Page 49 of The Last Five Yards

She is completely not okay.

But she is here.

And Reese is here.

And the night stretches wide open in front of them.

Maren turns her body back to the conversation Ava and Jules are having about their new apartments, graduating college, and moving on with their lives. They have both decided to stay down in Bloomington and start their lives down there. They encourage Maren to come down and visit, knowing that she won’t ever do it, but being invited still feels nice. Maren does her best to try and carry on the conversation, but out of the corner of her eyes, all she sees is Reese, dancing next to the fire with a couple of the divers. Her laughter rings like a bell through the air, and it is the only thing that Maren can hear.

She stands up, gently brushing the sand from her legs, and excuses herself from her friends. Telling them, she is just going to go down to the water to feel how cold it is. She starts to walk towards the water.

Jules calls after her, “Be careful out there, Captain, I hear there are sharks in the water.”

Maren shakes her head and laughs, not even bothering to turn around. She just raises her hand above her head, playfully flipping her friends off.

She is about halfway down to the water when she hears it. The voice she will never forget.

“Where are you off to, co-captain?”

Maren turns to find Reese jogging towards her. She gets down to Maren, slightly out of breath, and leans into Maren, tapping their shoulders together.

“God, we are the old people now, aren’t we? I forgot that running on sand was just evil.”

“Speak for yourself, Callahan. I could still out-swim more than half of them up there at the fire.” Maren giggles a little too loudly and quickly turns back to face the water.

Reese falls into step beside her, matching her pace like it is the easiest thing in the world. The lake spreads out in front of them, dark blue and calm, the surface catching the last bit of gold from the fire behind them.

“Do you remember,” Reese says, nudging her with her shoulder, “when Coach made us do that awful sunrise practice, and you swore you were going to quit the team?”

Maren snorts. “I was fourteen. We were freshmen. And in my defense, it was five in the morning. No child should be awake early enough to be somewhere at five.”

Reese laughs. “You showed up with a protein bar, a full thermos of coffee, and a printed workout plan you made for yourself. I should have known then you were destined to coach.”

Maren wrinkles her nose. “One, my coffee was something like eighty percent creamer. And two, you showed up ten minutes late with your hair wet from a shower. You knew you were getting into the pool. Why did you even shower?”

“Well, I had to wake up somehow,” Reese says.

“And you made the whole pool area smell like your melon hair conditioner for the next three hours.”

Reese grins. “And everyone loved it.”

Maren shakes her head, but her smile is real. The lake breeze slips between them, cool and soft. Their footsteps scrape quietly through the sand.

A few moments pass, gentle and easy. The noise from the fire fades behind them, replaced by the quiet lap of waves.

Reese toes the edge of the water. “Bet you five bucks it is freezing.”

Maren raises an eyebrow. “Bet you ten you complain first.”

Reese gasps dramatically. “Excuse you. I am a finely trained aquatic professional.”

“Who used to tell people there were sharks in the freshwater lake,” Maren shoots back.

Reese laughs, and Maren does too, a soft sound that feels like it has been trapped inside her for years. She steps beside Reese, close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating from her arm.

For a moment, they just stand there, looking out at the lake. The reflection of the fire dances on the black surface. The sky deepens into true night, stars just starting to prick through.

“It looks the same,” Reese says quietly. “The lake. The beach. All of it.”