“I only wish I was that creative.”
We both laughed, and the tension that had been hanging around me since the start of Christmas break had thawed a bit. When the light turned green, I sighed, taking it slower than before as I continued our cruise.
“So. Baths, huh?”
I couldn’t help myself.
Fucking masochist — as if you didn’t know that by now.
B nodded, untucking her legs and resting her feet on the dash again. “Yep. I do my best thinking submerged in a tub of hot water. Bubbles are an added bonus.”
She winked.
I tried really hard not to get a boner.
“Baths are to you as driving is to me.”
“Mm-hmm,” she agreed. “Which brings us to the purple elephant in the car.” She leaned her head back, eyeing me as the smile slipped from my face. “Care to tell me the reason we’re driving around this dead ass town in the middle of the night?”
My stomach tightened at the question, at the way it felt for someone to point a flashlight into my darkness and demand to know what’s there.
“I don’t know, B,” I said after a moment. “I just… ever since school let out, I can’t stop thinking about how fast everything is changing. I mean, it’s Christmas, my last Christmas home with my family. In six months, I’ll no longer be in high school. In eight, I’ll no longer be in Florida. It feels like my entire life I’ve been aching to grow up and move on, and now that it’s all here, I’m dreading it.”
My rib cage squeezed in on my lungs.
“It’s too soon,” I croaked. “I’m not ready. I’m… scared.”
I took a sharp left turn toward the beach, knowing then that I needed it. I needed the sand between my toes, the sea breeze in my hair, the sound of the waves to sooth my thoughts.
“It’s okay to be scared,” B whispered.
“Is it?” I challenged, parking the Jeep in a free spot in front of a beach bar.
I rolled down my window to check the parking meter, making sure I didn’t need to pay, and when I verified it was free this time of night, I sighed, resting my elbow on the window panel.
“I’ve always been so sure of everything. Confident. And here I am at one of the most exciting times of my life and I feel like hiding.”
Admitting it aloud felt like trying to eat mud.
B rolled her window down, too, so I cut the engine. Immediately, the distant sound of waves rolling in against the shore behind the bar filtered in, and I swear we both visibly relaxed, the way you do when you get home after a long day.
“I think it’s normal, to feel both excited and terrified of the future,” B said after a while. “And I’d be willing to bet every senior goes through what you are right now. You’re excited to get out of high school, but also sad, because as much as it’s sucked, it’s been fun, too. I mean, look at you — you’re this big basketball star and you’re playing your last season, your hot little girlfriend is a junior, so you know she’s not coming with you, and you’re going from a familiar city and state to one you’ve only visited before now.”
My stomach soured at the mention of Jenna.
Because I realized in that moment, I hadn’t really thought of her. Not like I should have been. I didn’t think of her when I texted B, or the entire past hour I’d had her in my car. And when I voiced my fears… leaving her wasn’t one of them.
That had to be a bad sign.
“What I’m saying is, it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling,” B continued. “I’d be more concerned if you weren’t scared.”
For a minute we were silent, and I ran both hands back through my hair.
“What if I fail? What if I hate college and all the pressure and I just crack?”
“You won’t.”
“But what if I do?”
“You won’t, Jamie,” she said again, leaning over the console. She said it with such conviction, such honest belief that it made my eyes water.
She wouldn’t speak again until I looked at her, and when I did, my next breath was a fiery one — smoky and difficult to consume. Her gray eyes shone in the bit of moonlight creeping in through the windshield, her curls soft and frizzy and wild, and I wanted to trace the constellations the freckles on her cheeks made, just like the stars in the sky.
“Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about you,” she said. “I know that when you want something — truly want it — there’s no chance in hell you’ll ever give up on it. Like when you wanted me to go watch one of your stupid basketball games, even though you knew how much I hated it and you found new ways to pester me every day until I finally gave in.”
She laughed a little at that, trying to lighten the mood. What she didn’t realize was that in that moment, staring into her moonlit eyes, I was having an epiphany.
And when she cleared her throat and leaned in a little closer, I nearly passed out from the strength it took to keep from kissing her.
“I know how much your family means to you, how much the firm means to you, and since you never play fair,” she teased, “you don’t have to worry about not succeeding.”
I tried to smile, tried to shake off every thought that was assaulting me then — which no longer included anything about high school or college. But B reached out, her hand gently resting on top of mine, and I let out a shaky breath through my nose as I focused on that point of contact.
“In all seriousness, you’re not going to fail. Because that’s not who you are. And I think once your feet hit California, you’re going to buzz to life with the energy there and use that to drive you forward. And you’re going to drink too much and stay up too late, but you’re also going to study hard and work harder, and one day you’ll be back here, running the firm, with the wife and kids you’ve always wanted.”
I didn’t miss the way her eyes flicked down at that, and it made me wish more than anything that I could jump inside her head and know if she felt what I was feeling, too.
“And I’m going to be sitting right here saying, ‘I told you so.’”
I angled myself toward her, then, unable to resist the pull of gravity any longer. And with that slight adjustment, we were just inches away from something that would ruin us both. I knew it. I know now that she knew it.
I looked at her lips, and I wanted to taste them so badly, I didn’t care what the consequences were.
“I hope you’re right,” I finally whispered.
I swallowed, turning my hand where hers hovered over it. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to lace my fingers with hers and feel what we could be if we gave in to that moment.
But she backed away quickly, forcing a smile and a playful wink. “Always am.”
It was like a rubber band snapping, a painful little sting to knock me back to reality. I think I smiled at her. I think I looked out the window. I know for sure I turned on a new playlist, mostly because if I didn’t have something to distract me, I was going to do something stupid.
It was almost dawn when I turned the Jeep on without asking if B was ready to go home. Regardless of her answer, I knew we both needed to get back.
When we pulled into her driveway, I let the Jeep idle, wishing the universe could give me just a few more hours of darkness.