Page 120 of Summer After Summer

“We were so young. Maybe we would’ve held each other back. Not achieved all this.”

“I’ve thought about that. It doesn’t make up for being away from you, but I do have a good life.”

I look around. “Seems like it.”

“These are just things. I threw myself into school and then work. I was in a hurry to get it all finished. To arrive wherever I was going. And I got what I wanted, I thought. But something’s always been missing. When I was really honest with myself, I knew what it was. You.”

“Why me, though? The girl you haven’t been able to make it work with?”

“I’ve asked myself that.”

“And?”

“There’s something about you. Us. I don’t know how to explain it: I’ve tried with other people, but nobody fits like we do, you know?”

He says this with hope, wanting me to agree, and I do. I do agree that no one’s felt like him and me, so no one’s felt like us. That something’s been missing from my life. And of course, it was him.

But he scares me too.

“I feel that way also, but Fred …”

“Yes?”

“We have to … I have to be cautious. I … I don’t know how this is going to work, if it’s going to work. And I need you to be okay with that.”

“Take it down a notch, you’re saying?”

“Maybe two or three.”

“I can do that.”

“Can you?”

“Of course. I can even pretend we’re strangers on a first date.”

“Ha!”

“I can. Watch me.” He reaches for his glass. “So, tennis? That something you’re serious about?”

My mouth twitches. “Little bit.”

“And you live in hotels?”

“I have a small apartment in New York. But yes, mostly.”

“Interesting, interesting. And what’s that like? Do you like hotels?”

I start to laugh. “You should have a talk show.”

“No one’s said that to me before.”

“You’d be very good at it. Like everything.”

“I’m not good at everything.” He’s hinting at something, and it’s then that I decide.

If we’re going to get through this evening, we need to stop going over the past. Fred’s joke about us acting like strangers was the right one.

“How about this,” I say, raising my glass. “How about we have more of this champagne, and we stop talking in meaningful ways alluding to other things and we just have fun?”

---