“No, but it’s late at night and?—”
“Meet me,” I say. “You don’t have to come to the hotel. Meet me.”
“Meet you where?”
“At the beach.”
“What?”
“Let’s go look at the stars. Let’s look at the moon. I think it’s a full moon tonight, right? And that’s our thing.”
“Fine. I’ll meet you in thirty minutes.” She lets out a low laugh.
“Thank you.” My heart soars.
We hang up the phone, and I quickly get ready and head down to the beach.
I see her standing next to a coconut tree. Once I get there, she turns to look at me, but she doesn’t wave, and she doesn’t smile. She just stands there, looking like the Mia I remember from our teenage years, the Mia I remember from endless nights of hanging out at the beach.
“Hey,” I say. “I brought two Cokes.”
“I brought two Cokes as well.”
We both start laughing because that was our thing. We’d go down to the beach and drink Coke and eat chocolate and just stare at the stars. We both take a seat in the sand, timidly at first, like this is a first date or a breakup meeting.
“Do you know that I have not gone stargazing in forever, not since you left town?” she says, gazing over at me.
“Well, I guess I was the one who always told you the constellations,” I say, laughing.
“Yeah, you were.” She lets out a long sigh, and we just stare at each other.
“This feels really nice, being here with you. Thank you for meeting me.”
“I think we’re stuck in the past,” she says suddenly. “I think we have such a beautiful friendship, and we are so close, and we’ve spent so much time together through the years. I think we’ve both spent too many years reminiscing about how great and how perfect everything between us was, and I think we’re stuck. I think we need to move past that.” She looks down, as she plays with her fingers. Her foot taps in time to a song that I can’t hear. I can feel her fading away from me. It feels like she’s describing a memory of another lifetime. Like we no longer exist. Like we’re no longer Lukey and Mi-Mi.
My heart sinks because it feels like the end of something. It feels like I’m losing her, and I’m losing her friendship, and I’m losing the part of me that makes us, us, and I don’t want to lose it.
I can’t lose it. I will fight for her.
I will fight for us.
I will fight for the melody that has provided the soundtrack to our lives.
I don’t say anything. Instead, I watch as a crab crawls along the sand and digs its way into a hole. I look over, and I see that she’s staring at me—her face beautiful, innocent, kind, angelic. I want to grab her hand and just hold it. I just want to touch her. I just want to feel that connection with her, but I don’t know what to say. Words will not come because a part of me agrees with her. Those years were the best in my life. She was the best part of my life, and yet I didn’t know how to tell her that.
“You want to go for a swim?” I say, standing up, needing to move, not wanting to remain stagnant, not wanting the feelings to build up—to make me upset, to make me hurt, to make me lash out.
“Swimming? It’s night,” she says.
“So? Let’s do it.”
“I don’t have a bathing suit.”
“We don’t need a bathing suit.”
“You want to go skinny-dipping?” She grins at me, her eyes light as she shakes her head. “You really are asking me to go skinny-dipping.”
“Well, I’m not asking you to fuck in the ocean for the first time,” I say, laughing. “But, yeah, let’s go skinny-dipping.”
