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“So,” she said. “I wanted to apologize about last night.”
“For?” I asked. I needed to know if she remembered, and what she remembered.
She met my eyes. “For asking you to kiss me. I wasn’t that drunk, Em. I remember.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’m just…sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. This breakup has been so weird, and I guess I am just lonely, and I’m sorry. I hope we can move past it.”
She twisted and twirled the bracelet around her fingers.
“Yeah, no, it’s fine,” I said. “No big deal.”
I was lying through my teeth, but I hoped that if we could never talk about it again, it would go away. I could forget about it. I’d forgotten about a lot of things in my life. Why should this be any different?
“Good,” she said, letting out a breath and smiling softly.
“Now that that’s over, I was wondering if you wanted to go to the beach this weekend? It’s supposed to be really hot,” she said.
I said that I did and we made plans and talked about work and she told me funny stories about Preston. All she needed to do was work for Preston’s parents for a while and she’d have enough saved up to maybe get her own apartment.
“Oh, and I have to stop by Linley’s on Sunday because Gray is moving in and I want to see if they need any help,” I said.
Linley had told me they’d hired movers, but they’d still need help unpacking and so forth. Gray lived about an hour away with roommates, so he wasn’t bringing a lot of big stuff like furniture with him, but he had all his woodworking stuff that needed to go to the apartment or Linley’s parent’s garage.
“I’m happy to come along and help,” she said. “We should bring them a housewarming present.”
So many of my friends were doing big things lately.
“We can go in on a present together, if you want,” she said.
“Good plan. Just let me know and I can send you my half.”
Natalie nodded and looked up at the clock.
“It’s getting late, I should get home.” She was giving off the exact opposite energy as last night. Like she couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
“I’ll drive you,” I said, standing up.
“No, it’s fine, I can just pay Gretchen,” she said, pulling out her phone.
“No, that’s silly. I’ll take you.”
She relented and I drove her home, playing the radio to fill the silence.
She didn’t hug me when she left this time either. As if she’d put up a boundary between us. That was fine. It was fine.
We were fine.
* * *
“Why didn’t you buy a pump?” Natalie asked on Saturday as we both attempted to blow up inner tubes in the beach parking lot.
“I didn’t think it was going to be that bad,” I said, rubbing my numb lips. “My parents always blew these things up, I guess I never thought about how much effort it took.”
Finally, we got the tubes inflated enough that we could safely float, and dragged them down to the sand with the rest of our stuff.
It was so hot out that our plan was to spend most of the day in the water cooling off.
