One Last Time

by Beth Reekles

  I stopped in my tracks, pulling my hand from his before he noticed how clammy it had become.

  Noah stopped walking, too, turning around with a laugh. His face was stiff, though, and he couldn’t quite meet my eyes, looking past me at the parking lot instead. “What, too mushy? I thought you wanted me to open up more, be more honest, not all macho-macho and never talking about anything emotional.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  Noah’s cheeks flushed pink. “I mean, like, you know. Elle.” He cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wasn’t serious. I mean.” Gulp. “Moving in together’d be a big step. We’re not there yet. I was just joking around.”

  This should be where I told him I got in. Hell, this should be where I told him I’d actually applied in the first place on the impossible chance that I might end up in Boston with him. He had no idea, but here he was talking about how nice it would be to have me around, how we could live together.

  The idea of Noah wanting to make such a big commitment and live with me should have made my heart do somersaults. I should have been squealing and throwing my arms around him and shouting, Surprise! We can! I can come to Boston!

  This was definitely where I should tell him.

  Especially when he looked so mortified that he’d suggested we live together in what was almost a throwaway comment and thought I was horrified at the very idea.

  “Elle?”

  Crap. Come on, Elle, say something. Tell him!

  I looked at Noah, focusing back on his face instead of staring right through him. And I said, “I think I left my curling iron on.”

  I didn’t think he bought it, but he said, “Text your dad. He can check for you.”

  I quickly pulled out my phone and pretended to send my dad a text, typing it out and then deleting it straightaway.

  “C’mon, we’re already late,” Noah said.

  “Yeah,” I said, shooting him a look, but a smile crept back onto my face. “And whose fault is that?”

  “What, like it’s my fault you look so damn good?”

  I fell back in step beside him and he bent to press a kiss to my neck. I laughed and pushed him off. “Don’t you dare! That’s what made us late in the first place.”

  “You know, technically, we wouldn’t be late if we didn’t show up at all….”

  “Noah Flynn, don’t even think about it. There is a big ol’ ice cream sundae in there with my name on it, and not even you and your cute butt can get in the way of that.”

  “My cute butt, huh?”

  I didn’t know how, even after over a year of being together, he could still make me blush by saying something like that, but I blushed nonetheless. Noah chuckled, wrapping his arm around me as we walked inside.

  * * *

  • • •

  Dining out with the Flynns was a pretty regular affair, but usually when we went out for a meal, my dad and brother were there, too. I’d thought it was a little weird that Lee and Noah’s mom, June, had made a point of inviting only me out for brunch today, but maybe it was because she’d invited Rachel, too. Maybe it was less of an “Elle” thing and more of a “Noah’s girlfriend” thing today.

  Even after more than a year, me being Noah’s girlfriend was still a new dynamic we were all getting used to.

  The rooftop restaurant they’d picked out was gorgeous. I felt underdressed in my jeans, my gaze lingering on a group of women in their early twenties who were laughing and drinking mimosas. I was glad I’d let Rachel persuade me to leave my hoodie behind and put some effort into doing my hair.

  We found the others easily enough, and as June got up to hug me hello, I said, “I’m so sorry we’re late. Traffic was awful, and we didn’t realize we’d have to stop for gas.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, smiling warmly as we took our seats.

  I heard Lee mutter, “Traffic? Really? That’s what she’s going with?”

  It was promptly followed by “Ouch!” as Noah stomped on his foot under the table.

  Once we’d ordered, I looked out at the view of the skyline. “This place is so perfect.”

  “We wanted to finally take you guys out someplace special to celebrate your graduation properly,” Matthew, Lee, and Noah’s dad, said.

  “Elle’s right,” Rachel gushed. “It’s so amazing here. Thank you for inviting me.”

  “I can’t believe we’ve actually graduated,” Lee said, shaking his head. “It’s so weird to think we won’t be going back to school in the fall. Like, that’s it. And now we’ve got the entire summer ahead of us—”

  “It’ll go quick,” Noah told us. “Believe me.”

  “Yeah, you kids better make the most of it,” Matthew said. “Any big plans for the summer?”

  “You mean aside from the beach house?” Lee laughed. “Actually, we were talking about going up this weekend, if that’s cool?”

  I looked at his parents with an expectant smile, waiting for them to nod and say, “Of course!” Because why wouldn’t they? Lee and I had been planning a long weekend at their family beach house for a couple weeks now. I’d gone there with the whole Flynn family every summer, but Lee and I had thought, now that graduation was out of the way, it would be cool to go just us guys, sneak some beers, blow off some steam after the craziness and intensity of senior year.

  But instead of smiling back and saying we could go, no problem, Matthew and June just looked at each other. June pursed her lips, looking worried. I watched her husband nod back at her and got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

  “What’s that look?” Noah asked. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” June said with forced breeziness and a stiff, too-wide smile as she looked around at us.

  Uh-oh, I thought. That wasn’t a mom smile. That was more like the kind of smile she wore when she was taking a call from the office.

  She drew a deep breath. “Actually, we have some news.”

  A creeping feeling of dread prickled over my skin.

