Senia could be a supermodel with her perfectly tanned skin, dark tousled hair, and spot-on fashion sense. At five-ten, she towers over my five-foot-six frame in her four-inch heels. She has the perfect button nose and full lips that I’ve always dreamed of having. My blonde hair is too thin, my nose is too small, and my upper lip is too big. Senia says it gives me a sexy pout, but she only says that to make me feel better. I’m average and I’ve learned to not only accept it, I embrace it.
“Don’t make me say it,” I reply as I unscrew the cap on the bottle of water and take a swig.
She holds up her hand to stop me. “Please don’t. And, by the way, that has to be the worst motto ever adopted by any person ever in the history of all mankind.”
I pull my keys out of my purse to lock the front door as we make our way out of the apartment. “You might be exaggerating just a little bit.”
Her heels click against the pavement and I inhale a huge breath of briny ocean breeze as we walk to the covered parking spot where Senia keeps her new black Ford Focus. She isn’t rolling in cash, but her parents make pretty good money with the real-estate company where their entire family works. She works in one of their satellite offices in Wilmington while the rest of the family works at the main office in Raleigh. Her parents pay her half of the rent on our apartment, her entire UNC tuition, and she gets a new car every two years on her birthday. Nothing fancy, but new.
“I get it,” Senia says as she deactivates her car alarm and we slide into our seats. “You don’t want to be a shallow, vacuous piece of shit like Joanie Tipton. But that doesn’t mean that you have to dress for a party like you’re going to work on a fucking construction site.”
“Hey, I resent that. I left my tool belt at home this time,” I tease her and she rolls her eyes as she turns on the stereo to her favorite EDM station.
An Ellie Goulding dance mix blasts through the speakers and Senia immediately begins bobbing her head as she pulls the car out of the parking space. She maneuvers her car around the moving truck that’s half-blocking the exit out of the complex. Cora, our eighty-six-year-old landlord, must have finally found a tenant for the upstairs apartment.
“Claire!” Senia shouts as she pulls onto Lumina. “You need to renew your driver’s license!”
“Senia! I live four hundred feet from where I work and I don’t have a car. I don’t need a driver’s license just so I can be your designated driver.”
I sold my car when I moved to Wrightsville Beach two and a half months ago to pay for the first and last month’s rent on my apartment. Senia moved in three weeks later, once the semester ended. She claimed she did it so we could spend the summer together on the hottest surf beach on the East Coast, but I know it’s so she can help me with the rent for a few months. The summer is halfway over now and she’ll be moving back in with her parents in a month to go back to UNC. If I don’t find another roommate or convince Linda to give me more hours at the café, I may be homeless in six months—for the third time in my life.
As soon as Senia pulls up in front of Annabelle’s parents’ beach house, I smell the beer and hear the laughter. My chest tightens. I focus my eyes on the water bottle in my hand, forcing myself to think of nothing else as I breathe deeply and slowly. Senia is quiet as she waits for me. She’s used to my coping mechanisms.
The edges of my vision blur and everything but the bottle disappears. I think about how water is the essential element for life to flourish. I think of how it soothes and carries us, cleanses and quenches us. I imagine the water washing away every worry, every doubt about tonight and carrying it away to a clear, tranquil sea. I close my eyes and take one final deep breath as my muscles go slack and I’m completely relaxed.
I nod once and reach for the door handle. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
“I don’t know how you do that, but it’s kind of creepy and inspiring all at once.”
Senia and I stroll up the walkway arm-in-arm past the lush summer garden toward the blue, two-story clapboard beach house. I spot a group of five guys standing on the porch with red Solo cups and cigarettes clutched in their hands. From his profile, I recognize the short Indian guy leaning against the porch railing. He was in the sophomore Comp Lit class I dropped out of last October. I turn my head slightly as Senia and I climb the steps to the front door, hoping none of them will recognize me.
Senia pulls open the squeaky screen door and I choke on the sweet smell of alcohol and perfume. We step further inside and the first thing I see is a gathering of a dozen or so people huddled around the sofa where a guy with a guitar is playing and singing a Jason Mraz song.