“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Jake says. The water has revived him like a plant. He’s sturdy, upright, ready to get to know this woman better. After all, the connection is uncanny—she said she had a celebrity crush on him, she lost a nephew to CF just as he lost a sister, and she took Mallory’s job at the high school. For all Jake knows, Mallory has, somehow, sent this woman to him. Because what are the chances that he would meet her in a crowded bar last night and then see her again this morning?

“I was hoping you would give me Coop’s cell phone number,” Brooke says. “He was really great.”

Fray

He wakes up on Saturday to two missed calls and three text message alerts from DEAD TO ME, who is Anna, his ex-wife. Fray won’t take the bait. He sets his phone down on the nightstand, rolls over, and gathers Leland up in his arms.

She stirs as he kisses her shoulder. “Good morning,” she whispers. “I’m happy to see this wasn’t all just a dream.”

“Not a dream,” Fray says, and he moves his mouth from her shoulder to the curve of her neck. “I’m real.”

They make love again, quietly, because the cottage is small and despite the grand renovation, you can still hear people thinking in the next room. Fray hasn’t felt this kind of unbridled desire in four decades; it’s like he’s back in high school. In the summer of 1985, Fray and Leland used to sneak out in the middle of the night to skinny dip in the country club pool, then have sex on the tennis courts. The difference between now and then is that Fray knows what he’s doing, and so does Leland. She spent over ten years in a relationship with a woman, an idea that Fray finds sexy.

When Cooper told Fray that Leland would be coming on this reunion weekend, Fray never imagined they would end up in bed together. He’d been too wrapped up in the drama and pain surrounding his split from Anna. Getting involved with another woman, even his long-ago first love, was the furthest thing from his mind.

But chemistry is chemistry—and Fray and Leland have always had it.

Things had started to seem promising the night before, after Jake and Coop left for the Chicken Box. Fray didn’t have many rules when it came to his sobriety, but no bars was one, and Leland said she didn’t want to go either. Fray thought maybe she was just tired—they were older now; at home, Fray liked to be in bed by nine, something Anna found maddening— but as soon as they heard the Jeep rumble off down the no-name road, Leland grabbed a blanket from a basket by the sofa and said, “Come with me.”