My eyebrows shoot up at that. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Ellis says with a grimace. “But you know, it was so…humane. The way they dealt with it. They forgave each other after really letting the other suffer for a bit. I don’t know, it feels so radical in a way. They understand that all of this”—he waves his hands kind of vaguely—“is imperfect. That the bad is part of it.”
“That’s an interesting way to look at it,” I say. “I would have run from the drama, I think.”
“Really?” He looks at me.
“Yeah. I would have taken all of it as…I don’t know. Signs.”
“Hm.”
“What?” I prod. “You don’t agree?”
“I guess I don’t. People are going to fuck up. You can’t predict the future, so you just have to learn to roll with it, you know?”
It’s hard not say,I can predict the future! I know who will make you happy. But I think about Ellis and his early marriage. How he accepted that as a phase in his life. He has no regrets and it’s one of the most attractive things about him. How he feels so secure in himself without knowing what the future holds. I wonder what that feels like. I can’t imagine it.
I find my eyes skimming his face, on the brink of reading it. He catches my eye and I flush.
“Heyyy,” he says. “Are you trying to read my face?”
I am about to deny it but start laughing. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
“I gave you permission already.” His eyes are lit up with amusement. Warm in the cold night. And I feel a pang, an ache deep inside. There is something there, there is always something there. He feels it, too. An understanding passes between us in a thick fog of intimacy.
I need to get back.
Then Ellis pulls a tennis ball out of his jacket pocket and throws it across the court and Pickle goes bounding after it. “Wanna play dog tennis?” he asks as he gets up.
“Um, depends?”
“On what?”
“What is dog tennis?”
He runs to the other side of the net to grab the ball from Pickle. “You know as much as I do.” And then he bounces the ball hard on his side of the court so that it sails over the net to me. Pickle runs frantically for the ball and so do I. I get to it before him and he starts whining and wriggling his body low to the ground, excited for me to throw it.
“This game seems…not tennisy,” I say with a laugh as I bounceit back to Ellis. It falls short so Ellis has to sprint forward but Pickle gets it before he does, and when Ellis falls to the ground, Pickle drops the ball and starts hopping all over him, licking his face.
I can’t tell if Pickle’s on my team or Ellis’s, or his own, but it doesn’t really matter. We keep the ball soaring through the air. At one point, Ellis “serves” it with very good form only to throw it directly into Pickle’s open mouth. We laugh so hard we end up curled into fetal positions on the court. As I catch my breath, I roll onto my back, a sense of peace blanketing me as I lie in the cool night air, crickets chirping, beside Ellis. I stare up at the sky and notice the gauzy clouds have turned the color of sherbet. How long have we been out here?
“I think it’s morning,” I say, voice hushed.
Ellis rolls onto his back to look up at the sky as well. “Looks like it.”
“I think…I should try and sleep for a couple hours,” I finally say, sad for this bubble to burst.
Ellis gets up and brushes his hands off before reaching down for mine. I look up at him and am hit with the bittersweet realization that Ellis always finds me when I need him. I take his hand, and he pulls me up. We end up standing close, my hand clasped in his strong one. “Thank you,” I say quietly.
He doesn’t say anything for second, just staying close, his breath warm and mingling with mine. Nervously, I add, “That was a great distraction. Just what I needed.”
Something seems to snap back to reality in him and he lets go of my hand, steps back, and gives me that familiar, easy smile. “I’m glad.”
We walk out of the tennis court, the birds chirping high in the trees, our footsteps echoing in the quiet early morning just as the lights of the tennis court shut off.
34
I take way too long getting ready for the wedding. This is actually my favorite part—the lazy morning followed by a getting-ready routine that stretches out for hours in some hotel room. Curling irons ready to go, formalwear hanging off closet doors, room service languishing on a table. I think maybe I love getting dolled up because I used to love watching my mom get ready the few times she had nights out. She was still so young and probably itching to remember her old self as she put on a short skirt and fun eyeliner. I used to sit on her bed and braid my Barbie’s hair as I watched her do hers.
