47. Cosmic Blue
Cosmic Blue
Desdemona
The Hamptons’ summer finally arrives. Every day smells of sunscreen and strawberries, and every night the air fills with the sound of insects and distant music from oceanfront parties.
The sky opens up, clean cerulean blue over sun-warmed clay.
The Hamptons, always beautiful, blurs and dissolves under the sun, a painting left out in the heat too long: colours bleeding at the edges, sky and sea melting into an indigo infinity.
For the first time in years, I don’t have anywhere to be except the court—and the court is the only place I can go where I can forget, if only temporarily, the pain of missing Elias.
I wake every day before dawn, lace my shoes, step onto the court with Dad while the mist is still lifting off the grass, when the air tastes of salt and mint.
By mid-June, the twins are home, bringing their noise and chaos with them.
They train with me on the courts behind the house—mostly to show off all those muscles they’ve been putting on—but their laughter feels like a reward, after everything that happened this year.
When I start competing again, Ophelia comes to every match. She sits in the front row, a little goth princess all in black with her eyes hidden behind a pair of Mum’s shades. She frowns enough that you’d think she’s there by force, but I catch her clapping every time I score points.
The days pass in sunlight and motion—fast, but never quite fast enough.
Luckily, my body remembers what it needs to do even when I’m distracted: how to serve, how to read the angle of a spin, how to wait for the silence before the strike. I train with Dad, his friends, my own rivals on the circuit—anyone who’ll rally until dusk.
Sometimes, when I serve, the ball makes a perfect arc against the sky, vanishing for a heartbeat into the blinding blue—and whenever that happens, my heart leaps, because I think of Elias.
Within weeks, my name’s on the list for the Montauk Summer Invitational, the most prestigious local championship on the coast. The Mariner’s Club courts shimmer with heat, white parasols scattered like seashells along the perimeter, champagne sweating in silver buckets.
It feels unreal—the press, the photographers, the applause—like a parallel life.
But I know this is just limbo. The liminal place between the end of one life and the start of another.
Nevertheless, in between matches, life finds its new rhythm: swimming with Mum in the mornings, practising with Dad and the twins in the afternoons, laughing with Ophelia in the evenings when we watch movies or when she insists on painting my nails black.
One weekend, we sneak into the city together, and I smuggle her into a bar and we get drunk enough that Aunt Willow has to send Luca over to pick us up.
That night, Ophelia and I get our first tattoos: a tiny O on my wrist, a tiny D on hers.
I love it more than any piece of jewellery I’ve ever owned.
Every now and again, Elias and I exchange texts.
He’s even busier than I am—revising, finishing his exams, meeting with Mr Mazzati, finalising legal proceedings for his emancipation from the Pearsons, flying out to Cambridge to interview for jobs and arrange his housing for the autumn.
He sends me little updates when he can: photos of his emancipation paperwork, flight tickets and accommodation keys.
I collect them like treasures; I don’t dare ask for more.
Like what happens when he’s between exams and university, what his summer plans are.
As if by asking, I’d be forcing him into a choice, or exercising pressure.
I don’t want him to come back to me because he thinks he owes me or my family anything.
I want him to miss me as much as I miss him.
But he doesn’t say anything, so neither do I.
Instead, I pour every restless thought into the court, every unspoken doubt and question and desire into another serve, another set, another match. It’s easier to chase the ball than to chase a future that might not even exist, right?
And just like that, I make it all the way to the Montauk Summer Invitational finals. It lands on the hottest day of the summer so far, which is about right.
Across the net is Nadia Ahdal, the rising star of the East Coast circuit—a seventeen-year-old prodigy with sponsors already circling her. Her white visor hides most of her face, but I can see the sharp gleam in her eyes, the calm, focused hunger—a perfect mirror to mine.
We exchange a smile but warm up in silence. The crowd murmurs, simmering with excitement. In the stands, Ophelia sits flanked by Austen and William, looking like a haunted doll and rolling her eyes at something they’re saying. My eyes meet hers, and she forms a heart with her fingers.
When the match begins, it’s like being struck by lightning. Nadia serves first—fast and punishing. The ball whistles through the air; I barely have time to breathe before I’m lunging, the world a blur of green and white and blue.
Nadia doesn’t make a single second of the match easy for me.
Sweat stings my eyes, my wrist aches, my lungs burn—but I don’t care.
I’ve never played like this before: not careful, not perfect, not afraid of missing.
Because what would be the point? Being afraid never stopped me from losing the things I was afraid to lose.
Being afraid only ever kept me a prisoner.
Now, I can move freely, reacting instead of planning.
Plans go wrong all the time anyway—I should know.
I made a plan, once, a terrible bargain, and when I gave it rules, I ended up breaking every single one of them anyway.
The match stretches past an hour, then two.
The crowd is roaring now, clapping between serves, the air electric with heat and noise.
Nadia fights hard, elegant yet ruthless, but somewhere in the final set, I feel it: the click of the rhythm, the spark of certainty.
My body realising something before my mind can.
Nadia serves wide. I sprint, catch it on the edge of the line, twist, swing—
The ball arcs through the air, spins, lands just inside the baseline.
Match point.
