Page 113 of Summer After Summer

I’ve lost. She drops to her knees, her hands covering her eyes in joy.

I put a brave face on, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd. I mime throwing my racquet up, and that draws a laugh. Then I sign it and give it to a young girl who looks like me. I collect my things and leave the court.

I step into the tunnel. The two men playing after me are there, waiting to come on court. One pats me on the shoulder and says something nice. I thank him, wish him luck, and he slips his headphones over his ears and goes back into his zone.

I shoulder my tennis bag, adjusting it. When I get past the men, there’s another person in the tunnel, and I know, without my eyes adjusting fully to the indoor light, that it’s Fred.

He smiles at me, shy, consoling and I finally do what I’ve been holding back since the cocktail party.

I rush into his waiting arms and let him gather me close, and I cry out my disappointment, but also my relief. That he’s here. That it can be our time now.

That it’s five years later once again, and somehow we’ve found each other.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

July 2023

After the lunch in James’s restaurant, we’re all very full and mostly drunk. I’d be more than happy to go home, but everyone else wants to go to Sag Harbor, and so that’s what we do, piling back into the van and then out again when we get to town. We walk without discussion to the beach. It’s a beautiful half-moon bay with a flat expanse of sand and the blue ocean curling lazily against it. The wind is down, and there are families paddleboarding and a few small sailboats looking discouraged.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” James says to me as we walk along the seaside. The rest of the group is up ahead, led by an excited Lucy, who’s skipping rocks and turning cartwheels like it was ten years ago. Fred’s rolled his pant legs up and opened the collar of his shirt, and he’s walking just behind her, laughing at her antics.

“Have you?”

“Men on ships don’t have that much to talk about other than the girls they left behind.”

I laugh lightly. Wes is also ahead with Sophie, Ann, and Colin. His hands are moving in big sweeping motions, a hallmark of when he’s telling one of his grand stories. Wes led a peripatetic life before we got married, never staying in one town long, or with one woman, though we didn’t focus on that. He’s spent time in every major city: Toronto, Boston, London, Hong Kong. He always said he left right before he got bored, but sometimes I wondered whether he had an instinct for when the bottom was about to fall out.

“Was I the girl Fred left behind?”

“Of course.”

I clear my throat. “Ah, well … ancient history now.”

“Are you sure about that?”

He motions to Fred, who’s looking back at us. Our eyes lock for a moment before we both turn away.

“I … Yes. It should be, anyway.” I kick at a shell in the sand. “What about you? Do you have anyone?”

His face clouds. “I lost her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not the way you think … she died. She waited for me, and three months before I was going to be discharged, she was diagnosed with leukemia.”

“Oh, James. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s been hard. When you’ve met the person you’re supposed to spend your life with, and then you can’t …” He sighs. “Well, you know.”

I clear my throat. “I think you have the wrong idea about me and Fred.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” James says.

“No, it’s fine. It’s … we have a kind of doomed love. And I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Love isn’t always easy.”

“I know, but it shouldn’t be this hard either.”

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