Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

He hadn’t been looking for another romantic entanglement, not even an easy rebound. But by Saturday, after first Cooper, then Leland, then Frazier had left—bringing to mind the children’s song about the dog that chased the cat that chased the rat—he realized this was what he’d been hoping for since the moment he saw Mallory waiting on the dock of Straight Wharf.

Mallory’s eyes, he’d noticed, were bluish green or greenish blue; they changed, like the color of the ocean.

They were green when she stared at him across the harvest table with her empty breakfast plate in front of her. She had devoured every bit of her omelet, making little sandwich bites with her toast. Jake couldn’t believe how at ease he felt with her, almost as if she were his younger sister.

Nope, Jake thought. Scratch that . His feelings were not brotherly. When he came around to clear Mallory’s plate, he saw a golden toast crumb on the pale pink skin of her upper lip. He brushed the crumb away with the pad of his thumb, gently, so gently, and then he kissed her and he experienced the most intense desire he had ever known. He wanted her so badly, it scared him. Go slowly, he’d thought. Jake had been with only a handful of women other than Ursula, most of them casual dates or one-night stands in college. He spent a long time kissing Mallory’s lips before he moved down to her throat and the tops of her shoulders. Her skin was salty, sweet, her mouth and tongue buttery. She made cooing noises and finally said, Please. I can’t stand it. This was how Jake felt as well; the want in him was building like a great wall of water against a dam, but he savored the nearly painful sensation of holding himself in check. Slowly, he moved his mouth over the innocent parts of her body. And then, finally, she cried out and led him by the hand to the bedroom. Somehow, he’d known that the experience would change his life, that he would never be the same again.

Mallory’s eyes were still green when she propped herself up on her elbow after they’d made love.

“Put your bathing suit on,” she said. “I want to show off my island.”

They headed out the back door and down a nearly hidden sandy path that led through the reeds and tall grass to Miacomet Pond. On the shore was a two-person kayak painted Big Bird yellow that Mallory dragged out to knee-deep water. She held it steady as Jake climbed on—he wanted to appear confident, though he hadn’t been in a kayak since he was twelve years old, back when his sister was still healthy enough to spend the day on Lake Michigan. Mallory handed Jake his paddle and effortlessly hopped up front.

Away they went, gliding over the mirror-flat surface of the water. Jake let Mallory set the pace for their paddling and he matched her strokes. She didn’t talk and although there were questions he wanted to ask her, he allowed himself to enjoy the silence. There was some birdsong, the music of their paddles dipping and skimming, and the occasional airplane overhead—people lucky enough to be arriving or, more likely, poor souls headed back to their real lives after an idyllic week or month or summer on Nantucket.

Jake tried to absorb the natural beauty of the pond—what an escape from the Metro stations and throngs of monument-seeking tourists in DC—but he was distracted by the stalk of Mallory’s neck, the silky peach strings of her bikini top tied in lopsided bows, the faint tan lines on her back left by other bathing suits. Her hair was swept up in a topknot and the color was darker underneath, sun-bleached on the ends. He examined her earlobes, pierced twice on the left, a tiny silver hoop in the second hole.

Suddenly, she leaned back, her paddle resting against her lap, her face to the sun, eyes closed beneath her Wayfarers.

“You paddle,” she said. “I’m going to lie here like Cleopatra.”

Yes, fine, he would paddle her for as long as she wanted. In twenty-four hours, she had become his queen.

Mallory’s eyes were blue when she gazed into the lobster tank at Sousa’s fish market later that afternoon. She was wearing cutoff jeans and a gray Gettysburg College T-shirt over her bikini. Her hair was in a ponytail; little wisps of hair framed her face. She had freckles on her nose and cheeks from the sun that afternoon. There was a tiny gap between her two bottom front teeth. Had she ever had braces? Jake knew every single thing about Ursula—they had been together since the eighth grade—but Mallory was a whole new person, undiscovered. Jake would get to know her better than he knew Ursula, he decided then and there. He would pay attention. He would learn her. He would treasure her. He would make a study of her eye color, the tendrils of her hair, the shape of her tanned legs, and the gap between her teeth.

When Mallory picked out two lobsters, her eyes misted up. The blue in her eyes then was sadness, maybe, or sympathy.

“You’re going to have to cook those buggers by yourself,” Mallory said. “I don’t have the heart.”

That night was their first date. Mallory melted two sticks of butter and quartered three lemons. She opened a bottle of champagne that had been in the cottage when she moved in, left by a long-ago houseguest of her aunt and uncle. They ate cross-legged out on the porch while the sun bathed them in a thick honeyed light. Once it was dark, they laid a blanket down in the sand and held hands, faces to the sky. Jake tried to identify the constellations and explain the corresponding mythology. Mallory corrected him.

She told Jake that her aunt Greta had moved in with a woman after Mallory’s uncle died. This had scandalized everyone in the Blessing family except Mallory.

How could it possibly matter if Aunt Greta chose to be with a man or a woman? Mallory said. Why wouldn’t everyone who cared about Greta just want her to be happy?

Jake had responded by telling Mallory about Jessica. I had a twin sister, he said. Jessica. She died of cystic fibrosis when we were thirteen .

That must have been so difficult for you, Mallory said.

It was, Jake said. Survivor’s guilt and all that. Cystic fibrosis is genetic. Jessica inherited the genes and I didn’t. He swallowed. She never got angry or made me feel bad about it. She just sort of…accepted it as her albatross.

I’ve never lost anyone close to me like that, Mallory said. I can’t imagine life without…Cooper. How do you ever recover from something like that?

Well, the answer was that you didn’t recover. Losing Jessica was the central fact of Jake’s life, and yet he almost never talked about it. Everyone he grew up with in South Bend already knew, but once Jake got to Johns Hopkins, it became something like a secret. He remembered being at a fraternity event, beer and oysters, and mentioning his sister to Cooper without thinking. Cooper said, “I didn’t know you had a sister, man—how come you never told me?” Jake froze, unsure of what to say, then blurted out, “She’s dead.” It felt like the party stopped and everyone turned to stare at him; he was that uncomfortable. Cooper said, “Hey, man, I’m sorry.” Jake said, “Nah, man, it’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, it would never be fine, but Jake learned to keep Jessica out of casual conversation. He couldn’t believe he’d told Mallory about Jessica after knowing her for little more than twenty-four hours. But there was something about Mallory that made him feel safe. He could turn himself inside out and show her his wounds, and it would be okay.

Sunday morning, Jake woke early and again made omelets, this time using sautéed onions and leftover lobster meat. Mallory wandered out of the bedroom wearing only Jake’s shirt from the night before. Her hair hung in her face, and one eye was still half shut.