“Lucky me,” he said. He twirled his racket. “Want to play a little? Lawrence just decided he’s got to buy this new racket he tried yesterday.”
“Sure,” I said.
We made our way to opposite sides of the court, and Adam served. It was a good serve—fast and low and just inside the box. Still, I slammed it back, feeling a surge of joy as it flew over the net. Adam returned the ball with a clean backhand that I just managed to return. It felt really good to be playing with someone who was my equal, when for the past two weeks the only person I’d played (“played”) with was Natasha.
And then, as I raced back to the baseline and barely returned another fast low shot, I had a horrible thought.
Don’t beat him. If you beat him, he won’t like you.
I almost tripped, like the thought was a piece of detritus laying on the court. As the rally continued, it felt as if I had to literally push the idea out of my mind in order to return his shots. But it didn’t go away, it just transformed itself. He’s a good player. Maybe you won’t even have to pretend to lose. Maybe he’s just better than you.
And then suddenly he misjudged where a shot of mine was going to land. At the last second he realized his mistake, but even though he managed to scramble to the ball before it bounced a second time, his rushed stroke resulted in a lob so high and slow, hitting it was going to be a dream.
What was I supposed to do? The seconds before I returned it seemed to play out in slow motion. One. Go for it.
I jogged backward to the baseline.
Two.
Let him win.
I sidestepped over to center court.
Three.
You’re not the kind of girl who lets a guy beat her.
I centered myself behind where the ball was going to bounce.
Four.
You’ve never liked a guy enough to want to let him win.
I watched it land.
Five.
And I hope you never will.
I pulled my arm back and slammed my racket into the ball. It smacked down just over Adam’s side of the net.
He ran to get it, but we both knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of returning it.
“Nice shot!” he said, panting. He watched the ball bounce to the fence, then turned to me. I was amazed to see that his face, though red and sweaty, was plastered with a smile.
What did his smile mean? Was he impressed I’d beaten him?
Adam gestured toward where the ball had stopped. “Again?” he asked casually.
If he was happy with me when he lost, would he be unhappy with me if he won? What, exactly, was riding on the next point? “Actually, I should go,” I said. I was a little scared of how thoroughly confused playing tennis was suddenly making me.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “If you don’t feel like playing, we could just hang out.”
I couldn’t hear the words hang out without thinking of our talk yesterday at the library. I like hanging out with you, and I thought you liked hanging out with me too. Less than twenty-four hours ago I’d been so sure I had this whole thing under control. What was happening to me?
I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Sure,” he said. He looked truly sorry I was going, which might have made me happy if I hadn’t wanted not to be happy about his looking truly sorry I was going. “I’ll see you later.”
“Sure,” I said. “Later.” I gave what I hoped was a happy-go-lucky-good-time-girl wave and hauled ass out of there.
SINCE I’D TOLD ADAM I had to go, I couldn’t exactly hang out at Larkspur doing nothing for the rest of the day. I ended up just heading home. When I got there, our rental car was parked in the driveway. I made my way through the Cooper-Melnick house, finally finding my mom in the laundry room, where she was taking towels out of the dryer and folding them.
“Hi,” I said. Her back was to me, and it was still a little weird to see her dark curly hair where for years I’d seen a blond bob.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice was cool.
It was hard talking to her back, but I couldn’t exactly blame her for not making this easy for me.
“Um, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”
My mom turned around. She was actually smiling at me. “You did that very nicely,” she said. “Apology accepted.”
I was truly grateful to her for being so nice about it. Some of the things I’d said to her had been awful enough that I winced just thinking about them. “Thanks,” I said. Then I added, “I wasn’t really mad at you.”
“Who were you mad at?”
The last person I’d meant to confide the Adam story in was my mother, but before I could stop myself, the whole thing came pouring out of me.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said. Then she stepped toward me and we hugged. It was actually kind of nice. My mom wears this perfume that doesn’t smell flowery at all, just crisp and citrusy. It makes me think of hiking through the woods on a cool, fall day. And she really hugs you when she hugs you. Normally I pull away before she’s done hugging, but this time I didn’t.
I lifted myself up so I was sitting on the washing machine. I didn’t want to think about Adam and Molly anymore. “Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
My mom looked at me for a long time, but she didn’t tuck my hair behind my ears or say anything about it being too long, like she normally does. Then she put her hands on my knees and took a deep breath. “I do have something I need to talk to you about, actually.”
Her voice was serious; suddenly I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear whatever it was she wanted to say. “It’s … about me and your dad. We’re …” Her eyes welled up, and she shook her head hard, as if that would make them stop. To my surprise it worked— she didn’t start crying. “We’re not in a great place.”
“What do you mean?” I said. Out of nowhere, I felt my own eyes start to sting.
