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Abby smacked the ball across the net.  Dennis made a diving stab at it and missed.  “Good shot,” he called out.  While he was retrieving the ball, Abby stole a glance at her watch.  As much as she enjoyed playing tennis, she just wanted it to be over.  She was meeting Nick after the match and she wanted to get on with that.  She could play tennis any time.  But she only had a few hours left with Nick.

Last night had been wonderful.  They had eaten pizza and talked about music...she asked him questions and he talked.  Then they had moved on to sports and movies.  They had carefully stayed away from childhood or current emotional issues.  At eleven o’clock, Abby said that she’d better be going.  Nick offered to walk her to the Lodge.  She declined, saying she knew the way and would be perfectly safe, but he insisted.  They walked along the path in the dark, saying little, enjoying the night air.  When the Lodge loomed up before them, Nick stopped.  Abby kept walking.  “Goodnight, Nick.  Thanks,” she threw over her shoulder. 

“See you at breakfast,” he called out.  She answered by waving her hand, but she didn’t turn around.  He watched until she entered the hotel and then he went back to Rose Cottage, relieved that the evening had ended without awkwardness.

Abby floated through the lobby.  James was no longer there and neither was the day man on the desk, but Abby knew that her passage would be noted.  She went to bed and hugged herself, trying to burn the memory of the evening into her brain forever.  It had been so…so…so much fun, she decided.  That was it.  It was fun.  They hadn’t been awkward with each other.  They hadn’t been trying to impress each other.  Just a couple of friends eating pizza and talking.

And breakfast had been more of the same.  Pleasant conversation with a friend.  Then off she went to tennis and off he went to the workout room, but not before he suggested meeting afterward.

“Good match, Abby,” called Dennis, as his final shot bounced at her feet and she missed it.  “Same time, tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid not, Dennis,” she said.  “I’m leaving tomorrow…going home.”

Going home.  Back to her parents.  Back to her real life.  Back to being Abigail Fremont.  No, she told herself.  Not that.  She was Abby Fremont and she was going to stay that way.

“Hey, there!” 

Abby looked up from her tennis bag.  Nick was leaning against the fence.

“How was your match?” he asked.

“Good,” answered Abby.  “How was your workout?”

Nick made a face.  “Fine, if you like that sort of thing.”  He held open the gate for her.

“And I’m guessing you don’t,” laughed Abby.

“You gotta do what you gotta do.  I have to get in shape, but I don’t have to like it.”

They walked across the driveway to the Lodge.  “Maybe you burn up even more calories if you fight it every step of the way,” suggested Abby.

“I never thought of it like that,” said Nick.  “I’d burn up a lot of calories, then, because I fight it every step of the way.  I used to piss off…I mean…anger my trainer all the time.  He said that if whining burned fat, I’d be as thin as a matchstick.”

“Aw, you’re not a whiner, Nick,” said Abby.

“Yeah, I am,” he admitted.  “I guess you want to shower now.  I’ve already done that.”

They arranged to meet on the patio.  Abby made her way through the crowd of people, mostly men, milling in the lobby.  Another corporate weekend was about to get underway, mused Abby.  Techtronic Sales, according to their name tags.  The men were loud and hearty, slapping each other on the back and making jokes about golf.  Their eyes moved over her in appraisal and then slid away.  She put her head down and headed for the elevator.  She was glad she was leaving the next day. 

It took her awhile to find Nick when she came back down.  The Techtronic guys had taken over the restaurant at the back of the hotel.  They were gathered around the tables like a bunch of corporate magpies, all chattering and chirping at once.  There were a couple of empty tables, totally empty, as the men had dragged the chairs to other tables and were sitting in larger groups, calling out to each other in loud salesman voices.  “Hey, Bill, over here!”  “Hey, Tom, pull up a chair!”  “Waiter!  Could we get another beer?” 

Abby could see that Charles was run off his feet, but he took enough time to acknowledge Abby and nod his head in the direction of the big wooden lawn chairs, one level down.  Abby smiled her thanks and descended the stairs.  She could see Nick, sprawled lazily in the chair, his long legs spread out, his cap pulled down over his eyes.  She wished she were as pretty as he was.

“Nick,” she said softly. 

He looked up.  “I wasn’t sleeping…just trying to block out the noise.”

Abby grinned and nodded.  The din from the patio reached this level and beyond.

“Look how smart I am, though,” he said, and motioned to his feet.  There was a large wicker basket sitting there.  “I ordered us a picnic…after breakfast this morning.”

“Did you know these guys were coming?” asked Abby.

