Page 17 of Summer Romance
It’s Saturday and Pete’s taken the kids to soccer. Frannie texts me: Sexy? Scooter???
Me: He said Ethan. How was I supposed to know? Won’t happen again
Frannie: Ok, good, because weird. But I’m glad you went out at all. We’ll find you someone normal
I look at my phone for a few seconds, at the word “normal.” It morphs in front of my eyes into something negative. Normal is a man walking into my kitchen and making me feel absolutely nothing. Normal is just getting through a conversation so it can be over. Normal is someone like Pete.
I get back from Phyllis’s and decide not to go to the dog park. I do not need to be hunting down a man who so quickly inspired black-hole-sized fantasies in my mind while also completely lying about who he was. I am finishing my second cup of coffee and deadheading the geraniums by my front door when his station wagon pulls into my driveway.
Ethan gets out and leaves the windows down for Brenda in the backseat. “Hey,” he says from the end of my walkway.His hands are in his pockets, and I’m a little relieved that he seems nervous. I don’t know if he’s nervous because now I know he’s Scooter, or because now he’s the one doing the stalking.
“Hi,” I say.
“I hope this is okay. My mom told me where you lived. I was going to take Brenda to Beechwood Point and wondered if you guys wanted to come.”
“My kids just left with their dad,” I say.
“Oh, okay.” But he doesn’t turn to go. “Are you and Ferris free?”
There is no reason in the world for me to go on a second excursion with this man. I am humiliated thinking about it. But he takes a hand out of his pocket and runs it through his hair in a way that makes me think,Yes. Yes to the way his hand runs through his hair. Yes to making him explain himself. Yes to getting another taste of that lighter way I feel when I’m with him. I’m in the house grabbing Ferris and a leash before I’ve had a chance to think it through any further. It’s been a week of tiny steps forward, though I now wish one of those steps would have been washing my hair this morning. I stop at the mirror by the front door and put my hair into a braid.
I get into the car and say, “So where are we going exactly?”
“The very tip of Beechwood Point.”
“Of course, you’re a local. The Fairlawns’ house?”
“To the right.”
“The Schwartzes’ house?”
“To the left.”
“There’s nothing between those houses.”
He’s smiling. “You’ll see. I owe you a really big apology, and I think I need a better setting than the front seat of my car.”
“Agreed,” I say, and look out the window.
We drive down by the water and pass the dog park and the inn. Beyond the inn is more public shoreline and then about twenty waterfront homes that end at Beechwood Point. It’s all private property. “Okay, so now that you’ve met my children, you also know I can’t get arrested, right?”
“We won’t get arrested.”
“Because we’re not breaking the law?”
“No, we’re totally breaking the law. But I’ve done this a million times. You never get arrested for break-in a million andone.”
I turn to the window and grip Ferris tighter. I have been out of my comfort zone since the day I met Ethan, and there’s a bit of excitement mixed in with my nerves.
“Not much of a rule breaker?” he asks.
“Exactly never.”
“Today’s your day.” He pulls up in front of the Schwartzes’ gray stone mansion. “We’re here.” When I don’t move, he says. “If we get caught, I’ll take the fall. I’ll say I kidnapped you.”
I roll my eyes and get out of the car. We walk our dogs past the Schwartzes’ tall hedge and black iron fence. The air is damp and thick here closer to the water, and there are no cars on the road. This part of town feels like a gothic novel,with giant old homes and a murder of crows keeping watch. I don’t know where we’re going, but I can feel the excitement that comes with taking a risk creep right up my spine. Ethan stops at the end of the Schwartzes’ fence. To the right is the Fairlawns’ house. He moves toward a wall of ivy between the two houses and turns back to me. “Through here.”
As he cuts a few of the vines with a pocketknife, I realize that we are at the Ghost Gate. Or at least that’s what we used to call it when we were kids. It’s a rusted-out gate between those two houses that leads to a sandy path. Before these vines grew in, you could see the first few yards of the path where it turns into a grove of trees. In high school, kids used to talk about what was back there, but the one kid who actually tried to find out got caught on the security cameras and was arrested. Sort of the way we’re going to be arrested today. I should turn back immediately, but I don’t.
