Cherry (36 page)

Layla didn't know quite what to say, so she didn't say anything at all.

“A penny for your thoughts?” he asked.

It was the kind of question Layla would've found so charming back when they were dating. Now he just reeked of alcohol and a bit of desperation.

Layla held out her hand as if to ask for an actual penny. Logan didn't have one to give her and probably mistook her gesture anyway, so he grabbed her hand and held on, squeezing it tight, which felt familiar but also foreign all at the same time . . .

After a brief moment Layla pulled her hand away.

“We broke up.”
Layla knew that Logan was talking about Vanessa, but it was also what she wanted to say to him.

“I heard,” she said instead. She'd been trying not to pay
too
much attention to Logan and Vanessa's relationship, but apparently something dramatic had happened between them on prom night, and Vanessa ended up going home with someone else.

“Shoulda listened to you . . .” Logan laughed. “But then you should've listened to me, too.”

“O-kay . . .” Layla didn't quite know what Logan meant, but she was more than ready for this conversation to be over.

Clearly Logan was not: “There were gonna be rose petals.”

“What?”

“On the beach. That was going to be the last clue on Valentine's Day. I was gonna decorate the sand in front of my aunt and uncle's with a whole entire, like,
bed
made out of red rose petals. And we were gonna have sex on top the petals, on top of the sand, under the stars, and the moon and back—”

“Logan, I really don't . . .” The missing word at the end of Layla's sentence was “care,” but she decided she didn't want to say it out loud. Or she couldn't. Either way, she decided it was time to go back inside the party. Layla started walking back to the house.

Logan followed closely after her. “Okay, I'm sorry—”

“I don't need you to be sorry—”

Logan reached out and grabbed Layla's hand again.

And she pulled hers away again, just as fast as she could.

“
Why are you mad at me?” he asked.

“What kind of a question is that?”

“You don't seem to want to talk to me . . .”

“Logan, I'm not gonna make
small talk
or whatever—”

“We can make big talk if you want.” Logan laughed.

“You're drunk, Logan. Go home.”

“Would love to,” Logan said with a crassness in his voice. “But first can we agree that we should've lost it to each other?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I didn't lose it,” Layla said, feeling strangely liberated.

Logan certainly wasn't expecting her to say that. “What about your to-do list?”

“What about it?” Layla smiled.

“O-kay,” Logan said, sounding even more drunk than he had just a moment before. “What happened to the Layla Baxter I dated for two years? That girl would've made sure to finish her to-do list.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that girl isn't me anymore . . . ,” Layla said. And she meant it too. She didn't have to pretend. Not with her face. Not with her voice. Not with any of it. It was a glorious feeling. “And that's okay,” she added.

“It
is
okay,” Logan said, smirking, “but it could be better . . .”

Before Layla could ask him what he meant, Logan pulled her in for a kiss.

It was big and hard and fast and slow all at the same time.

And all of a sudden all the old feelings came rushing back.

The
attraction, the hormones, the love . . . all of it.

And Layla kissed him back just as hard and fast and slow as he kissed her. And even though she knew it really would be okay—
way more than okay
—if she didn't complete her to-do list, she also couldn't help but think, at least for a fleeting moment, that maybe she and Logan should just . . . do it. They could have sex on the beach—right here and now—and Layla could cross it off her to-do list, and that would be it.

But then, forever, that would be it.

And it simply wasn't what Layla wanted . . .

. . . at least not right now.

And since right now was all there really was Layla pulled away from Logan, stopping his kisses.

“Aw, come on, Lay. Let me help you finish the to-do list. You'll be happy. I'll be happy . . .” He leaned in for another kiss, but Layla held up her finger, touching it to his lips. “What's wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Layla smiled. “But we're not doing this.”

“Oh, come on,” Logan said, sounding all drunk and harsh and mean. “You're gonna miss your deadline.”

“Due date,” Layla corrected him with a laugh. She couldn't help herself. She couldn't be something she wasn't either. And she certainly wasn't going to do something she didn't want to.

Layla walked away—back to the party and away from Logan—and she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that
not
doing her very last bullet point was actually the most important thing she'd done all year.

LAYLA
laid out her outfit for graduation on her bed.

It was hard to believe that it was all really happening in the morning.

HAPPENING
, she texted The Chat as the doorbell rang.

“Lay-la!” her mom called from downstairs a few moments later. “Guess who's here?” Layla had teased her mom for thinking that someone might show up to her front door without texting first, but that's exactly what Logan had done.

“I figured you might tell me not to come over,” Logan explained as Layla closed the front door behind them and joined him outside. They sat down on the front steps. Logan had asked if she wanted to hang out on the trampoline one last time, but Layla had said no. This felt better. “I just wanted to say sorry . . . ”

“Doesn't love mean never having to say you're sorry?”

“
Yeah, well, my mom thinks that's the stupidest thing she's ever heard, so . . .” Logan smiled, popping that signature dimple into his cheek. Now that he wasn't dripping with alcohol, he looked and sounded like his old charming self again. They hadn't been alone like this, really alone and just themselves together, since the day they broke up. Layla had missed him so much, but looking at him now, and smiling with him, she could feel that he wasn't the same person from before.

And neither was she.

And Layla couldn't help but think that was a good thing.

“I still love you to the moon and back,” Logan said as the beginning of his good-bye.

“I love you, too,” Layla said.

And she meant it.

But it was a different kind of love than she'd had for him before.

She knew that no matter how many times she'd fall in love in the future, there'd always be a small, quiet place in her heart that belonged only to Logan.

And that was okay.

More than okay.

In a way, Layla loved Logan more now than she ever had before. The good news, though—maybe the
best
news—was that she loved herself more.

