“Hello?” I say into my cell. It’s Siri. I make a regretful face to Janette, pointing to the phone like I have to take this call. She hands me a drink carrier and waves me away like these sorts of interruptions happen all the time. I’m grabbing a napkin to wrap around Abram’s iced coffee at the drink-doctoring station I typically avoid, when I feel her eyes back on me, if they ever even left. There’s something else in them besides curiosity, which has absolutely no business being there: my business.
25
ABRAM
JULIETTE’S STANDING over the couch bed with her arms crossed, dressed in a pair of tight black workout pants and a matching black long-sleeve. No clue what time it is, but she’s about to tell me what I’m late for.
“We’re going for a run,” she says with extra intensity, handing me an iced coffee. Unexpected bonus: She’s already put the straw in for me. I take the water-beaded cup from her hand, thanking her, trying not to drain it in one gulp as she watches me bring the straw to my lips for three mini-chugs in a row.
She pulls back the blankets from my chin. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
I’m in my boxer briefs. Thankfully, nothing’s escaped or excited or arranged at an odd angle. I sit up and start looking around the floor for the same clothes I wore last night. She points to the overstuffed chair next to the fireplace, having already laid out a clean pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and socks. She also found the remote control to the fireplace, because the flames are crackling. Through the window behind it, the sun is rising above the water.
“Don’t put on your shirt yet.” She walks over and starts spraying me down with enough sunscreen to make the ozone a moot layer. Not that I’m complaining, especially when she starts rubbing the spray gently into my neck, as liberally as she’s ever done anything when it comes to touching me. She even remembers the backs of my ears.
A short while later, we’re on the beach, running, and it doesn’t suck as much as I recalled, but I’m sure sucking a lot of air.
“You okay?” Juliette asks, with plenty of breath to spare.
I nod.
“Adderall?” she offers, as casually as one would an Advil. “I keep an extra underneath the insert of my shoe.”
Once I realize she’s not kidding, I shake my head no, and she looks at me like it’s my loss. Except it’s not, I tell her, because that tiny chunk of pill she gave me a few weeks ago, before eighth period, made my brain latch on to all kinds of to-do’s: Abram! You should make a bunch of lists and clean your locker and pick scabs that turn out to be freckles and trim your fingernails, but it’s essential that you do this all at the same time!
I consider anything related to me wanting to multitask a disorienting, what’s-happening-to-me? experience, and on that note, I should make sure I don’t step on a one-hundred-thousand-dollar sea-turtle egg.
“Can we take a break soon? Just a thought.”
She checks her iPhone. “It’s only been twenty-eight minutes and thirty-three seconds.”
I grab her hand and lead her back toward the house. Break time. She’s been needing to give herself one for a while now, anyway.
Juliette
ABRAM DOESN’T SEEM to have a plan, but he does find the exact spot of sand I would’ve chosen—a good distance away from that demented scene over there: a visibly happy couple making a sand castle with their bouncy, halterkini-wearing little girl. The two of us sit down, and then nothing happens. At least the sun feels like it’s burning the pale off my face, since I’ve stopped moving long enough to let it get a decent shot. Remind me why you quit running again? asks my brain, but instead of waiting for an answer, it releases a few more stress hormones. I’d worry about my health if I weren’t the type of lifeless person who lives forever. Guaranteed, I’ll be five hundred years old someday, the stereotypically bitter old lady down the road who refuses to croak out of spite toward people long since dead, and all I’ll have to show for my life is a bunch of check marks. Remember that one time I went to the beach with a cute boy, completed a bunch of self-given assignments, and vacuumed the fun out of everything? Granny would never admit to regretting that, so let’s talk about something you’re doing wrong. I won’t have any kids or grandchildren lighting candles around my deathbed, though, so I’ll just be lecturing my hospice nurse, mistaking her for my next of kin as she yearns to pull the plug.
The above out-of-control thought sequence is exactly what my new audiobook warns against.
“What do you think about just hanging out here for a while?” Abram asks.
“Okay,” I say, letting him do the thinking. He looks surprised. I wonder how long it will take him to realize this would be better with towels.
ABRAM
WE’RE RELAXING ON THE BEACH, sprawled out side by side on the towels we just fetched, without a responsibility in the world besides all the ones we’re putting off back home. Juliette keeps asking if she’s tan yet, holding out her arm for my “brutally honest opinion.” To be honest, we’ve only been lying still for twenty minutes, but I prop myself up on my towel so I can better assess her pigmentation. Eventually, my eyes wander over to her smooth, taut stomach with its tiny little belly button that I’d like to do a shot of something out of someday, even if it’s saltwater, and what was her question?
“You’re at least as tan as me,” I confirm.
She sighs. “I want to be as tan as you two years ago.”
“Ah-ha, so you did see me as you were running by the courts pretending to ignore my shirtlessness.”
I’m guessing the W she draws in the sand next to me stands for Whatever.
She sits up and takes off her sunglasses, looking over at me. “Not that it matters, but I could never tell who was winning … you were both so good.”
“Dad usually won in practice.”
“What about in a match?”
I hesitate. Feels almost like a betrayal to show off my bragging rights, tout my official tournament victories over my dad or whatever—the last of which was on this exact island, at the club across the street, after we won the doubles together. I confess my guilt about this to Juliette, and she reminds me he would’ve been a lot more upset if I’d let him win. Very true.
“I want to see you play again,” she says.
“Naw, we should just take it easy this afternoon.” When she responds by putting her sunglasses back on, I sit up straighter and remove mine. “You’ve already scheduled something, haven’t you?”
She puts her hand over her heart in a sarcastic gesture of innocence, then tells me we have four o’clock reservations at the club across the street.
26
Juliette
“WHEN’S THE LAST TIME you played?” Abram asks as we step out onto the court together.
“Can’t remember,” I say, like it’s the funniest thing. It’s not—I took a few mother-daughter tennis lessons a year and a half ago. Mom’s idea. Her bribing me with Adderall was mine. I spent most of my time on court making snarky comments under my breath about Mom’s sudden interest in the sport. I remember hitting exactly one forehand when we were playing doubles together—the ball only smacked the back of her arm, but in that particular moment of resentment, it felt like my first Wimbledon title.
“What about you?” I ask Abram.
He pops the lid off a can of tennis balls, tearing off the metal seal. “Here … last year,” he says, then bends over and starts tying his shoes. I recognize more and more of our surroundings from the picture on Abram’s refrigerator—the one of him and his father holding a trophy.
Maybe I should stretch a bone or two? I grab my phone, reach down, and touch my toes, letting the blood rush to my head as I send Heidi a text asking for some last-minute tips. Her immediate response of Get it!!! is not relevant, but it’s incredible how she keeps finding a way to use the phrase, regardless of the context. Do I have to give her props for that? Anyway, it was nice of her to let me re-borrow the Maria Sharapova dress I wore to her party. This time, though, I’m pairing it with Chris Evert’s frosty eye daggers. The look is vintage bitchy couture. As for Abram, he’s dressed in the same pocket T-shirt he probably would’ve worn if we’d just sat back at the house staring at each other, although the shorts he’s wearing are a bit shorter than his others, his legs looking tanner and therefore more muscular by the minute.