“Tell them to take a taxi here,” Anna says to her husband. It’s already, or rather once again, the hottest August on record, and sweat drops are clinging to the skin between her breasts as she moves around the living room of the rented beach house, methodically picking up scattered items—Julian’s reading glasses, an empty tube of sunscreen, his slippers, an annotated draft of his manuscript. Except for the manuscript, which she leaves on the coffee table, she chucks each item into a wicker basket with some force, as if punishing the things themselves for having dispersed around the room.
“I told them we’d pick them up from the ferry,” Julian says from his seat at the dining table, where he’s reading a novel and sipping on his coffee. “I think it’s nicer.”
“But I still need to shower and change.”
Julian flips a page on his book. “You look great,” he says.
She’s wearing her favorite running outfit, a variation of what she wears every day—a high neck sleeveless top over expensive cropped leggings—her power suit equivalent when WFH. “I’m sweaty,” she explains.
She’s moved on to the couch pillows, which look deflated. She restores them to their original fluff with a few pats on all sides and then throws a blanket over the couch’s armrest, expertly spreading it out to achieve an effortless, casual look. “Don’t sit on the couch again,” she says to Julian. “And can you clear up the table, please? And wipe it down?”
“I don’t think our friends will mind if the house doesn’t look perfect,” he says without looking up. But over the last ten years of marriage, the edge of Anna’s glare has become as sharp as the diamond on her ring finger, so he empties his coffee cup and gets up. He takes the dirty dishes into the kitchen, where she hears him load them into the dishwasher one by one like he’s taking his time. When he reemerges, he says, “hey, can we try to have fun this weekend? Please?”
A familiar pang of shame grips her chest and she shoots him a glare. It’s not like she doesn’t want to have fun, she thinks. To be fun. More like him than like herself. But she’s nervous. This is not the best time for their friends to visit. She had said as much to him when he announced the invitation but he waved away her objections, saying the best time was always now, especially since it was summer, and anyway, he could not retract the invitation. “It’ll be fun,” he had said.
“It’s just that I could have used the next two days to work on this manuscript,” she lies.
“It’s a history textbook,” he replies, referring to the book Ana is currently editing for the publisher she works for. “It’s not going anywhere.” And though she knows he’s trying to calm her, to pass on to her something of with his own artistic work ethic, this only irritates her further. As if she could afford to miss deadlines. As if she could work less and still spend the summer with him in a house like this one, a two-bedroom with an office and a wrap-around porch overlooking the shrinking shores of that Mediterranean island. But she doesn’t want to argue anymore, so she turns away from him and tries to refocus her attention on any lingering deviant items in the living room.
Julian comes around to her and gently grabs her shoulders, forcing her to stand still, which is easy because he’s a whole foot taller than her. “Listen,” he says, and only continues when she finally looks up into his sky-blue eyes. Despite her annoyance—or perhaps because of it—Anna cannot help but marvel at how good he looks in the olive green linen shirt he’s wearing. His blond wavy hair has grown longer and wilder in the salty moisture that hangs in the air, and after a month on the island, his skin is the golden color of the island’s shore. It’s a fact that her husband has grown more beautiful than her over the years. “Why don’t I go get them, while you go take a long, relaxing shower?”
She twists free of his hold. “Fine,” she says, and struts down the hall to their room, wicker basket in hand, knowing he won’t understand why his offer doesn’t solve anything at all.
#
When she hears the crunching of tires on the gravel path outside the house, Anna opens the front door and smiles. As soon as Julian shuts off the engine, Camilla steps out of the passenger seat. She’s already wearing a see-through silk tunic over a black bikini and the type of denim shorts Anna will no longer wear in public. She shrieks when she sees Anna and runs straight to her with arms spread wide. When the two women release each other, Anna sees Oliver carrying his girlfriend’s luggage as well as his own. Camilla is already following Julian into the house, the two of them laughing over something Anna has missed, so she goes down the steps to help Oli. Camilla’s purse slides down his arm as he leans to kiss Anna once on each cheek. “About time you invited us,” he says.
