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She seemed to realize he was staring. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You were thinking about something.”
He sighed. “I’m glad you decided to come today,” he finally said.
“Because I’m having a great time.”
As Alex hovered over the grill, they settled into easy conversation.
Alex gave her an overview of what it was like to run a country
store. He told her how his in-laws had started the business and
described with affection some of the regulars, people who could
best be described as eccentric, and Katie silently wondered
whether she would have been included in that description had he
brought someone else to the beach.
Not that it would have mattered. The more he talked, the more
she realized that he was the kind of man who tried to find the best
in people, the kind of man who didn’t like to complain. She tried
and failed to imagine what he’d been like when he was younger,
and gradually she steered the conversation in that direction. He
talked about growing up in Spokane and the long, lazy weekends
he spent riding bikes along the Centennial Trail with friends; he
told her that once he discovered swimming, it quickly became an
obsession. He swam four or five hours a day and had Olympic
dreams, but a torn rotator cuff in his sophomore year of college
put an end to those. He told her about the fraternity parties he’d
attended and the friends he’d made in college, and admitted that
nearly all of those friendships had slowly but surely drifted away.
As he talked, Katie noticed that he didn’t seem to either embellish
or downplay his past, nor did he appear to be overly preoccupied
with what others thought of him.
She could see the traces of the elite athlete he once had been,
noting the graceful, fluid way he moved and the easy way he
smiled, as if long accustomed to both victory and defeat. When he
paused, she worried that he would ask about her past, but he