48
Tyler
We rode our bikes into town for breakfast. We bought three novels each at the bookstore. We splayed out on the warm, itchy
grass of a sculpture garden and watched the clouds blow in and billow out of the cerulean sky. We snacked on stale fudge from
the ice cream parlor and finger-staining cherries from the farmers market. We talked about Lola finally getting that job offer.
We talked about Arthur and his grandkids and how, at this rate, he might never come home from his trip out west. We talked
about the storm and the tropes and the muffins and how Meredith 100 percent thought we fucked and how, after last night, neither
of us cared one bit. The hours melted into each other. Noon became two, became four, became six. And then, around seven, when
the sun began to slant into evening, I rolled onto my side and asked Katie what she’d like to do next. She twisted her fingers
into mine and grinned.
Fifteen minutes later, we were at a mini golf course off the highway, and I was handing over an exorbitant amount of money
in exchange for two buckets of balls. Mine were black; Katie’s, bubblegum pink. This was not a thing we’d chosen. Instead,
the unfazed teenager working the kiosk-hut-thing took one look at us, handed me a receipt, and filled our respective pails
without so much as a word.
The course was Hamptons-themed. Nine holes of on-the-nose references to an already incredibly self-referential place.
There was Old Hook Mill, the Montauk Lighthouse, and even a replica of Dune Road, replete with real sand, rocks, and cattail corralled by a crooked driftwood fence.
We were at our final scene—a micro-reimagining of the Water Mill Museum, spouting fountain and all—when Katie, after putting literally seven over par the entire course, shot a hole-in-one.
She did this ridiculous little hop—two, maybe three inches into the air—and then looked at me. The sun was setting, and the
air smelled like cheap hot dogs, and there was only artificial grass and rich people being ironic and a strawberry milkshake
sky for as far as the eye could see. She tapped her foot, laughing.
“It’s customary,” she said, “in my culture, when you take a girl on a very long date, and she wins a goldfish at a run-down
carnival or gets a hole-in-one despite her lack of hand-eye coordination, to kiss her.”
“That so?” I said as she stepped between my legs.
“Yep. That’s so.”
“How convenient,” I said as she angled her chin toward mine. She had to strain to do it, so I lifted her in the air. My hands
were wrapped around the small of her back, and my club was dangling from my fist. “Because it’s exactly what I was about to
do.”
I walked Katie back to the terrace of the main house, hands in my pockets. She’d been wearing this tiny white sundress all
day, and its ruffles had wilted a bit in the humidity. Her hair was down and windswept, and her nose was pink. I chewed on
my bottom lip, shuffling from sneaker to sneaker. The grasshoppers were beginning to play, and a hint of fog was gathering
on the windowpanes.
“Tell me you had a really good time today,” she said.
I laughed. “I had a really good time today.”
Her eyes crinkled like I knew they would. She’d always done that: smiled with her eyes first. “Now, traditionally,” she said,
“you would kiss me again.”
I rolled my eyes and brought her face toward mine.
“Oh!” she said. “A face grab! Daring!”
I glared at her. “You’re lucky I’m obsessed with you.”
“You are? You—”
I kissed her hard. I pinned her up against the warm, wet glass of Meredith Bradford’s twelve-foot-tall door and kissed her
hard. She moaned into my mouth, bunching the hem of my shirt into her fist, twisting her tongue into mine, laughing as I cupped
her ass, as I yanked her into me, as she tugged me closer, panting.
And then, all of a sudden, she pulled back.
“Now what?” My chest heaved, and one of my hands hovered midair, right where I’d had her.
“I’ll go upstairs and spin around in circles. You’ll go home and, I assume, think about what it’s going to feel like to fuck
me. And then, I guess, we’ll sext.”
“But I’m a hundred feet away,” I said. “And our phones don’t work.”
She pecked me on the cheek and, just before she disappeared into the house, said, “That’s going to make it so much hotter.”