The last one to reach her is Jamie. Like the others, she offers Anna a huge grin but there are half-moons under her eyes. “Oh, it’s so good to see you,” she says as they embrace, and Anna suddenly feels guilty that this is the first time she sees Jamie since her divorce. She’s about to say something, to offer at the very least an empty recognition of this fact, when Oliver announces that he’s starving and ushers them into the house.
In the kitchen, Anna pours five glasses of sparkling water. She slices two large lemons into wedges, which she places on the rim of each glass. She brings them out to the back terrace in a tray along with a board covered with slices of Iberian ham and manchego cheese that she’s expertly arranged around a small bowl of olives and tomatoes from the local market. The beauty of it pleases her as she puts the charcuterie board on the table.
She finds Jamie already out on the terrace, which overlooks an olive tree garden, and beyond that, a sandy bay. “Sorry to be taking up your office,” Jamie says, as soon as she notices Anna.
Anna waves a hand at her and pretends it’s no problem at all. “I’m so glad you’re all here.”
“This place is gorgeous,” says Jamie. She points at the sandy bay that opens up below the house. “Is that the same beach where you two got married?”
“No, ours is a bit farther west.”
Jamie nudges Anna with her shoulder and says, “that was a fun day.”
Anna always says Jamie was her first friend in Spain, and that she has her to thank for her marriage, and her friends. The two of them met at an art gallery where Jamie worked. Anna, twenty-eight at the time, told Jamie that she had just arrived in Spain and was both grateful and surprised when she invited her to dinner the following night at the home she shared with Lisa. Soon, Anna was tagging along everywhere with them and their friends, a group of ex-pats with little in common but the shared experience of their foreignness. There were more gallery openings, artist talks followed by late tapas dinners, everything she had come to Europe looking for. And there was them. Oliver was funny and easy to like, and Julian was gorgeous, but it was Camilla—Italian, wild and beautiful—whose friendship she most craved. Their company had been as much a home for her marriage as the studio apartment she and Julian had first lived in together.
Anna puts a hand on Jamie’s arm. “How are you holding up?”
“It comes and goes,” says Jamie not pretending the question is about anything else. After a pause, she asks, “have you been in touch with her?”
Anna shakes her head and flushes with the same surge of guilt she felt earlier. She’s been meaning to reach out to Lisa since hearing about the breakup. She tells herself she’s been busy. But it’s more than that. She must admit that she didn’t even question why they invited Jamie, instead of Lisa. It was as if they had all freely given themselves into Jamie’s custody. Anna supposes it’s because they’ve known Jamie longer; because even after all those years Jamie was their friend and Lisa was Jamie’s girlfriend. But Anna can’t even remember the last time they went anywhere as a party of five, not six. She makes a mental note to call Lisa as soon as she can and says to Jamie, “I’m sure this weekend will do you good.”
When the others join them outside, Julian opens a bottle of wine and Anna’s charcuterie board gets picked apart. Soon after, Julian opens another bottle. They talk until the sky’s blue deepens. They talk about nothing in particular, the way friends do when they’ve known each other long.
Oliver nods at Julian. “So,” he says, “how’s the book going?” He says it like he’s mildly amused; like it’s an obligatory question for a writer’s friend to ask.
“It’s fine,” says Julian. “I’m almost finished.”
Anna thinks Oliver shoots her a questioning look but it’s quick, so she can’t be sure.
“I can’t wait to read it,” says Jamie.
“Let me know if you want me to look at it,” says Camilla.
“Like you would know a simile from a metaphor,” Julian jests. Camilla is also a writer, or rather, a ghost-writer. Mostly she works for American publishers and writes about things she doesn’t care about but sell well. The last book she wrote is about the “joy of cleaning,” she says in a self-mocking tone— not that she’s legally allowed to say she wrote it, Anna reminds her. Julian, who’s still looking for a publisher for this unfinished second novel, teases her—as he tends to do—of selling out. But Camilla only laughs and raises her wine glass in the air like it’s a toast to herself. “I’ll say Amen to that.” Unlike Julian, she prefers the money to the fame.
