I squeeze her. “Me too, but I’ll follow along on all of your adventures.”
I open the newly downloaded Instagram app on my iPhone, showing off my first post of the two of us.
Her face lights up and then she seizes the phone from my hand and tags herself in the GIF before handing it back to me.
“See, it’ll be like I’m right there with you,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Do youknowthe time difference between here and London?”
“Well no, but?—”
“Seven hours.”
“So…”
“So when you get done with classes for the day, I’ll beasleep,” she whines.
“So I’ll call before my classes,” I volley back.
She wheezes. “When I’m live streaming the Buckingham Palace?!”
“Icanwatch it now.” I wink at her.
Her eyebrows rocket up her forehead. “Teddy! That’s it! You can more than watch it, you canjoin!”
“Okay, that might be a little?—”
She grips me by the shoulders. “Fine. You’re new to social media. We’ll start small. How about a fall bucket list. We post pictures of all the things we’re doing and tag each other in them.”
I nod, sending my ponytail in a bounce. “Only if I can draw mine. I refuse to sketch stuffy subjects even if my art professors want me to,” I say.
“You know I love a good Teddy original,” she whimpers.
My own eyes well with tears. “It’s just for a year. It’s my way of figuring out what comes next. It might not stick,” I convince her.
“Teddy Fletcher, following her parents’ advice. Oh, it will stick, all right.”
I laugh. She’s right. Even when I told Reed and Miles I planned to attend Idaho State in the fall, they weren’t surprised. For a brief moment, I considered gallivanting around the world with my best friend and doing art along the way.
Who doesn’t want to see twenty countries in Europe?
It would be the greatest post-senior trip of all time. But I trust my parents’ judgement, and it can’t hurt taking freshman generals just to see if there’s anything else out there that I might want to do with my life. Art is all I’ve ever known.
I jump back into work at the fly shop when she’s gone, making the most of my last summer at my favorite small-town job with my favorite people. Things don’t have a shot of being weird with Miles when Shep’s always around. I never did tell Reed about my conversations with Miles or Cozy. It feels better to just keep the relationship to ourselves.
Whenever Reed and I are alone, we watch a lot of movies cuddled close and holding hands. We swim and flirt late at night, but it never goes much further than that. I don’t know if we’re both scared or if it’s just not meant to be, but I haven’t overanalyzed it. Neither has he. Not until now, anyway.
It’s a Friday night and the first week of August. Any other day, we’d be hanging out at his house, but tonight we’re sitting on the edge of my dock. My back presses against his chest, one of his arms resting behind him and the other floating on his bent knee. A quilt of shadows dances around us from a looming grey cloud cover. I have to brush my hair out of my face every few seconds, pulling out a spindle woven in the strands from the shedding oak tree in the wind. The lake slaps against the dock in defiance against the current, and flashes of bright yellow light streak through the clouds. From a distance, they look like they’re touching the water’s surface on the south shore.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” Reed says, resting his chin on the crown of my head.
I nuzzle my face against the downy fabric of his shirt. “Yeah, it is.”
I love coming out here right before a storm, watching the lake come alive.
“I could do this for the rest of my life.”
The way he whispers it, I know he’s not talking about sitting on the end of this dock and watching a storm roll in.
