“Fine,” she says, faking a scowl, the soft pink of her lipstick emphasizing her turned-down lips. “Break your old mother’s heart. I can’t have anything.”
I laugh, planting a kiss on her cheek and sweeping her up into a real hug this time, careful to angle my body so she doesn’t feel the flask tucked into my waistband. “You’ve got me, don’t you?”
She lets out a dramatic sigh. “I guess you’ll do.” Her voice is muffled against the thick fabric of my suit jacket. “Hey,” she says, pulling away and grinning. “Why are you on your own? You give her the bracelet yet?”
My heart pounds, just like it used to before a football game. “I’m waiting for the right moment,” I say as I give the room a quick scan. “You seen her?”
“She was with Sam, by the terrace, a few minutes ago,” she says, nodding to the right, toward the floor-to-ceiling windows separating us from the oversize-stone terrace that overlooks the hotel courtyard.
She reaches out to gently adjust the knot of my tie, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. It’s a Windsor, not that I’m pretentious enough to know any other way to tie a tie, but she spent the morning of my seventh-grade formal learning the knot just so she could teach me how to do it. It was the first dance I went to with Kim.
Mom’s been there through everything.
“You really think she’ll like it?” I ask. I felt so sure when I ordered it, but now…
“Absolutely.” She gently pats my face. Reassured, I give her the phone back. Total mistake.
She grabs it and quickly snaps two more pictures, still with a flash that is now popping behind my eyes. I attempt a glare, but the crow’s-feet around her eyes wrinkle as she grins innocently at me, and my frown cracks right down the middle. Nothing will bother me tonight, not even my mom’s incessant documentation of my life.
So I cheese it up, posing for one last photo, and once she’s satisfied, I’m off to finally find Kim. I chuck the wadded-up cocktail napkin into a trash can as I make my way toward the terrace, where the sky is dark and ominous on the other side of the glass.
It usually doesn’t take me long to find her.
She’s always had this fire, this magnetism that pulls people into her orbit. At school, I usually have to wade through a crowd of people just to get to her, so I keep my eyes peeled for the largest group and a flash of that particular shade of blond that manages to hold whatever light is in the room.
It’s been like that for as long as I can remember, the color the same as it was when we fought over the last swing on the playground in third grade.
I push into the crowd, and people part to let me through, smiles and high fives coming from every direction.
“Gonna miss those articles in the sports section next year, Lafferty,” Mr. Butler, my journalism teacher, says, giving me a pat on the back as I pass by him. Another reminder of all that time sitting on the bench, writing about the games instead of actually playing in them.
Where is she?
The disco ball overhead sends out glimmers of sparkling light, making it hard to see much of anything. I’m about to pull out my phone and fire off a text when…
There.
Her blond hair peeks past Sam’s broad shoulders as she shifts her weight ever so slightly to her left hip, her silk dress hugging her sides. She looks incredible tonight, long hair flowing around her shoulders, blue eyes bright and open, lips shiny with gloss.
But as I get closer, I see her face is serious, the familiar wrinkle in her forehead forming as she talks, like it always does when something is up. It’s a look I saw a week ago at prom and this afternoon when we were taking graduation pictures, but whenever I ask, it all gets smoothed away with a wave of her hand.
I look from her to Sam, watching as he nervously runs his fingers through his dark hair.
And that’s when I realize they must be talking about UCLA. The tension melts from my shoulders.
Kim and I have already committed, but Sam was wait-listed. Sam and I always dreamed of playing football together at UCLA, but after homecoming that was all over, thanks to me and my injury. I let the both of us down. After I was sidelined, Sam dropped so many passes and missed so many blocks, he was riding the bench almost as much as I was. When all of his football prospects dried up, his grades took a sharp dip right alongside his football career. So Kim’s been helping him send in some essays and updated supplements that’ll hopefully tip the scale in his favor.
Judging by the last few weeks, we’ll definitely need him there. Not only is he the friend that’s stuck with me through the mess of this last year, but he’s the glue that holds our trio together. He’s the voice of reason in all things, especially when Kim and I fight. He’s the one who pulls us back together when things get rough.