. . . was as bittersweet as it gets.

Layla, Zoe, Alex, and Emma posed for pictures on the athletic field in their caps and gowns. At some point, as the cameras were flashing from every direction, Emma thought to whisper to the girls that the real reason she liked photo­graphs so much was that they never changed, even when the people in them did. Everyone wanted to say that wasn't true, that they wouldn't change, or at least, if they
did
, they would still manage to grow and change in the same direction and fit this neatly together forever.

But they all knew that they couldn't say that.

They knew it wasn't the sort of thing you could promise.

Later, The Crew spent their graduation night at Disneyland. Twelve glorious, uninterrupted hours spent running around the happiest place on earth. No boys or other girls. No sex. No distractions. Just four best friends. And a hundred rides.

The last ride of the night (slash morning) turned out to be Splash Mountain. It was Zoe's favorite, even though the big drop at the end scared her beyond words. It had actually been their first ride of the night too, but Zoe asked to ride it one more time. Layla loved the symmetry of that, and Alex and Emma were game, and so the girls ran back through the park for one last splash. As they crept up the conveyor belt in their fake plastic log, edging toward the largest drop, Layla, Alex, Zoe, and Emma all managed to have the very same thought at the very same time: The best part about this ride was that they were on it together. Honestly, that was the only thing that really mattered.

Just before the sun came up, the girls stood all together watching an
actual
fireworks display in the sky above the magic castle. Of course they couldn't help but think about their own personal fireworks, the ones they'd set off by themselves or with the lucky people they'd let step inside. And the thoughts and feelings were enough to make them want to cry . . . but it all turned into laughter instead, because sometimes emotions are so close together it's impossible not to feel them all at once.

Sometimes emotions know what you need even when you don't.

This was it: the final, fleeting moment of high school.

All of it was bright and exploding, and then just as quickly fading away and finally disappearing into the sky. The girls felt each blast as if it were happening just for the four of them alone and no one else in the world. And the whole thing was already a memory—a forever-and-always kind of memory—
before the fireworks display even ended. Maybe, honestly, before it had even really begun.

It was just that special.

This moment.

This magic.

This friendship.

This glorious time of their lives.

And they knew it couldn't last forever, not really anyway, but they already felt like it was all a part of them, like it had burrowed into their hearts and melted into their minds and blurred—irrevocably blurred—into the depths of their souls.

This was it—and this was everything.

The story started in a froyo shop, and that's effectively where it ended, too.

Even though it didn't officially—
actually—
happen for Layla until the very end of the summer, it was all set in motion right in the beginning on the first day after graduation. After the girls came home from Disneyland, and napped, The Crew decided the only thing they wanted was froyo. This meant breaking tradition and showing up at The Bigg Chill on a Tuesday, which would've been fine, totally, absolutely fine,
except
for the first time all year—maybe even possibly for the first time
ever
—there was no peanut butter flavor option on the Bigg Chill menu.

There was
always
peanut butter.

And Layla always ordered it.

But now this time would have to be different.

Layla tried very hard to act like it wasn't a big deal, but Bigg Chill Aaron could tell that it was a VERY big deal.
He decided to be bold and recommend his favorite flavor instead: Honey Greek Yogurt. “It's not for everyone,” he cautioned, “but I'm a big fan.” Layla tried it. She liked it. And ordered it without too much of a fuss.

Then, the girls sat at their usual table, in their usual corner, and laughed and ate too many rainbow sprinkles and were just happy to be together.

And that was it.

Alex had a week until she had to leave for Stanford and summer track practices. Emma's one-way ticket to Southeast Asia was scheduled to leave two weeks after that. She'd officially decided to defer her freshman year of college and take a gap year. Emma was going to travel around the world, volunteering and working and taking pictures as she went. Zoe had to move into her dorm at the University of Michigan the second week of August. And Layla would start her freshman year at USC a week or so after that.

It was all happening.

That first day after graduation Layla had left The Bigg Chill feeling strangely alive. She felt invigorated, like the world was an open door, a book with only blank pages. Layla climbed into her car, stuck the key in the ignition . . .

. . . and simply got stuck.

She couldn't drive. She could barely even move. She was petrified. She desperately wanted to be the kind of person who could speed off into the sunset and not look back, but that wasn't Layla's style. Yes, plans could change and she would survive. There was no peanut butter froyo, and she had lived to tell it. But she liked her lists and her systems
and all of her due dates. Layla was unapologetically
Layla
, and she wasn't going to stop being that now . . . but apparently and unfortunately, it felt like she wasn't going to be able to go anywhere either.

And then.

Just when she thought she might actually get stuck sitting in the parking lot of The Bigg Chill forever, her phone buzzed.

It was a phone number she didn't recognize, with a 267 area code.

Too soon to make a plan?

Layla looked up from her phone and saw Bigg Chill Aaron smiling at her through the wall of glass windows. Layla had given him her number just a few minutes earlier. She said she would love to hear from him sometime. And she meant it. The fact that he texted her almost immediately
and
used the word “plan” in his very first text message was an absolute dream.

Almost instantly Layla and Bigg Chill Aaron fell hard and fast, as text messages and timid smiles turned into full-fledged butterflies and endless make-out sessions. He insisted he wasn't normally like this, all head over heels and all in and everything, but their connection was infectious and palpable, and there was no reason to fight it. Bigg Chill Aaron's name was soon shortened to “Aaron,” because there was far too much discussion about him in The Chat to keep typing all three words over and over again. A few weeks later Aaron officially asked to be Layla's boyfriend. A few weeks after that, they said “I love you.” And then,
about two months after that very first text . . .