“Okay, so it was accidental smart,” said Nick, standing up and picking up the basket.  “But it was still smart.  Come on.”

Without even thinking about it, they both headed in the same direction…down to the beach and over to the rocks.  They walked in silence, Abby content to enjoy the warm sunshine and the thought that a handsome man was taking her on a picnic, Nick because he was squirming with guilt.

He had watched Abby make her way through the patio restaurant, and he had watched the reaction of the salesmen as she passed.  They had looked at her and then at each other.  A couple had made sour faces and the others had laughed.  Then one put his hands up in front of him like paws and panted.  Nick wanted to go up to the guy, pick him up and throw him over the railing.  But he didn’t.  He stayed where he was and pulled the cap further down over his face, hoping no one would recognize him.  And he was ashamed.

Something was wrong, Abby realized.  Nick’s mood had changed.  She didn’t know if she had done anything.  She didn’t think so.  Maybe he was just apprehensive about leaving their cocoon of safety and heading back to the real world.  She knew she was.

“Why didn’t you like Rose Cottage?” asked Nick, suddenly.  “I mean, besides the obvious,” he laughed.

“Because all the fun happened at the Lodge.  All the spontaneity… ‘Hey, let’s…’”  Abby waved a hand through the air.  “…go to the beach…play volleyball…ride a bike…whatever.  I was always isolated down in the cottage when that kind of thing got going.  And then later, when there’d be a group activity, they’d be talking about the fun they had…and I wasn’t part of it.”  She sighed.  “And of course, the best fun happened at night, the campfires on the beach…stuff like that…I missed all that.”  She went away into herself for a moment and then pulled herself back with a shake of her head and a shrug.  “Hard for a 12-year old,” she said sadly.

Nick nodded.  He’d been a social misfit himself in school.  His mother was constantly taking him out of school to go on auditions.  The other kids teased him and mocked his aspirations for stardom.  Knowing how wrong they’d been didn’t ease his pain.  It still hurt all these years later to think about it.  And Abby had allowed it to run her whole life.  He could picture what it had been like…the other kids looking for a target, a scapegoat, to try out their adolescent humor.  And Abby would have been perfect.  She wouldn’t have gotten any of the in-jokes from the activities she missed and that would have made her more of a loser.

“Then why…?”  He spoke without thinking it through.

“Why come back here?  To…”  She didn’t want to say it.  He didn’t want to hear it and nodded quickly.

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t all bad.  Most families were only here for a couple of weeks, but my mother and I stayed longer...sometimes the whole summer.  So every couple of weeks, there’d be a new batch of kids, a new start…And sometimes, there’d be another loser…someone too shy to make friends…and I’d take her under my wing and have a buddy for awhile.”  Now it was Abby who spoke without thinking it through.  “And besides, this is where I…”  She clamped her lips together and her face turned red.

The smile started at the corner of Nick’s mouth.  It turned up one side of his lips before traveling to the center of his face.  He pursed his lips and then pointed a finger at her.  “Where you what?” he asked.  They both knew the answer.

“Where I had my first sexual encounter,” said Abby, primly.  And then she burst out laughing.  “Now that was a truly horrible and embarrassing experience.”  She shuddered at the memory. 

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen,” answered Abby.  “The last virgin on the block.  Totally out of the loop at high school, where, of course, all the talk was about dating and sex.”

Nick didn’t know about that.  He hadn’t been to high school; he’d been on the road.  But come to think of it, most of the talk there had been about sex as well.

“Horrible and embarrassing?” mused Nick.

“Well, sort of, but thrilling as well,” said Abby.  "A couple of kids who had no idea what they were doing…it was his first time too…and he was…um…well…let’s just say that his staying power didn’t quite match his enthusiasm.”

“I feel like maybe someone somewhere is describing me the same way,” said Nick, wrinkling up his nose at the memory of his first encounter.  “I wasn’t very good at it.”

“I think that’s probably a universal phenomenon,” said Abby, reassuringly.  “There’s so much hype about it that it would be impossible for the first attempt to come up to one’s expectations.”

“I guess,” said Nick, “but if it was so…disappointing…why was it enough to bring you back here?”

“Oh we got better at it…we practiced for two whole weeks,” said Abby. She stared out over the lake, her mind far in the past.  “He was 16 and I was 17 and we just did not want to be here.  We were the only two that didn’t have the courage to tell our parents to ‘stick’ the boring Lodge vacation.  There was only us along with lots of grownups and little kids.”  She gave Nick a shy smile.  “So we used the time to educate each other.”

“You’re pretty when you blush,” said Nick, without thinking. 

