that was what was weird, Rachel thought as she studied her friend. Mac is a little mysterious.
Her belly did that long slow roll it’d been doing whenever Mac was around. That was weird, too. She had known Mac since freshman year and now she was hot for her best friend. Seriously hot—as in “let’s make out and get naked” hot. She didn’t know what to do about it, except of course ignore it, which she had been trying for a few months now, and that just made her more crazy.
She wanted to do whatever he and Margaret had done.
But she didn’t know how to get from best friend to naked all in one night. And one night was all they had left.
“You gonna toss your gown in, too?” she asked, sitting next to him. She flipped her skirt up over her knees and thought about grabbing her sweatshirt from the bag, but it was still hot out and the tank top she wore was fine.
“Nah.” He reclined against the smooth, round rock at their backs. “Thought I’d burn it. Someone said you can get high off the fumes.”
She chuckled and leaned back with him. She brushed his shoulder with hers—totally on purpose—and her breath caught at the zing that raced along her skin.
Touch me. Touch me. Touch me.
If she opened her mouth, she was sure those words would come pouring out like sand.
“Look what your brother gave me today” Mac dug into his own bag and pulled out a small piece of wood.
Her vision blurred with hot tears.
She wished she could pretend there was no Jesse, no little brother she was being forced to leave behind. Maybe then it wouldn’t feel as if she was drowning all the time.
She picked up the piece of avocado wood that Jesse had whittled into a four-inch-high tree with branches and roots using his twenty-year-old Swiss Army knife.
She ran her thumb along the ridges and the veins in the leaves and felt her heart breaking.
“It’s amazing,” Mac whispered. “I mean, the kid is eleven. What eleven-year-old can do that?”
Rachel shrugged and handed it back to him. “He’s something,” she whispered.
“Rachel—” Mac’s tone was soft and sympathetic, and the hand that cupped her shoulder burned her to the bone. An ugly mix of emotions inside of her—a seething, poisonous combination—tried to leak out.
Don’t ruin this night. It’s my last night. Don’t cry. Don’t, Rachel. She pressed down all the impotent anger and raging sadness and turned a bright smile to her old friend.
“Hey, I brought something.” She remembered what she had pilfered from the back of the fridge. Since she was leaving tomorrow she didn’t need to worry about her father finding out and losing his mind. She rummaged in her backpack. “It’s probably warm by now,” she muttered, and pulled out the bottle of champagne she’d wrapped in towels to keep cool. “Ta-da!”
“Wow, champagne,” Mac nodded. “Awesome. Since we’re not having graduation parties—”
“Who needs crappy cake when you can have lukewarm champagne, huh?” she asked. She knew just how sad this was, which was why they had to joke about it. All of their classmates were having parties with volleyball nets set up in the backyard and coolers of pop and beer. But Rachel’s and Mac’s parents just couldn’t get it together to put a special dinner on the table to celebrate their kids’ achievements.
“Mom always says it’s supposed to be for a special occasion, but the dumb bottle’s been sitting in the back of the fridge forever.” There’s no such thing as a special occasion at my house, she thought, and fumbled with the top of the bottle. “How am I supposed to open this dumb thing?”
“Let me have that,” Mac said, and tore off the foil. He stuck his thumbs under the cork, and his arm, pressed against hers, flexed, the veins that had suddenly appeared in his forearms strained against his skin. Rachel swallowed hard, swamped with new painful feelings.
“How do you know how to do this?” she asked. Maybe he and Margaret had champagne.
“Cary Grant,” he muttered, preoccupied with the bottle.
The cork popped and the spray shot all over their feet. Rachel screamed and jerked her sandals out of the way. Mac took a giant swig, catching most of the foam.
“Perfect,” he said, and wiped his mouth. His eyes were sparkly and filled with fun and they made her drunk enough. She didn’t need champagne. He handed her the bottle and Rachel took it, all too aware that she was pressing the glass that had been on his mouth against her lips.
The champagne fizzed, sweet and cool down her throat. It was perfect.
“So?” He bent his knees and slung his long arms around them. He looked up at the stars and she knew he was searching out the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. He always looked for those first. Gotta get my bearings, he’d say.
Rachel took another gulp of the fizzy booze.
“Tomorrow, huh?”
“Yeah.” She handed him the bottle.
“I can still give you a ride. San Luis Obispo isn’t that far.”
“Right, like The Jerk is going to give you the car.”
“Screw him,” he muttered, kicking at a rock that shot off the ledge. Rachel heard it clatter to the bottom. He took a long pull from the champagne bottle. She filled her lungs with as much air as possible and promised this would be the last time she tried.
“Come with me,” she said in a rush.
“Rach—”
“You’ve got awesome grades—”
“And zero money.” He rolled his head against the rock. “We’ve talked about this like a dozen times.”
“I’m going early so I can get a job. You can get a job, too. We can bag groceries, or work with a landscaper. You’d like that. Working with the…” She trailed off. She knew begging wasn’t doing any good. She had gotten the scholarship and he hadn’t even applied. Even bagging groceries wouldn’t make enough to cover books.
And Mac wasn’t going to leave his mom, not while she was married to The Jerk.
Rachel nodded and took another swig of the champagne before handing it back to him. What am I going to do without you? she thought, staring up at the sky. The world suddenly loomed too large without Mac beside her. All the spaces inside of her that she thought would be filled with excitement and hope and joy about college were vacant. Empty. All she felt was an anguished longing for her best friend and a sickening wish that things were different.
“It would be stupid to ask you to stay, huh?” he whispered, and her eyes flew to his in surprise. “I mean you—”
“I can’t, Mac,” she breathed, wondering what brought this on. “He kicked me out. He said after I graduated he—”
“He
