Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(9)
“No,” Stella says firmly. “Because I think you’re an idiot with a big mouth and a thoroughly distorted sense of self-confidence.”
As the two of them begin to bicker again, Clare glances over at Aidan, who is usually the referee in these situations. But at the moment, he’s just watching them with an unreadable expression, his head tilted to one side. When she catches his eye, he gives her a weary smile, but in spite of everything, she can tell there’s a part of him that’s secretly enjoying it. This is just what he’d been hoping for tonight—something normal. Something light and silly and meaningless. Something that doesn’t feel like an ending.
“I’ve got a brilliant idea,” Clare says, and Scotty and Stella turn to her as if they’d forgotten anyone else was there. “Let’s play the quiet game.”
“I forfeit,” Scotty says with a shrug, and Stella says, “Of course you do,” and just like that, they’re off again on an unending circuit of teasing and arguing.
Clare leans back in her chair, looking around the tiny restaurant, where the light is warm and yellow. It would be impossible to count the number of nights that had begun or ended here, how many evenings had followed this very same pattern. She lets the blur of it all wash over her: the chirp of the video games and the girls singing tunelessly at a corner table, the smells of garlic and cheese, and the fluorescent lights of the sign in the darkened window, a red so electric it burns her eyes.
When she turns back again, Aidan is smiling at her.
“Hey,” he says, leaning to bump her shoulder gently with his.
“Hey,” she says quietly, so quietly it’s almost lost in the noise of the place, a noise that no longer belongs to them. But Aidan hears her anyway.
“Any chance,” he says, “that you could pass me the Parmesan?”
She reaches out for it, handing it to him with a little smile. But later, when nobody’s looking, and the pizza is gone, and the shaker of cheese has been forgotten, she can’t help herself: She picks it up again and slips it into her bag.
The Beach
7:54 PM
Outside the restaurant, the sky is now a deep pink, turning the trees and the lampposts and the pitched roof of the train station into silhouettes. Together, they wander over to Aidan’s car, which is parked at an angle on the street, and then the four of them stand in a little semicircle around the hood, as they’ve done so many times before, waiting for someone to decide in what direction the night will go.
Usually, there are more of them, arguing about what should come next. But over the past few weeks, the rest of their friends have scattered across the country, setting out from their little suburb of Chicago in a dozen different directions like the spokes of a wheel: Kenzie to North Carolina, Eliza to Texas, Will to Ohio; Henry left ages ago for a freshman-orientation wilderness trip in upstate New York, and the twins, Lucia and Mateo, had driven out to Stanford on their own, leaving time to see some sights along the way. Earlier this week, they’d lost most everyone else when the University of Illinois started up, dozens of their friends all migrating south at once.
“It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” Clare asks, slipping her hands into her pockets.
Stella nods, her eyes fixed on the sidewalk. “And then there were four…” she says, and they all grow silent. Though dusk hasn’t yet given way to dark, the streetlamps above them snap on, casting long shadows across the sidewalk.
Finally, Scotty clears his throat. “So what’s the plan?”
“There’s not much going on,” Stella says, digging her phone out of her purse and scrolling through her texts. “Pretty much everyone’s gone already. But apparently Andy Kimball’s having people over later. And Mike Puchtler and those guys are going bowling. They said we could meet up, if we want.”
“And if all else fails, we could always go hang out in my backyard,” Scotty says. “Just for a change of pace.”
“You have a backyard?” Clare asks in mock disbelief, since they ended up there pretty much every single night this summer, eating his mom’s home-baked cookies beneath the starry sky as the clock wound down on another evening.
“Actually,” Aidan says, thumping the hood of the car, and everyone turns to him, “I think we’re gonna head out on our own.”
Scotty’s face falls, and he stares at his best friend. “So… this is it?”
“Yeah, what happened to quality time?” Stella asks, frowning at Clare. “You’re gonna leave me alone with this clown on our last night together?”
“No,” Clare says quickly, over the sound of Scotty’s protests. “Just for a little while. We still have some… talking to do. But we’ll meet up with you guys later for sure.”
“Right,” Aidan says. “We just have to make a few stops first.”
Stella laughs. “Let me guess: Clare made a list.”
“Clare made a list,” Aidan agrees with a grin.
“Pro and con?”
“More of a schedule for the evening, actually.”
“Hey,” Clare says, frowning at them. “How else are we supposed to figure this out?”
Scotty rolls his eyes. “Yeah, it’s not like there’s any way you could have seen this whole college thing coming. It must’ve really snuck up on you.”