“A casserole? Here?” I don’t think Wil could eat another casserole in his lifetime.
She shakes her head. “You misheard me. I said bring them takeout, which sounds a little like casserole.”
“My mistake. I don’t think they’re up for company right now, but you and I could have dinner. It’s been a while.”
“Done,” she says.
“Great. Okay. So . . . sick day in quotes?” I flash my most responsible smile.
“I’ll call the school.” She yawns.
I blow her a kiss and tote an armful of beach towels out the door.
I listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd on the way, cranked up too loud. Wilson taught me that’s the only way to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd, I think, and then I get pissed and change the station. The day is bright and hot and cloudless. I park near the beach access and lug everything onto the sand. I smooth the towels a million times, and when I’m dripping with sweat, I crack open a Coke and kill it in a single gulp. I’m nearly alone on the smooth sand; near the waterline, there’s a mother trailing behind an unsteady toddler and an elderly man casting a fishing line beyond the waves.
Wil shows up first, and then Leigh not a minute later, and when they see each other, they both try not to get caught giving me a look.
“Surpriiise!” I say. “Happy beach day!”
“Happy beach day?” Wil’s face is crooked. “Hey, Leigh.”
“You are smiling too big, Bridget,” Leigh tells me. “Like, religious cult big.” She gives Wil an awkward back pat. “Doing okay today?”
“Sure.” Wil gives her an obligatory nod.
“I just—I wanted us to hang out, is all. Together, since the school year’s almost over,” I say. I want to hug Leigh, but she’s all angles: arms crossed, shoulder pointing in my direction.
“Great,” Wil says. “Definitely beats spending the day boxing up the last of my dead father’s shit, which I was supposed to do after school.”
I put a hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry.” Wil’s cheeks redden.
“Hey. No judgment,” Leigh says.
Wil peels off his T-shirt. “I’m gonna go in real quick.” He jogs toward the ocean, and I watch him disappear beneath the waves.
“Rough.” Leigh unhooks her frayed denim overalls and shimmies out of them. Beneath them is a bikini she must have tie-dyed herself.
“So. You guys are banging,” she says matter-of-factly.
“We are not,” I say, pitching a bottle of sunscreen in her direction.
“You are such a liar! Wil Hines is drowning his sorrows in your—”
“Leigh. Gross. And no, he isn’t.” I chuck my cutoffs and tank top and stretch out on my stomach. Leigh drops next to me. I perch on my elbows.
“I heard Wil broke it off with Ana.”
I try to stare through her mirrored shades.
“Yeah,” I say. “Objectively, they weren’t a good match.”
“Objectively?”
“Okay. I’m not the most objective person,” I admit. “But you know they weren’t good together.”
“Everybody knows they weren’t good together.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For being so—” I make a face. “For disappearing yesterday.”
“You scared me,” she says, and she makes the same face. “In a big way. And you didn’t call or text or anything.”
“I know.” I drop to my side. “It just pissed me off, the way you reacted when I told you about Wil.”
She nudges her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose. “What do you mean?”
I hold my breath for a few seconds, and the words tumble out. “I wanted you to be excited for us. Because even with all the shitty stuff that’s happened lately, I’m excited. I’m happy. I’ve wanted Wil back for a long time. This is a big deal.”
Leigh rests on her side, too, and takes her sunglasses off and scoots so close that we’re almost touching. I can hear the ocean rushing beneath the towel, beneath the hardened sand.
“Listen,” she says. “I know this is big.” I see my reflection in her eyes. “And I’m sorry for not reacting the right way or whatever. It’s just that I love you. And I know what a fucking hard time this is for him.”
“No, I get it.”
“But you don’t,” she pushes back. “I don’t, either. No one but Wil knows what Wil is going through right now.”
I’m silent. I wish I could tell her about Wil’s dad. It feels lonely, having that kind of secret, and I think of how Wil had to carry it alone for so long.
“I guess I just didn’t think it was a good idea for you guys to try to get back together when he must be in such a dark place.” Her lips are still pressed together like a tiny bud, worried.
“You don’t want me to get hurt,” I say quietly.
“But it’s more than that,” she argues. “You can get over being hurt. You’re tough.”
I flex my bicep.
“But what if you and Wil had one last shot to get back together? And what if you tried to make that happen right after his dad was killed, and it was just too much for both of you and you lost your chance?” Finally, Leigh blinks, her eyes bright and glassy.
“That’s a lot of what ifs.” I reach for her hand, feeling a pinch in the pit of my stomach. “What’s going on with you? I’m usually the neurotic one between us.”
She shrugs. “End-of-senior-year existential crisis, I guess. Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.” I lean over and give her a sandy kiss.
We flop onto our backs and watch the universe hurtle by in slow motion.
“I know I don’t get what he’s going through, exactly. And sometimes it feels like he’s a million miles away.” I think about the shadows that cross him when I ask if he wants to talk about that night. “But I don’t care, Leigh. I don’t think you have to understand every little corner of a person to love them. I think you can love them first, and you spend the time you have trying to learn the parts you don’t know.”
“And how much time do you have?”
I feel Wil’s footfall in the sand and I shush Leigh. When he gets close, he shakes his hair, raining on my too-hot skin.
I flip over, grab his wrists, and pull him next to me. “You look good out there.”
“Buddha, beam me up.” Leigh groans, opening her arms wide. “Thank God school is almost over.”
“Can you believe we only have a few weeks of classes left?” I say, and it sounds wrong. Seniors finish classes a week before the rest of the school, which gives us a week to decompress before graduation.
“Three weeks, baby!” Leigh high-fives the nearest cloud. “Which means three weeks until I unveil my senior art project. You guys’ll come, right? The Saturday before graduation. Just me and the other AP Art nerds.”
“Definitely,” I tell her. “We love AP Art nerds.”
“So, Leigh.” Wil turns onto his side. “What’s your plan? College, I’m guessing?”
“Art school.” Leigh opens the cooler and unearths one of the subs. “At SCAD.”
“Cool,” he says.
“Are you staying here?” she asks.