  “We’ve decided to sell the beach house.”

  No way.

  This wasn’t happening.

  Today had already been a total roller coaster, but this was the worst part so far—and it wasn’t even one o’clock yet.

  “What? Why?” Noah burst out, while Lee shot to his feet, crying, “Hold on! What? Where’s this coming from?”

  “Lee, please, sit down,” his dad said firmly.

  Lee did, but gawped at his parents. “Wait a second—was this whole meal just to soften the blow and butter us up before you dropped that bomb?”

  “No!” June sat up straighter, then fiddled with her napkin. “Not…really…Kind of. Did it work?”

  “Using delicious meats and beverages to deliver bad news is wrong, Mom, just wrong. I thought we raised you better than that.”

  Noah elbowed him, to quit with the jokes. “You guys are serious about this? You’re actually selling the beach house? We’ve had it forever!”

  “We’ve been talking about it for a while now,” June said. “It just doesn’t make sense to hold on to it anymore, not with you kids going off to college. It’s like you said last year, Noah. You guys are going to start getting jobs and summer internships, moving around the country for college or to meet up with friends….A lot of things are changing, so it seems like the sensible thing to do.”

  “And we might as well tell you, because you kids will find out soon enough anyway,” Matthew said with a sniff, “the whole area is being redeveloped. If we sell up now, we could get four, maybe five times what it’s worth.”

  “You sound like a realtor,” Lee grumbled, sinking in his seat.

  “Honey,” June said, “I am a realtor. We didn’t make this decision lightly, you k
now. There are a lot of interested buyers, and that land is just too valuable to hold on to.”

  “The land?” Noah echoed. He leaned over the table, frowning. “They’re not going to knock it down, are they?”

  Matthew shrugged. “It’s very likely. We didn’t take you for the sentimental type, Noah.”

  He pouted, slouching in his seat. It made him look younger and was an entirely un-Noah-like look. In fact, he looked distinctly Lee-like in that moment. “We spent a lot of time at that place. It’s…it’s just weird to think it might not be there anymore,” he added stiffly.

  “Where are we meant to watch the Fourth of July fireworks now? Going to the beach house together is tradition. We swore we’d always go there every summer! You might as well cancel Christmas, Mom.”

  “Lee…”

  “With the money we make from the sale, we could buy another,” Matthew suggested, like that was anywhere near the point. “Some place where the paint isn’t peeling and the pool filter doesn’t break every year.”

  “No!” Lee cried. “I’m putting my foot down. You guys can’t sell.”

  “Yeah,” Noah piped up, shifting in his seat and crossing his arms just like Lee was doing. They’d always been so different, but right now, anyone could see they were brothers. They were a united front. “I’ve gotta go with Lee on this one. That house has been in the family for, what, eighty years? It was your grandma’s place, Dad! You can’t just replace it. You can’t sell it!”

  “If we’re voting here, I’m a solid no, too,” I said, raising my hand. The beach house felt like it was my place just as much as it was theirs. And Lee was right. It was tradition.

  I shot Rachel a look, even though she’d only ever been to the beach house for a few days last year, and she waved a hand around awkwardly. “Me too.”

  June sighed. “I’m sorry, guys. It’s already been decided.”

  The waitress chose that moment to appear with our plates of food.

  “Like hell it has,” Lee muttered to himself, but I heard him. He caught my eye and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him look so determined.

  If his parents thought we were going to let the beach house go without a fight, they were sadly mistaken.

  Chapter Three

  I’d thought the whole “Berkeley versus Harvard” thing was bad enough, but this?

  Lee sulked through the rest of our main course—and, to my astonishment, so did Noah. They both pulled faces and scowled and grumbled under their breath, stabbed at their food, and cast the occasional glare at their parents.

  They looked so alike in that moment that it was almost funny.

  Almost.

  Rachel, for her part, tried to keep the mood up. She tried to talk to Lee a few times, and when that didn’t work, she talked to his parents with an enthusiasm that bordered on manic as she tried to beat past the silence that had settled.

  I was still trying to get my head around it all.

  Selling the beach house? I never thought that would ever be an option. It was the beach house. It was where we’d spent pretty much every summer of our lives. Some of my best memories had happened there. It was where Lee and I first swam without floaties! Where I got stung by a jellyfish when I was nine and made Noah give me a piggyback ride all the way back to the house. Where Lee got his first kiss, with a Latina lifeguard from upstate whose name none of us could remember now.

  I glanced over at Noah, whose jaw was clenched. When we were growing up and Noah suddenly got too cool to hang out with us anymore, the beach house had been the one place where everything felt like it used to when we were still kids, where he’d hang out with us.

  It was where we’d first drunk beer, snuck from a cooler one Fourth of July when we were thirteen—when Noah was starting to become a cool guy at school, breaking all the rules, but not so cool he couldn’t include us in his little heist. (Although he had drawn the line at having us tag along to any parties he went to later that same summer.)

  They couldn’t just sell. That wasn’t how it worked. Not for a place like the beach house.

  It was so much more than just a piece of land, a bungalow with peeling paint and a dodgy pool filter.

