Page 121 of The Bargain

“I thought he was being cynical.”

“But that wasn’t cynical, was it?”

Dad stands and helps me up. He lays his hand over my head.

Despite how tall I’ve grown over the years, I still manage to feel small in his presence, like I’m the little girl he used to carry on his shoulders down to the beach.

“Smart kid, your Elias. Is that why you love him so much?”

I nod, throat suddenly tight. “I miss him, Dad. I miss him so much.”

“My Desdemona,” Dad says, laughing softly. “Crying over a boy?” And before I can protest, he pulls me roughly into his arms, hugs me like a bear holding its cub, big hand ruffling my hair. “You might be as smart and beautiful as your mom, but deep down, you’re just a big romantic loser like your dad.”

I muffle a denial, but it’s buried in his chest as he holds me tight, and I don’t repeat it.

47

Cosmic Blue

Desdemona

The Hamptons’ summer finally arrives. Every day smells of sunscreen and strawberries, and every night the air fills with the sound of insects and distant music from oceanfront parties. The sky opens up, clean cerulean blue over sun-warmed clay. The Hamptons, always beautiful, blurs and dissolves under the sun, a painting left out in the heat too long: colours bleeding at the edges, sky and sea melting into an indigo infinity.

For the first time in years, I don’t have anywhere to be except the court—and the court is the only place I can go where I can forget, if only temporarily, the pain of missing Elias.

I wake every day before dawn, lace my shoes, step onto the court with Dad while the mist is still lifting off the grass, when the air tastes of salt and mint. By mid-June, the twins are home, bringing their noise and chaos with them. They train with me on the courts behind the house—mostly to show off all those muscles they’ve been putting on—but their laughter feels like a reward, after everything that happened this year.

When I start competing again, Ophelia comes to every match. She sits in the front row, a little goth princess all in black with her eyes hidden behind a pair of Mum’s shades. She frowns enough that you’d think she’s there by force, but I catch her clapping every time I score points.

The days pass in sunlight and motion—fast, but never quite fast enough.

Luckily, my body remembers what it needs to do even when I’m distracted: how to serve, how to read the angle of a spin, how to wait for the silence before the strike. I train with Dad, his friends, my own rivals on the circuit—anyone who’ll rally until dusk.

Sometimes, when I serve, the ball makes a perfect arc against the sky, vanishing for a heartbeat into the blinding blue—and whenever that happens, my heart leaps, because I think of Elias.

Within weeks, my name’s on the list for the Montauk Summer Invitational, the most prestigious local championship on the coast. The Mariner’s Club courts shimmer with heat, white parasols scattered like seashells along the perimeter, champagne sweating in silver buckets. It feels unreal—the press, the photographers, the applause—like a parallel life.

But I know this is just limbo. The liminal place between the end of one life and the start of another.

Nevertheless, in between matches, life finds its new rhythm: swimming with Mum in the mornings, practising with Dad and the twins in the afternoons, laughing with Ophelia in the evenings when we watch movies or when she insists on painting my nails black. One weekend, we sneak into the city together, and I smuggle her into a bar and we get drunk enough that Aunt Willow has to send Luca over to pick us up.

That night, Ophelia and I get our first tattoos: a tiny O on my wrist, a tiny D on hers.

I love it more than any piece of jewellery I’ve ever owned.

Every now and again, Elias and I exchange texts. He’s even busier than I am—revising, finishing his exams, meeting with Mr Mazzati, finalising legal proceedings for his emancipation from the Pearsons, flying out to Cambridge to interview for jobs and arrange his housing for the autumn. He sends me little updates when he can: photos of his emancipation paperwork, flight tickets and accommodation keys.

I collect them like treasures; I don’t dare ask for more. Like what happens when he’s between exams and university, what his summer plans are. As if by asking, I’d be forcing him into a choice, or exercising pressure. I don’t want him to come back to me because he thinks he owes me or my family anything. I want him to miss me as much as I miss him. But he doesn’t say anything, so neither do I.

Instead, I pour every restless thought into the court, every unspoken doubt and question and desire into another serve, another set, another match. It’s easier to chase the ball than to chase a future that might not even exist, right?

And just like that, I make it all the way to the Montauk Summer Invitational finals. It lands on the hottest day of the summer so far, which is about right.

Across the net is Nadia Ahdal, the rising star of the East Coast circuit—a seventeen-year-old prodigy with sponsors already circling her. Her white visor hides most of her face, but I can see the sharp gleam in her eyes, the calm, focused hunger—a perfect mirror to mine.

We exchange a smile but warm up in silence. The crowd murmurs, simmering with excitement. In the stands, Ophelia sits flanked by Austen and William, looking like a haunted doll and rolling her eyes at something they’re saying. My eyes meet hers, and she forms a heart with her fingers.

When the match begins, it’s like being struck by lightning. Nadia serves first—fast and punishing. The ball whistles through the air; I barely have time to breathe before I’m lunging, the world a blur of green and white and blue.