The sound that follows is a burst of euphoria: the umpire’s call, the applause, the collective exhale of the crowd.
Someone presses a silver trophy into my hands; it’s warm to the touch, warm from the sun.
I hand it to Dad, who kisses it and brandishes it like he’s won it himself, and I walk back to where I left my bag with my towel—
Which comes flying at my face. I catch it mid-air.
My heart stops, stutters back to life. It aches like it’s been shot through with an arrow.
If it wasn’t for the adrenaline of the match still pumping through my system, I think my legs would’ve buckled from sheer relief.
“Another shiny trophy, love?”
Leaning against the chain-link fence beyond the court, half in shadow, half in sunlight, Elias watches me with a slight smirk.
He’s wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt.
He’s had a haircut, too, but still looks like he combed his thick dark hair by running a hand through it.
His eyes are like dark jewels—his beauty strikes me all over again.
“You don’t have enough of those, no?” he says.
I wipe my face, sling my towel around my neck and stalk carefully closer.
My heart is beating a mile a minute. My body aches, skin tingling with want.
When I reach him, Elias hands me my water bottle and I keep eye contact as I take a long draught.
He doesn’t: his eyes immediately fall to my throat, which is covered with a sheen of sweat.
“Did you come all the way here to make fun of me?” I ask finally, my voice mild enough.
“Someone’s got to keep you humble.”
I pretend to look past him. “Where’s he, then?”
“That’s not very romantic of you.” He laughs, low and soft. “Thought you’d be jumping into my arms and all that.” He smirks. “Cause another embarrassing display of obscenity or whatever Mrs Kendall called it.”
“Maybe I would’ve jumped into your arms if you hadn’t thrown a towel at my face.”
“I threw it in the air.”
“Towards my face.”
He shakes his head. “So pedantic, this girl of mine.”
My heart lurches once more, forgetting its own function.
“Since when am I your girl?”
“Since I’m asking you out.”
He has the audacity to say it calmly, softly. He holds my gaze, and he doesn’t even look nervous, or cocky—he looks sincere. And that sincerity is somehow more intimidating than if he’d pinned me to the wall by my neck.
“In exchange for what?” I ask, uncertain now, because this is new territory, a make-or-break match in a sport I’ve never trained for.
Elias pushes off the wall and stands right in front of me.
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all, love. No conditions, no bargain, no payment. Just you and me, no lying, no pretending, no holding back. Your heart and mine. Your life and mine.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as you want. Forever, preferably.”
“Forever?” I repeat, trying to keep the grin from blossoming on my face. “It needs to be studied—that ambition of yours.”
“You don’t like my ambition?” he asks, and he’s also trying to stop a smile from tugging on his lips, but he’s not winning that fight, and his hands are already reaching for me, fingers brushing up and down my arms almost like he doesn’t realise he’s doing it, sending shivers up my spine.
“I like it.” My voice comes out husky. “I like it a lot.” And because his hands are now rising to my shoulders, gliding delicately over my collarbones, my neck, I admit the truth. “I like everything about you, actually.”
“That’s good,” he whispers. “Because I love everything about you, too.”
“Love?” I swallow. “It’s not a competition, you know.”
“But if it was, I’d win.” He speaks with his lips inches from mine, so close I can almost taste his words, the sweetness of them. “No shiny trophy for you this time.”
“First match, maybe,” I concede. “The competition’s just beginning.”
He grins. “Thought you said it’s not a competition?”
“You made it one.” I grin right back. “And you know I don’t like losing.”
“That means you’re saying yes, love?”
“To winning?”
“To going out with me.”
“Yes.”
And then my arms are around his neck, and he’s lifting me up against him, and we’re kissing, soft then hard then hungry.
Behind us, I hear little cheers and a loud, pointed “Ew!” in Ophelia’s voice.
I turn to throw her a glare, Elias’s mouth trailing against my cheek, only to see the twins covering Ophelia’s eyes and Dad laughing as he pulls all three of them away, my trophy shining under his arm.
When I turn back to Elias, the expression on his face is so achingly familiar, I can’t help asking him the question that’s been haunting me ever since I last saw him.
“What were you going to say, that day? In Spearcrest, when Mrs Kendall was dragging me away? You never finished your sentence.”
He cups my face carefully in his fingers, smiles, amused and rueful all at once.
“You already know what I was going to say.”
“Maybe I’m wrong.”
“When have you ever been wrong?”
“Too many times to count.” I touch my fingertips to his lips. “So say it.”
“I love you.” He catches his breath. “I was going to say I love you. I was scared you might not wait for me. I wanted to ask you to. I might’ve begged, if Kendall and North hadn’t meddled.
” He lets out a soft, sheepish laugh. “Maybe it’s a good thing they did.
” And then his eyes rise up to meet mine, and this time, they’re not sheepish.
They’re dark and bright and ferocious, just like him. “I love you.”
And, well, he was right: I did already know.
But it still feels good to hear it. It feels good to say it back, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Like a mantra against pain and sadness.
Like a plea to the wide, waiting universe.
Like a promise whispered against his mouth.
And then I kiss him again, I kiss him breathlessly under the wide-open blue sky, that depthless cosmic blue that will always make me think of Elias.
The End