18. Eighteen

Dear Diary,

So, tonight’s the night. I’m going to tell Jamie how I feel about him at the prom tonight. I don’t really want to, to be honest: I’m so scared he’s going to say he doesn’t feel the same. But it’s a now-or-never kind of situation, really, because everything’s changing. High school’s ending. After tonight, everyone will go their separate ways, either to uni, or to start work, and some of us will probably never see each other again. That’s why I have to do it now, before it’s too late. Because if I don’t, and nothing ever happens between us because of it, then all these years I’ve spent pining after him will have been wasted, and I don’t want to feel like my life has been wasted. Not ever. This is my last chance to make it all mean something. I don’t want to look back one day and regret not telling him. I guess if I’m going to regret anything, I’d rather it be the other way around.

Speaking of regrets, I’m supposed to be singing at it too. Every year the music department picks someone to perform the last song of the night, and I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, but this year they picked me. I know! I’m nervous, obviously, but I’m excited too, because it’s going to be my first time singing on stage, in front of actual people, and I just feel like this is my big chance to show everyone that I can actually do it, you know? Also, by the end of the night, me and Jamie will hopefully be an item, and if that doesn’t give me the confidence to sing, I don’t know what will.

Anyway, I’m going to sing Fast Car, by Tracey Chapman. Chloe says it’s a stupid choice for a high school prom, and I should just do Don’t Stop Believin’, which is ”a guaranteed crowd-pleaser” but I like Fast Car. It speaks to my soul. And I feel like tonight is the night that will change everything — it will literally be my ticket to somewhere better than here, just like in the song, so I think it’s pretty appropriate, too, no matter what Chloe says.

Wish me luck…

Summer, XOXO

I close the diary and pick up the glass of water I poured earlier instead.

It’s 1 a.m., and I’m sitting on the balcony outside my hotel room again, desperately trying to re-hydrate before bed, while determinedly not thinking about Jamie, and the look that crossed his face when Chloe dropped her bombshell. But the image keeps popping into my head anyway, and it makes me cringe so hard that when I go to put the glass back down on the table, I miss altogether, and it goes tumbling to the ground, where it shatters dramatically on the tiled floor of the balcony.

Whoops.

“Please tell me that’s not you throwing things around again,” comes Alex’s voice from the balcony next door as I bend down to pick up the pieces.

I freeze on the spot.

What’s he doing out here at this time of night?

“Summer?”

There’s the scraping sound of a chair being pushed back, then Alex’s head appears over the wall between us, which gets higher the closer it gets to the building. I’d been sitting just in front of the doors to the room, and he presumably was too, on his side of the wall, which is why we haven’t seen each other… until now.

“Sorry,” I say, straightening up guiltily. “It just slipped out of my hand. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “You didn’t. Oh…”

His voice trails off as I step forward to see him better, moving into the light that’s being cast upwards from the pool area.

“What is it? Is there something wrong?”

Alex swallows. “Er, no,” he says. “No, it’s just, you look… different. Nice, I mean. You look nice.”

I glance down at myself. I’d forgotten I was still wearing that stupid red dress I borrowed from Chloe earlier; not to mention all that makeup. I touch my face self-consciously.

“Chloe gave me a makeover,” I tell him. “She’s good at that kind of thing.”

“Is she?” Alex raises an eyebrow, then quickly lowers it again, seeing the look on my face.

“Sorry,” he adds sheepishly. “You just look different, is all. You don’t look like you.”

I’m tempted to ask whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing as far as he’s concerned, but I stop myself just in time.

“You must have been somewhere special,” Alex says, his voice sounding a bit odd. “Was it another date? With Jamie?”

“No,” I reply quickly, wishing he’d stop looking at me like that. “Chloe wanted to go and see him. It was nothing, really. Gerald was there too.”

I have no idea why I’m so keen to assure him I wasn’t on a date.

It’s not like he’s going to care.

“Gerald?” he says, chuckling. “Sounds like quite a night.”

“Yeah,” I reply, sighing. “Quite a night. What are you doing up, anyway? Have you been out somewhere too? One of the clubs?”

My heart contracts suddenly at the thought of him out in some bar, maybe flirting with the blonde woman from breakfast this morning, or someone like her.

Stop it, Summer. It has absolutely nothing to do with you if he was.

“No,” he says ruefully. “Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid. I just came out here because I couldn’t sleep. I’ve got… well, I’ve got a few things on my mind.”