At six o’clock, Julian lights a candle to keep the mosquitoes away, and Anna goes back inside to start making dinner. She puts on a pot of water to make pasta and hopes they’re not expecting anything more elaborate; she’s not had time for more. She knows she should start chopping the veggies she’ll throw in but instead, she just stands by the stove, relieved to have a moment to herself.
A voice behind her startles her. “You know what they say about watched pots.” Oliver’s standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. She laughs, a sign he takes as an invitation to come in.
“They sent me in to supervise,” he jokes. He opens a couple of drawers until he finds a knife and a chopping board and places them on the counter next to where she’s standing.
“So,” says Anna, “how’s everything going? How’s work?”
“Come on,” says Oliver, “are we that boring?”
“Fine,” she says, trying to hide her offense. “Tell me something else then.”
He knows her too well, though, so he tilts his head and says, “are you okay?” There’s a characteristic trace of amusement in his voice, a voice that has never, in all the years they’ve known each other, conveyed pity or condescension.
She offers him a half-truth. “I’m a bit stressed with work.”
“Yours or Julian’s?”
“Ha,” she says, but his perceptiveness makes her nervous, and she turns to check on the water. “Tell me about you. Seriously. How are things?”
“Well,” he says, accepting the change in subject. “Get this. We’re buying a house.”
“What?”
“We’re making an offer next week.”
Anna is surprised, not just by the news or the fact that Camilla hasn’t told her, but by the feeling the news provokes in her. “So, what…are you guys getting married now?”
Oliver laughs. “What? No way. Zero commitment, remember?
“This is a huge commitment!”
“Nah, we can always sell it.”
“Bullshit,” says Anna.
Oliver shrugs. He’s started cutting up the veggies on the counter. “We’re paying all cash.”
“Cash?” She shakes her head. “Well, that makes no sense, financially.”
He tilts his head as if to get a better look at her, and says, “be happy for us.”
“I am,” she protests, the pitch of her voice rising unintentionally. She wants to mean it, though. “I’m just surprised,” she says. “I’ve known you a long time, Oli. You’ve mocked people with mortgages for fifteen years.”
“Hence the cash payment,” he says.
She refrains from lecturing him on the disadvantages of this and is glad when she hears bubbles breaking the surface of the water. She turns from him and throws two whole bags of pasta into the pot.
“You guys must be good, then,” she says after a moment. “Happy.”
“We are.”
“I’m glad.”
Without lifting the knife from the cutting board, he asks, “aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Happy.”
“Oh.” She lifts her arms and gestures at the walls as if the fact that they were renting that house for the whole of August was answer enough. She can tell from his silence that he doesn’t buy it but she’s grateful when he doesn’t press her.
“So,” he says after a pause, “how’s work?” They both laugh, but she tells him anyway while she helps him slice the cherry tomatoes.
Nine minutes later, she drains the pasta and returns it to the pot. While she mixes in a whole jar of store-bought pesto, Oliver moves to her side and tosses in the veggies. She can smell a mix of sweat and tobacco on him and she’s about to tease him about how many times he’s quit smoking when the sound of Jamie’s voice behind her makes her jump.
“Do you guys need any help?”
“Sure,” says Oliver. He gestures at Jamie to grab the pot and then, without glancing back at Anna, he takes a stack of plates from an overhead cabinet and follows Jamie out of the kitchen.
The others are already hunched over full plates of pasta when Anna comes back out. She takes a seat next to Julian and accepts a glass of wine from him. Out on the quiet bay, sailboats have anchored for the night. Their masts, like sentinels, barely swaying as the orange light disappears behind the blue horizon. Oliver tells a joke about the difference between catfish and writers, and Anna forces herself to laugh. Under the table, Julian grabs her hand, squeezing it gently, as if thanking her. And as all the colors of that summer evening settle on her husband’s face, Anna lets out a long breath, hoping to release quietly into the breeze everything she holds inside.
