Page 76 of Summer After Summer

Lucy’s surprised. “You’ve been to one of Olivia’s birthdays?”

“I have.”

She looks at me, then at Fred. “You two know each other?”

Fred grimaces. “Why does no one around here know that?”

“Not sure. Anyway, Lucy, it was a long time ago.”

“You dated?”

“Briefly,” I say firmly, wanting to be the final word on this. “But it was no big deal.”

Fred’s red in the face now, and I’m not sure if it’s embarrassment or anger. Maybe both.

“Right,” Lucy says. “So, what’s the plan for tomorrow night?”

“I don’t really—”

“You should join us.” She holds onto Fred’s arm, more tightly than earlier. “There’s still room at the table, right, Fred?”

“I think my sister has a table.”

“That’s the same one. She invited us. Ann will be there too. And Sophie and Colin. But they’re eight-person tables. Room for you and Wes.”

Now it’s my turn to blush. “I … I thought Sophie would have told you. We’ve separated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s fine.”

“I hope you’ll join us. Truly. You should celebrate your birthday, even if it’s a tough time.”

“I’ll think it over—thanks.”

She nods and now we lapse into silence, the sounds of the cocktail party breaking up around us. In a moment, one of us will make an excuse to go, but right now we’re bound up together in tensions we don’t fully understand.

“What did I miss?” Charlotte says a minute later, coming up next to us with Ann in tow, and all I can do is laugh.

CHAPTER TWENTY

July 2008

After he climbs through my window, Fred and I have a week where I’m so happy, I could burst, but where I’m also nervous that it will go away at any second.

Fred tells me and tells me that things have changed, that we’ve learned the lessons of the past and we can start planning our future again. But it’s hard to hope. I’ve had other things snatched away from me—my mother, him, tennis—that I didn’t see coming, and I prefer to think about what might happen, so I won’t be taken entirely by surprise.

So, I’m happy, but it’s tinged with something else too. A darkness.

But oh, we have fun. Neither of us has any responsibilities, so we explore together, from one end of Long Island to the other. We take a tiki boat tour in Peconic Bay. We walk around Montauk, our hands glued together. We stand on the point in East Hampton and stare out into the ocean as the wind whips our skin smooth. We go to Shelter Island and ride bikes around it, taking in the wildlife.

At night, Fred climbs up the trellis to my room, and we spend hours exploring each other, finding new ways to please and touch and feel—all the things I’d read about in the romance novels I used to secret away in my room as a teenager. I feel those things, I am those things, a woman, needy, and comfortable enough with Fred to ask for what I want and to give in return.

When I’m not with him, I’m tired and distracted. He has to spend some time with his aunt, which I understand and support. But, but, but. It’s hard to be alone. Ash has her own boyfriend—she’s started dating Dave, the guy who worked with Fred five years ago. I don’t see it lasting, but stranger things have happened.

Sophie is away for the summer, working as a counselor at a summer camp with Colin where his sister, Lucy, goes too. Charlotte is interning with a magazine in the city. So, it’s just me and William and Aunt Tracy in the house, asking for details of my “summer romance” as she keeps calling it, despite my assuring her that it’s something more.

And now it’s my birthday. Fred and I were occupied when the clock ticked over, but I wake with the sun and bury my face in his arm, drinking him in.

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