‘Excellent,’ he replied and turned the tape player up loud.
Jennifer knew that it was supposed to be a fun day, but she couldn’t help feeling out of sorts. Labor Day was always bittersweet, the sense of an ending in the air. Jim played cassette tapes for the rest of the journey, sharing new music he had discovered and liked; bands with names like Pulp, Oasis and Blur, Brits who were giving a kick in the teeth to American grunge, he explained with a note of national pride. He hoped this summer had been worthwhile if for no other reason than to improve her taste in music. She wanted to tell him how amazing it had been, how sad she was that it was almost over, but she stayed quiet.
Her mood picked up by the time they got to the island. Most people were already at the beach, assembled in a knot around a pile of baskets and ice boxes and footballs. There were at least twenty in the group, and at first glance, Jennifer realised she knew about half of them. They were Jeanne’s crowd, not her own; nice people from school, and a few she had met at the party at the start of the summer.
They played volleyball and sunbathed. Jim mixed in easily. Too easily, she noted with annoyance when Tina, a petite curvy blonde and a friend of Jeanne’s new flatmate, asked him to apply some tanning oil to her back, and he readily accepted.
As the light fell out of the sky, they made a makeshift fire pit on the beach and collected driftwood to burn. Everyone cheered as the flames roared into the air and the mauve twilight seemed to gift the night more magic.
‘Time for s’mores,’ someone shouted.
‘What’s a s’more?’ asked Jim, fetching his guitar from their pile of stuff.
‘A campfire tradition,’ replied Tina, getting up to find a jumper and sitting herself down next to Jim when she returned.
‘Grab a prong, my friend,’ said Jeanne, handing him a skewer.
He stabbed his fork into a huge marshmallow and put it into the fire.
‘There’s an art to it,’ continued Jeanne. ‘Some people like them burned and incinerated; some people just want to warm them up a bit, but the best is when you get them golden and roasted.’
‘Just like this,’ said Jim, carefully removing his mallow from the top of the flame. He was about to pop it into his mouth when Tina stopped him.
‘That’s not a s’more,’ she said, moving closer. ‘You need a graham cracker and a piece of chocolate.’ She demonstrated her recipe with the ingredients she had to hand. ‘Then you get your marshmallow and sandwich it together with another cracker, and there you have it. Delicious,’ she said, reaching over and feeding it directly into Jim’s mouth.
Jennifer felt as if she’d been tasered. Her entire body was in shock as she watched Tina lick a remnant of white goo from her hand suggestively. She couldn’t believe how the woman was making a campfire tradition into an artful seduction. She flashed a look over at Jeanne, who registered a faint, resigned disapproval before standing up and waving a bottle of beer in the air.
‘I think it’s time we played a game,’ she announced.
A murmur of unwillingness rippled around the circle until she instructed their school friend Pete to get the shot glasses.
‘In honour of this being our School’s Out Forever summer . . . we should play Most Likely.’
‘What? Like a yearbook?’ asked a voice in the growing darkness.
‘Exactly like a yearbook, except with added tequila,’ confirmed Jeanne.
Jim started strumming his guitar softly.
‘How does this work then? We don’t do yearbooks in England.’
‘I think up a category, and then we all have to decide who’s most likely to do that thing. If someone votes for you, you have to drink a shot. I like to think of it as punishment for potential and accomplishment.’
Jim laughed, and Jennifer watched him for a moment. She liked his smile, she always had done. He looked quite beautiful in the twilight, she thought, remembering back to the first night they had met, by the lake. She felt something in her heart, a yearning for something she had not yet had or was ever likely to have.
As her gaze trailed around the circle, she could see Tina looking at him too and wished that Jim would just put the guitar down. He needed no help attracting female attention as it was, and there was something about the way Tina was looking at him that made Jennifer’s back stiffen. The pretty blonde looked tiny and lovely and vulnerable bundled up in her sweater, although to men, Jennifer knew she would look like a sex kitten.
‘Do you want another s’more?’ asked Jennifer, edging towards her friend. She knew that it was not the most tempting offer she could make, but she felt on red alert; that he was in the proximity of a predator and she had to stop him from getting caught.
‘Cheers,’ he smiled.
She toasted a marshmallow until it was brown and crisp, but as she sandwiched it between two graham crackers, the biscuits disintegrated, leaving a crumbled mess.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said as he put his guitar down and took the broken s’more from her.
&nb
sp; ‘It all tastes the same,’ he said reassuringly, but Jennifer noticed that Tina was looking over triumphantly.