#
It’s windy the next day but they still go to the beach and stay for most of the afternoon. Oliver is in the water and Jamie has gone for a walk to the southernmost tip of the island, which is not too far from where they are. In a bikini bottom and a white shirt, Anna lays on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows and ignoring the pain of the only pose that allows her to read on the beach. Next to her, Julian sits cross-legged in the shade of a huge beach umbrella that says “I (heart) Summer” in thick red letters and that threatens to blow away any minute. Camilla and Julian are playing chess, so she sits across from him, her topless breasts facing the ocean. That’s the one European habit Anna has never gotten used to.
Anna feels her husband’s hand graze her back as he reaches for the hem of her shirt, which the wind has just blown up, and pulls it down. He leaves his hand on her lower back, warm and firm.
One morning when she and Julian had only been dating a few weeks, Anna woke up before dawn and unable to go back to sleep, made some coffee, poured it into a tumbler, and set out towards the Barcelona beach. She wondered whether she should text Julian, who lived just a few blocks from the water. After a few minutes of walking, her heart beating fast, she pulled out her phone and went for it. Wanna watch the sunrise? And though it was not yet six in the morning, he’d replied with a thumb’s up emoticon and a smiley face. They sat with their bare feet buried in the cold sand, facing the water and taking turns to sip on her coffee. They didn’t say much as the grey sky above the horizon broke with the rising sun, becoming tinged with pink and purple before fading into the deep blue that enveloped the city behind them. That was the first time she realized that Julian was the color of summer. When the sun was high enough that they could no longer look at it directly, they rose and dusted the sand off their bums, and walked back into the city, their whole day still ahead. It became something of a ritual, something they did in those first few months whenever one of them woke up early. She never told him that she was always up at six. That she restrained from texting every day. He never told her he’d been seeing someone else. That part she’d found out later, when it no longer should have mattered.
Finally, Camilla moves a piece on the board and Julian laughs as if she’s told him an old joke. Anna looks up and scans the board, but she doesn’t understand the game.
Julian says to Camilla, “shouldn’t I be good at this by now?”
“You talking about chess or your career?”
“Ouch,” he says, but he’s laughing with Camilla.
Sometimes Anna wonders if Julian is jealous of Camilla’s success. She suspects that he’s not, and attributes this to either lack of ambition or his belief in the superiority of fiction over non-fiction. Camilla moves another piece and they both laugh again. Their laughter is so light, like balloons rising in the air.
A shadow appears over Anna’s book and she turns on her back to find Oliver standing at her feet. She has to squint to keep the sun from her eyes, but then he moves to block it entirely from her. From this angle, he takes up her entire field of vision but his face is all shadow.
“Hey,” he says, and though they all reply to his greeting, he’s looking straight at her.
She grabs a towel from her beach bag and hands it to him. He doesn’t dry himself before spreading it next to hers and sitting down. On the side of his body that faces Anna, goosebumps now cover the skin on his arms, all the way to his freckled shoulder. “Let’s check out the lighthouse later,” he says to her, nodding in the direction of where Jamie went. “The view over the edge must be incredible.”
As soon as Oliver turns back to her, Anna wiggles her bum from side to side, gently at first, and then a little harder until Julian moves his hand away. The game is over anyway. Just then, the wind picks up again and blows her shirt up over her back, erasing with it the trace of warmth from her husband’s hand.
#
The next morning, Oliver’s voice reaches her all the way down the hall. “There’s an emergency!”
She knows from his tone that there isn’t one but she comes out anyway. She finds him in the kitchen holding the refrigerator door open. He slams it shut as soon as Anna walks in. “We’re out of booze,” he says.
Camilla slides past Anna into the kitchen, grazing her back. “Why don’t we go into town together?” Today she’s wearing a different bikini under the silk tunic, a white one. “We can have lunch somewhere nice and then go to the liquor store on the way back.”
Anna is about to say she’d rather stay in and get some work done when Jamie appears behind them and says, “oh, that sounds fun! I wanna see the town.”
“Let’s go,” says Camilla. “We’ll make a girls’ day of it and the guys can hang here.”
Oliver, who’s still in his pajamas, shrugs. “Works for me.”
