Page 4 of The Last Special Thing

CHAPTER THREE

Afew days after graduation, Amelia, Weston, and Madisson were outside the freshly painted white door of Max’s new apartment. The location was unbeatable, right on the main strip of Pacific Beach and five blocks from the water. If this were her place, she’d never be home. She felt a calling to water; it’s why she loved being out on her parents' boat. The crash of the waves, the tang of the salt in the air. She resonated with the unpredictability of nature. One moment, the waters would be calm. Next, it would tear down sandcastles. It was beautiful and destructive, and no one judged it for that. It was the same draw that brought her to acting: to remain the same person yet be viewed in a million different ways.

Her feelings about nature were one of the many differences between her and Weston. For their one-month anniversary, she had suggested a beach picnic. He had agreed to it, then spent the entire time complaining about the sand being messy and continually brushing off his pants. By the end of the date, he suggested that they should eat by her pool next time.

Weston liked things to be controlled and orderly. Amelia had told Madisson over the course of their relationship that Weston was the yin to her yang. Sometimes, though, if she was being truly honest, she found he could be a bore. Who doesn’t feel the magic of the beach?

Despite their differences, breaking up with him had never crossed her mind. He was well off, and MIT would guarantee him a life of success. He would be the type of man who would take his wife to Tuscany on a Tuesday. She wanted that life, and Weston would be the man who could provide it for her.

She didn’t vocalize these thoughts, though, similar to how Madisson never said Max was the reason she gave up New York. The girls had an understanding. They didn’t need to say the ugly parts out loud.

“Hey, Babe!” Madisson bounded into the apartment and greeted Max with a long kiss. Weston moved around their embrace in the living room and took a seat on the blue-grey couch. Amelia followed and sat next to him, leaving inches between them. Madisson pulled back from Max after another minute and skipped over to the recliner. She plopped down cross-legged and put her chin on her fist.

“Can Weston get a G, please?” Madisson cooed to Max.

“Yeah, Babe.”

Max’s eyes were glazed, and his blond hair was buzzed. Tattoos stretched up his pale arms; fresh ones appeared every time Amelia saw him. He bragged about how cheap they were. He got inked in the garage of a friend of a friend. His ears were gauged, and a ring pinched his nose. He was the type of thin associated with self-neglect. Amelia could probably kick his ass in the gym. She smirked.

Madisson was his opposite. Her black hair hung to her belly button in mermaid-like waves. She was short and curvy, with brown doe eyes, long lashes, and smooth lips. Men wanted to help her: pay for her coffee, open her door, give her answers to a midterm. Once, a stranger riding a tandem bike offered her a ride, which she accepted on a whim. Madisson had pride about her assumed helplessness; it was a game to her to see how far men would go for her. Amelia admired her.

In the kitchen, Max scooped marijuana out of a jar, weighed it, then dumped the fuzzy green clumps into a ziplock bag. Max returned to the living room and exchanged the baggie for Weston’s twenty-dollar bill.

“Thanks, man.” Weston shoved the bag into his jacket pocket.

Madisson reached for the remote and turned on a crime show rerun as Max ducked back into the kitchen.

“Oh! I’ve seen this one!” Madisson said, clapping her hands together. A smug smile crept up her face as she turned to Weston and Amelia. “You’ll never guess who the killer is.”

A few minutes later, Max returned with a blue and purple swirl pipe packed with weed.

“Here you go.” Madisson leaned out of the recliner to hand Max a Hello Kitty lighter.

“Thanks, Babe.”

Amelia tried not to roll her eyes at the incessant “babe” ing, wishing Max would go to college just to add another word to his vocabulary.

Max circled the top of the weed in the pipe, burning it methodically. He pressed his mouth to the hole in the pipe and inhaled, his chest expanding. Puff, puff, then with stoner etiquette, he passed it to Madisson. She inhaled, closed her eyes, then released the skunk smell as if the exhale relaxed her.

Quiet dread wrapped around Amelia, knowing it would be her turn soon.

Amelia had smoked weed on occasion, always with Weston. It wasn’t something she understood. Everyone else would crack up laughing at the stupidest things, and she was never in on the joke.

For that reason, when Weston handed her the pipe, she sucked quickly to get it over with. The pipe glowed faintly, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. She handed it back to Max, feeling like a fool.

“Only ash left.” He looked at her quizzically, and she averted her gaze.

She scooted to Weston, removing the space between them. Resting her cheek against his shirt, she sought an ounce of comfort from him.

Weston neither leaned in nor pushed her off. Instead, his attention drifted to a poster on the wall, a vintage-looking print of a woman in a yellow bodysuit.

“Is that Uma Thurman?” Amelia asked, following his gaze.

“Yep.” Max returned with the pipe filled again, and a knot formed in the pit of her stomach. She started planning out her excuse to skip the next round.

“How’d you know that?” Weston tilted his head down toward Amelia. They had never enjoyed the same taste in films.

“Fall Out Boy wrote a song about her, so I looked her up.”