Chapter 14
I was running late and decided to take the shortest route over the beach.
With my shoes in my hand, I trudged through the warm sand and took the stairs up to the Greenfields’.
I could feel the day’s training in my bones, and my upper thigh muscles were sore.
Reaching the last step, I was hit by the smell of acrylic paint.
A part of the terrace was covered in newspaper.
On top were a couple of white wooden chairs that looked like they’d just been painted.
The balcony door was open. Out of politeness, I knocked on the pane and stuck my head inside.
Laurie was belting out Harry Styles’s “Sign of the Times” very loud and very out of tune.
With a grin, I rubbed the sand off my feet, slipped into my slides, and stepped inside.
My grin turned into a full-blown smile when I came across her in the kitchen, giving all she had to a cucumber mic.
Opening her eyes and seeing me, she winced in embarrassment.
An instant later, however, she simply handed me a wooden spoon.
I waved it off, shaking my head, while Laurie turned back to her cuke for the grand finale, putting one hand to her heart and balling the other into a fist. I couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.
“That was impressive,” I said, clapping.
“Don’t lie. Vince says my singing is a kind of active euthanasia.” She made a face, whereas everything within me reacted to his name. My memory in particular. Images popped up before my mind’s eye. Me and him. Him and me. Naked skin. Water. Caresses. My body responded with a shudder.
“The pizza still needs a sec. You want an iced tea in the meantime?”
“Do you have any water?”
The pizza was already going to be a serious hit to my nutrition plan. “Of course.” She opened the refrigerator and handed me a plastic bottle. “In any event, the pizza is whole grain and vegetarian. And I intentionally used less mozzarella.”
“You’re a sweetheart,” I said, touched. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“It’s no big deal. Tastes good all the same. Vince might complain later though. He’s a total cheese junkie.”
“Is he eating with us?”
“No, he’s over at Pili’s. But there will no doubt be leftovers.”
I remembered her attractive face and long, deep-brown hair.
“Are they together?” I blurted out before considering how I might respond if the answer was yes.
“Sadly, no.”
I was only aware of having held my breath once I let it out. “What do you mean?”
“Well, she’d be perfect for him. She’s as crazy about surfing as he is, lives just around the corner, friendly and intelligent too.” Laurie peered into the oven, then changed the subject.
“Vince and I sanded and painted the chairs.”
“The ones out on the terrace?”
She nodded. “What all one does to keep one’s brother happy.”
“You’re close. You and Vince.” It wasn’t something I’d just realized. But it was the first time I was saying it out loud.
“All we’ve got is each other,” she said, a tinge of sadness creeping into her voice. “Our folks died a few years ago in a sailing accident. Ever since…” She didn’t finish.
“I’m very sorry.”
“Without Vince, I never would have made it.” Her eyes grew distant. “He suffered just as much as me, but he swallowed it all in order to help me out.”
“I’m happy you have him,” I said. The idea of losing my parents and having to go through it alone made me tremble.
“Yeah. Me too.” A faint smile appeared at the corner of her mouth, and for a second or two, everything was still. Then she clapped. “Right. What do you think? Action? Horror? Sci-fi?”
The change of topic came so abruptly, I didn’t immediately follow.
“Fantasy? Comedy? If need be, I’ll even go for a love story,” she continued.
“Well, to be honest, I’d be up for anything.”
“You see the latest Cole Jacobs? The knight movie?”
I nodded. “On the plane.”
She thought for a moment. “The one with Rio McQuoid is supposed to be pretty good. Though I’m not really in the mood for love stories right now.”
I shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned…”
The beeping of the oven cut me off.
Just a little while later, we were sitting on the couch in the future common room, eating pizza, and watching Rio McQuoid make his signature moves and run a hand across his lips. His really sexy lips.
“I had a sex dream about him recently,” Laurie said.
I swallowed wrong and started coughing. She slapped me on the back and handed me my water.
“You okay?”
I couldn’t manage more than a nod. “Are you serious?”
“About having a sex dream about Rio McQuoid? And how.” She laughed. “IRL, there’s not all that much going on in that department at the moment, if you get what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“You?”
“Umm, I… Well, I’m not in a relationship or anything.”
“You don’t necessarily need the one for the other.” Laurie chuckled.
“True.” I smiled. “But I haven’t really had the opportunity for any of the other stuff either. Most of the year I’m on the road and spend my evenings in hotel rooms. On top of that, I go to bed pretty early.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“Tennis is lonely. I mean, you’ve got a team around you, a trainer, a physiotherapist, an adviser. But when the going gets tough, you’re alone. You play alone, win alone, lose alone. And then, afterward, you’re alone.”
“What about dating apps? Ever tried?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Not such a good idea when you’re in the public eye.”
“Good point.” She tapped her forehead. “I always forget that you’re famous.”
“Well, I don’t know about famous…”
“Griffin Chipman recognized you immediately.” She wriggled her eyebrows.
“You probably don’t forget a woman who gives you a fake number all that quickly.”
We laughed.
“I think my brother was pretty stunned too.”
“Vince?” As if she had other brothers.
She nodded with a grin. “He googled you. I saw it.”
All at once my dream was back.
“I did, too, by the way,” she added. “That’s nuts that both your parents were tennis stars. And that they got married. I mean, it’s like a movie or something.”
“I thought you didn’t like love stories,” I teased, taking a bite of my pizza.
“Well, I’d watch that one. I mean, the fact alone that your dad…”
“Don’t say it,” I interrupted, frowning.
“Played tennis well,” she said with a smile.
