The night I made a commitment to myself to be happy and grateful and well-dressed and brave.
It was the beginning of the end of everything.
But it was also the beginning of everything.
That things turned shitty a few months later didn’t negate the fact that I loved those words, that I wanted to live by them.
“I’ll come for an hour,” I say.
“Yay!” Willow says. “I was thinking of live streaming it. And since you were in the camping video, you can be in this one too!”
I give her a look.
“Or not,” she says.
So just like that, I’m doing it. I’m going back to the place where everything changed.
Luke looks so completely unbothered that I feel a swell of rage at him, and that fuels my determination to go and show him how equally unbothered I am. Because that’s what everything is between us, isn’t it? A game. A farce.
On Friday night, Willow comes over to my house to get ready. She picks out a denim miniskirt for me and a flowy, thin-strapped polka-dotted monstrosity of a top that I never wear. It reminds me of the opened wings of a ladybug.
“Monstrosity?” she repeats, shocked. “Girl. No, this is perfect.”
“It’s so ... hippie-ish.”
“So? You can be hippie-ish. You can be anything for just one night.”
She goes with a long maxi-dress herself and gives herself gorgeous beach curls. Then she does our makeup. By the time she’s done, I look like a glamorous hippie version of myself and she looks like royalty from some sunny, exotic island. Because we live near each other and we got ready together, I drive us both to the lake. I’m also not planning on drinking, so I can be Willow’s ride back.
As we pull up to the lake, there are more cars than I’d expected.
“I thought it was just for staff,” I say.
“Maybe it snowballed,” Willow says easily.
We park in a line of cars under some big leafy trees and make our way to the “beach” part of the lake. The music is relatively quiet, so we won’t get a police visit, but people are laughing and talking and clearly having a good time. They are also decidedly not people from work, but I try not to dwell on that.
Besides, it’s not the people who are the problem. It’s the place. The memories it brings.
Before I can fall into a spiral, someone grabs my arm and I whirl around to find Luke, but I barely have time to say anything before his mouth is on mine. The kiss is wet and sloppy, and I step back from him.
“Are you drunk?” I say, with just a trace of hysteria in my voice.
“It’s Friday!” Brett says, appearing out of nowhere, too, and putting his arms around Willow and then me. “Let the man relax a little.”
So Brett is obviously also drunk.
I shrug him off and turn back to Luke, eyeing the can of beer in his hand. “How much have you had?”
Luke pushes his hand through his hair. “Didn’t count,” he says.
I drop my voice a little lower. “Did you drive here?”
“It’s Friday. Let my man relax a little,” Luke parrots.
First, what he said doesn’t even make sense. Second, what the hell?
I look around, wanting to grab someone, to explain to them, but there’s only one person in the world I would have grabbed if I ever found Luke drinking. And he’s not here.
