36
“CAN EVERYONE GATHERround please?” Nick said, summoning our group over to him like a cruise director when we got down to the beach. He was still coated in a rainbow of smeared food, and when I looked around, I noticed no one else had changed either. They must have come right from cleaning the dining hall to the beach. “I realize things just got a little out of hand up there.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Eloise muttered, hand wound around Linus’s arm.
“But,” Nick continued, shooting her a look, “we’re going to call a truce for tonight, because we have one final camp tradition to do, and we’re going to do it now before Clara has to leave.”
I looked at him, confused, until Trey emerged from the boathouse holding a giant container in his arms.
Of course.
“Wish boats?” I exclaimed, hands clasped at my chest.
It was the same box Steve had grabbed for me this morning.
“They were part of your plan for the week, right?” Mack said, turning to flash me one of those playful smiles I loved so much.
“Yes,” I said with a nod. “But we’re supposed to do them tomorrow, on our last night. Like we did as kids. And it’s barely dark out.”
“Clara, there’s no hard and fast rule that says that,” Sam said. “Besides, we can do whatever we want.”
“Well, you know that’s occasionally out of my comfort zone,” I replied, thinking of the conversation we’d just had in Sunrise.
“You’re learning,” was all she said back.
Trey knelt by the box and started digging through, passing out the small white pillar candles, and tiny square pieces of wood, each with a small hole carved in the center.
“Candles?” Linus asked, skeptically examining the slab of cut timber in his hand as Sam passed him a black marker.
“Wish boats, honey,” Eloise corrected as she grabbed one for herself. “We write wishes on the bottom of the wooden part. The candles go in the center. If it reaches the other side of the lake without the flame going out, your wish comes true.”
“That seems virtually impossible, considering the distance, and the chance that the elements could change at any second,” Linus mused, glancing out at the water, as if he could measure the circumference with his eyes.
“Eh, it’s all part of the fun, mate,” Trey said, offering him a paternal pat on the back. “Sometimes the impossible actually happens.”
Trey smiled at me, and I scanned his face for any signs of grief or anger after his blowup with Nick hours earlier in the dining hall. But he seemed at ease, like a weight had been lifted, finally. The only thing on his face was a smear of chocolate sauce.
I wandered over to the edge of the water and plopped myself down in the sand, rubbing my thumb against the unfinished side of my wooden block. Wishes were one of those things that seemed so obvious until you were faced with actually coming up with one. There were endless possibilities, but it had always been impossible to pick just one.
“Hey.” I looked up to find Nick standing above me. “Want some company?”
“I’d love it,” I said, patting the ground next to me. “Especially if it’s you.”
He slid in next to me, tucking his knees into his chest.
“So,” he said. “Is it too soon to wish for a hot, mysterious man to waltz into my life next week?”
I chuckled, playing with the piece of wood in my hands. “Look, I support whatever you need to do right now.”
I leaned closer, nudged him with my shoulder. “Seriously, though. You okay?”
“Honestly? Yeah, I am.” He nodded, a relieved look on his face. “I mean, I didn’t intend for it to explode like that. We’ve just been dancing around the topic forever.”
“I don’t understand. If you knew things weren’t good between you guys, why didn’t you bring it up with Trey?” I asked as I fiddled with a stone on the ground before tossing it into the water. “I know I haven’t seen you in a while, but if there’s one thing I know about you, Nick, it’s that you’re good at talking things through.”
“Yeah, that’s been, like, the whole problem in our relationship. I’m too good at talking.”
He let out a sigh, but nothing about him seemed resigned. He looked content. At peace, even. “I just needed him to own his feelings for once, you know? And speak them out loud. I’ve been talking for the both of us for way too long.”
“Yeah, I got that when you yelled at me about his sneakers,” I said, nestling my head against his shoulder for a brief moment.
“In my defense, they are practically brand-new,” he said, chuckling. “So in this case, I think my yelling was pretty valid.”
“Look,” I said, finally managing to eke out a laugh. “The saying goes, ‘All’s fair in love and food fights.’”
We sat in the quiet for a moment, swatting away mosquitos and deer flies and all the other creatures who came out to drink human blood as night fell.
“I’m sorry I’m leaving you in the lurch,” I said. “I said yes to my boss and didn’t even think about how you guys are going to get back to the airport.”
“Eloise is on it,” he said. “She and Linus are going to give us a ride.”
“Good.” I nodded. “But I’m also sorry for not being around these last few years. For falling out of touch. For being MIA from our friendship.”
“Hey,” Nick said, reaching out for my arm. “Do you know what my letter said?”
I shrugged, and when his expectant stare didn’t leave my face, I gave in with a smile.
“Live laugh love?”
He cackled at this, shaking his head. “Look, the poem was horrible, I’ll admit it. But then, at the end, I wrote, ‘It’s okay if you mess up a lot.’ And I remember writing that poem, but I don’t remember writing that, or even why I wrote it. But that’s the thing that has stuck with me since getting it back.”
“Maybe we were all a lot wiser as teens than we gave ourselves credit for,” I mused.
“No one expects you to be a perfect friend, Clara,” he said gently as he stood with a stretch. “Just a good one. So try to be kind to yourself. You’re only human.”
