Friday, July 1

PARIS

Rae, Clara, and Gabe stood across the river from Notre Dame. Jonah and Aubrey had stayed back at the Arc de Triomphe, where, Rae assumed, they were still making out. She leaned over the wall in front of her and looked at the Seine below, at its dark, glassy water. They’d been walking for over an hour, and her feet killed.

“My feet kill.” Clara slumped beside her. “How far did we walk?”

“It’s almost midnight,” Gabe said, “so—pretty far? I guess?”

“Pretty far,” Clara whimpered. She pressed her weight into Rae’s side, her skin warm and her hair draping over Rae’s arm. It felt stiff and waxy from the recent hair dye. It reminded Rae of the way her own hair used to feel after a day at the beach in Georgia. Or maybe she was only thinking about that because the air around them smelled damp, the same way it used to when Lucy would drive them to the beach, all the windows of their old car rolled down. Rae’s limbs grew sleepy and comfortable.

“Rose and I came to Paris a few summers ago,” Clara said, staring up at the massive stone cathedral. “Right before she went to college. My parents let us come by ourselves, and we spent the whole time pretending we lived here.”

“In an old cathedral?” Rae asked.

“In Paris,” Clara said. “Wouldn’t you love to live in Paris?”

“I don’t know.” Rae considered it. “Maybe? I want to live as many places as I possibly can. What about you, Gabe?”

“Not sure,” Gabe said, but Rae didn’t think he was really listening. His eyes were fixed beyond Notre Dame, and he seemed distracted.

Rae wondered if he was thinking about Aubrey. She wondered if Aubrey had tried to set him up with Clara and if he’d totally freaked out. She wondered if maybe she should have done something to stop her. Maybe she should call Aubrey right now to find out what had happened. But—selfishly—she didn’t want anything about this moment to change.

“Where should we drink these?” Gabe held up the bag of beers they’d bought at an all-night grocery store.

“Down there.” Clara gestured at a staircase built into the side of the bridge. They walked to the riverbank, and Rae saw the tops of parasols, a few tall palm trees, and a line of flapping, blue flags come into view.

“What the hell is all this?” Rae asked.

“I guess we’re about to find out.” Clara adjusted her fascinator.

They hopped down the final step and landed next to—a beach. But not a real one. It was a raised wooden platform drenched in sand and dotted with lounge chairs and umbrellas in the same dark violet color as the deepening sky. Even at midnight, couples and tourists ambled down the pathway by the river.

“They put up actual palm trees,” Gabe said. “Talk about committing to a theme.”

Clara kicked off her heels, climbed onto the platform, and lay down in the middle of a circle of chairs. “If Aubrey were here, she’d be so pissed at me right now.”

“She would tell you going barefoot is a tetanus risk.” Rae settled on a chair, taking off her camera bag and placing it beside her.

Gabe sat between them and checked over his shoulder to make sure there were no guards around before passing out the beers. A boat drifted past, its deck dripping with twinkling lights, and water splashing in its wake. Rae reached over to dig her fingers into the sand. Tetanus be damned.

“All right.” Gabe lifted his beer. “Here’s to the first hangover I don’t have to hide from my parents.”

“Cheers to that.” Clara clinked her can with his, and they opened theirs together, slurping the foam away before it could spill onto their hands.

Rae held on to hers but didn’t open it yet. The air dipped and bobbed around her like water. She tucked a loose curl behind her ear and took it all in: the ornate carvings on the side of Notre Dame, the glittering colors reflecting on the bridge.

“You know what we should do,” Clara said. “We should make a pact. We should promise each other that a year from now we’ll come here again and sit on this exact beach at midnight.”

Gabe raised an eyebrow. “What if we all hate each other by then?”

“We won’t hate each other,” Clara said. “Why would you say that?”

“No, he’s right,” Rae said. “Lots of people end up hating their high school friends. It’s a statistical likelihood.”

Clara kicked sand in her direction. “You’re both so morbid.”

Their conversation drifted to a pause, and Rae heard water lapping against the concrete barriers. Gabe’s phone rang, and he shimmied it out of his pocket. “Zaida,” he said to them. “My parents probably asked her to check up on me.” He stood, brushing sand from the back of his jeans.

“Tell her to throw us a party!” Clara called after him.

He shook his head as he answered in Spanish, walking away down the beach. Clara and Rae watched until his silhouette disappeared past the palm trees, and then Clara turned back to Rae. “Okay,” she said. “You have to tell me. What was Aubrey talking to him about back there? And why did they both look so miserable?”

“Oh.” Rae’s gaze fell to the sand. Clara’s eyes were so bright and earnest that Rae didn’t think she could lie to her. “I’m not exactly sure. But I think it had something to do with—you, actually.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Aubrey might have asked whether you and Gabe liked each other. Or something.”

