She nodded, staring at a spot where the water fell sharply, landing in a froth of bubbles before flattening out again.
After a minute Kendall said, “This summer has been . . . a summer.”
“Did we have all the fun?”
She gave me a puzzled look.
“That night at the gas station,” I added. “You said we’d have a lot of fun before you left. That we’d try to have no regrets.”
Kendall sighed. “It’s so easy to say that stuff at the beginning of something.”
We were quiet. It would have been a creaky, awkward quiet anywhere else but here. Maybe that’s why I’d chosen this spot, because I knew the scenery would fill in the blank spaces between us.
“But I did have fun,” she continued. “What about you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And the regrets?”
I paused. “Only one, in the SuperCon parking lot.”
“Me, too.” After a moment she added, “I’m sorry I screwed everything up for you.”
“Eliza screwed everything up. Then I screwed it extra tight.”
“But if I hadn’t—”
“Please stop,” I said. I didn’t want to think about the what-ifs. “To be honest, part of me is glad I did what I did. Let that part of me come out. Because obviously, it needed to. Maybe I can really be okay now.”
“Good. But I’m still worried about you, a little,” said Kendall. “One of the things that made it easy for me to leave was knowing you’d made some new friends. Thinking you’d be with Camden and probably wouldn’t be around much anyway.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, waving my hand, wishing I were really as certain as I sounded. “It’s only a few months.” I looked at her. “Although, you’ll be different when you come back.”
“God, let’s hope so,” she said, and I must have seemed surprised because she added, “But in a good way. Otherwise, what would be the point of going?”
“Or doing anything,” I added.
“Exactly.”
“I can’t stay much longer,” said Kendall. “My parents are driving me out to visit my grandmother at the nursing home. She doesn’t know I’m leaving. I’m kind of dreading telling her.”
“Okay. I’m just glad you were able to see this. And me.”
Kendall nodded and bit her lip, and I saw suddenly that she was scared. It was a big thing, what she was doing. I felt an overwhelming urge to give her something that would bolster her.
Maybe I wanted to give her an extra reason to come back.
“I have to tell you,” I heard myself saying. Kendall raised her eyebrows in curiosity and I continued. “When we dropped you off at your house that night of the SuperCon, you should have seen Jamie’s face. It wasn’t an I-feel-guilty face. It was more like an I-love-that-girl face. I think he really does have feelings for you.”
Kendall sat completely still. She didn’t react. For a moment, I thought perhaps she hadn’t heard me.
“Don’t,” she said sharply.
“No, really. If you’d seen him, you’d believe me.”
Now she doubled over as if I’d punched her in the solar plexus. “Why would you tell me this?” Her voice was high.
“I thought it would make you feel better about the whole summer.”
“Well, it does not.”
She covered her head with her arms and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But if it were you who had information like that, wouldn’t you tell me?”
She took another deep breath inside her little self-huddle. “Yes.”
“So . . . ?”
Kendall unrolled now and looked me straight in the eye. “A bad situation to cap off several other bad situations. On that note, I think I’d better go.”
Crap, crap, crap she was angry. What had I done?
“I can’t believe we’re saying good-bye like this,” I said.
“You mean like this?” she asked, then pulled me into the tightest hug I’d ever felt in my life. It actually hurt.
“See you at Christmas,” I said.
“Check that blog link I sent you,” she said. “I’ll start posting stuff as soon as I can.”
Kendall climbed off the rock and rolled up her towel.
“Are you walking back with me?” she asked.
“I’m going to stay for a bit.”
She nodded and headed up the trail. She got a few feet away, then stopped to turn and wave. I waved back. We froze, neither of us wanting to be the one to lower our hand first. But then Kendall did. She started moving again and in seconds, she was around a curve and out of sight.
I lay back on the rock, my hands behind my head, and stared up at the sky.
In my mind, Camden came to lie on the rock next to me.
Holy cow, how I missed him. This ache. Like the ache I’d felt during the summer of watching and wanting, but in the core of me.