Be kind to yourself. Number five on my list. “That is exactly what I told myself to do in my letter,” I marveled.
“See?” he said, his face brightening into something big and beautiful, just like his heart. “You were on to something then. You should listen to yourself more often.”
We were interrupted by a shriek, and I spun around to find Linus down on one knee in front of Eloise, who was clutching her bright pink face.
“Oh my fucking god!” I gasped, scrambling to stand. “Did you have any idea?” I whispered to Nick, who was now standing next to me, mouth agape.
“Linus may have asked Trey and me when a good time to propose might be,” he said. “But he was supposed to do this tomorrow night, so I didn’t realize he had changed plans.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t tell him to do it during the dessert party,” I joked.
He choked back a laugh, and then grabbed my hand, squeezing it as we watched Eloise and Linus embrace.
“I’m so happy for them,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
Mack was standing directly behind Linus, and he caught my eye, his mouth in a giant O.
“Holy shit,” I mouthed to him, laughing. He shook his head back at me in disbelief, beaming with the kind of shock that only came after moments like this.
Linus was now back on his feet with Eloise wrapped around him, kissing him like it was their last and first time together, all at once.
“There’s no ring,” he said to her when she finally pulled away. “Because you’d kill me if I picked out something that you hated.”
“Oh my god, he’s so right,” Eloise gushed as Sam immediately embraced her in a hug. “And because we’re about to spend all that money on the van.”
“What van?” Nick asked, perplexed.
“We just put an offer on a sprinter van we found, near here actually,” Linus explained. “We’re thinking of quitting our jobs to travel.”
“Wait, you’re doing hashtag van life?” Mack could barely hold back the look of shock on his face. “You two?”
“Yes, Mack.” Eloise stuck her tongue out at him, but the rest of her face was ecstatic, like her freckles might start sparkling at any second. I was so used to her containing her emotions that the sight of her like this still startled me a little. “Weren’t you just rattling on about change being necessary the other day? Well, this is me doing that.”
Mack acquiesced with a bow of his head, clapping his hands.
“You all need to see what my wish was!” Eloise squealed, still a fountain of utter delight.
Next to her, Linus, so stoic and serious, glowed in a way that seemed beyond human, like all the love he felt was causing him to ignite from the inside out.
She flipped over the small wooden block in her hand, where she’d written “ENGAGED” in all caps.
“You beat me to it,” she said, grabbing him for another kiss, and the rest of us awwwwed in unison.
Across from me, as everyone else gathered around Linus and Eloise, Mack motioned in my direction. He took off down the beach, away from the boathouse, and I followed, a few steps behind him.
He waited for me at the edge of the water, wish boat in hand.
“What are you wishing for?” he asked, staring at me intently as I laced my fingers through his.
“For you to finally be humble,” I teased, glancing up at those bright, kind eyes, that long nose with the little bump, and that hair still sticking up all over the place.
“Too late for that.” He chuckled, leaning forward to place a soft kiss on the bridge of my nose as he let go of my hand.
“I know,” I said, poking him in the ribs with the corner of my wish boat. “A real waste of my wish.”
“Come on in.” He beckoned, shuffling slowly into the water, his eyes never leaving my face. “The water’s warm!”
I gave one glance back to the shore and then fixed my eyes on Mack’s shadowy figure in front of me and followed. Soon the water was just below the edge of my shorts, his body inches from mine.
“Made it,” I declared, dipping my free hand into the water and flicking it onto his face. He ducked, but a few drops still landed on his forehead, and on instinct I reached up to wipe them away, tracing my fingers along his creased brow, down the firm line of his cheekbone to those soft lips that were always, always smiling.
“See?” He said it as if running fully dressed into the lake was the most obvious choice we could make. “I knew you could do it.”
I didn’t need a letter from the past to know how fifteen-year-old Clara would want this goodbye to go. She’d tell me to profess all my feelings to Mack right now, honest and raw and muddled, and demand I throw my car keys into the lake and drag him back to his bed, all my good logic and reasonable life choices be damned.
But I didn’t trust that she knew what was right, any more than I trusted myself now, at thirty-five.
And so I did what I knew how to do best: I went along with the plan.
“I should hit the road soon,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, sure.
“Here,” he said, flicking a lighter in his hand, the flame appearing like magic as he brought it to the tip of his candle. “Let’s make our wishes.”
I cupped a hand around my candle as he leaned closer, kissing his candle to mine until the wick sparked and caught fire.
I had written something on the bottom of my wish boat, something that hadn’t appeared on any of my previous lists. It was, I realized now, the thing I wanted more than anything.
“Do you think they’ll come true?” I asked, knowing full well that mine was impossible, completely out of reach.
“I’m not sure I believe in wishes,” he said finally. “I always tell my campers that I think it depends on how badly you want them.”
He placed his wish boat onto the water, giving it a small push with his finger as it bobbed out away from us.
One thing. One simple, impossible thing.
More time.
“I’ll wish real hard then,” I said quietly.
Mack took a step back until he was close behind me, sliding his arms around my waist. I didn’t move, taking one last minute to relish the feeling of his body pressed against mine.
Finally, I bent forward, dropping my wish boat into the water.
And then, I let it go.