Page 38 of Summer Romance
Pete lets out a breath. “That’s twenty-four hours.”
And I know what he means. He means that’s way too much time for him to not be able to do whatever he wants.
I’m guessing Ethan knows this too, but he doubles down. He jots down a few numbers on his legal pad. “Okay, if we let you have them until four on Sunday, that would be thirty hours. Ali, is that okay?” He must be the best poker player in the world. There is no hint of a smile on his face to give him away. Lacey is sitting with her pen at the ready to record the decision.
“Where’d you get that tracksuit?” Pete asks. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him so angry.
Ethan runs his hands down the velour. “It belongs to my father. It would be hard to find one like it now, I think. But thank you.” He turns to Lacey. “So did we say thirty hours?”
“Twenty-four is fine,” Pete says.
“We are goingto get so fun-tastic tonight,” Ethan says when we’re outside. Pete stormed out of the office ahead of us, so we’re in the parking lot alone.
“Well, thank you for today,” I say. It’s not enough, but I need to get into my car and talk to my mom. It wasn’t okay, her not letting me sort out my marriage. I should have been standing up to Pete all along. I feel tears welling up and I don’t want to darken his victorious mood. I turn to go and he grabs my arm.
“Wait, aren’t we celebrating? We won. He committed to time and you have a full free day. Every week.” Hisexpression is expectant. Like he’s waiting for me to get the joke and laugh.
“I know, it’s great,” I say. And my voice catches. I don’t want to be crying in this parking lot.
“Come with me.” Ethan leads me to his car. He opens the passenger door and I get in.
“Really, I’m fine,” I say when he’s in the driver’s seat.
“You’re not fine. We won and you’re about to cry.” He’s turned toward me, and he’s waiting for me to explain.
“It’s all of it. The fact that Pete had to be bullied into spending twenty-four hours with his children. The fact that my kids have never been with him for that long, including when we were married. The fact that I haven’t had twenty-four hours to myself since my mom died. All of it.”
“He’s kind of a tool.”
“I may have made him that way. I stopped asking him to step up a long time ago. My mom. She sort of covered for him. I turned into this.” I gesture at myself.
“What do you mean by ‘this’?”
“A weary housewife. This isn’t a costume.” I’m crying now and reach into my bag for a tissue that isn’t there. I find Cliffy’s rainbow sweatband and use it to wipe my eyes. “And I’m also sort of afraid of the free time. What if you just bought me twenty-four hours a week and now I have no excuses?”
Ethan puts his key in the ignition. “We need dogs and some fresh air.”
22
Ethan drives to my house, and I go inside to change into shorts and get Ferris. He wants to come in, but he’s seen enough of what a mess I am today, and I know for a fact that, even though I loaded the dishwasher, there are two sets of muddy cleats and the rancid shell of a hermit crab in the sink.
We go back to his house to pick up Brenda, and he emerges in his red swim trunks and a white T-shirt with a backpack slung across his shoulder. It’s the outfit of a teenage lifeguard, but I’m having a hard time seeing Ethan as anything but the grown-up man who is currently holding me together.
We drive in silence to the dog park, which is honestly not my first choice. I don’t really feel like playing referee and making small talk with my mom’s friends. When we get out of the car, there’s a breeze pushing backlit clouds across the sky. It rustles the giant leaves of the sycamore trees in a way that sounds like distant applause. As if thirty miles away, someone else has finally gotten things right. There’s ahint of lavender in the air. Lavender, I think, is a sinister fragrance—it relaxes you while it calls in the bees.
Ethan leads me past the dog park toward the sound. It’s low tide and it looks like you could walk halfway to Long Island. Little kids are in the water in front of the inn with buckets and shovels, the water just up to their ankles, and I imagine what it must feel like to be that free in all that space. Like they’re walking on water.
There’s a path along the seawall that runs the length of the park but eventually dead-ends into private property. We start walking south in silence and I am loving the feel of the wet breeze on my face. I am loving the fact that he’s not expecting me to explain any more about why I was crying.
When we’ve hit the end of the path, we are at a wrought iron gate around the garden of a waterfront home. The Litchfields used to live here, but I think they moved to Florida too.
Ethan peers through the gate and says, “The Litchfields used to live here.”
“I remember,” I say. “Sammy used to have the best parties. No one ever complained about the noise out here.”
Ethan points to a small island a hundred yards out. It’s covered with a couple of hardy trees that bend north as if they’ve been caught in a photograph of a storm. “That’s Pelican Island, or at least that’s what we used to call it when we were pretending to be pirates. Sammy’s brother Jason and I used to swim out there and build tree forts when we were little. In high school we’d hide beer behind those trees.”
“Clever.”
