Chapter 11

The girls and I all walked onto the beach around 8 that night. The sun was beginning to descend over the ocean, and the sky was turning mystical colors of gold, pink, purple, and blue. The clouds were sheer and light, and the sound of the crashing waves was overwhelming and beautiful at the same time. And in the distance, we spotted our guys tossing the football around as a bonfire burned brightly.

No, this wasn't the first chapter out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. This was real life.

We all lugged bags of food and snacks in our hands, trudging through the sand to reach the guys. Naya, Heather, and I borrowed Cory's truck and went food shopping, and we had bought maybe a few too many things. We had five different salads, grilled chicken, tofu dogs, cheeseburgers and their respective toppings, an assortment of rolls and bagels with accompanying spreads, and pounds of cold cuts and cheeses for sandwiches. We had also purchased four or five large bags of jumbo marshmallows and the reusable plastic marshmallow roasting sticks, so we didn't have to scour the beach for gross driftwood that washed ashore.

"I see them," Dianna remarked with a smile as she pointed towards the group.

My hands were heavy with large bags of food. "You'd think they'd see us and offer to help." I swear, the color of my palms was the pinkest of paint selections for a newborn baby girl's bedroom. I could hear Jenna and Amber struggling behind me as they carried the large cooler filled with ice and beers. Naya and Heather carried the other cooler, filled with bottles of wine and other chilled beverages.

"Such boys," Ashley groaned, her arms weighed down by large containers of pasta and potato salads.

We trudged over to them, and only when a few feet distanced us, they saw us coming. And of course, they dropped everything and ran over to us, coming to our aide. Mark took the bags from my hands, and even though I could see him remove the weight from my palms, I had no feeling in them for a few minutes. It was so bad, I opened the cooler, and instead of grabbing a beer, I dunked my hands into the ice water.

"Hands hurt?" Cory asked as he bent down into the cooler I had my hands shoved in to grab a beer.

"A little bit," I replied sarcastically as I looked up at him. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and his shirt was damp. Small grains of sand stuck to his arms and legs. And he had this little smirk on his face like the one that Finn Hudson would give to Rachel Berry. Baby boy looked so cute.

Without saying anything more, he walked away from me as he twisted the cap of the bottle off with the bottom of his shirt. I swear, he just liked to tease and torture me. After a few more moments, I took my hands out of the ice and dried them off on the back of my black shorts. While I had my hands in the frigid water, the guys unpacked the food and set it up on folding tables that they had brought with them. We'd be eating around the fire, but at least we wouldn't be serving the food off of a sand dune.

It didn't take us long to dig in. I filled up my plate quickly with salads and vegetables, and a heaping spoonful of hummus that Dianna had whipped up quickly. All of the guys attacked the hamburgers and sandwich materials, and I think some of them even ate the tofu dogs, thinking that they were real hot dogs. But the girls and I kept it simple and smart, knowing that we would have to still look cute in our bathing suits.

I sat on one out of four logs that surrounded the bonfire, and I stretched out my legs so that my feet would be warmed from the heat coming off of the flames. I ate my salad slowly. Have you ever tried eating a salad with an oil-based dressing on a flimsy paper plate? It's not pretty. You can't just go stabbing around the plate with your fork, because then you'd puncture holes and the dressing and everything would just leak out. You had to poke at the lettuce and mixed greens to coax them onto the fork, almost like it was assuring them that it would be safer in your mouth than on your plate.

I watched Cory as he walked towards me with two loaded plates of food in his hands. I couldn't help but smile as he took a seat near me. He placed his two plates of food down on the sand before retrieving another bottle of beer from the cooler. And after he finally came back, he settled in down the log from me, and began eating. "Everything looks so good," he smiled as he picked up his cheeseburger and took a huge bite. "I think I ate a weird vegan dog thing over at the table because it didn't fit on my two plates, and even that was amazing."

"Thanks," I responded as I ate another forkful of the salad. "And you ate a tofu dog."

"Tofu?" he asked, furrowing his eyebrows as he took another bite of his cheeseburger. "Is that like chickpea stuff, like hummus in a casing?"

He wasn't that far off. It did have chickpeas in it, along with other things. Instead of naming off all of the natural ingredients, I cocked my head to the side and gave him a half nod. "In a sense, yes. But hey, I bought the Canadian brand."

"Well, bonus point for you then," he smiled as he inhaled the last bite of his cheeseburger. "All of us were starving waiting for you girls to get here. I mean, I ate breakfast, but these guys have just had all liquid. Well, I think Chris ate breakfast, but otherwise, none of us."

"It all took a long time to prepare and cook. It wasn't easy getting things together in a kitchen that's not your own. None of us knew where anything was."

"I figured," Cory nodded as he ate a forkful of pasta salad. "Bertha is in good shape?" he asked, referring to the truck.

"She was a good girl," I responded with a small smile. "I think she appreciates a woman's touch sometimes."

Cory laughed, covering his mouth with his hand with the fork in it to hide the mashed up pasta in his mouth. "Yeah, that sounds just like Bertha."

"Why did you name your car Bertha?" I asked as I took a sip of my Corona that I had next to me.

He quickly shrugged his shoulders. "It was the first thing that came to my mind. She was an elegant, large, lady in red," he chuckled, referring to his red Range Rover truck. "Bertha just seemed to fit right." He paused to take another bite of pasta salad. "Did you name your car when you first got her?"

"Of course," I responded, almost before he finished asking the question. "Her name is Eleanor."