#
They take a table in a plaza in the center of a post-card perfect village with cacti growing as tall as the windows and purple bougainvillea spilling over low, white walls with rounded edges. On every corner, boutiques are selling white linen clothes and straw hats. They’re as far inland as they can be on that small island, and the noon heat is oppressive. Anna, who is driving, orders a bottle of sparkling water with lemon while Jamie and Camilla share a bottle of chilled rosé. “Lunch is on me,” Camilla says, and proceeds to order almost every tapa on the menu: a crispy flatbread with tomato, oven-baked potato wedges with romesco sauce, shrimp with mushrooms in garlic butter, grilled octopus, and olives. “Okay,” she says laughing, “I think that’s enough.”
Anna motions at the waiter to bring another wine glass. One can’t hurt.
“So,” Anna says, once they’ve ordered, “Oliver told me you guys are buying a house?” She’s been waiting to bring it up, curious to hear Camilla’s version. That’s the tricky part of them all being best friends—holding both sides of every couple’s confidence with equal indifference.
“Yeah,” says Camilla with an enthusiasm that betrays no artifice, no acknowledgment of contradiction between this act and a lifetime of commitment avoidance. “Oh, I can’t wait to show it to you.” She takes a sip of wine, and adds, “it’s a bit pricey, but whatever, I love it.”
“I didn’t know that. That’s exciting,” says Jamie. And then turning to Anna, she says, “weren’t you guys also in the market?”
“Yeah, but we had to postpone it. Maybe next year, if Julian’s book sells well.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” says Camilla in a tone that wouldn’t have been condescending if it hadn’t been for the gesture of gently squeezing Anna’s arm. “I know you’ve been wanting more space to work from home.”
“It’s fine,” says Anna. She takes a sip of wine. She already regrets admitting to a money issue.
“Well thank you for hosting us,” Camilla says. “It’s very generous of you.”
“Of course,” replies Anna, waving at an imaginary fly in the air. “I mean, we’re totally fine. It’s just wiser to wait.”
“Well, good,” says Camilla returning to the food. “I’m glad you guys are doing well.”
“Yup,” says Anna.
Just then, the waiter brings out their food and silence settles between them as he covers the entire table with their order. Camilla takes a photo of the display and then she twists in her seat to take a selfie of the three of them. “Smile,” she says, and Anna has to wipe sweat beads off her forehead before she can look up. When they’re finally allowed to eat, Jamie turns to Anna and says, “so you guys are doing well? Really?”
“What do you mean?” Anna asks, pretending not to know exactly what Jamie means. She takes her fork to a shrimp that’s been swimming in garlic sauce.
“Just that you guys seem different,” says Jamie. There is no judgment in her tone. Jamie has that rare talent of being gentle and direct at the same time.
Anna can feel both women watching her as she chews on her shrimp, the garlic already crowding out every other sense except for the smell of fish and oil in the humid air. She glances up at Camilla and meets her gaze, which reveals nothing of her thoughts. Camilla has always had a good poker face. It strikes Anna then that this is why she hadn’t wanted them to come—old friends might let you lie to them, but they won’t let you lie to yourself. Anna is about to admit she’s been considering therapy, even anti-depressants, when Camilla says, “it’s okay. Julian told us.”
Anna stares back, confused. Those are thoughts she hasn’t shared with Julian yet. “What do you mean?”
“He told you what?” says Jamie. She’s clearly not been included in this confidence.
“They’re thinking of getting a divorce,” Camilla says to Jamie.
Jamie now turns to Anna. “Is that true?”
Anna is trying to focus on her breath now, trying to keep her anger at bay. She puts her fork down and brings a cloth napkin to her mouth. “I can’t believe he told you,” is all she can say.
“Cut him some slack,” says Camilla. “I think he wanted us to talk to you.”
“When was this?”
“He says it’s you who wants it.”
“Is this why you wanted to come out today?”
Jamie waves both hands in the space between them, like she’s a traffic controller for tiny airplanes, and says, “wait, you want a divorce? What’s going on?”
Anna turns to Jamie and exhales in defeat. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
After a long pause in which Anna offers no further explanation, Camilla and Jamie resume their eating in silence. The heat has now wrapped itself around her like a blanket and she longs to be back in the car with the AC. Anna knows they’re waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t know how to choose from all the threads that are unraveling. When did Julian tell Camilla? Was it last night while she was making dinner? Or had it been before the summer? She doesn’t know if she’s angrier about this, how he’s confided in their best friends behind her back, or about the fact that Camilla has already taken his side. Cut him some slack, she said.