“Kate, I know you think I came out here on a whim. That I was just … throwing a hissy fit or something.” She smiled when she said it, but I cringed a little at her landing on the exact words I’d used to describe her behavior to myself. “The truth is, I’ve been very, very unhappy for a long time. I think we both have—your father and I. Only he just works hard and hopes things will get better, and I can’t do that. Even if I had a job, I couldn’t do that,” she added quickly.
“I wasn’t going to say anything about your having a job,” I said, which was true.
“The point is, you’re right—I do need more in my life than just you and Meg and your dad. But even if I have those things …” Her voice started to shake, and she took a deep breath. “Even if I have those things, I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to work things out.”
I was crying for real now. “You mean you might get divorced?!” How could my parents get divorced? I mean, I knew they weren’t exactly the perfect couple or anything. But divorce?
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” said my mom, and she was crying too. “It’s not what either of us wants. But neither of us wants to be unhappy either.” She put her arms around me. Since I was sitting on the washer, I was a little taller than she was, and I put my head on her shoulder and just bawled. I kept thinking about how mad my dad had been when we were on the phone the last time. Was that what our family was going to be like from now on—people who just yelled mean things and accusations at each other?
Were we technically even going to be a family anymore?
The thought made me cry harder, and for a minute it was like I almost forgot my mom was even there. But then I realized she was patting me on the back and humming a little. It was the kind of thing you might do to a little kid, or even a baby, but it actually made me feel better.
Finally I pulled away from her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I got you all snotty and wet.”
She laughed and brushed at her eyes with the back of her hands. “I used to change your diapers,” she said.
“A little snot’s not a big deal.”
“So what happens now?” I asked.
She handed me a washcloth still warm from the dryer, and I wiped my face with it. “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “We’re trying to figure out what the next step is. So I’m going to have to ask you to be patient and understanding for a little while longer. Do you think you can do that?”
I nodded. “Of course,” I said.
What I didn’t say was that things had been a whole lot simpler when I’d been convinced my mom was just being a prima donna.
I headed to the guesthouse and got into bed with Lolita, even though it was still the middle of the day. Sarah knocked at the door around six and said she and Jenna were going to play mini golf, but I pretended I was napping. My mom invited me to go to the movies and dinner with her and Henry and Tina, but I told her I wanted to be by myself.
I tried to read, but I couldn’t focus on the words in front of me. Divorced. My parents might get divorced. Who would I live with, my mom or my dad? Before this trip, the answer would have been a no-brainer (Hello, Dad!), but now I wasn’t so sure. I thought of how he hadn’t called me back after our fight, how he’d been too busy to talk almost every time I’d called him from Cape Cod. Maybe my mom and sister were right. Maybe he was a little selfish.
What if they did some kind of joint-custody thing and I had to change houses every few days? Where would I keep my stuff?
Just as I was wondering if my mom would stay in our house and my dad would get an apartment, or if it would go the other way around, Jamie’s invitation to my mom rang in my ears, and I realized just how big my parents’ geographic split could potentially be. Do you ever think about coming back East? What if my mom decided not to move across town but across the country?
I couldn’t believe I was lying there trying to figure out what state I’d be living come September—this wasn’t possible. It wasn’t happening.
I needed to talk to someone. I dug my cell out of my bag to call Laura, but then stopped before I could dial her number. It wasn’t just Brad that made me not want to talk to my best friend. So much had happened since the last time we’d had a conversation—I’d have to tell her about everything: the fight my mom and I had, which meant explaining about why I’d been in such a bad mood, which meant explaining about Adam. Just thinking about getting her up to speed felt exhausting.
And then, almost without consciously deciding to call her, I dialed Meg’s number.
“Hey,” she said, picking up on the first ring. “Long time no talk.”
“Hey,” I said. “Did you know that Mom and Dad might get divorced?”
Meg took a long deep breath. “I knew Mom was really unhappy,” she said. “I knew she’d come East to try and decide what to do.”
“I knew that too,” I said. “But I didn’t know it. I mean, I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t believe it.”
I thought Meg was going to say something about how I should have listened to Mom more carefully, but instead she laughed. “You know something, I don’t think I believed it either.”
“Really?” I was totally surprised.
“Really,” she said. “I still don’t believe it. I still hope they’re going to work things out.”
“Well, Mom said they might. She said they both want to.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Katie.” I felt a tiny bit irritated by her saying that. I mean, she didn’t know. Then again, maybe if I’d listened to her assessments of my parents’ marriage earlier, I wouldn’t have been the victim of a drive-by reality check in the laundry room earlier.
“I’m kind of mad at Dad,” I said. “We had a fight a couple of days ago, and at the end I was crying, and he didn’t even call me back or anything.”
I immediately regretted telling Meg. I knew she was going to say something mean about Dad.
But to my surprise she just said, “I’m really sorry, Katie. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It does, doesn’t it?”
We talked a little more, not even about Mom and Dad, just about what I was reading and the class she was taking, and then we said good-bye.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember, after we hung up, I was glad I’d called her.
