Page 75 of The Two of Us

The last time I received an SOS text from Cat was in the sixth grade when she started her period for the first time at school, which is why I slip off my heels and run barefoot into the parking lot.

I stop at Ambrose’s car, looking in every direction for her. When I hear footsteps running up behind me, I turn to find Ambrose bent at the waist, trying to catch his breath.

“Where is she?” he asks.

“I don’t know. She texted you too?”

He nods.

“I’m right here.” Cat shoots her hand up, coming out from behind a minivan.

I rush to her side. “Cat, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She holds her hand up, stopping me from coming any closer. “But we,” she says, pointing between the three of us. “We are not fine.”

“What are you talking about, Cat?” Ambrose asks.

She crosses her arms. “We sat not a foot away from each other in that ballroom and yet you’d think we were separated by oceans. This has gone on long enough. I don’t know when this friendship between the three of us got so complicated, but that ends right now.”

Ambrose laughs. “You’ve got to be kidding me, you used SOS for this?”

“Shut up, Ambrose!” Cat yells. Ambrose clamps his mouth shut.

“You’re both coming with me,” she says, pulling Ambrose’s keys from her clutch.

Ambrose’s eyes bulge, patting his pockets. “How the hell did you—”

“And if you don’t,” she cuts him off. “I will never forgive the two of you.”

As if that leaves us much of a choice. Ambrose and I bite our tongues and slip into the car while Cat drives us to a location she refuses to disclose.

And when the car slows over the crunch of gravel twenty minutes later, Ambrose is the first to speak. “I can’t believe you parent trapped us,” he grumbles.

I snort. “I can.”

“Quiet, both of you. Mara, Ambrose keeps an obscene number of T-shirts in the back. Grab two.”

“What? Why?”

She slips out of the car only to duck her head back in. “We’re going swimming.”

***

Treading water in Lake Bonnie in nothing but one of Ambrose’s oversized T-shirts is the last thing I thought I’d be doing on my prom night. But here I am. Here we are.

“So what now,” I ask, splashing Cat.

I can tell she wants to laugh but she keeps her face stoic for show. “We need to backtrack our history. Figure out where it all went wrong.”

“I don’t think I can tread water that long,” Ambrose says. Cat splashes him and when he chokes on the water we all laugh.

“Cat,” I say, softening my voice. “People grow apart. It’s just life.”

She shakes her head. “No. See, I don’t accept that. Because I love Maitland, but us three? We’re soul mates.”

I dip my head back in the water and release a sigh. “What would you have us do?”

“A restart.”

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