I giggled and threw the T-shirt and sock of his I was still holding at his head. The sock caught on his ear until he shook it off, like a dog. Noah chuckled too, and that wistful part of me, the part that was forever a hopeless romantic, wished I could take a snapshot of the moment—all three of us laughing and smiling at the beach house together like always, and seemingly without a care in the world.

It was a perfect moment in time—but that was all it was. A moment.

Chapter 9

Our last day together went by way too quickly. We tried to cram everything in: games of Frisbee, tossing a football around, swimming in the ocean, playing volleyball (I’d joined in this time, even if I was awful at it). Noah and I had left Lee playing another round of volleyball to get some time to ourselves at the beach bar—thankfully without any problems like the last time.

I wished it could last forever. I wished Noah didn’t have to leave.

I was dreading saying goodbye to him. I knew it wasn’t for long, and he’d be back soon, but it just made me think about how much harder it would be to say goodbye when he left for good. I was trying really hard not to think about it; it was dragging down my happy mood.

“Mm,” Lee said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I just remembered!”

Except he was talking with his mouth full, so it sounded more like Mmmph, ah jush muh-mem-phud. I understood what he was saying, though; after seventeen years of being around Lee, I’d got used to listening to him tell me things with his mouth full of food.

“What?” I said—after I’d swallowed my food.

“Well,” he said, gulping down his burrito loudly, then belching even louder. “You know this morning when we were playing volleyball? After you two left, I was talking to a couple of guys. There’s a party down on the beach tomorrow night. There’s gonna be a whole bunch of people there. But no bonfire, they said.”

“They haven’t had a bonfire for years,” Noah said, but he sounded uninterested—or distracted. “The police caught them a few years back. Something about a safety hazard.”

“A safety hazard right by the sea?” I said.

He shot me a flat look, but then turned back to Lee. “So? What’s your point?”

Lee took another impossibly huge bite of his burrito. This time, he swallowed most of it before he answered. “Well…my point is, there’s a party tomorrow. So me and Shelly can go.”