Chapter 9
Nine
“When I was a kid, Bingham felt like a world away,” Sydney said as Reese’s car meandered along the coastline.
They’d been driving for over an hour, and they were about halfway to their destination.
It was a slightly chilly Saturday morning, but the weather would warm up in a few hours, when they were slated to arrive at the Fitzpatricks’ seaside mansion, just ‘a hop, skip, and a jump away’—they’d been told, according to the text that Stan Fitzpatrick had sent Reese’s entire family—from the country club where they’d be spending the day.
Sydney had snuck little glances at Reese, conversation light as the radio played instead.
Reese was dressed more casually today than she had been last weekend, in an airy linen shirt that was half tucked into her white, high-waisted, wide-legged pants.
“Is it okay that I’m taking the scenic route?” Reese asked, her eyes staying on the road. “I figured you weren’t champing at the bit to get there any earlier than necessary.”
They’d had a quiet send-off early this morning, at least between the two of them. Hallie, the jubilant ray of sunshine that she was, had cups of coffee ready for them and a few good-natured jabs about what their sleeping situation would be tonight.
Sydney had waved her best friend off, but it was something she’d thought about more than once over the last couple of days.
Reese, however, hadn’t seemed to give it much consideration. She was clearly distracted as they’d thrown their weekend bags in the car and started their Saturday morning drive.
Sydney took in Reese’s posture, which hadn’t relaxed since they’d gotten in the car. “Are we taking the long way for me or for you?”
She watched as Reese’s shoulders sagged. “I’ve interacted with my father more this week than I have in the last ten years. Apparently, the possibility of currying favor with the Fitzpatricks has gotten me off the bench and back on the starting team for children who have value to him.”
“We don’t have to go,” Sydney said, meaning it. “I saw a lobster shack a few miles back. We can sit in the parking lot until it opens and then gorge ourselves on a morning lobster roll.”
“I don’t know that ‘morning lobster rolls’ are a thing.”
Sydney looked at her, aghast. “There is never a bad time for a lobster roll.”
Reese glanced over at her, still clearly lost in her own thoughts. “He called me on the phone this morning. To check in .”
It took Sydney a few seconds to realize they were still talking about Tripp.
“Is that not something you two do? Like, ever?” Sydney, in contrast, talked to her parents multiple times a week on the phone. When she was in Florida, they lived together. Being surprised to see one of her parents’ names flash across her phone screen was an alien concept to her.
“Let me put it this way: I think he would have had my mom send a card for my college and business school graduations if he could have gotten away with it. You’ve probably spent more time with my father in the last couple of years than I have.”
Reese was probably right, Sydney acknowledged with a wince. She’d had dinner with Tripp, Grant, and varying groups of business associates and friends of theirs over the last half decade when she was in town in Boston.
And yet, she’d never liked Grant Devereux III, colloquially known as ‘Tripp’ to anyone from their dinner companions to the female waitstaff he stared at for a few beats longer than Sydney had ever been comfortable with.
When she’d been with Grant, she’d made an effort, truly. They’d gone to dinner at dozens of places over the years during Sydney’s visits to Boston.
And his father had always come off as… smarmy, for lack of a better word.
It felt strange and a little embarrassing to accept that Grant was just a Mini Tripp, which she’d never let herself acknowledge before.
Settling down with Grant once she retired from the tour had always been the plan, so if she’d needed to put some blinders on to stay the course, she’d done it. Unthinkingly at the time, honestly, but the signs were obvious in retrospect—at least where his self-important personality was concerned.
On some level, though, she understood how Reese was feeling.
“I used to think that it was sweet that Grant wanted me to spend time with your dad,” she said, “that he wanted to make sure I was ingratiated into his world.”
Reese looked briefly at Sydney. “And now?”
“Now, I feel like I was just a prop for them to parade around at dinner with people Tripp wanted to impress,” Sydney admitted.
It was something she was only recently coming to terms with.
She’d liked going out to dinner with Grant, but when she was back in Boston for such limited periods, spending time with other people meant they had less time to reconnect and focus on themselves as a couple.