Abby pinched her lips together and said through gritted teeth, “Well, if I could just live in a perpetual state of embarrassment, I might make the cover of Vogue.  Is ‘pretty’ so important to you?”

“No, not at all,” said Nick, “I am so done with pretty.”

“Well, then you came to the right place,” said Abby, sweeping her hand down to indicate her body from head to toe.

“Stop it, Abby,” said Nick, losing patience.  “It’s not about looks, it’s about attitude.  You hide from the world…and you shouldn’t.  You’ve got a lot to offer.  It’s not the world that puts you down because of your looks…it’s you.  You don’t even try.  Put on some makeup.  Buy some clothes that fit you.  Get a new hairstyle.  Get a new attitude.  Take control of your life.”

“Really?” said Abby, sarcastically.  “Is that all it takes?  A good attitude.  Tell me, Nick, how are those workouts going?”

They glared at each other for several seconds.  Abby was determined not to look away first.  It was what he would expect her to do.  Her lips trembled and she could feel tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

“We’re doing it again, aren’t we?” said Nick, softly, breaking his eyes away from hers.

“Yes,” replied Abby in a whisper.  “We’re so good for each other in that way.”

“Sorry,” said Nick, still looking down.

“Me too,” said Abby.  She gathered the picnic debris and put it in the basket.  “Well, I think I’m going to go pack.  What time do you need to leave tomorrow?”

“The flight’s at two,” said Nick, “and it’s a what…a three-hour drive?”

“Depends who’s driving,” said Abby with a chuckle. 

Nick laughed, “Okay, forty-five minutes.”

They talked it over and did calculations.  They decided that they would meet for breakfast as usual and head out after that.  There wasn’t any need to go earlier, nor any reason to stay later. 

Nick jumped down onto the beach and held out his hand to Abby.  She took it and jumped lightly to the ground beside him.  He was tempted to continue holding her hand while they walked up to the hotel, but he didn’t. 

“Why didn’t she come?” asked Abby suddenly, unaware that she had verbalized the thought until Nick froze in his tracks beside her.  “I mean, you said she always wanted to stay there, so why didn’t she?”

“She didn’t know,” said Nick.  “It was a surprise.  All she knew was that we were taking a vacation.  A limo was going to take her to the airport and another one was waiting in Chicago.”

“So what happened?”

“She found something better to do,” said Nick.  “She took the limo to Vegas and married her ex-boyfriend.”

Abby gasped.  The pain in his eyes took her breath away.  They started walking again, staring at the ground in silence.  They climbed the stairs, passing the lawn chairs, empty now, and the patio restaurant…also empty.  The Techtronic salesmen must be having a seminar, thought Abby. 

They entered the hotel and stopped at the concierge’s desk.  Nick asked James if he’d return the basket to the kitchen and thank the chef.  

“Certainly, Sir,” said James, thinking that he’d never seen two such unhappy people.

Nick turned away.  “I’m going to go pack,” he said to Abby.  “I’ll see you later.”

Abby watched him start away.  “Nick,” she said, after he’d gone a couple steps.  She walked up to him and put her hand on his arm.  “She’s an idiot,” she said and gave his arm a squeeze. 

Nick nodded and gave a small smile.  “Yeah,” he said, “she is.”

“Miss Fremont?”  It was James.

“Yes, James,” said Abby, turning back to the concierge.

“Your mother called again.”

Abby rolled her eyes.  Behind her, she heard Nick whisper, “See you later.”

“Well, James, if she calls again, tell her that I will be home tomorrow in time for dinner.”

“Well, Miss, actually…she…um…insists on speaking with you.”

“Insists?”  Abby’s tone was haughty.

“She’s told the manager and the desk clerk that they are to make you phone her.”

Abby stared at him.  Then her lips curled up into a smile.  “And I should take pity on the staff, shouldn’t I, James?  You’ve all been so kind this week.  I really should not have you suffer the wrath of Sharon Fremont.”

“Now, Miss Fremont,” chastised James.  “Your mother…”

“…is a conniving, controlling, interfering woman,” said Abby.  She held up a hand to forestall James’ protest.  “I’ll call her.”

James watched her walk away, her shoulders drooping, her hair covering her face.  Her mother.  What a piece of work.  Over the course of the week, James had watched Abigail blossom, coming out of herself a bit, standing up a little straighter, smiling more.  He knew why…because of the interest from the blond.  James narrowed his eyes.  He wondered about the motivation there.  He hoped Abigail hadn’t put her heart into it.  Ah well, he thought.  It will all be over tomorrow.