"Why Eleanor?"

"The first letter of my license plate is E, and I was listening to the Beatles on my way to the car dealership. I think it was one of those fate things."

"Do you call her Elle for short?" he asked with a small smile.

I couldn't help but smile back as I looked at him. "Close! It's Ellie."

"Do I get half a point for that?"

I nodded. "Yes, but only a half."

"I'll take it."

And then he gave me this smile that was unlike any other smile he had given me before. It was this wide, bright smile that was warm and comforting, and I could tell it was the most genuine and real thing in the world. It was the kind of smile that made me want to scoot across the log and throw my arms around him and hug him for all of eternity, just to feel his body against my body. I mean, if I did it now, we'd both have to put down our plates of food, and I'd be afraid of kicking sand onto his meal, or possibly knocking over his bottle of beer, so I refrained. I just smiled back before I continued eating. I figured that I could at least get rid of the plate, and I'd be one step closer to doing what I wanted to do.

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We all sat around the fire. It was nearly midnight, and the sky was pitch black, and we hadn't seen the ocean for hours. None of us could find the moon that night – until we realized that it was the one day of the month that we had the new moon – and then, we really just had to gaze up at the stars. We had blown through the marshmallows pretty quickly. Apparently, five bags of jumbo marshmallows, while sounding like a lot of marshmallows, only really allowed two or three marshmallows per person. So, once we finished all of the marshmallows, we really just resorted to heavy drinking and guitar playing. Mark had brought his guitar down to the beach earlier when they were there to prepare the bonfire, and we all serenaded each other with our favorite songs that we knew by heart, and some songs that we had done on the show.

Cory and I were still sitting apart from each other on the same log for the night, but while Mark took a break from guitar playing to get another drink, Chord, who was sitting between me and Cory, got up to grab another drink with him. Cory looked at me and smirked, and then he scooted his way down the bench towards me, taking over Chord's seat.

Now, normally I would just be happy about this, but tonight, I was thrilled. Cory and I sang multiple duets together, including a little gem titled 'Faithfully' that always seems to bring me close to tears, and we also sang a verse of 'Can't Fight This Feeling' together (well, Cory was really supposed to sing it on his own, but I couldn't help but join in), and then we brought it back old-school and sang the 'Borderline/Open Your Heart' mash-up. I was surprised Mark could pull that one off on the guitar, since it wasn't really all that easy to sing. And while we sang these duets together, we were both connected and intertwined. It was like that tether thing that was happening at the end of Season 2, how Finn said that he felt tethered to Rachel. Maybe Ryan, Brad, and Ian knew something that we didn't know, or something that at least Cory didn't knew. I knew it, though. I've been in love with the boy for two years now. But either way, I just felt that bond, and it was one of the greatest feelings I've ever felt.

Maybe he scooted over towards me because he felt that way too. That tether.

"Hey, stranger," he smiled at me. His elbows rested on his knees and he was leaned over. He held a beer bottle in his hands, and he looked straight into my eyes. "What are you doing over here?"

I shrugged my shoulders and I looked at him with little heart shapes emitting from my eyes, seemingly. "What does it look like I'm doing?" I asked him with a small smile.

"I don't know," he responded. "Sitting there."

"Good observation," I laughed as I took a sip of wine from a red plastic cup. "Now, I should ask you, what are you doing over here?"

"Nothing," he responded before taking a sip of beer. "I missed you."

My heart fluttered in my chest like a butterfly trapped in a cage, and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the ill-effects from the wine. "Really," I declared with a smile as I leaned in towards him. "I don't want you to miss me anymore. I'll always be right here." Was that too corny? Shit, I think that was too corny.

"Good," he smiled.

We both looked away from each other when we heard Mark start strumming on the guitar once again. And even though I wasn't looking into Cory's eyes anymore, I couldn't shake the smile from my face. My cheeks were starting to hurt, and my lips were starting to dry, but damn it, I was happy. I looked over towards Dianna, and very subtly, she opened her eyes larger and leaned her head to the left, as if she was signaling to me to lean my head on Cory's shoulder. You know, Dianna isn't one to lead me down the wrong path, and so I figured that now would be as good of a time as any to follow her guide.

As Mark began to strum the first few chords to 'Teenage Dream', which Darren started to sing, I slowly lowered my head towards his shoulder, until I finally felt my head plant firmly on his body. And instead of tensing up like I figured he would since it was unexpected, I felt the arm that I was leaning on extend, and almost right away, I felt his hand on my opposite shoulder.

There we were, in front of all of our friends on the beach in front of a bonfire being serenaded by Mark Salling and Darren Criss, showing a public display of affection for each other. I was smiling more now than I was before, if that is at all possible, and I'm pretty sure everyone else was starting to notice. I wished that I could have given a shit, but I didn't. This is what I had wanted for so long. I wanted a warm embrace from Cory in an incredibly romantic setting under the stars. Yes, it would have been more ideal if we were alone so I could jump his bones and start making out with him, and yeah, it could have been influenced by large amounts of alcohol, but for right now, this was pretty amazing.

"I like the way your hair smells," I heard him whisper into my ear, and it gave me goosebumps on every inch of my body.

I chuckled lightly, looking up towards him in his general direction. "It's the ocean breeze, I think. Kinda made it rough and tangled."

"It's good, though," he reassured me as he pulled me in closer towards him.

Lord, if this was my last moment on this earth, thank you for making it one truly amazing one.