Senior Year
Abby windsurfed as revenge. With Kate a confusing stitch in her heart, she vigorously took to work, and when Lonnie, a sandy-haired windsurfer who flirted with her at the shop daily, offered her lessons, she accepted.
She missed surfing, missed her teammates and Isla, missed sex, but most of all, missed Kate.
So, she spent long afternoons and sunlit evenings when she didn’t have class or a shift with Lonnie on the river.
And then the first letter came.
Abby ditched Lonnie so abruptly that he showed up at the shop, certain something horrible had happened to her.
When she shrugged, told him to relax, they were just having fun, he knocked over a rack of kayaks.
One of the kayaks cracked a window, which would come out of her paycheck, but she didn’t care.
She was too busy composing a letter to Kate in her head.
Too busy debating whether to sign it with Sincerely, Abby or I miss you or Love, Abby.
She floated between correspondences, an eye on the gorge, the gap between state lines reflective of the valley in her chest. When she wrote Kate, she wrote it to the canyon and the water too, alluding to love and jealousy, uncertain if it would return.
But it did. Kate said love first. She also said friends and can’t and Blake.
Abby rode the wind with abandon after that letter.
She indulged the various tourists, offered pointers, agreed to give lessons to more than one attractive woman, agreed to drinks after, and sex next.
It was better than her typical propensity for self-destruction.
She preferred that Kate didn’t know. Preferred that she continued signing her letters with love, even if it didn’t include the ardor Abby wished for.
The week before Kate’s return to Insley, Abby couldn’t sleep. She anxiously considered what might be different between them. She worried she might have said too much, that Kate might keep distance from her after their conversations of wanting.
She soared across the water during her last work shift, leaning into the wind, muscles clenched against the sail, thighs and feet straining to balance.
She cut across currents, picked up speed, launched off waves for a little air and a crash, just to climb up and do it again.
She plowed water and splashed the windsurfers she recognized, rode until her legs and lungs burned.
Abby admired the view of Hood River’s tiny city center crawling up the hills as she coasted in and dismounted with a plunge. She lugged her board and sail through the shallow waves, when a shout echoed from the pebbled shore.
“Do they really pay you to play all day?”
Kate’s bare feet sank into the sand, chestnut tresses a flag in the wind, her eyes a glowing lighthouse from the breakers.
“What?” Abby fumbled her gear as she charged through the water, unable to move fast enough, like the end of a dream. “What are you doing here?”
Kate smiled. “I came a few days early. Mick told me you were at work and the shop told me you were here.”
Abby dropped her board and stood gaping in her wetsuit. “I’m so glad to see you.” She started for her, but then stopped. “I’d hug you, but I don’t want to get you wet.”
Kate flung herself into her arms anyway. Abby squeezed back, nestled into her shoulder, and fought the sting of tears.
“I missed you too,” Kate whispered into her neck.
They chuckled at nothing in particular when they released each other, just giddiness on Abby’s part, maybe the same on Kate’s.
Abby studied her for the familiar and for the changes that naturally emerged during time apart.
More freckles peppered Kate’s cheeks, her chestnut waves a little longer, face a little firmer.
She could have sworn her cerulean gaze deepened in her absence, richer and gentler, but lively.
Loving. Or maybe Abby had just missed her so much that she projected everything that long-awaited look made her feel.
“You cut your hair,” Kate said.
Abby snapped out of her trance and raked a hand through her drenched locks. “Oh yeah. I got tired of messing with it in the water.”
“I like it.” Kate cleared her throat. “Seems like a rough summer gig.”
“The worst.” Abby winked. She hefted up her board and sail and led Kate to the grassy slope bordering the waves.
Her heart thundered, but it didn’t unsteady her.
In fact, it jolted as if knocked back into place, as if the entire world was knocked back into place.
The gorge became more gorgeous, the sherbet sunset sweeter, even the seagulls sang instead of squawked.
“You’re pretty good.” Kate nodded out at the water.
“I had a lot of time to practice.”
Abby unzipped her wetsuit, shimmied it down to her waist, and let the wind dry her in her bikini top.
Kate’s eyes roved across her skin, pausing on her right shoulder blade.
She traced the tattoo with a finger and Abby gasped, her shudder and raised skin surely noticeable to Kate, but she didn’t retreat. “I didn’t know you had this.”
“It’s for my mom.” Abby stared down at the grass. “Honestly, I don’t even remember getting it. How fucked-up is that?”
Kate carefully outlined the sun pressed in ink. “I thought of you so often,” she whispered.
Her fingers left the tattoo and crawled upward, exploring the back of Abby’s neck. She closed her eyes, sighed at the touch, then simultaneously resented the touch, roiled, and writhed at the impossibility of those perfect fingers.
“How’s Blake?” Abby asked.
Kate withdrew and cleared her throat again. “He’s good. He’s with his new team in Florida.”
“Good.” Abby searched Kate’s eyes, but they darted away from her. “I’m happy for you. Getting married and all.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not like that. Nothing’s changed.” Kate frowned.
Abby bit her lip. They eyed the horizon, the water reflecting every shift in the sky, waves topped white like whipped cream on a sundae.
“This year is going to be excruciating, isn’t it?” she asked, certain that Kate knew what she meant.
“No.” She smiled. “It’s going to be the best one yet.”
“Maybe for you.” Abby chuckled at Kate’s ability to still sparkle in her shade.