I rolled my eyes. My father was without a doubt the David Beckham of the tennis world. At the end of his forties, he almost looked better than in his twenties when a British tabloid had named him the “World’s Sexiest Tennis Player.” My mom still teased him about it.
“A few years ago they got an offer from Netflix for a documentary series about us. But they said no. To protect their private sphere,” I said, making quotation marks in the air. “I think they were primarily interested in my privacy.”
“Would you have liked to do it?”
“No, not really. It just fits my parents’ way of doing things. Sometimes they’re a little bit…helicopter-like.”
“You have brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Maybe that’s why.”
“I think it’s more that their childhoods were characterized by drills and the pressure to perform. My grandparents, on both sides, put sports above everything else.”
“That had to have been tough on your folks.”
“It’s the famous flip side of the coin.” I shoved the rest of the by-now-cold pizza into my mouth. I couldn’t keep up with the movie either. I mean, I had no idea who the red-haired woman sitting on Rio McQuoid’s lap even was.
* * *
By the time the credits were rolling, it was almost ten.
Laurie was snoring next to me on the couch.
I toyed with the idea of waking her but decided against it.
Instead, I turned off the TV and draped a blanket over her.
With my shoes in my hand, I snuck to the front door.
I’d just about made it when I heard a pair of keys going into the lock from the other side.
The next instant the door swung open, and Vince was there in front of me.
The real one, not the one from my dreams.
“Oh, hey,” he said, surprised.
He was wearing his usual outfit of T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. The only difference was that he’d paid a little more attention to his hair. For Pili? I pushed the thought aside and said hello with the most relaxed “hey” I could muster at the spur of the moment.
“You already going home? Wait, let me guess: Laurie snoring away on the couch?”
I smiled. “She was pretty worn out from all the painting.”
“Believe me, she would have passed out painting or no painting,” he replied good-naturedly.
“We left you some pizza. It’s in the refrigerator.”
“I already ate. But thanks.”
Silence.
“Umm…yeah. Well…guess I’ll be going then.” I motioned that I wanted to slip past, but he didn’t move an inch.
“I’ll walk you.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he beat me to it. “I thought you’d understood how things work around here.” He made a gesture with his hand. “After you.”
I hesitated, even though I knew I didn’t have any choice.
“How was your evening?” he asked after we’d taken a few steps.
A soft breeze brushed a few hairs into my face.
“Mellow. We ate pizza and watched a couple of movies.”
We’d stopped the Rio McQuoid film when we realized we’d been talking too much to follow what was going on.
“Which ones?”
“First Definite Endings and then A Quiet Place.”
He stopped and looked at me. “I wouldn’t even want to walk home on my own after watching A Quiet Place.”
“It wasn’t all that bad.”
“Compared to what? The Conjuring?”
I laughed.
“Psst. They can hear us,” he whispered with an exaggeratedly fearful expression.
My laugh grew louder. “And how was your evening?”
“I went to get something to eat with Pili. In Haleiwa.”
“Where Gabe lives,” I remembered.
“Gabe Preston?”
“Umm…” Suddenly I realized that I had no idea what Gabe’s full name was.
“Tall, brown hair, looks like Jason Momoa?”
“Yeah! He totally looks him, right?”
“A little,” he said with a smile.
“He’s my physiotherapist.”
His eyes darted to my foot. “You having problems with your ligaments again?”
For a second, I was surprised he remembered.
“No, it’s got more to do with things regenerating more quickly. I get treatments after my training sessions to ensure that my muscles stay relaxed, and I can keep up the pace.”
“Doesn’t exactly sound healthy.”
“It’s totally normal in professional sports.”
“Doesn’t make it healthier,” he mumbled.
I decided to change the subject. “Gabe told me that you’ve known each other for a long time. It’s not like we talked about you or anything, it’s just…”
“All good,” he said and smiled again. “I know he’s friends with your godmother.”
“Yeah, for whatever reasons.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Well, they’re so different. Gabe is totally relaxed and Kay… She’s the most disciplined person on the planet.”
“Opposites attract, right?”
“Yeah, that’s probably what it is.” A little distantly I said, “He told me about his son.”
No idea why I brought that up out of the blue.
“Keiko.”
“Did you know him well?”
I remembered Gabe mentioning that Vince, Laurie, and his children used to play together.
“Well, as well as you do when you see someone once a year for just a few weeks. We used to go surfing together sometimes when we were on vacation here. Me, Keiko, Chip, and Millie.”
“Chip was there too?”
“He was Keiko’s best friend and went out with Millie.”
“Wait. Chip was…with Gabe’s stepdaughter?”
Vince nodded. “Yeah, for around five or six years.”
I made a surprised sound.
“Well, not everyone gives him a fake number.” I could hear him grinning.
“I just didn’t think Chip was the kind of guy for relationships.”
“Back then he was.”
“Hmm.”
The motion detector light went on, and, to my surprise, I felt a bit disappointed.
“Thanks for bringing me home. Even if it wasn’t necessary at all.”
“Laurie would chop my head off if she found out I let you walk home alone.”
“Did anything… I mean, did anything ever happen to her?” When he didn’t immediately answer I added, “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“Well, one time there was a dude waiting for her.”
“A stalker?”
“An ex.”
“Oh.”
“The rest of the story is for her to tell.”
“Right. I didn’t mean… It was just something that crossed my mind.”
We stopped speaking. It was time for me to say goodbye. It was time for him to say goodbye. But neither of us seemed to feel the need to do so. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the light go on in Kay’s bathroom. Vince seemed to notice, too, and took it as his cue.
“Sleep well…Lou.”
The way he added my name, so soft and gentle, made my heart flutter.
“You too.”