Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(48)

“It will if we break our record.”

“It’s been forever since we’ve even come close,” he says, picking up the paddle and giving it a twirl. “But I’m game if you are.”

“Oh, I’m game,” she says, serving the ball to him. He lobs it back in her direction, and then she does the same, again and again until the orange ball is nothing but a blur. There are plenty of opportunities for them to wing it hard at each other, but instead, they do their best to continue the rally, both of them counting silently as the ball flies back and forth, back and forth, until Aidan finally sends it spinning into the net.

“Sixty-two,” Clare announces. “Not even close.”

“Pitiful,” he agrees. “We can do better.”

They volley for a while longer, and this time the long chain is broken when Clare accidentally slices a shot hard to the left, the ball hitting the very edge of the table before it sails past Aidan and rolls under the couch.

“Jeez,” he says as he flattens himself on the carpet, reaching for the ball. “You’re kind of intimidating with that shiner.”

Clare spins her paddle a few times and makes a menacing face. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, returning with the dusty ball. “Quite the bruiser.”

“You, too,” she says. “Double bruiser.”

They begin again, and this time they make it to ninety-eight before Clare misses.

“Not bad,” she says as she retrieves the ball. “Have you been practicing without me?”

“No,” he says stiffly.

She frowns at him. “I’m only kidding. It’s fine if you were.”

Aidan has a Ping-Pong table in his own basement, but the only time Clare was ever down there, she noticed that it was completely covered with piles of laundry and oversize boxes of paper towels.

“We haven’t used ours since I was little,” he says, swinging the paddle absently. “I tried to get Riley to play a couple months ago, but it’s not really her thing.”

“Do you ever…”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“No,” he says. “Do I ever what?”

“Play with your dad?”

He snorts. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Of course not,” he says, rubbing at an invisible spot on the table with this thumb. “That would be considered fun. And my dad doesn’t do fun. My dad only does what he wants to do.…” His voice breaks, and he lifts his eyes to meet Clare’s. “I bet he won’t even see me off tomorrow.”

“Of course he will,” Clare says, troubled at the thought. “They’re driving you to the airport, right? That’s all part of the whole college deal. The dramatic goodbye, the bear hugs, looking back to see them waiting while you get in line at security…”

“I think you’re describing a different movie than mine,” he says with a pained smile. “At this point, I’ll be lucky if he even says goodbye before my mom and I head out.”

“You had a fight. That’s all. He’ll be over it by tomorrow,” she says, trying to sound more certain than she feels, then adds, “It’s too big a deal not to be.”

“Maybe,” Aidan says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. He juts his chin in Clare’s direction, and she realizes she’s still clutching the tiny orange ball. “Let’s play.”

It takes a while for them to get a good rhythm going again; each time they get past twenty or so, one of them whiffs.

“We can always stop, you know,” Clare says, but Aidan’s face is set with determination, and instead of answering, he just widens his stance and holds up his paddle, so she serves it to him yet again.

Over and over, they try and fail. The ball glances off the corner of the table, or Clare misjudges the distance and misses entirely, or Aidan spikes it into the net with more force than seems strictly necessary.

They’re both tired. Clare’s limbs feel heavy, and she can see that Aidan is fighting back yawns between rallies. With each new attempt, they seem to fall apart quicker. But every time she moves to end the game, Aidan just frowns and motions for her to continue.

“We can do this,” he says. “We’ve done it before.”

“That was a million years ago,” she points out. Soon after they started dating, they’d wandered down here and picked up the paddles, half-jokingly. But after a few practice swings, they realized they were both pretty good, and they managed to keep it going for 188 consecutive volleys, whooping and cheering after the ball finally sailed away. Right now, though, that feels like a very long time ago. “We’re nowhere close. We might set the record for number of attempts at the record, but that’s about it.”

Aidan only shakes his head. “Let’s go,” he says, so they try again.

After a while, in the middle of a rally, Clare feels a wave of exhaustion wash over her, and without thinking about it, she simply snatches the ball out of the air when it comes spinning in her direction.

“I can’t,” she says, when she sees Aidan’s crestfallen expression. “I’m too tired.”

“But we were so close,” he says, though they both know that’s not true. “We can do it. We have to.”