After a while, Jamie asks, “do you think you would feel differently if you had kids?”
Anna leans back in her seat and scoffs. It’s not like Jamie to suggest, like other women have, that children are the piece she’s missing. That a child, like a magic bean, would make up for the shortfalls in her conduct and condition. “I mean, would it have made a difference for you?”
Jamie nods. “Yeah. Maybe. If there was someone to remind us of why we loved each other.”
Her candor both surprises Anna and makes her flush. After a while she says, “I’m sorry, Jamie. I didn’t realize.”
“It’s okay,” Jamie says.
Anna can tell she means it, but the exchange leaves her feeling deflated. Like the cushions on her couch, she slumps a little in her seat. Finally, she says, “we’ve just grown apart. You know? Sometimes it happens.”
“Sure,” says Jamie.
And then, looking at Jamie but speaking to Camilla, Anna says, “I just can’t live like this anymore.”
Jamie reaches over and squeezes her hand, and when Anna looks at Camilla, her friend offers her a smile. Anna knows they think she’s lying. That there’s more to it. But the surprising thing, the thing so true that it can chill her skin on a summer afternoon, is that there isn’t.
#
That night they sit around the table on the terrace and play a card game.
“Do you guys remember the first time we played this?” Jamie asks while she shuffles the cards and deals them out. They all get six cards, each one illustrated with a fantastical image. Whoever’s turn it is to play must choose one of her cards, put it on the table facedown, and say a phrase that describes the image on the card. Everyone else then selects the card in their hands that best matches the sentence and lays it on the table facedown. Afterward, when all the cards are turned to face up, everyone bets on which card was the storyteller’s original card.
“No,” says Camilla, “When was that?
Anna remembers exactly. “It was when we rented that ski cabin, for Julian’s birthday.”
“Oh my God, yes,” Camilla says, her eyes widening as she remembers. She turns to Anna and says, “remember when we had a perfect game? We guessed each other’s cards every single time. Nobody else did.”
Anna laughs. “Yeah, that was insane.” They had taken it as proof of their bond, how they could almost read each other’s minds. From across the table, she senses Julian looking at her and she meets his gaze. His eyes look bluer in the evening as if they’d absorbed the light all day. When she can no longer look at him, she raises her wine glass to her lips and turns to the cards that are landing in front of her. There’s a silence, as each of them picks up their cards. Anna rearranges them in her right hand, even though there is no meaningful order in which they can go.
“It makes me happy to have this little reunion,” Julian says, leaning back in his chair as if to take it all in. “The whole crew.”
“Not the whole crew,” Anna blurts out. Both Camilla and Oliver shoot her a look and she chides herself immediately. It’s not like her to be mean, but she’s on edge tonight.
“Huh?” says Julian.
Jamie turns to him and puts a hand on his back, gently. “She means that Lisa’s not here.”
“Fuck,” says Julian. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”
“Don’t worry,” Jamie says. And then as if to console him further, she adds “I’m happy to see you all too.”
They’re ready to play the first round and, because he’s sitting to Jamie’s left, it’s Julian’s turn to go. With no hesitation, he lays his card face down on the table. “My wife,” he says and catches Anna’s eye.
Oliver draws breath through his teeth. “Bold,” he says, with the exhale. Each one of them must now choose a card from their hand which could not only represent Anna, but Anna as seen through Julian’s eyes.
Anna tries to keep a smile on her face, a small smile, one that doesn’t require too much effort to hold throughout the night. She can feel Julian’s eyes on her, but she refuses to look up at him. How does her husband see her? It’s a scary thought and she feels her gut contract with anger at him for exposing her like that to everyone. She’s the first to put her card down.
Next goes Oliver, followed by Jamie. Camilla is the last to go, and she glances at Anna over the rim of her cards as if measuring her up before playing her card.