  My phone rang. A flash of guilt shot through me for not putting it on silent, but instead of apologizing and shoving the phone back into my purse, I took the excuse to leave the table. “I’m just gonna take this. I’ll be right back.”

  I tried not to run away from the sour mood hanging over our table.

  It was an unknown number, but I answered anyway. “Hello?”

  “Hi. Is this Miss Evans?” a lady’s voice asked curtly.

  “Er, yes. Speaking.”

  “Miss Evans, this is Donna Washington from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Berkeley.”

  Oh crap. Crap, crap, crap!

  “Uh…”

  I gritted my teeth, my other hand coming up to clutch my cell phone. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder. Everyone was still sitting at the table, well out of earshot.

  “I’ve tried to get ahold of you several times in the last few weeks.”

  My stomach clenched. I wondered if I was about to puke my overpriced, fancy meal all over the wall in front of me. Gulping, I said, “I’m sorry, I’ve…I’ve just been, like, insanely busy. You know, graduation and…and stuff.”

  Wow, Elle, great answer. It’s easy to see how you got into places like Berkeley and Harvard with excuses like that.

  “I’m sure you’re already aware, if you’ve received my voice mails and our emails, that this call is to follow up on your decision regarding your attendance at Berkeley, starting in the fall.”

  “Well, I…I was wondering if maybe…maybe it’s possible to have a little extension?”

  Donna Washington sounded like she was not taking any of my petty, indecisive BS today. Her already-curt tone became even more clipped. “We’ve already granted you an extension beyond the usual deliberation period, Ms. Evans.”

  My hands began to sweat. “I…I know, and I really appreciate that, but please, I’m just…I just got off the wait-list somewhere else today, and I need the teensiest bit more time. Please—”

  “Ms. Evans,” Donna Washington interrupted, striking absolute terror in me for a second, “I need to inform you that you have until Monday to accept your offer. If we do not hear from you by then, we will have no choice but to offer your spot to a wait-listed student.”

  She waited for my answer. I was a little surprised; I half expected her to hang up the phone after that last piece.

  “I understand,” I told her in a small voice. “Thank you.”

  I stayed there for another minute after hanging up. My breathing was uneven and my palms were sweating. I wiped them on my jeans.

  Until Monday. That only gave me three days, including today.

  Just a couple of days to make a potentially life-changing decision. And fess up to Lee and Noah. Totally fine. I could absolutely handle that.

  Maybe I could flip a coin?

  Back at the table, I could see our desserts had arrived. Lee was waving a spoon around, talking agitatedly at his parents—undoubtedly arguing about the beach house again. Beside him, Noah was nodding, pitching in occasionally to back his little brother up.

  Shoving my phone into my back pocket, I returned to the others.

  “Back me up here, Elle,” Lee said, interrupting himself midsentence to get me involved. “Berkeley isn’t even that far from the beach house. It’s not even in a different state! Even if we do get summer internships or whatever, they’d probably be around here somewhere. We could totally still make it to the beach house. Right, Elle?”

  “R-right.”

  A pang of remorse tugged deep in my stomach.

  It lessened slightly when I realized Lee had two sundaes in front of him that he’d be
en digging into in equal measure. He pushed the strawberry one back in front of me.

  “Who was that on the phone?” June asked me instead of replying to Lee.

  “Oh, uh, just my dad. You know, the usual. Needs me to babysit Brad.”

  “Mom, you can’t—”

  “Lee, please.” His dad sighed, rubbing a knuckle between his eyes. “This isn’t up for debate. You kids were saying you were thinking about going up to the beach house this weekend, right? How about we all go and start sorting some things out? We’ve gotta clear everything out, clean the place up. Might as well make a start sooner rather than later, huh? Rachel, Elle, we could do with your help, too, of course.”

  I bristled slightly at being lumped in with Rachel. Like I was just Noah’s girlfriend. And not like I was part of this family and had spent a bunch of summers at the beach house with them, too. Like they hadn’t said to me a thousand times, “It’s just as much your home here as it is ours, Elle!” and like I hadn’t treated it exactly like that for basically my whole life.

  “Happy to help,” Rachel squeaked, sounding like she didn’t have a lot of choice.

  “Oh, I’m gonna be there,” I heard myself snapping. June put a hand lightly over mine for a second.

  “Fine,” Noah barked.

  “But just know,” Lee declared, “we are not happy about this.”

  I glowered down at what he’d left of my dessert. Yeah, that’s not all we’re not happy about.

  My cell was burning a hole in my pocket. Forget the beach house, I wanted to say. What the hell am I going to do about college?

  My gaze slid between the Flynn brothers: Lee, grumbling to Rachel and pouting, looking more hurt than anything else, and Noah, who caught my eye and gave me a crooked smile.

  Lee and Berkeley, or Noah and Harvard?

  I had only three days to decide.

  Chapter Four

  After our fancy meal, Noah dropped me off back home. I’d been quiet the whole ride, stewing over this new development about the beach house and my college dilemma. Noah, luckily, had been too busy sulking, so he hadn’t asked what was up with me.