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“There’s nothing to tell. Like I said.” She tossed back the rest of her fruity alcoholic slushie and stuck the umbrella behind her ear. “You know I really like peach-flavored stuff.”
Gem pointed to what used to be in Sam’s glass as evidence.
“He started calling me that one day, and I guess… I don’t know.” Sam picked at the comforter. “It stuck.”
“It stuck. That’s for sure,” Bronte said around sips of her drink.
“Peaches is adorable,” Laney added.
Gem flipped onto her back, lining her legs up against the wall. “The fact that you brought him here at all says everything we need to know.”
Sam grabbed her next drink. “All you need to know for what?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, Samantha. We are one and the same when it comes to this,” Gem said and then backtracked. “Or, we used to be one and the same. And I know no one listens to any advice I ever give, but—” she eyed Sam, her head upside down “—I wasted a lot of time ignoring how I felt about Jason. You’re going to be real mad at yourself if you waste any more time with that man out there.”
“We don’t have any time. That’s the problem.”
“Because you’re going to Texas?” Laney guessed, and when Sam nodded, Bronte waved at herself.
“Look at what happened to Chris and me. We were across the country, and we figured it out.”
“Yeah, but wasn’t it terrible?”
Bronte popped the cherry from her drink into her mouth. “Yes, and it was also worth it. So, maybe you should start thinkingyes, andinstead ofno, but.”
Gem righted herself. “Whoa.”
“That was really deep,” Laney whispered solemnly.
Sam considered Bronte’s words carefully.Yes, she was moving to Texas at the end of the month,andcould she also be with Mike? “How, though?”
Because her friends could always read her mind, Bronte said, “You can figure out a way.”
Laney shifted so her feet hung off the bed. “You’re only in Austin for a year. You could do long-distance.”
“Or you could ask him to move with you,” Gem said, like that wasn’t the scariest option in the world. “What’s the worst that could happen? He’d say no?”
“We barely know each other.”
“Technically, haven’t you known each other since you were kids?” Laney asked.
“Biblically, she means.” Gem smacked Sam’s leg. “Right?”
“I mean we’ve known each other as adults in this particular relationship for a few weeks. That’s not the basis for asking someone to move their whole life to another state.”
“Why not?” Bronte asked, her straw between her lips.
“Youare asking me that? You, who would write a literal agenda for this chat if we allowed you to because you like order and predictability so much, are asking me why not invite a man who is supposed to be my summer fling to uproot his life and move in with me?”
“Correct,” Bronte answered before slurping her drink, rattling the ice at the bottom, while Laney and Gem broke up into a fit of giggles.
Sam got up, waving her nearly empty glass in the air. She was not drunk enough for this conversation. “Again, I point to Exhibit A, to you and Chris. You didn’t want to move to LA with him.”
“Well, actually—”
Sam pointed a finger at her. “Don’t you ‘well, actually’ me. Did you or did you not want to move to LA with the man you are marrying?”
“We live there in the summers. Like people who move to Florida in the winter.”