“For you too,” she said. “It’s our last one together. I mean, you know, as a team. Though it’s seriously messing with my head. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” Abby stood and offered Kate a hand. “Want to get dinner? I’m supposed to meet Mick and Haley. It’ll be nice to have you, so I’m not third wheeling with two horny lovebirds.”
Kate laughed as Abby helped her up. “Do I have a choice?”
Abby embraced her again, firmer than before. “I miss our letters,” she whispered.
Kate rubbed her back. “Why? Isn’t this better?”
Abby released her. “Yeah, but there was something safe about writing. It doesn’t seem right to say those things here, does it?”
“Not quite.” Kate tilted her head to the side, her chin quaking just once. “But it doesn’t mean it’s not still true.”
Abby nodded. “Let me put this gear away. I can drive us.” She turned and sank at the confirmation she didn’t want. Summer letters were over, and the stamp of love, gone with them.
After her fifth straight game without a hit, Kate accepted she’d fallen into a slump.
It’d taken root over the summer, when she returned to Washington to finish a few final tournaments with her club team.
She’d hit into an easy out nearly every at bat, squandering any shot at an invitation to try out for Team USA.
She’d hoped returning to Insley, her safe place, surrounded by her favorite people, might cure it, but during their exhibition games that fall she struck out a dozen times.
“Hutchins!” Coach Whitley waved her over to the home dugout after practice. “Step into my office.”
Most of the team had cleared out, except for the usual suspects who always left in a pack.
Jill, Abby, and Mick tangled with each other in a typical Three Stooges routine, half running, half wrestling each other around the bases in a game that no one quite understood the rules of, while T.K.
talked loudly on her phone in right field.
“What’s up, Coach?” Kate asked.
“Just wondering how to harness all that energy for a national title.” Coach Whitley chuckled as the stooges tripped over each other. “How are you, Kate?”
“I’m good.”
Coach Whitley narrowed her gaze like she didn’t believe her. “School’s good?”
“Yeah. Yeah, just working on my law school applications.” Kate swallowed. It wasn’t just the applications, but the internship and letters of recommendation too, and while her LSAT scores were above average, Berkeley was far from guaranteed.
“And everything else? The boyfriend, home—”
“All good,” Kate said, growing impatient. “What’s this about?”
Coach Whitley frowned. “I know you’re struggling up at the plate and I’m just wondering if something else might be going on.”
“Nothing’s going on.” Kate adjusted her visor, unable to stop her gaze from settling on Abby.
The real reason for her slump. Her first terrible outing, her first game of strikeouts that she couldn’t shake, followed Abby’s letter.
The one with the haunting postscript: I don’t know if I’d associate love with my summer relations.
Kate contemplated the line, felt ill over it, for the rest of the summer.
What did relations mean? Was Abby dating someone?
Was she sleeping with someone? But she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
Not in her letter back. Not when she saw her coasting on the river like she had wings, controlling the wind and waves.
Not when her knees wobbled as she landed in her arms or when she glimpsed her bare stomach and the rise of her breasts that she usually turned from.
She didn’t know desire could be so exhilarating, excruciating, or embarrassing, but mostly humbling. No wonder she couldn’t hit.
“I’m trying. I really am,” Kate said.
“I know and I’m not trying to punish you. I want to help.” Coach Whitley sighed. “Which is why this weekend, I’m going to have Palamino hit leadoff.”
Kate snapped her head back to her. “W-what?”
“It’s just for the weekend. I’m shifting you to the middle of the lineup.
It’s less pressure and it’ll give you a fair go against these pitchers.
Get your confidence up.” She patted Kate’s shoulder.
“It’s just for the last few games of fall.
They’re just practice games, really.” Coach Whitley nodded at her.
“You’re still the captain of this team.”
It was a new title, one unanimously given to her after tryouts. Even Mick, who was a strong contender as their catcher, stepped aside.
“I know there’s a lot of pressure on you—on the field and off it. You’re doing exceptional and if you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”
Kate nodded at her, appreciative but certain she wouldn’t take her up on the offer.
“Thank you.” She shifted back to the field to hide her trembling lower lip, and the unshakeable sense that no matter how hard she worked for it, the game she loved so much was destined to slip from her fingers.
And the person she loved so much, the one unwittingly responsible for her recent failures, was destined to too.
“I’m moving her to third base,” Coach Whitley said.
Kate’s eyes bulged. “Who? What?”
“Cruz. Now that Seaborn’s gone, a waste of that arm of hers at second,” Coach Whitley said.
“Did you tell her?” Kate’s heart sank lower than she thought possible. No more turning two with Abby. No more moving as one. No more of that perfect harmony, in which they’d found so much more than a game.
“She wanted me to tell you before I made it official.” Coach Whitley pursed her lips. “Did you know she could’ve gone back up to Division I this year?”
Kate shook her head.
“Half a dozen programs offered to pick her up and she chose to stay here. Hard to believe after last year’s rough start, huh?” Coach Whitley smiled as she put her hands in her pockets and backed away to leave. “I have no doubt that’s thanks to you. You did a good thing, Hutchins.”
Kate lingered, too stunned to reply. While it wasn’t a solution to her slump, she found a sliver of hope in those words. Abby chose to stay. And while it was likely for the team, and for Isla, and to finish her degree, Kate also knew it was for her too.