Page 142 of Summer After Summer

“We can go somewhere else? There’s a wine bar near here that has a great cheese plate.”

“That sounds … Yes, let’s do that.”

“Great.” He takes my hand and then looks up at me, surprised at himself. “I don’t know why I did that. Is it weird?”

“Well, we are cousins …”

“That’s all been debunked! The last name is a coincidence.”

“And you did date my sister …”

“Years and years ago, and it was never serious.”

“Does she know that?”

Charlotte’s heart was broken, too, when she and Wes split that fall. She’s never introduced another love interest to the family, though she’s had a few women friends who I thought might be more than that. But Charlotte doesn’t confide in me, and the one time I tried to ask, she gave me such an icy stare, I stammered to a stop.

“Do you not want to go?” Wes says, then squeezes my hand.

I can feel its warmth. A spark, something connecting us. He’s better looking than I remember, his voice warm and low. “No, I do.”

“Good.” He flashes his smile again, and it does something to me. A man who doesn’t make me want to run away. A man who’s looking at me like I’m nothing but a good idea. “Should we go?”

“Yes.”

We walk to the elevators, our hands still locked together. As we wait for it to arrive, I catch sight of Ash. She smiles at me, like this has been her plan all along. And maybe it was, but for once, I don’t mind. All that matters right now is that Wes’s hand feels good in mine and that this night that felt like an obligation now feels like one full of possibilities.

The night turns into a whirlwind.

I’d always heard that term, but it had never applied to me. Maybe it means speed. And Wes and I certainly move with speed. That night at the wine bar ends up back at his place, with me staying over. The sex is good and comfortable, like it isn’t our first time. None of the usual awkwardness, and maybe not quite the same passion as I had with Fred, but that’s a good thing, I think.

That passion had burned me one too many times. I need something that simmers and never goes out.

The next day we walk to the park after I get back from practice, watching a small sailboat race in a pond, buying pretzels and hotdogs, losing our way because we’re engrossed in conversation, and I spend the night at Wes’s again.

And the next and the next and a week of nexts.

It’s weird, how much we have in common. We just seem to understand each other. It felt like that with Fred at the beginning too, in a way, but this is different.

When I met Fred, I was a kid, and now I’m an adult. I know what I like and what I don’t, and Wes seems to want the same things I do. The same food, the same routine, to settle down after so many years of travel. He’s also an early riser, going to the gym each morning while I hit. He’s fine with the meals I have to eat, the time I have to go to bed. My life slots into his without any friction, though I keep waiting for it. But it never arrives.

After a month, he starts coming with me to tournaments when he can. He watches from the stands and learns how to massage my sore muscles and finds other foods I can eat. He’s a strong player himself, and sometimes he hits with me, helping me warm up, getting me mentally ready. I start to play better, a product of happiness, and I marvel how easily he fits into my life.

Other people react to us that way too—when they meet us for the first time they always nod, like Wes’s the person they expect me to be with.

“Don’t you think it’s funny,” I say to him one night in bed, “that no one ever asks where you came from?”

“Why would they?”

“I don’t know. I was single for so long …”

“Oh, you were, were you?” He pulls me to him, rubbing his nose against mine.

“You know what I mean.”

He shrugs. “People know something right when they see it.”

“Oh yeah?”

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