by Kate Brian
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insisted on dressing like she'd never left the beach.
"Don't remind me," Kai lamented. "When can I go back?"
"Hello? We just got here!" Eva told her, shoving Kai with her elbow.
"Ow!" Kai rubbed at the spot dramatically. "Since when did you get loud and violent?" she joked.
"Wesleyan is having a positive effect on me," she said with a shrug.
"It's having some kind of effect, but I don't know if it's good," Kai said. She was smiling.
"Oh, no, it's good," Eva said with a grin. "Would you guys believe that yesterday I actually raised my hand in class?"
"No!" her friends said in unison, their mouths dropping open.
"Yuh-huh!" Eva said, preening. "I didn't get called on and I almost wet my pants, but I have high hopes for the future."
Mandy and Debbie laughed, shaking their heads, and Kai flung her arm over Eva's shoulders. "Our little overachiever."
"What about you?" Mandy said to Kai. "Our volleyball coach can't stop talking about UCLA's freshman wonder."
"Yeah. I'm famous," Kai said with a shrug, then she took a huge bite of her burger. "Don't worry, though. I won't forget you guys when I'm on the Olympic team."
"And I won't forget you guys when I go to Paris for the fall runway shows," Debbie put in.
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"And I won't forget you guys when I'm elected the first female president," Mandy told them.
"How does Eric feel about being the first husband?" Kai asked. "Or the first man? Or... how would that even work?"
"I don't know," Mandy said with a laugh, blushing over the mere mention of him. "Maybe we'll let him make up his own title."
She was supposed to head over to Eric's after seeing her friends, and she couldn't wait to get her hands on him. It had been two whole weeks since his last trip from Villanova to Princeton and Mandy was suffering from withdrawal, both physical and emotional. Her second sexual encounter with Eric had gone much better than the first and since then, whenever they got around each other, well, let's just say they made up for lost time.
Mandy had never thought she was capable of becoming a sex goddess, but she kind of was. Not that she'd ever tell anyone that.
"So what about you?" Debbie said to Eva. "We all said we wouldn't forget you. What are you going to do and then not forget us?"
At that moment Riley walked through the front door and grinned when he saw Eva and her friends. Eva's heart did a few backflips.
"I don't know," Eva said giddily. "Get married?"
"What!?" her friends blurted. Debbie dropped her hand on the table and sent a fork careening across the restaurant. 278
"Well, you guys ... we love each other, and we know we want to be together, so . . . yeah. We're engaged," Eva said, grinning so wide it hurt. Riley approached, his giddy expression matching her own. Neither one of them had been able to stop smiling since he'd officially popped the question that morning.
"Shut up!" Mandy said loudly, slapping Eva's hand from across the table.
"Omigod, I am going to be the last one of us to have sex," Debbie said, slumping down in her seat.
If she had thought Ardsmore was devoid of worthy men, FIT was a veritable wasteland. There were plenty of great guys on campus, but unfortunately they were, for the most part, same-sex oriented. Debbie and her friends had recently taken to hanging out at all the NYU watering holes to meet people, but so far she'd yet to find anyone worthy of rebreaking the tattoo rule. And this time she was sticking to it. No pitter-patter of the heart, no sweaty palms, no true love equalled no tattoo.
"Don't worry, Deb. We're gonna wait till we graduate, so you have three and a half years to get someone to sleep with you," Eva said archly.
"Ha, ha," Debbie shot back.
"Me-ow!" Kai said.
"See? I'm like a whole new person," Eva joked.
"Hey, guys," Riley said, arriving at the end of their table.
"Riley! You're taking the plunge, huh?!" Kai said, standing so that Eva could get up and throw her arms around
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Riley's neck. He kissed her right there in the middle of the diner like he hadn't seen her just a few hours ago when he'd dropped her off at her apartment. He'd driven from Yale to Wesleyan to pick her up, and all they had talked about on the long drive was their engagement and Riley's vow to wait until he was married and how Eva's existence was making that vow deliriously hard to keep.
"Um, you guys? You're gonna make me heave," Debbie told them.
"Yeah, God," Mandy added with a smile. "What would Mrs. Treemont say?"
Eva pulled away from Riley and they both grinned down at her friends.
"I think she'd say that the panel split her money on the two most deserving candidates," Riley told them.
"The two most deserving candidates with the greatest willpower she's ever seen," Eva added, lacing her fingers through Riley's.
"If you guys are really going to wait three and a half years, then I agree with that assessment," Kai said, dunking a fry in her ketchup. "No one deserved that scholarship more than you."
"All right, enough sex talk," Debbie said, sitting up straight. She snapped her fingers as the waiter walked by. "Garcon! A round of chocolate milk shakes to celebrate our friends' engagement!" she said haughtily.
"Coming right up," the cute waiter answered with a lopsided smile.
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A few minutes later the five friends were seated around the table, clinking glasses and giving themselves chocolate mustaches as Riley retold the story of his proposal. Mandy daydreamed of the day when Eric might do the same, Kai tried to envision a scenario in which she would ever say yes to spending the rest of her life with a guy, and Debbie quietly, surreptitiously got the waiter's phone number.
Eva smiled as she looked around the table at each of her closest friends. There was no going back to high school, no going back to sharing every little thing and that kind of close friendship that blossomed when people saw each other every single day.
But that was okay. Eva still loved her friends and she knew they loved her. They were just moving forward. Changing. And change was good.
"To Eva and Riley!" Debbie said, holding up her half- empty glass once Riley's story was finished.
Everyone knocked their glasses together, their cheers filling Eva's heart with a happy warmth she would cherish forever.
"To Eva and Riley!"
