"What do we do first?" Bren asked.
"I don't know." Edward said. "I've never done this before."
"Me either." she answered. "Should we just take our clothes off?"
Bren had been his next door neighbor for literally forever. She was born a week before him. Their families were next door neighbors and their mothers best friends. A little over 18 years ago, they had met while still in diapers, barely days old. So it probably wasn't quite accurate to say they'd never seen each other naked, but they certainly had not since they'd learned that boys and girls were different.
They played together in one house before they knew boys and girls were supposed to play with different things. Then when they knew, they played together, her with dolls and tea parties, he with trucks and army men.
They had other friends when they got older, but their paths kept crossing. Her friends mingled with his friends. They hung out together sometimes, just them. Other times they hung out with common friends. Another coincidence, their last names both started with the same two letters, so they sat together in class when the teacher assigned seats alphabetically. They sat together by choice otherwise.
They were almost inseparable till they were about 12. Their friends started teasing them about hanging out with each other. They succumbed to peer pressure and kept their distance. Except when they didn't. When nobody else was available, or when they just wanted to see each other. They rode their bikes together, explored the neighborhood together, explored the woods together.
As they got older, their bodies told them they wanted the company of the opposite sex, but their friendship was too close to allow either of them to notice that they were of opposite sexes. She told him about boys she was interested in. He told her about girls he had a crush on. When one of the targets of their not fully formed interest was a friend of the other, they played matchmaker for each other.
Edward had noticed that Bren's body had developed, of course. He usually put such thoughts out of his mind. They were friends, and friends didn't think of each other that way. They didn't exactly avoid each other, but quiet moments together had been awkward often enough that they started finding other people to hang out with. Their driver's licenses, their friends with cars, their widening interests, all took them further away from home, and from each other.
But they still lived next door to each other. It was the early summer after their senior year. He was mowing the front lawn. It was an easy job with the power mower, and he didn't even break a sweat. Bren came over as he was wheeling the mower back into the garage.
"I want to show you something." she said. Edward briefly noted the light cotton shirt she wore, bare at the shoulders, and the capri shorts. He noted how strong her shoulders had become after she'd taken up swimming in a semi-serious way, and the small mounds below them. He noted the sleek smooth skin covering long toned legs. He noted the femininity in her face - the perfect balance of her eyes with her her nose and lips - and how it was barely hidden behind the serious and alert expression she usually wore.
He just as quickly banished the thought, and looked at the girl he'd grown up with, the girl he'd known all his life, who was like a sister to him. "What?" he asked, peeling the work gloves off his hands and wiping his brow with a towel.
"C'mon" she said, and turned toward her front door without looking back. They knew each other well enough that they usually knew what the other was thinking, what they would do, and she had no doubt that he would follow.
She led him into the house and toward the stairs. "My parents are on vacation." she'd informed him, knowing he would be looking around to say hi to her mom. "They finally decided I could be left home alone without throwing wild parties and trashing the place. They told me I could have girlfriends visit, but no boys."
"I'm a boy." he said.
She laughed. "Yeah, but you don't count."
"Oh, I see." It could have hurt, but he knew she meant her parents didn't think of him that way. And neither did she. "What do you want to show me?"
She led him to her room. "In here." she said.
He followed her in. It was the same room she'd always had. She was never a tomboy, but neither was she a girlie-girl. She was highly intelligent, a serious student, and always had a knack for knowing what was going on when he was still oblivious.
Her room was filled with the kinds of things a girl collects over her life, some that he'd seen in his earliest memories of playing in here, some were new to him, the personal belongings of a mature young woman. Stuffed animals lined a shelf. One, a threadbare Tyrannosaurus he'd known all his life as "Rex" lay on the pillow over a deep red bedspread of a neatly made bed. Books lined another shelf. Well worn children's books. Organic chemistry textbooks. Everything in between.
"So what is it?" he asked.
She went to a desk that held an assortment of puzzle toys, a small stack of books, a stack of notepads full of scribbles, doodles, and what looked like serious notes, and a laptop. From a cheap metal in box she pulled a letter.
Edward read it, then dropped his hands, the paper held in one of them forgotten, its physical presence overwhelmed by its contents. It was her college acceptance letter. He'd gotten his last week. It hadn't struck him before, but this made it real. This was their last summer together. The last in the same town, in the same state.
"Have you ever wondered how much of who we are is because of all the time we've spent with each other?" she asked.
He hadn't, but it was the kind of observation she was always making. The kind of thing she saw, that she wondered about, that he rarely did. She made him think about them. They were part of each other, in so many ways.
"We've shared so many firsts" she said. She'd cried on his shoulder the first time she broke up with a boyfriend, after all of one chaste date. He'd gone to her the first time he broke up with someone. They went to the arcade and never said a word, but she was there. They'd hugged afterward, his first hug with a woman who was not his mother or an aunt. Before that, they'd shared their first curiosity about their growing bodies, without touching, just peeking. Before that, so many firsts of growing up. First skinned knee, first broken bone - when he'd fallen out of a tree - first time running away from home and getting as far as next door.
"I guess that's true." he said, still holding the proclamation that ended their lifelong closeness.
"After this summer," she said, her eyes watering. "We'll be a thousand miles apart."
"We can keep in touch." he said, his throat tightening.
