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A waiter arrives, buying me a few moments to plan my response. He pours us each a glass of champagne (the same good stuff we had last night), and we order the chef’s recommendations from the prix fixe menu.
I raise my glass to toast hers, but she eyes me instead. “So?”
“Okay,” I say. “I think this is… conversation. It’s learning, and caring, and effort. Objectively more challenging than just ripping off your clothes.”
“Then you’ve never tried taking off a sports bra after a hard workout.” I’m relieved that she’s made a joke, and she lifts her champagne. “What are we drinking to?”
There are so many things I want to say: To us. To new beginnings. To the future. But instead a chuckle rumbles through my chest, and I say, “To the wisdom of our elders.”
Gwen’s lips spread into a joyful smile. “I’ll drink to that.”
It’s comfortable just to sit in silence with her. It’s not why we’re here, of course, but there’s something familiar in the scene: Gwen, gazing out the window at the sun setting over the waves, the stillness, the quiet, being together. Being content. Being happy, just like this.
“Have you always been a beach person?”
She turns from the window and traces the stem of her champagne glass. “No, not really. I think I loved the idea of the beach, but we never really went as a family.”
“It suits you. Like I said last night, it seems like you’re just kind of… I don’t know… made to be here. With the sea and the sun.”
She gives another long glance toward the Atlantic and exhales. Her face is an outward expression of the same kind of at-peace feeling I had at the spa earlier today.
Our first course is delivered, and just as I’d anticipated, the servings are small but artful.
“Can I tell you something else?” She picks up her outermost fork and lets it hover above her plate.
“Anything. Please.”
“My parents always thought the beach was silly. Impractical. All of our vacations were to places with museums, if we took them at all.”
“You haven’t really mentioned your parents before.”
She gives a half-smile, and there’s so much sadness in it that I want to transport us back to that hammock with her curled up at my side, just to let her be content, and chase her down that slide again, just to let her laugh.
“We’re not super close. We talk. We love each other, but they’re not the most affectionate.” She takes another sip of champagne. “Gram is my mom’s mom. The apples fall far from the tree in our family. I’m nothing like Mom, and Mom’s nothing like Gram. It’s like Mom fell—the apple, of course—and rolled down a little hill, then grew into this giant tree that I fell from, but the tree was so big it towered over all the trees and so I just kind of landed back at the base of Gram. Gram’s tree.” She sucks in a breath and looks at me, her eyes wide. “Was that too much? Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. That was a good way to describe it, I think. You’re more like Maggie than your parents.”
She nods, and the understanding helps her open up to share more. “My parents are brilliant. My dad’s a professor of geopolitics, and my mom’s an engineer. That’s actually kind of the reason why Mom and I have Gram’s last name. All her degrees were in the name Sophia Pierce, so when she and Dad got married she insisted on keeping her name.”
“And they wanted to pass it down to you, too?”
“Yes, because Dad’s last name is stupid.”
“Do tell.”
She shakes her head, laughter dancing in her eyes. “That’s more of a fifth date conversation.”
My heart leaps a little at the thought of a fifth date. “I look forward to it.” She smiles and drops her gaze to her glass of champagne, and I resume the conversation before I think too much about the implication of a fifth date. “Your parents—they sound… a little intimidating. Like there are big shoes to fill.”
“So you can imagine how very proud they were when their one and only offspring handed them a manuscript of a Y-A novel at the age of sixteen. Y-A means—”
“Young Adult. I know. But Gwen… sixteen? You’d written a book before you got a driver’s license? That’s incredible.”
“I’d thought so, too. But apparently it was ‘impractical’ and a ‘waste of a promising young mind.’ They thought that if I was going to write, I should write about what they thought was meaningful: articles about capitalism or democracy. Things like that.”
“Of course. The usual subject matter for a teenager.”
“Exactly,” she says, one side of her mouth quirking up.