I frown.

“It’s not what happened earlier, is it?” I say in a rush. “You know, by the pool? Because I’ve been meaning to apologize for that. I didn’t really mean it. I just said it because… well, because that’s the kind of thing we say to each other, isn’t it? You say I’m reckless and that I believe in fairytales, so I say you’re—”

“‘Arrogant and up myself’?”

I feel my face turn as red as my dress.

“I’m really sorry,” I tell him sheepishly. “I didn’t realize you were there. And Chloe was winding me up, so I —”

“Relax, Summer,” he says, interrupting me. “That’s not what I was thinking about. Believe it or not, you’re not the only thing on my mind right now. No matter how good you look in that dress. Drink?”

Those few sentences of his are going to require a lot of unpicking. Before I can figure out which one to start with, though (Do I ask him what he was thinking about, or go straight into the detailed analysis of the ‘dress’ comment, and whether he meant it to be as flirtatious as it sounded?), he turns around and picks up a bottle of champagne, which looks like the same one I saw in his room the other day, and waves it in my direction.

That’ll explain the flirting, then. He’s just drunk. I’m not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

“I’m good, thanks,” I say quickly. “I think I’ve had enough for one night.”

Alex shrugs and pours one for himself.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened with Whatshisface, then?” he asks, downing his drink in one.

I hesitate for a moment, then go and get my seat, and bring it over until it’s next to his, with the wall between us.

“Nothing happened,” I tell him, sitting down. “Chloe and I just went to Jamie’s bar to see him, then the three of us went to a club. Well, the four of us, counting Gerald. He didn’t stay long, though.”

“And that’s what’s got you smashing glasses on the balcony in the middle of the night?” he asks skeptically. “There must be more to it than that, surely?”

I sit quietly for a few seconds before answering him.

“There isn’t really,” I tell him carefully. “We went out for a drink. It was fine. Well, fine-ish. But then, just as we were saying goodbye, Chloe decided to tell him I’d come over here just to see him, and then it all went weird.”

“Really?” says Alex drily. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Stop it.”

I glance over at him cautiously.

“Actually, it was a bit weird even before that,” I admit. “Just sort of strained, and… different. Then Chloe told him why I was here, and I felt so stupid. Like, the stupidest.”

I wait for Alex to agree with me, but he just sits there, looking up at the night sky.

We sit for a few moments in companionable silence, listening to the nighttime noises of the resort: the chirping of crickets, the distant thump of music playing further along the coast, the muffled laughter of someone returning to their room.

“I think I might be having a mid-life crisis,” I say into the darkness.

“I thought you were only 31?”

“I am. Okay, a slightly-more-than-a-quarter-life crisis, then. Or whatever you call it when you’re in your thirties and you feel completely and utterly lost; like everything is spiraling out of control, and you have absolutely no idea how to stop it… or even what you’d do if you could.”

There’s a long pause.

“Life,” says Alex. “I think it’s just called life, Summer.”

“Is it, though? Because everyone else seems to have it all figured out. Look at you, for instance.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You’re so sure of everything. So confident. So… grown-up. And then there’s me, just kind of hanging around, waiting for my life to start.”

“Isn’t that why you’re here, though? Because you got tired of waiting for your life to start and decided to do something to help it along?”

“That’s… an unexpectedly kind way to look at it.”

I glance across at him, but he’s still watching the sky, and his silence gives me the courage to go on.

“That’s the thing, though. I thought doing this would be, I don’t know, empowering, I guess. But other than when I got on the plane, and when we were at the top of the mountain, it hasn’t really been. I think it’s just made me even more confused, really. And tonight… tonight just made me kind of sad. Or nostalgic, maybe.”

“Because of Jamie?”

I know I’m going to regret telling him all of this when I wake up tomorrow morning with a bad case of hangxiety. But the darkness, and the silence, and the sound of the cicadas, all combine to create an oddly intimate atmosphere in which it feels safe to unburden myself.

“No, actually,” I admit, surprising myself. “Or not just him. I think I felt sad because being with him and Chloe made me realize that I’ve been pining for something that didn’t really exist, other than in my mind. And that makes me wonder what on earth I’m doing out here.”

“Nostalgia is a powerful thing,” he says quietly. “It makes us do strange things sometimes.”

I want to ask him what he means by that, and what strange things nostalgia has made him do. But suddenly he’s jumping out of his seat and striding over to the edge of the balcony to look out,

“Look,” he says. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

I get up to join him, gazing blankly out into the darkness, from which I can just hear the distant sound of the waves.

