Page 117 of 28 Summers
Mallory is forced to face her own disingenuousness. If she’d really wanted this to work, she would have gone away. But she’d wanted to see Jake’s reaction. Watching and hearing him without his knowledge is like reading his mind: he loves her.
She gets another text. The buzzing of her phone is louder than she anticipates.
Where are you? Your cottage is locked but your Jeep is here. Just please, for the love of God, tell me where you are. It’s not fair for you to just leave me hanging like this, you know it’s not.
He’s right; it’s not fair.
“Mallory!”
She imagines this from his point of view. He waits all year, anticipating. Then he makes the necessary arrangements, lies to Ursula and the forty staff members who are now watching his every move, and shows up here, expecting to step through the door of the cottage and find burgers, shucked corn, sliced tomatoes; Cat Stevens, World Party, Lenny Kravitz on the stereo; a new pile of books on “his” side of the bed—and Mallory.
The door is locked. He’s had no warning of this. He’s blindsided.
Mallory wants to run over the dune calling out his name and jump into his arms. She wants to kiss him. It will be like the ending of the movie where Doris and George think it’s over, but then George comes bursting back in and they reunite—to continue, year after year,until our bones are too brittle to risk contact.
But this isn’t a movie—that movie, or any other. It’s their lives, and she’s a human being and can take only so much.
She sends him a text:We can’t do this, Jake. It’s too dangerous now.
I don’t care if it’s dangerous.
Not only for you,Mallory writes.For me as well. And for Link. And for Bess.
Are you here somewhere?he writes.Can you see me?
No,she types. But before she can hit Send, her phone rings. The buzzer is loud, and it’s a still afternoon, the air heavy with mist; she’s certain he can hear the sound floating over the dunes. She declines the call.
You are here,he says.
No, I’m not.
He calls again. She declines the call immediately. She should turn her phone off, she knows, but she doesn’t want to end their communication. She and Jake have spent the past twenty-odd years not using cell phones because that’s how other people get discovered. Now that they have been discovered, she supposes it doesn’t matter.
I want to see you for sixty seconds,he texts.Please. Then I’ll leave.
Jake, no. That won’t work.
One kiss,he texts.Please. Just one kiss, then I promise, I’ll leave.
There might be some among us who would say no to that request, but our girl Mallory isn’t one of them.
Close your eyes,she texts.
She climbs out of the dunes and doesn’t see him, which means he’s moved around to the front porch. And that is indeed where Mallory finds him.
They kiss. It’s just one kiss, the deepest, sweetest, most heartbreaking, stomach-flipping kiss of Mallory’s life. With only the Atlantic Ocean as their witness, they swear that kiss will hold them through the next two or six or ten years.
“I love you, Mal,” Jake says.
Mallory closes her eyes, too overcome to say anything back.
When she opens her eyes, he’s gone.
Summer #28: 2020
Ursula de Gournsey has a weeklong campaign stop in St. Louis. Every speech is followed by a reception where they serve fried ravioli, Imo’s Pizza, gooey butter cake, and Ted Drewes frozen custard.
Jake is with the campaign in a suite at the Hyatt Regency when he receives the call from Lincoln Dooley.
