay. Some things aren’t meant to last.”
My eyes must have widened in horror because she laughs and says, “Not us. We’re set, remember? You and me, doddering around an old estate somewhere in our nineties. Grey Gardens-ing it up.”
“Turbans and paste jewelry,” I agree quietly.
She grins, “With fifteen cats. And a hot pool boy.”
I laugh. It feels like a release somehow. Relief. And I realize the worst part of my stupid suspicions wasn’t even Tate, and his terrible betrayal, but the idea of losing Elise. Of her being gone from my life, cut away and buried for good.
Elise squeezes my hand again. “It’ll be okay, I promise,” she tells me. “It’s you and me. I don’t know about the others—maybe Mel, and Lamar, and AK and everyone come back every holiday, and we hang out and visit each other, and nothing changes. Or maybe we drift apart and don’t speak until our ten-year reunion. Shit happens, you know? You can’t control it. But us? We’re forever.”
I lace my fingers through hers in response. “I know it’s stupid,” I say, feeling as foolish for the things I haven’t said as the things I did. “It’s high school. We always couldn’t wait for it to be done. But now, everything so close . . . I like how it is, right now. I don’t want anything to change.”
“But it does,” Elise says softly. “Everything changes. But it can be better. Think about it, if we both get into USC . . . you and me, California. We can hang out on the beach like this all the time, and not die of hypothermia.”
I smile, leaning to rest my head on her shoulder. I never told her I’ve spent these last weeks split, wavering between schools on the East and West Coasts, between proximity to her or to Tate. Now I’m glad I didn’t make a big deal of it, because it doesn’t feel like a choice anymore. Of course I’m going with her. Of course.
“Do you love me?” I ask, repeating our familiar refrain.
“You know I do.”
“How much?”
“Miles and miles.”
• • •
We sit on the beach until the world slowly stops spinning on its axis, then head back across the sand to the bar. I’m almost not surprised to find Melanie waiting outside the back exit, pacing back and forth and clutching her phone.
She sees us approach, and rushes up to meet us. “Where were you guys?” she demands, “I’ve been texting and calling. Why didn’t you tell me you were going somewhere?” she adds, a whining note to her voice. “I thought something happened.”
“Jesus, we were gone ten minutes,” Elise says, and sighs. “Do you want me to wear a tracking chip?”