Page 18 of Summer After Summer

I’m close enough to see the tears pooling in Fred’s eyes, matching my own. I want to take that last move into his arms, to comfort him, to comfort me, but instead, we stay like we are, floating, looking at each other in a way I’ve never done before, our breaths matching as they go out and in. Like we want to get closer, but we’re scared of what might happen.

“Olivia, I—”

Someone blows a whistle and we start apart.

“Fred!” Dave yells from the beach. “Break’s over.”

“Guess I better go,” Fred says, but he doesn’t move.

“I think I hate Dave.”

He laughs. “Right now, I kind of do too. Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

He squeezes my arm, then runs his hand down the length of it until he reaches my fingers. My whole body responds, clenching in reaction, and I finally tear my eyes away from his. He runs his hand back up, then swims away.

I watch his sure strokes and then continue to watch as he walks out of the water to where he recovers his clothes from the sand and ties a towel around his waist. My heart is beating too fast, and my limbs feel weak, but it feels safer here in the water than exposed on the land, and so I stay.

We have a week of days like this. Sun-kissed afternoons where we find excuses to touch each other in the water until Dave blows his whistle on us.

We talk too about anything and everything. What his life is like in Boston. What mine is like here. Why I love tennis so much. Music and TV shows and stupid things that don’t mean anything serious but are a way to distract ourselves from whatever is happening between us.

We haven’t kissed, even though it’s all I think about. But it’s coming; I can feel it. Why else would he rest his hands on my waist under the water, his thumbs making slow circles on the small patch of skin between my bathing suit top and bottom? Why else would he look at me so intensely it’s hard for me to concentrate?

We just need to find a minute where we’re not on display.

I haven’t told anyone about Fred. He’s a secret, my secret, and my mind is full of him no matter what I’m doing. Coach Matt tells me I’m distracted, that I need to get my head back in the game as I spray forehands past the baseline. My piano teacher tut-tuts as I screw up basic passages I’d mastered at seven. I smile about him over dinner, happy, for once, that my self-involved family is too busy with their own lives to notice.

I even keep him as a secret from Ash. I want to share, to gush about Fred and discuss every little detail and touch and what it all means, but I also want to keep him—us—to myself for a while until I figure out what’s going on. So I tell her I’m doing extra training for tennis and can’t hang out, and she pouts her disappointment but doesn’t question me.

And now it’s July 3rd, the day before my birthday, and I’m trying to think of how I can see Fred outside his work hours, when Ash catches me at the gate that separates the club from the beach.

“OMG, I knew it.” Ash’s arms are crossed, one foot jutted out in front. She’s got her hair in a French braid, and she’s wearing pink terry shorts and a matching sweatshirt.

“Knew what?”

“You’ve been ditching me. For a guy.”

I can’t keep the blush from creeping up my cheeks. “I …”

“You are.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Yeah, you did.”

I yoke my arms around her neck. “Are you mad?”

“No, I’m impressed.”

We start to laugh. “Didn’t think I had it in me, huh?”

“Not in a million years.”

“You want to come with me?”

Ashley cocks her head to the side. She’s wearing a shade of bright red lipstick that she calls her Lolita look. “Gross,” I said, when she told me that. “Did you even read the book?”

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