When all their cards are on the table, Julian picks them up and shuffles them. Always the expert gamer, his expression remains relaxed, yet fixed, as he replaces them one by one on the table, this time facing up. The illustrations are:
- A girl standing at the bottom of a huge pile of books and reaching up
- A twisting ladder climbing up into the clouds
- A scowling hen in an officer’s uniform lecturing a group of lined up chicks
- A dark-haired woman in a winter coat standing by herself in an icy landscape
- A woman rising from the ocean, her arms resting on the horizon while the sun rises behind her
Jamie holds a hand up. “Wait,” she says, “so now we all have to vote for the one we think that Julian placed, right?”
“Correct,” says Julian. “You have to decide which of all the cards is mine. The one I think represents my wife.”
“So,” says Oliver, and Anna knows from that one word that he’s about to provoke her. “Is the winner of this round the one who knows Anna best? Or the one who knows Julian best?”
They all laugh gently but nobody replies.
The first card is Anna’s own. The image makes her think of how far she feels from her husband when he’s reading a book. He becomes so absorbed in it as if he’s somewhere else. So she ignores that card and focuses on the others.
She votes for the second card. The ladder could represent her ambition and how far she’s climbed in her career. Julian sees how hard she works. Oliver votes for the second card too, although Anna suspects his interpretation is less kind. Camilla votes for the third, the one showing Anna as an angry mother hen. Jamie votes for the fifth card.
“Ha! Only Jamie got it right,” exclaims Julian. He points to the one with the woman rising from the ocean and says, “my card is this one.”
Jamie claps her hands. “I knew it. It was the sweetest one. It reminded me of your wedding here.” And then, still smiling, she looks at Anna and says, “how did you miss that?”
Anna ignores her, more out of shame than anger. When she’d looked at that card, she’d assumed it was Jamie’s thinking about them here, on vacation. But she can’t deny that her husband’s card was the only one that suggested something beautiful about her. She should’ve seen it.
She places a finger on the card that shows the lonely woman in the snowy landscape. She seems so alone, so cold. Anna slides the card away from her. “Who put this one down?”
They all look at each other. “That was mine,” says Camilla.
“This is how you see me?”
Oliver looks at her sideways. “Dude, come on, it’s a game.”
“Oh, and the angry hen?” Her eyes are fixed on him now. “That one was yours?”
“It was funny!”
“It shows an angry bitch.”
“Technically, it’s a chick,” he says.
Camilla lets out a low laugh and Anna falls silent. Oliver nudges her with his shoulder. “Come on, it’s supposed to be funny.”
“She voted for it,” Anna protests, pointing at Camilla, who drops her eyes.
“Because we’re jerks,” says Oli in defense of his girlfriend. “But Julian’s was sweet. Be happy about that.”
Julian touches her arm to get her attention. “Look,” he says sliding the card towards Anna. “She’s like you. You see? Her and the sunrise. It’s like when…”
“I know,” whispers Anna.
Eventually, they had stopped their morning beach walks. Other things filled up their time. But now, looking at the card, she remembers what she liked so much about those days—how light she’d felt so close to Julian right before the sunrise.
#
By midnight, both Julian and Camilla are drunk. They’re both dancing but not together, each one in their own world. They only pause and turn to each other to belt out the next line in the song. Jamie is also dancing, but she seems tired like she’s just going through the motions. From her chair, Anna watches them, these beautiful people swaying like palm trees in the afternoon. They will not remain this close forever, she thinks. It’s normal. Friends drift apart. And yet, the thought saddens her.
When the next song starts, Oliver comes to stand in front of her and extends a hand. He doesn’t remove it until she finally accepts it and lets him pull her up from her seat. He tries to twirl her around, but she’s stiff.
“Can you relax?”
“No,” she says. He smells of cigarettes and it surprises Anna that she almost likes it.
“Try.”
“Fine,” she says and puts her right hand on his shoulder and her left one in his right hand. She focuses on following his moments. Oliver is a terrific dancer, always has been, and after a while, she does relax, a little. She can count the freckles on his cheekbones.
“Will you still talk to me? If Julian leaves me?”
