HOLD THE FOREVERS

4. Athens-1

4

Athens

May 5, 2008

Finals week wasn’t the ideal time to throw a party. I definitely should have been studying for my Spanish final. Languages were not my strong suit, and I needed an A on the final to keep my B in the class. It was pathetic.

Instead, I was waiting for Marley to show up in Athens. She was the genius of us. She’d been in the Duke TIP program since middle school, which identified young talent, and had been admitted to the university with early acceptance. I missed her, as she was five long hours away. Thankfully, she didn’t have any finals at Duke and was currently driving south to be here in time for my birthday party.

I texted her, requesting an ETA.

Driving down the Atlanta Highway. *insert B-52 lyrics*

She was ridiculous, but I was glad that she was finally here.

Cole had been needling me all day about coming over to his place early for birthday shenanigans. It didn’t matter that we’d celebrated his birthday yesterday downtown. Half the football team had drunkenly shown up and gotten him so plastered that he’d blacked out the second I got him into his bed.

It was still surprising to me that our birthdays were so close. His on the fourth of May and mine on the fifth. I’d always hated having my birthday on Cinco de Mayo until college when it was apparently the coolest s**t ever, and Cole had promptly declared that he was throwing a joint birthday party. Then he’d planned two anyway. Having two birthday parties after claiming we were only having one was perfectly Cole.

HERE! HERE! HERE!!!!!

I dashed out of my dorm room and down into the Brumby lobby. Marley had hiked up the hill and opened the lobby door when I got out of the elevator. We collided in the middle, laughing and practically near to tears. This was the longest either of us had ever gone without the other. I’d seen her at Christmas, and it was too long to go.

“I missed you!” Marley said.

“So much,” I told her. “Let’s never do this again.”

“Deal.” She finally released me. “So, when do I get to meet him?”

“Cole has been asking the same thing.”

“Well, it’s not fair that Josie was here the weekend y’all met,” Marley said. She brushed strands of her curly, dark hair out of her face and adjusted the large backpack on her back. It was likely all she’d brought with her for the day that she was staying with me before she returned to Savannah for the summer. If I knew my best friend at all, the rest of stuff was neatly arranged in boxes in the trunk of her giant SUV. Likely labeled, dated, and color-coordinated. “I mean, she’s been rubbing it in that she got those pictures of y’all at the game.”

“She sold them to a newspaper,” I groaned, dragging her deeper into the dorm.

“I know! That’s so Josie.”

“Isn’t it?”

We hurried back upstairs, chatting animatedly about everything and nothing.

I’d known Marley since second grade when we were both in Mrs. Jackson’s class. Marley complimented my Lisa Frank shirt, I gushed over her scrunchie, and then we promptly got in trouble for talking too much. We’d been inseparable ever since.

After we both got dressed, I texted Cole to let him know we were on our way and then took my beat-up Hyundai north of the dorms to the light-blue house where Cole lived with his two roommates. I knocked twice on the front door and then let myself inside. The party wouldn’t start for another hour and wouldn’t really get going until later, but already, there were a handful of people present, sitting around, watching TV, and pregaming with beers.

I pulled Marley in behind me. We hurried past one of Cole’s roommates, Barry, and continued into the kitchen. Cole turned at our presence, and a smile split his face.

“Finally,” he said, scooping me up and kissing me.

“I did text you.”

He patted his pockets. “I don’t know where my phone is.”

“You’re always losing it.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. You’re here.” He turned to my best friend. “And you must be Marley.”

“I am,” she said, extending her hand for him to shake.

He took it. “So good to finally meet you. Lila talks about you nonstop.”

“Funny. I was going to say the same thing about you.”

He grinned as his gaze shifted back to me. “You talk about me nonstop?”

“You’re my new, shiny toy,” I told him with a wink.

“And what does that say about me?” Marley asked.

“You’re the Woody to his Buzz Lightyear.”

“I don’t know whether or not to be offended by that.”

“You’re forever, babe,” I told her, slinging an arm over her shoulders. “Now, we have two birthdays to celebrate.”

“Yes, what can I get you?” Cole said. “Beer, wine, margaritas?”

“Margaritas,” Marley and I said in unison.

Cole blended together the drinks, and we took them into the living room to watch SportsCenter. I’d seen the baseball highlight plays already. Apparently, it was a casualty of spending a lot of time with Cole. More and more sports.

“So,” Marley said as she sank into a chair. She tucked her legs up underneath her and looked at Cole.

“Oh no,” I said into my margarita.

Cole glanced at me. “What?”

“Here it comes.”

“Tell me everything about you,” Marley said. “What’s your major? What do you want to be when you grow up? What do your parents do?”

“Mars,” I grumbled. “We talked about this.”

She looked sheepish. “I know you told me to stagger my questions, but this is who I am.”

Cole just chuckled. “It’s fine. I don’t mind the third degree from your best friend.”

Cole’s other roommate patted him on the back. “Good luck with that.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Cole said with an eye roll.

Tony leaned forward. “I’ve known him since high school. Trust me, he’s not that interesting.”

Marley and I laughed as Cole punched him in the shoulder.

“d**k,” Cole grumbled. “My major is sports management and marketing. I don’t ever want to grow up. And my dad is a football coach. My mom is a middle school teacher.”

“Okay, okay,” Marley said, holding her hands up. “I don’t understand what sports management even is.”

“It’s someone who wants to work with sports,” I told her.

“Yeah, but … what do you do with that?”

“Ignore her,” I said. “You don’t have to submit to this interrogation. She’s a science person, and she wants to, like, cure cancer.”

“Dementia,” Marley corrected.

“Interrogation already accepted,” Cole said with that same smile. His blue eyes bright as they rested on my best friend. “Sports management could be anything from professional sports to running a rec league. Personally, I’d like to be a talent scout for a professional football team, but I’m also interested in marketing and PR. Which is why I’m a double major.”

“I’m surprised you have time with football.”

Tony chuckled. “He thrives most when he’s swamped. You should have seen him in high school. He played football, ran track, held down a job with his dad, volunteered at a nursing home, and kept a 4.0.”

My eyes widened. Thanks, Marley. Somehow, I was learning more about my own boyfriend through this conversation. I’d known he was a double major. He’d schooled me about that on our second date. But all the rest, I wasn’t aware.

“Yeah, fine,” Cole said, “I like to keep busy. Nothing wrong with that.”

“You were salutatorian without trying. You had to turn down an academic scholarship,” Tony said, crossing his arms. “You’re a monster.”

“You turned down an academic scholarship?” I asked.

Cole shrugged. “I had to. I was offered a football scholarship, too, and there are all these weird NCAA rules. The academic scholarship could go to someone else.”

“Whoa,” I muttered.

“Oh, so you’re smart!” Marley said with a smile.

“Well, I don’t need help on my Intro to Kinesiology paper if that’s what you mean,” Cole said, winking at me.

I stuck my tongue out. “It was a fair question! Most of the jocks aren’t writing their own papers. How was I to know that you’d turned down an academic scholarship?”

“It was cute.”

Marley nodded as if she saw the pieces fall together. “Sports management for you and physical therapy for Lila. You’ll recruit the players, and Lila will piece them back together.”

“Big dreams,” Cole said.

“I like your big dreams and big brain,” I told him.

“Is that a euphemism?” Cole asked, rubbing his nose against mine.

“Maybe.”

“You two are disgusting,” Tony said. He leaned away from our very public display of affection.

I didn’t mind being disgusting. I was exactly where I wanted to be.