Sometimes, she’d just wanted to cuddle up on the sofa with a glass of wine and a romcom, her partner’s head resting on her chest as she played with their hair.
Grant had never let her do that.
And now, given all she knew, she wondered if all of their evenings out had been a way for him to keep things superficial, not giving them much time to dig into serious conversations or make space for them to be vulnerable with one another.
On top of it all, going out with him often had made it feel even more unlikely that he was carrying on an affair, not that she’d really given it much thought.
It was just another data point that likely flitted through the back of her mind over the years, that if he had been up to something, he’d have wanted to squirrel her away in the apartment, away from prying eyes or someone who could catch them.
It’d been well orchestrated, so much so that Sydney had never consciously thought about the possibility at the time. It was only in retrospect, when she understood the full extent of Grant’s duplicity, that she saw her former life through a clearer lens.
“No one wants to feel like a means to an end,” Sydney continued. Their eyes connected before they both looked away.
Maybe it made Sydney’s stomach churn uncomfortably because, on some level, that’s what she and Reese were doing to one another, the only difference being they both knew the score.
“He’s going to be insufferable this weekend,” Reese said.
“Which one?” Sydney asked honestly.
Reese laughed. “Both, I’m sure, but Grant seems to have his tail between his legs most of the time when my dad and Stan are around.”
Sydney crossed her fingers. “Here’s to hoping that streak continues.”
“Is this weird for you?” Reese asked, meeting Sydney’s gaze for a second before she returned her attention to the road. “We didn’t really talk about it after the party.”
Sydney chewed on her lip, considering the question. “I’m definitely thinking about things differently than I used to, especially where Grant and I were concerned.”
“Are you finding that path forward?” Reese asked, referencing their conversation from the previous weekend, the one in which Sydney had thought she needed answers, but now was looking for a way to move on.
“One step forward, two steps back,” Sydney lamented. “I just keep thinking I should have known, but the more I think about it, there’s still nothing that jumps out and screams, ‘He was cheating on you.’”
They’d reached Boston, and Reese eased the car onto the highway and accelerated so they could get around the city quickly. “Like what?”
Sydney pretended to be interested in a piece of lint on her navy-colored linen pants.
She tried to hide the vulnerability in her tone, but she knew the crack in her voice spoke volumes. “He’d come to some of my matches, when he could fit them into his schedule, and he’d always sit in the section for coaches and family.”
Reese lifted a sculpted eyebrow but kept her eyes on the road. “Well, he was your boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but, like… a lot of those matches were televised, especially as I got into the deeper rounds. And gossip sites loved picking apart my comings and goings. Wasn’t he worried about Brynn catching him? Did she know?”
It was the million-dollar question, and maybe they’d get the answer this weekend.
“I’m not sure,” Reese offered. “I talked to Brynn earlier this week, about my bridesmaid dress. She seems like she genuinely wants to be friends with us.”
Sydney almost choked on the to-go coffee she’d plucked out of the car’s center console and pointed between them. “Us? As in you and me? You can’t be serious.”
“She said ‘us,’” Reese repeated. “She said she knew the situation was complicated, whatever that means, but she was excited for us to all spend time together.”
“It just doesn’t make sense. We weren’t the most high-profile couple in the grand scheme of things, but paparazzi were normal, especially at tournaments.
And you know Grant. He loves to go out and be the center of attention.
And sometimes,” Sydney said with a hint of loss in her voice, “he’d plan these really romantic dates for us after matches, whether I won or lost.”
Reese gave her a side-eyed glance. “Grant doesn’t strike me as the romantic type.”
“He’d call me, just to check in. Every day, without fail.”
Reese pursed her lips. “I feel like that should be the baseline for a serious relationship, not the goal.”
And maybe that was true, but, “It’s just difficult to accept. Not the breakup, I mean,” Sydney clarified, “but that I was so wrong. You were right. I think he was intentionally misleading me. He had to be.”
She’d run it around and around in her mind over the last week until she’d accepted the truth.
Grant had always been cocky, if not a little conceited, but they’d gotten together before she’d been famous.
When there were no endorsement deals and Sydney had had to take multiple layovers to reach her tournament destinations.