I laughed at his attempt at humor, but it felt fake, and I had a feeling it sounded fake. So I tried to smile instead, but it felt a bit more like a grimace.

“Shut up,” I told him instead. “You’ll love it there.”

“Sure. I’ll just love being surrounded by a bunch of do-gooders.”

I leaned away just far enough to swat at his chest, this time with a genuine smile on my face, if only a small one. “Yeah, yeah. Because you’re so ruthless and villainous, now, aren’t you?”

“Love does wonders for a guy’s rep, huh?” He kissed me for what must have been the billionth time that morning.

If things hadn’t been so different this year, I wouldn’t have cared as much that he was going away for a few days. I could handle spending a little while without my boyfriend; that wasn’t the problem.

The thing was, it was all so wrong. The fact that Noah and his dad were leaving us early was just not right.

Summers at the beach house were supposed to be all of us together just having fun, spending a while without worrying about our lives back home. Summers at the beach house weren’t supposed to be cut short by trips to college campuses. It just felt too grown-up.

I remembered our conversation from the other day—Noah wondering if this would be his last summer here, saying that it might soon be my and Lee’s last summer here too.

Lee might have convinced himself that it would never happen, but I wasn’t so sure.

Things were already changing so much. What if they only got worse?

“Time to go, Noah.”

And speaking of things getting worse…

My gut twisted. There was a lump in the back of my throat. I had that prickly feeling behind my eyes, like you get when you’re about to cry. My palms got all clammy. My breath shuddered when I exhaled.

If this was what I felt like just thinking of him leaving for college, how was I ever going to cope when the time came for him to go for real?

Almost as though he was able to read my thoughts, Noah smoothed my hair back off my face and left his hand lingering, his thumb stroking my cheek lightly. His electric-blue eyes bored into mine with a look so intense I could only stare back and wonder what he was thinking.

“Be careful at this party, okay?” he murmured.

I nodded. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I do. A lot. You’re the kind of person who needs to be worried about. Especially being as clumsy as you are. And with Peter Pan over there being such a bad influence.”