“She did? Where the hell did that come from?”

“I believe from her good friend Too Much Champagne.”

Clara laughed, and Rae slid from her chair to the ground beside her.

“But I don’t see Gabe that way.” Clara wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “I can’t even imagine kissing him. It would be so creepy.”

“I know,” Rae said. “Remember when Aubs and Jonah got together? You said you’d never date someone from our friend group. You called it a ‘recipe for awkwardness.’”

“Oh yeah.” Clara turned to face the water, and the light from the bridge illuminated her profile.

Rae hadn’t fallen for Clara because she was beautiful, but once she had fallen for her, the beautiful thing had become impossible to ignore. Even now, Rae couldn’t help noticing the sweep of her eyelashes, the dip of her collarbone. Another boat passed by them, its light reflected on the water’s surface.

“What about you?” Clara asked, watching it pass.

“Do I have a crush on Gabe?”

“No.” Clara looked back at her. “Do you like anyone? Or did you? Before we left school?”

Rae rolled her warm can of beer on the ground. “Not really.”

“Typical Rae. So many girls, so little time.”

“That is not typical me.”

Clara smiled. “It really is. You fall hard for someone, but then the relationship lasts approximately ten seconds. You’ve clearly forgotten all about Emily St. James.”

“What about her?”

“You kissed her at prom.”

“Yeah, but she kissed me first. What was I supposed to do? Pretend I didn’t notice?”

“Because that doesn’t prove my point at all,” Clara said flatly.

“Well, you kissed your prom date, didn’t you?”

“Jack?” Clara stretched her legs across the sand. “I did. But he was pretty boring.”

“So boring you dated him for a month?”

“He was a cute college guy. I was infatuated with him. But then I realized he wasn’t deep or poetic—he was just dull.”

Rae traced a few lines in the sand. “I think you made the right call. You don’t want to move to LA with a boyfriend. You want to be free to meet lots of hot art-school guys.”

“I guess,” Clara said.

The blue flags snapped in a gust of wind. Rae kept rolling her beer can. She felt a dull ache at the base of her ribs, the same one she got every time she thought about Clara leaving. Or meeting some stupid perfect guy. But she had to remind herself that this feeling was good. This was the feeling of moving on.

She and Clara had been friends since their first semester at LAS, but Rae’s feelings for her hadn’t changed until the summer after junior year. Their friends were off traveling with their families, but Clara had stayed in London to do a fashion internship at the Victoria and Albert Museum while Rae worked part-time at her mom’s antique store. They began spending all their free time together—floating between each other’s houses and staying up till three AM to watch old movies like Moulin Rouge! in Clara’s room.

Her room was crowded with a sewing table, dress mannequins draped in patterned fabrics, and inspiration photographs pinned to a bulletin board above her desk. Being there made Rae feel like the world was made of such vivid colors. Like everything was a little more intense, a little more concentrated there, in that tiny space with Clara’s purple-painted walls and the high window above her bed. It was the first time since meeting Aubrey that Rae felt another person slip so easily into her life.

Except being with Clara was nothing like being with Aubrey.

It was like being with a girl Rae wanted to kiss. Because Clara had been right earlier—Rae did harbor intense, all-consuming crushes. And those crushes usually became intense, all-consuming relationships. And those relationships always ended. But since she and Clara had no hope of dating, Rae was stuck here, in the pining stage, waiting for the day her feelings would finally burn out. “We should do your pact,” she blurted.

Clearly, that day was not today.

Clara dusted sand from her knees. “Really? You want to meet again in Paris?”

“Sure. How do we make it official? Do we sign it in blood or something?”

Clara scooted across the sand. “Or we could drink to it.”

“Better idea.” Rae opened her beer, and instantly, warm, foamy liquid sprayed everywhere.

Clara covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh no!”

“Shit!” Rae held the can away from her, beer sputtering onto her arms and legs.

“Quick! Take this.” Clara grabbed a towel someone had left on one of the loungers, but already the beer was soaking into Rae’s clothes. She wiped some off her lap. “Great,” she said. “I’m going to smell so wasted.”

“I guess that’s what happens when you roll a beer around for ten minutes,” Clara said. “But it’s okay. We can share.” She started to hand over her drink but paused for a second, her arm suspended between them. “But only if you really mean it,” she said. “Only if you want to come back here sometime. Even if it’s only the two of us.”

Another boat appeared from under the bridge, stirring the night breeze—a breeze that touched Rae’s cheek, that moved through Clara’s hair. It rippled the river beside them, the water as dark as a pool of black ink.

Rae took the drink from Clara. “Yeah,” she said. “Even if it’s only the two of us.”