Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

Mallory tosses her mail onto the passenger seat, and a plain white postcard flutters out of one of the catalogs to the floor. Mallory sees her name printed on the front. She snaps it up, flips it over.

It says: I’m flying in on Friday the first at 4:45 p.m. If you’re not waiting at the airport, I’ll take a taxi to the cottage.

The postcard is unsigned, though obviously Mallory knows who it’s from.

She sits a second, wondering if she should cry or laugh from utter relief.

Laugh, she decides. She has so much to tell him!

Summer #4: 1996

What are we talking about in 1996? Leap year; Bob Dole; Braveheart; Chechnya; cloning; a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics; Princess Diana divorcing Prince Charles; Tickle Me Elmo; JonBenét Ramsey; Whitewater; Kofi Annan; Ask Jeeves; the Menendez brothers; Tupac Shakur; mad-cow disease; the Spice Girls; jihad; Dr. Ross and Nurse Hathaway; Alan Greenspan; “Show me the money, Jerry.”

The year 1996 is uneventful for our boy.

So, he thinks, let’s skip to the good stuff.

On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Mallory is waiting for Jake on the ferry dock. Her hair is longer and blonder; she’s wearing it in braids. She’s wearing her usual cutoff shorts. He would like to rip them off her. Contrary to their established protocol, which allows no displays of affection until they’re safely at home, he takes her face in his hands and lays a kiss on her that leaves them both breathless.

When she breaks away, she grins. A year is too long to live without that smile, he thinks. He wishes he’d brought a camera; he wants to take her picture.

While Mallory fixes the appetizers, Jake goes for a swim, then takes an outdoor shower. There are no men’s board shorts hanging up. That’s two years in a row, which is good news, although he doesn’t like thinking of Mallory alone.

Yes, he does. It’s completely unfair because Jake and Ursula are now living together—meaning that Jake is living in the same apartment that Ursula uses to take a shower and change her clothes before going back to work—but Jake prefers to think of Mallory spending her evenings lying by the fire with only Cat Stevens, a book, and the howling wind for company.

Jake walks into the cottage, towel wrapped around his lower half. Mallory hands him a cold Stella and a cracker slathered with smoked bluefish pâté from Straight Wharf Fish. It is one of the most delicious things Jake has ever tasted.

“If you like it so much,” Mallory says, “we can get you some to take home. It freezes.”

“Or it can be just one of those things I enjoy once a year,” he says.

“Like me,” she says, and she beams. “I’m going to shuck corn and you can play some music. Did I tell you I got a five-CD changer?”

Jake scoops her up and carries her to the bedroom.

“Again?” she shrieks.

Again, again, again; it’s their fourth Labor Day weekend together, and this year, for whatever reason, Jake can’t get enough of her. It would make Mallory uncomfortable, probably, if he told her how often he thinks of her the other 362 days of the year. Some days occasionally, some days frequently, some days constantly.

Once the corn is shucked and the tomatoes sliced and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic, once the burgers are grilled and they each have a drink and are listening to Sheryl Crow and gazing at each other over the light of one votive candle—it’s romantic, Mallory claims, so romantic that Jake can’t see his food—she says, “So, how’s Ursula?”

“Fine,” Jake says. “I don’t know what happened, but she kind of gave up on the engagement talk.”

“She did? ” Mallory says.

“No,” Jake admits. “But I bought myself some time by agreeing that we should move in together.”

“Oh,” Mallory says. She stops layering pickles on top of her burger and gives him a direct look. “Did you move into her place or did she move in with you?”

“We got a new place,” Jake says. “That was what she wanted. Fresh start, place of our own. We split the rent.”

“And you can just stay there once you get married,” Mallory says.

Every year, there comes a moment when he wonders if Mallory is going to kick him out. This year, that moment is now.

“I guess that’s the idea,” he says. He swigs some of his beer. He doesn’t like talking about Ursula, though he understands why it’s necessary for Mallory. She likes to do it on Friday night, get it out of the way, get caught up on Jake’s romantic life at home so that it isn’t looming over her head like a thundercloud.

Better to know than to wonder, she says.

Jake isn’t sure he agrees.

“Where does she think you are?” Mallory asks.

“Nantucket,” he says.

“With Coop?”

“I’m not sure I specifically said ‘with Coop.’ I just told her I was coming up to Nantucket for the weekend because I barely got away this summer at all, and also, she thinks it’s a tradition now.”

“It is a tradition now,” Mallory says. And they both sit for a second, Jake fending off guilt because it’s obviously not the kind of tradition that Ursula is imagining. “Does she know it’s my cottage?”

“She’s never asked. I would guess if she was pressed, she would say it was your family’s cottage.”

“But she knows I exist, right?” Mallory says. “She remembers me from the wedding?”

“She might,” Jake says. “I mean, yes, she noticed us dancing at the wedding and she asked about you but she hasn’t mentioned you since then. She hasn’t mentioned you in connection with the cottage.”

Mallory takes a bite of her burger, then butters an ear of corn. She seems put out by this statement, but why?

“It seems so unfair,” Mallory says. “I spend so much time being jealous of her and she doesn’t even know enough to be jealous of me.”

“Well,” Jake says, “if she knew how I felt about you, she’d be very jealous indeed. Does that make you feel better?”

“Yes,” Mallory says, and she blows him a kiss across the dark table.

Jake wakes up alone in the low, wide platform bed. The crisp white sheets have light blue piping; Mallory admitted that she splurged on them at the Lion’s Paw in honor of his visit. There’s a stripe of sunshine peeking through the wooden blinds (also new) that lands directly across Jake’s eyes. He inhales Mallory’s scent from her pillow and stretches.

Jake makes coffee in Mallory’s French press and takes a mug out onto the front porch. He watches the waves fold over themselves again and again and again. It’s hypnotic. There isn’t a soul on the beach in either direction. What’s to stop Jake from running into the ocean naked for the first swim of the day?

Nothing, he supposes. He does it.

As he’s bobbing around in the water, he sees Mallory, home from her run. No braids; her hair is in a ponytail. She pries off each sneaker with the toe of her other foot, peels off her socks, stops to drink some ice water, and bends over to touch her toes. She goes back into the cottage and he hears her voice. She must be calling his name. Is she worried? Does she think he left? No, surely she sees all his things still there.

A second later, she appears back out on the porch. She takes a bite of a peach, sees him swimming, waves.

He waves back.

She lifts her arms over her head and places her right foot alongside her left knee. It’s her yoga tree pose, the one she showed him last night and made him try. (He failed.) He sees her green vine tattoo standing out against the golden skin of her ankle. It feels like he has vines wrapped around his heart.

He’s in love with her, he thinks.

If they count the Fridays and the Mondays, then today is the start of their fourteenth day together, the end of their second week. Is that how long it takes to fall in love?