A/N: A short one today, but I like to try to keep the updates daily. Comments welcome!

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The last three weeks of high school were a whirlwind, with finals flowing, too soon, into graduation. Tami wasn't quite ready to say goodbye, not to her friends, not to her father, and most certainly not to Eric. Two hundred miles suddenly seemed a very long distance indeed.

Tami's mother must have taken 8,000 photographs, given the number of times that camera clicked throughout the ceremony. Jack was their valedictorian, and he gave quite a moving speech about the memories that had been forged in high school and the classmates who had transformed.

"God, Tami," Kimberley whispered to her from where she sat in the folding chair next to Tami's, her blue cap tilted slightly forward, "After that speech, I feel bad that I'm going to break up with him next week. Maybe I'll wait a little longer, until he leaves for summer training. He does look really hot in that cap and gown, doesn't he?"

Tami went out to dinner with her family afterward. Her father seemed proud but pensive and a little sad. He slid her an envelope with a graduation card and $2,500 in savings bonds to use for college. "Cash them in as you need them," he told her. She'd already applied for a work study job as a secretary in the Student Counseling Office and was going to try her best to graduate debt free.

Tami had a good time at the graduation party later, but she didn't protest when Eric suggested leaving early with Jack and Kimberley. The four of them stopped by the lake – not in the secret spot, but in a more obvious one – lit a fire on the shore, and walked down a fishing pier in its glow. They sat on the pier's edge, shoulder to shoulder, girl-boy-girl-boy, their bare feet dangling just above the cool water, but not quite touching it. Eric and Kimberley had a beer in hand, while Jack and Tami drank Diet Coke.

"Guess we're driving, huh?" Tami asked Jack.

He leaned forward and looked down the row, over Kimberley and Eric, and said, "It sucks being the responsible party, doesn't it?"

Tami nodded.

"Well," Eric replied with a smirk, "I think Tami figures if she gets me drunk enough, she might just get lucky tonight."

Kimberley snorted. She handed Jack her beer. "Here, then have the rest of mine."

"Heck, why not. It's graduation after all. Tami can drive us all home." Jack put down his coke and took her beer.

Kimberley turned to Tami with wide eyes. "Tonight's the night," she mouthed, and Tami shook her head.

"This is almost goodbye, huh, kids?" Jack asked.

"Who you calling kids?" Kimberley asked. "Just because you were forty when you were fourteen doesn't make us kids."

"You'll invite us all to your mansion when you're in the NFL though, right?" Eric asked him.

"Yeah, sure," Jack said. "I'm even going to have a Ms. Pac-man machine so Kimberley will want to come." He slid his arm around her waist and smiled at her a little sadly.

"Get your hand off my hip," Eric told him.

"Well scoot over and get your hip off my girlfriend!"

Eric did scoot over a little, pushing Tami to the very edge of the pier.

"Don't drown your girl while you're at it," Jack warned him.

Eric draped an arm around Tami's shoulders.

"Will you also have a sand volleyball court?" Kimberley asked. "Out by your pool?"

"Oh yeah. Eric and I can watch you two play." He grinned and Kimberley smiled.

"It would just be in the interest of the sport," Eric insisted.

"Yeah, it's a very interesting and complicated sport," Jack agreed. "I mean, sometimes the ball hits the ground – "

"- And sometimes it gets volleyed," Eric interrupted.

"And sometimes you even rotate."

Eric took a swig of his beer. "That pretty exciting right there. The rotating. It's a really – Whoa!" He slid off the pier. He'd been sitting awfully close to the edge, so it really only took a little push.

"What the - ?" Jack's question was interrupted by his own tumble from the pier, at the hands of Kimberley's shove.

Tami and Kimberley pulled their legs up before the boys could drag them in.

Eric shook his head, water spraying off his hair in the black lake, which was illuminated by a line of moonlight. Tami couldn't tell in the darkness, but she thought maybe he was giving her a dirty look.

"You know I don't have a change of clothes in my truck, right?" Jack asked.

"Guess you'll have to drive me home naked," Kimberley told him, and both girls giggled.