I wobble off my bike. It takes three shaky tries to engage my kickstand.
Alex dismounts, too, and knocks down his kickstand, looking only slightly steadier than me. Mia hops off and races toward the snow-cone truck. “I want a large!” she bellows.
Alex and I follow after her, breathing heavily, wiping sweat from our faces.
“That,” Alex says, “was a damn satisfying victory. A petty victory, but a satisfying one.”
“Thankfully,” I tell him between heaving breaths, “pettiness is our brand.”
Alex laughs hard, straight from his belly, as we fall into the Gus and Yiayia’s line, holding Mia’s place while she stands right by the cart, eyeing the flavors.
We turn, facing each other, and suddenly Alex yanks me into a hug. I sink into it, plastering my sweaty body to his, squeezing him tight.
“That felt so good,” he mutters.
I nod. “That feltamazing. At least, psychologically. My body says that it felt like death.”
He laughs again, squeezing me to him, so nothing’s between us. Hips pinned to hips, my breasts smashed against his chest, sweat-slick thighs sticking as his hands curl around my waist.
We both pull back after a moment, looking at each other, chests heaving, sweat dripping down our faces. Our eyes lock, and some unknowable force seems to tug us closer, closer, until our noses brush, until I can almost taste him, almost feel his lips brushing mine.
Heat coils through me. My nipples harden. A sweet ache throbs between my thighs. My tongue darts out, wetting my bottom lip, as Alex rakes his teeth over his.
We are dangerously close to an endorphin-soaked kiss.
“Where’s Mia?” Jen asks.
We snap apart.
“Exploring her options, right by the cart,” Alex says, turning enough to point to his daughter, exactly where he said she was.
Jen glances between us, once again, something written on her face that I can’t place. Ethan saunters up to us, looking and sounding the least winded of all of us. “I thought that would be a bit more challenging,” he says offhandedly, before taking a not-nearly-desperate-enough drink of water from his bottle. “I hardly broke a sweat.”
Alex and I glance at each other—winded, flushed, soaked through with perspiration. I think with anyone else, Ethan’s dismissive dig, his pointed reminder that we might have narrowly won the race but it cost us, that if he’d tried as hard as we had he probably would have beat us, would have crushed the euphoric joy of this moment.
But I’m not with anyone else. I’m with Alex. My petty vengeance coconspirator. Fellow gelato-gorger. Great hugger. Even better listener.New York TimesGames buddy. Honest and kind and in my corner. My friend.
Like they’re nothing, like they’re meaningless, Ethan’s words slide off me, gone as quick as the rivulets of sweat sluicing down my body, evaporating in the pressing heat.
Thatis the real victory. Not the petty one. Not the one Ethan tried to undermine. The win he can’t take away. The win I’m most proud of.
Eyes locked with Alex, I smile.
CHAPTER 17NOW
August 3, first day of “vacation”
I can’t see the ocean yet, but I can sense it. In the warm breeze wafting in through the car’s open windows, different from the oppressive humid heat of Missouri, the summertime stormy mugginess of Western Pennsylvania—salt-sticky damp, the briny tang of fish and sea creatures that’s almost pungent, almost off-putting, yet it makes me breathe deeper, draw it in, taste it on my tongue.
“Ted,” Alex says quietly, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road. “You’re seriously going to leave me hanging there?”
I lowerThe Ministry of Time, which I’ve been reading to him in a hushed voice for the past five and a half hours. “Didn’t mean to,” I tell him. “I just got my first whiff, and it distracted me.”
“First whiff of what?” He rubs one eye with the heel of his hand, then reaches for the thermos of coffee we’ve been sharing since we pulled out of Pittsburgh in the nighttime darkness, a sleepy Mia buckled into her car seat, tucked in with blankets andher favorite lovey, a battered stuffed panda bear she delightfully named Polar Bear.
“The sea,” I tell him, watching Alex take a deep gulp of coffee.
He briefly glances my way, then back to the road, fumbling with the thermos as he tries to wedge it into the cupholder. I reach for the thermos, taking over the task, and our fingers brush. I try to push away the pleasure of that sensation, the heat of his skin, the calluses I graze as I pull back, but Alex catches my hand and clasps it, settling it on the console armrest between us.