Second Time Around Read Free

friendship and fine literature.”
    “And many more!”
    “Cheers!”
    “Cheers!”
    “Cheerio!”
    L ater, after the other girls drifted off to bed one by one, Arden and Cait remained on the porch, hugging their knees against their chests to ward off the damp midnight chill and watching the rippling reflection of the huge white moon on the lake.
    They sat in silence, listening to the steady lapping of the waves, until Arden yawned loudly. “Last Fourth of July. Couldn’t have asked for a better night. Jamie was right about those wine coolers, though; I can already feel an epic hangover coming on.”
    Cait stared straight ahead and addressed the fearless, frail girl who had started out as her freshman year roommate and ended up as her best friend and bonus sister. “You’re not going to die, you know.”
    Arden’s laugh was wry but gentle. “Of course not. I’m only taking an extended leave of absence from the firm because I’m bone idle.”
    “That’s not what I meant; I just—”
    “I know exactly what you meant, Cait. I know what youmean and you know what I mean.” Arden exhaled slowly, her breath barely audible above the breeze. “Let’s change the subject. How’s the book coming?”
    Cait frowned. “What book?”
    “That novel you keep saying you’re going to write.”
    “Oh. That. Well, between teaching and going ten rounds with the B+ brigade and trying to publish all those esoteric articles in all those esoteric journals, I don’t really have time to write fiction right now.”
    Arden shifted in her seat and quoted Marvell. “‘
Had we but world enough, and time
…’”
    “Exactly. I’ll get to it someday.”
    “Well, you better buckle down, sugarplum, because all the best writers kick off young: Keats, Shelley, Plath …”
    “Those are poets,” Cait pointed out. “Totally different. Poets do their best work before thirty; novelists don’t even get warmed up until then.”
    “Says who?”
    “Professor Hott-with-two-
t
’s Clayburn.”
    “I see.” Arden changed position again, but Cait couldn’t tell if the cause of this restlessness was physical or psychological distress. “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but you just had a birthday, didn’t you? Thirty-two?”
    “I prefer to think of it as twenty-twelve.”
    “Always with the excuses.” Arden’s voice dropped to a thick, slow murmur. “Here’s the thing: Time is a luxury. Time is precious. And this is coming from the queen of procrastination. No more extensions. No makeup tests.”
    Cait bowed her head to hide her tears. “Can we please talk about this?”
    “Absolutely not.” Arden snapped back into her customary flippancy. “And if you start singing ‘Wind Beneath MyWings,’ I’m kicking you out of the cabin. You’ll have to sleep on the beach.”
    “Can I just hum a few bars?”
    “You’ll be a tasty bear canapé in your sleeping bag.” Arden shivered. “Let’s stay up late and look at the moon. Pull an all-nighter, just like back in college.”
    “You’re on.” Cait ducked into the house long enough to grab two thick woolen blankets, which she wrapped around Arden and herself. They huddled together on the chaise in silence, sharing a cocoon of warmth and gazing up toward heaven. Cait vowed to stay awake, to safeguard Arden with her own vitality, but sometime before dawn, her vigilance lapsed and she slipped into slumber.
    T wo months later, Arden slipped away, too. She did so in classic Arden Henley fashion, quietly and on her own terms, and not before springing one last, life-changing surprise on her friends.

“She had an unequalled gift … of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.”
    —Henry James,
Greville Fane
    A
million
dollars?” Jamie slid down against the bar’s break room wall until she was sitting on the booze-sodden floor mats. “You’re yanking my chain.”
    “Well, a million dollars split four ways,” Anna explained on the other end of the phone line. “So two