Page 56 of Seven Summer Weekends

“That is the question.”

He climbed off the step stool and sat on it. His eyes filled with tears.

“Let me ask you something,” Addison said. “What makes you think that this time would be any different? I mean, you cheated, then promised it was a onetime thing, then cheated again—with the same woman. Are you still in touch with this woman?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you doing, Rome? If you love Kizzy, as you claim to, then let her go. She’s young. You’rebothyoung. You have endless days of happiness ahead of you. “

“I don’t know how to live without Kizzy. I barely remember a time when she wasn’t by my side.”

“I’m sure you will figure it out. Let’s take a break—go to the market to pick up stuff for dinner.”

“It’s OK if I stay here tonight?”

“It’s fine. You can leave in the morning. And if I hear from her, I will ask her to call you or reach out myself.”

She knew Kizzy would want it this way. Even with everything that had happened before and now, Kizzy didn’t hate Rome. She wasn’t a hateful person.

After dinner, they sat down to watch a movie. Before it began, Rome asked, “Addison. Do you think we will remain friends after this?”

“Me and you?”

He nodded a yes, and she smiled at him sweetly, even put her hand on his knee before saying, “Absolutely not.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Ben spent the next few days holed up in the Montauk motel crafting the piece on Terrence. He polished it up on the train back to Bay Shore. Ben loved writing on trains. He once took a fifty-one-hour ride from Chicago to San Francisco when behind the eight ball on a deadline. By the time they had reached the plains of Nebraska, he was halfway through, and he finished up somewhere in the Nevada desert. Now, as the conductor announced, “Next stop, Bay Shore,” he proudly closed his laptop. He was satisfied that he had given Terrence his due as the legendary and barrier-breaking athlete that he was.

Ben boarded the ferry, sat up top, and thought about his next move with Addison. He had escaped unscathed, really, and contemplated chickening out. He didn’t have to open himself up like that again. As he walked home in the dark, he tossed both options around in his brain—deliberating between letting it go or pursuing her. Though he knew it was really a matter of the heart. The brain could come up with a thousand reasons not to do something, but it was the heart that held the presidential veto.

When he turned onto his block—their block—it became obvious what would come next. The draw was almost magnetic, and his feet were barely touching the ground. The light was on in her living room, and he could see her through her window, curled up on the couch watching TV. One look at her, and he was sure he had no choice but to tell her how he felt. He walked quietly onto her front deck, contemplating knocking, knowing full well that she would jump ten feet in the air when he did. With that in mind, he pulled out his phone to text her first.

As he was about to press Send, a man appeared in her living room with a big smile and a bowl of popcorn. He plopped down next to her on the couch with a casualness that couldn’t have belonged to a paying guest. Ben looked closer. The man said something that looked to be deep. Addison answered, placing her hand on his knee.

And Ben turned around and headed home to Sally, the only living thing that had never disappointed him.

The next morning, Ben woke with a familiar ache in his stomach, but refused to give in to it. Instead, he threw on his wet suit, grabbed his paddleboard, and headed to the beach. Watching all of that surfing reminded him how good it felt to be out on the ocean, to clear his mind. Sally followed and sat dutifully waiting for him on the shore, dipping in and out of the waves, becoming a wet, salty mess. She did her usual meet and greet on steroids when he made his way back onto land.

They headed back home together, him carrying his board, her running ahead and then circling back behind him again to make sure he was OK. She was in tune with his feelings and always had been. And while he was nowhere near the depths ofgrief that he had been in the past, he was most certainly bummed, and Sally most certainly knew it.

“Good girl,” he said, running his hand over her back as she passed.

Sally looked back at him knowingly and made a beeline for Addison’s house.

“Bad girl, bad girl,” he mumbled under his breath.

Ben kneeled down in front of the doggie door—ass in the air—and peeked through at Sally. She was wiggling her back all over Addison’s living room rug, doing the doggie mamba.

“Get out of there!” Ben coaxed, before changing his tone to a high pitched, “Here, girl!” Neither worked. He knocked on the front door. No answer. So he kneeled back down, his head through the doggie door, when Addison arrived behind him.

“Ben?” she called out.

Smack, boom. “Ow!” he said, flipping back on to his butt. He ran his hand over his forehead, grimaced at the blood on his fingers, swooned a little, and pushed himself against the door to settle down.

“Oh boy,” Addison said. “Let’s get you inside.”

The cut was nothing much, but Addison broke out Gicky’s first aid kit (a metal box painted to look like Clara Barton) and went to town while Ben whined on the couch. “This may sting,” she said, wiping a cotton ball with hydrogen peroxide over the wound. It did.

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