Finding Mr. Brightside (11 page)

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

A
BRAM 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

W
E’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

“W
HEN’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.

We walk back to our respective baselines, and this surface underneath my feet … Abram calls it “green clay,” but it’s basically a bunch of tiny rocks that hop up into the backs of my shoes whenever I take a step. Abram’s already sliding around like he’s rediscovering his childhood sandbox, which is exactly what he should be doing.

“Ready?” he calls out, his voice echoing off the tall backstop behind him.

“Yes. No, sorry, hang on.…” My grip feels weird, slippery. Need to get in my ready position, which is the same as my other ramrod stance only with a light swaying back and forth like I’m about to produce some tennis. I signal for Abram to bring it on. The ball pops off his racquet, spinning, spinning, landing a few inches in front of me and bouncing three feet higher than expected. My racquet connects with the ball, but I’m not even sure where I hit it.

Abram apologizes in spite of it actually being my fault, then sends another try my way.

ABRAM

A
BOUT THREE RALLIES
into the warm-up, Juliette complains of cold-wrist problems, which is a cover story for her being embarrassed about nailing her last shot straight past the baseline, into the backstop. She removes a sweatshirt from her purse and puts it on. She looks good in it. There’s something about a girl like her in my hoodie: It doesn’t fit, but it just fits.

She puts her tennis scowl back on and jogs to the baseline. I hit the next ball to her, and I can tell she’s relieved when it brushes across her strings and bounces right back to me. She forgets to follow through, so I start exaggerating the correct path of the racquet after I make contact, thinking maybe she’ll pick up on my technicalities. She does—in a sarcastic way that actually ends up improving her stroke—so mission accomplished. We rally for a few minutes longer until she starts walking up to the net with her hands on her hips. She might be defaulting. I trot up to join her.

“Everything okay?”

She rests her racquet on her hip, looking down at mine. “Are you really left-handed?”

“Nope, I’m fake left-handed,” I say with a smile, using one of her favorite words to call people out with. “I write with my right hand, play sports with my left. Could’ve gone either way, but Dad thought I should be a lefty.”

“Because he wanted you to have the ad-court advantage?” she asks. Not sure why I’m surprised she knows the game that well, given her close friendship with Heidi and formidable online research skills.

“Pretty much, yeah,” I say, hitting the clay off the bottoms of my shoes with the edge of my racquet, just like he used to do.

“That was … awesome of him,” she says, surprising herself. “Smart.”

“Yeah … it was.” For a second, I think about all the additional hours my dad must’ve spent teaching me to be left-handed. It frees me up to appreciate him and not feel guilty about it, or retroactively protective of my mom. “Thank you for saying that,” I tell Juliette.

We hit for the next hour, during which she keeps telling me to stop making her look better than she really is by placing the ball in her strike zone every time. I can only do so much, as the uncoordinated ladies at the country club back home, where I taught a few summers ago, can attest. Unlike them, Juliette has athletic ability when she lets it come naturally, when she’s just hitting the ball, letting her string tension do the work instead of the tension in her shoulders, and not analyzing her shot as it heads over the net. This is why tennis can be therapeutic for people sometimes: It requires you to problem-solve but doesn’t leave enough time to overthink.

“I’d recognize that lefty forehand from a mile away!” a booming voice calls down to the court.

I look up to find a couple of ghosts from my tennis past, staring down at me from the stands.

27

Juliette

A
BRAM WAVES UP
at our unexpected visitors, a mask of anxious politeness freezing over his face. Isn’t that the same mask I wore when cornered at Starbucks earlier? I’m going to need it back if he expects me to make a friendly impression on that Brawny-paper-towel-of-a-man who keeps pulling up his shorts. Incredible how the petite brunette seems to love him anyway—maybe forgiveness is easier to generate with a heart-shaped face like hers? The width of her smile certainly appears effortless.

“We’ll come up and say hi,” Abram tells them. He jogs around the net post to my side, takes my hand. “Terry and Linda McEvans,” he says into my ear. “Neighbors, love tennis, used to hang out with my parents.”

“Did they hang out with
our
parents?” I whisper.

“Not that I know of.”

As we walk up the stairs, I really want to blame him for us being in this situation. If only it weren’t my fault for making the reservation. When we reach the top, I take a small step in the opposite direction, hoping elsewhere is still an option. Abram calmly herds me back in tandem with him.

“I told Terry to wait till y’all were done,” the woman says as we approach them, “but the doctor said he can’t help it if he’s chronically obnoxious.”

“Doc’s right, I’m untreatable!” Terry says proudly, twitching his mustache. “And ’bout had myself a heart attack when I saw the name Abram Morgan on the court assignment calendar.” He looks at Abram with squinty-eyed amusement. “How you hitting ’em these days, champ? We has-beens want to know.”

“Infrequently,” Abram says too honestly, smiling. I would’ve gone with a lie/frown combo.

“That’s
not
what I like to hear,” Terry says good-naturedly, and he and Abram begin working their way through a complicated handshake-hug-handshake ritual. Linda shakes her sleek nightly-newscaster hair back and forth like she doesn’t understand it, either, before fixing her energetic brown eyes on me.

“Hi, I’m Linda McEvans. Terry and I live just down the road from the Morgans.” She has the kind of duskily feminine voice that cracks at all the right times, with just a hint of southern twang.

“Your neighborhood is very nice,” I say, in the voice of an alien who doesn’t vacation on Earth very often. “I’m Juliette.”

Terry extends his furry paw and introduces himself to me, saying, “The pleasure is all mine, Juliette.” Indeed, but I like how his grip is loose and unassuming; firm handshakes are overrated.

Terry stands back and picks up Abram’s racquet, takes a few imaginary practice swings. “I know I don’t look like much now,” he says to anyone who’ll listen, “but I used to play a lot of competitive tennis in my day. And you know who forced me into my third or fourth retirement?” He points to Abram. “Last year’s version of this guy.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, I retired pretty much right after that tournament myself,” Abram says.

Terry McEvans has more restraint than my snap judgment gave him credit for, because he doesn’t ask why, just reaches out and pats Abram’s shoulder like he’s been there, quit that.

“You mind if I take his forehand for a spin?” Terry asks me. “Five minutes is my max these days, promise.”

“By all means,” I say, awfully. What’s next?
Be my guest
?
Spin away
? I hand Abram the racquet he let me borrow.

Terry whispers something into Abram’s ear, making sure I hear the part about me being a “keeper.” I like the honest part where he mumbles “If you’ve got the energy to keep catching her” better. Linda smacks him on the arm for it before they head back down to the court, leaving us ladies to a few minutes of small talk followed by a lifetime of never seeing each other again.

Linda sits down on the bleachers and pats the spot next to her. What if I acted like it was already taken? I sit down and wait for the questions to begin as she removes a huge canister of sunscreen from an elephantine purse that rivals mine in size. I want to ask where one can purchase such a tote monster, but I don’t, because now we’re unspoken purse rivals.

“I’m paranoid about sunscreen,” she says, speaking my language, and then proceeds to lambaste herself with the coconut-scented spray. She passes the bottle to me casually, as she might to a friend she’s been sharing with for years. I give my arms another thin coat.

“Do you mind if I use this on my legs, too?” I ask Linda.

“Of course not.”

No wonder I’m so pale.