“A shooting star. You just missed it. If we keep watching, though, we might see another one.”

We lean on our respective balconies, looking up at the sky. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but it feels nice and companionable, so I continue standing there, even though the night air is too chilly for this dress.

“Did you make a wish?” I ask suddenly. “Aren’t you supposed to wish on shooting stars? Isn’t it supposed to bring you luck? Or do you not believe in that either?”

“Guess.”

“I’m guessing no. The guy who doesn’t believe in love definitely isn’t going to believe in wishes. Or in luck.”

Alex snorts.

“Shooting stars are just rocks hitting the earth’s atmosphere,” he says. “They look pretty, but there’s no magic involved.”

“So why’d you get so excited when you saw one?”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You jumped right out of your seat. You were like a little kid at Christmas. So maybe there’s hope for you yet. Maybe you do have a heart somewhere in there after all.”

“Of course I have a heart, Summer,” he says, so quietly I almost miss it. “Of course I do.”

I turn to face him, feeling like I’ve said something wrong, but unable to figure out quite what it is.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me what it was that’s got you sitting on your balcony in the middle of the night,” I say. “The thing that’s on your mind?”

He hesitates.

“Motorcycles,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking about motorcycles.”

“Motorcycles? Er, are you feeling okay? Because that’s kind of a weird thing to keep someone up at night. Even someone as strange as you.”

“You said you wanted to ride one,” Alex replies, ignoring me. “In your diary. It was one of the resolutions, remember?”

“Oh. Yeah. But that’s one of the ones I’m happy not to do,” I tell him. “It was just a stupid, teenage idea of something that would make me ‘cool’. I think Jamie used to talk about how he wanted to own a motorcycle someday; that’s probably why I wrote it. It’s not like it’s some deeply cherished ambition of mine.”

“Maybe not,” says Alex, “But you want to complete the list, don’t you? Well, I can’t provide a motorcycle — and I’m not sure it would be a good idea for you anyway, given how clumsy you can be — but I did see a sign for a quad bike experience earlier today. Maybe we could do that instead?”

“We? You mean you’d come with me?”

He hesitates for just a moment.

“Well, yeah, I guess. If you want me to? I quite fancy having the opportunity to be ‘cool’ myself, if I’m honest.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” I tell him. “You’re already cool. You don’t need a motorcycle. In fact, you probably shouldn’t get on one, because then you wouldn’t just be a hot, moody guy; you’d be a hot, moody guy on a motorcycle. That might be too much for some people.”

“Hold on,” he says, smirking. “Did I hear that right? Did you just call me hot?”

“No! I mean, yes. But I wasn’t speaking for myself,” I say quickly. “I just meant that’s how other people would see you.”

“Whereas you see me as ‘arrogant and up myself’?”

“I already apologized for that,” I point out. “But I shouldn’t have said it in the first place, so, you know, sorry. Again.”

I’m babbling again. It’s because he’s standing so close to me — and being so unexpectedly nice to me — that it would be very easy to forget I spent the first couple of days of this trip hating the guy.

But I don’t think I hate him anymore.

And he is really hot, to be fair.

“You’re forgiven,” he says, his voice serious as he looks down at me, close enough to touch. The atmosphere between us is suddenly charged, and I shiver, as much from the proximity to this gorgeous man standing next to me as from the cold.

“You should get yourself inside,” Alex says immediately. “It’s freezing out here once the sun goes down. And you’re… well, not exactly dressed for it.”

“Oh. Okay,” I reply, fighting back an unexpected wave of disappointment. “It is getting late, I suppose.”

I linger on the balcony, watching as he efficiently clears up his champagne glass and picks up the empty bottle.

And I haven’t even picked up that broken glass from earlier.

I stoop down, sweeping the pieces into my hand, and when I straighten up again, he’s opening the sliding door to his room.

“Promise me one thing,” he says, stopping in the doorway.

“What?”

“Promise me you’ll stop trying to be more like your friend Chloe. Because you don’t need to. You’re perfect the way you are.”

The door slides closed behind him, leaving me alone with my thoughts — most of which revolve around that mindfuck of a last sentence of his, which has casually just turned everything I thought I knew on its head — and a pile of broken glass.

Once I’m finished cleaning it up, I go back to the balcony and look out again at the sky. I stand there for what feels like a long time, but I still don’t see any shooting stars.