***
I read for a while, and I’d just decided to go to sleep (it was only around nine o’clock, but it wasn’t like I had anything to stay up for) when there was a knock on the door. It was spooky, actually. My mom and Tina and Henry hadn’t gotten home yet, and I didn’t think Sarah had either. What if there was some kind of serial killer on the loose? I made myself a little smaller on the bed, trying to remember if the door was locked or not. There was another knock, and I realized I didn’t even know the address of the house I was staying in. How could I call and just tell them I was in the Cooper-Melnick house somewhere by the bay?
I was so dead. “Kate? It’s me.” It was Adam. My heart started pounding even harder than it had when I’d thought I was about to be the victim of an ax murderer.
“Just a sec,” I said. Of course I looked like total crap. My hair was up in a tight ponytail, and I wasn’t exactly supermodel chic in my sweats. If life were a romantic comedy I would have had a face mask on for good measure; but as I now knew, it was not. A romantic farce, maybe, but not a comedy.
I opened the door. Adam looked impossibly cute in a dark blue fleece and a pair of ancient Levis with a patch on the knee.
“Hey,” he said. He was smiling our secret smile.
“Hey,” I said as casually as I could.
“How come you guys didn’t come by the Shack?” he asked, clearly assuming I’d been playing mini golf with Jenna and Sarah.
It was too complicated to explain that I didn’t know why Jenna and Sarah hadn’t come by since I hadn’t been with them, so I just said, “You know, I just wasn’t hungry.” Because that’s the kind of cool, casual, love-it-or-leave-it kind of girl I am. Sometimes I’m hungry for lobster, sometimes I’m not.
“I wanted you to meet my brother. He came in this afternoon.” Adam looked really happy about his brother’s arrival. All I could think of was how there had been a time I’d been shocked to have kissed a guy who had a brother I didn’t know about.
If only a brother had been the one thing I hadn’t known Adam had.
We were still standing in the tiny vestibule. I was simultaneously so happy and so sad to see him—it was like he was something precious and beautiful and delicate of mine that I’d recently discovered had a huge crack running down the middle of it.
“Come with me,” he said, blissfully unaware of my thoughts.
What was I supposed to say? I mean, it wasn’t like I could claim a prior obligation. “I’m—” I gestured vaguely at what I was wearing, wishing I were in something more officially pajamay so I could plead inappropriate attire.
“Come on,” he said, pulling at my hand. “I want to show you something.”
“Okay,” I said. I slipped on a pair of flip-flops that were right in the entrance area, not realizing until I’d pulled the door shut behind me that they were my mom’s and, therefore, about a size too small. I could feel my heels hitting the gravel as we walked down the driveway and headed for the woods.
No doubt there was symbolic meaning to be found in this, but if so, I wasn’t in the mood to find it.
It was incredibly quiet and dark in the woods, though every once in a while bright moonlight would break through the trees and a patch of ground would be illuminated as clearly as if it were spotlit. Neither Adam nor I spoke, leaving the vaguely creepy silence intact. I thought of this line from a poem we’d had to memorize freshman year. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” It was a perfect description, and I thought I remembered our teacher saying the author was from New England somewhere. I wondered if he’d been talking about woods in Massachusetts, woods like the ones I was in right now. Adam led me down the lane that went from the driveway out to Route 6. But instead of going l
eft, the way I’d always gone, we went right. A couple of hundred yards after we turned, he turned again, this time onto a tiny narrow path.
“Stay close,” he said. “There’s poison ivy.”
I could barely make out his shadow even though he was only about two feet in front of me; but within just a few steps, it started getting lighter. Less than a minute after his warning about the poison ivy, we were standing in a little clearing. I took my eyes off Adam’s back and realized we were by the side of a large pond.
“Oh wow,” I said. The full moon was reflected in the surface of the perfectly still water. Looking up I saw the sky, impossibly busy with stars made pale by the brightness of the moon’s light.
“I know,” said Adam. “It’s amazing, right? This is my favorite spot on Cape Cod.”
I could see why. After the impossible immensity of the Atlantic Ocean and the dreamy beauty of the bay, the pond was intimate and safe. It reminded me a little of places I’d come upon hiking in the mountains around Salt Lake City. Though we were at sea level, this could have been a mountain pond. Suddenly I felt a wave of homesickness. When I realized that the home I was missing might never be what it had been, I felt dizzy with sadness.
Adam pulled me in front of him and put his arms around my waist. He nestled his chin on my head. “My house is right over there,” he said, pointing across the lake. “If it were day you could see it.”
“Really?” I said.
“Well, if it were day and there weren’t any trees.” He thought for a second. “And you had a telescope.” He laughed. “And X-ray vision.”
This is so romantic, I thought. This is the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me.
“If it weren’t freezing, I’d say we should go skinny-dipping,” he said. “As it is, I’m way too much of a wimp.”
He turned me around gently, and we started kissing. It felt so great to be kissing Adam. Who cared about my parents’ marriage? Who cared that I was never going to be Adam’s girlfriend?
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