Oliver tilts his head and looks at her with a twinkle in his eyes and a half-smile as if he were the keeper of some secret about her. “I heard it was the other way around.”
Anna shrugs. “It’s just a matter of time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m serious,” she says. “And you know Cami will take his side.”
“You won’t be alone.”
“Oh yeah? Have you talked to Lisa lately?”
Oliver slows down, just by a beat. It’s barely noticeable to anyone but her and when he speaks again, she holds her breath, because suddenly she knows exactly what he’s going to say.
“Anna…”
She tries to stop the dancing but he doesn’t let her. “Don’t…”
“…he would be a fool to let you go.”
She exhales some measure of relief. It’s not exactly what she expected, but she grasps his meaning. She can’t tell if what she feels is anxious or excited, so she averts her gaze and says nothing.
“You are wonderful,” he whispers just close enough to her ear that nobody else will hear.
“You said I was a bossy bitch.”
“A wonderful bossy bitch,” he replies.
She knows she’s blushing, so she looks around the room, partly to see if anyone’s heard and partly just to look away. Jamie is gone and Julian and Camilla are playing a game to see who can spin the fastest without falling. Julian knocks into a side table but manages to catch the lamp on it before it tips over. Anna gasps as it happens and Oliver squeezes her hand, and says, “chill. Everything’s fine.”
She wants to believe him. So she turns back to him and smiles as he twirls her once.
#
Later, when they’re finally in bed, Julian rubs her back. They always sleep like that now, her back turned to him. She wonders if he’s hoping to arouse her, so she pretends to be asleep, matching the rhythm of her breath to the tide. With each wave, she inhales. And with every exhale, she tries to dispel the one thought that keeps arising—why the touch of this perfect man stings like ice on sunburnt skin. After a while, he becomes motionless beside her and she wonders if he’s fallen asleep.
Without turning to him, she whispers. “I need to tell you something.” She hopes he didn’t hear but then she feels him roll back onto his side and press his hand gently on her back.
“Okay,” he says.
When she turns to face him, she finds his eyes alert despite the hour and the booze, and relaxed, like he could wait an age for her to speak.
She takes a moment, resisting the pull of the thing she’s set in motion. She both wants and does not want to tell him, so she knows she must blurt it out before she can change her mind. “I had a miscarriage.”
Concern pulls on the edges of his brow, widening his eyes, and she shakes her head, realizing what he’s thinking. “No, no. Sorry,” she says. “It was about a year ago. You were on tour and I was home. It just sorta…happened.” She had only just discovered she was pregnant and a couple of weeks later she was losing it. It was so early, her doctor said, she might have missed it entirely.
Julian takes his free hand and covers the whole left side of her face with it. She doesn’t breathe while she waits for him to speak. Finally, he says, “why didn’t you tell me?”
Anna shrugs, shaking her head even as she presses her face into his hand. Because she didn’t want to interrupt his tour? Because what would be the point? Because part of her was relieved and because sometimes there were things he didn’t want to hear. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
He rolls back onto his back and pulls her into his arms, resting his chin on her head. His skin is warm, like mornings on the terrace. With her head pressed between his hand and his chest, she can’t hear the ocean anymore. Only the steady beating of his heart.
#
She wakes a few hours later while it’s still dark. They’ve slept with the window open and she pulls the covers up to her chin as the coming dawn blows cool air into the bedroom. Beside her, Julian sleeps on his stomach, his arms folded under his head.
As the shadows begin to recede from the master bedroom of the beach house, she thinks about waking him. If they hurried, they could get to the beach before sunrise. The night has almost lifted. But she doesn’t do it and soon there are streaks of sunlight across the foot of the bed. She sits up, waiting for the light to find her face. Right at seven, her alarm clock goes off and she reaches out to silence it. Next to her, Julian stirs. He opens his eyes and looks right up at her like he already knew exactly where she’d be. She’s thinking she should get up, get dressed, go make breakfast; the others are leaving in an hour. But under the covers, his hand moves to her thigh and rests there. And though she throws the covers aside, she doesn’t move away just yet.
The End
COPYRIGHT BY KRISTA TIMEUS CEREZO