Summer Fridays: A Novel - Softcover

Rindell, Suzanne

 
9780593473917: Summer Fridays: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593473914 ISBN 13: 9780593473917
Verlag: Dutton, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

You've Got Mail for a new generation, set in the days of AOL and instant messenger banter, about a freshly engaged editorial assistant who winds up spending her "summer Fridays" with the person she least expects

Summer 1999: Twentysomething Sawyer is striving to make it in New York. Between her assistant job in publishing, her secret dreams of becoming a writer, and her upcoming wedding to her college boyfriend, her is plate full. Only one problem: She is facing an incredibly lonely summer as her fiancé has been spending longer and longer hours at work . . . with an all-too-close female colleague, Kendra. 

When Kendra's boyfriend, Nick, invites Sawyer to meet up and compare notes about their suspicions, the meeting goes awry. She finds Nick cocky and cynical, and he finds her stuck in her own head. But then Nick seeks out Sawyer online to apologize, and a friendship develops.

Soon, Sawyer's lonely summer takes an unexpected turn. She and Nick begin an unofficial ritual—exploring New York City together every summer Friday. From hot dogs on the Staten Island Ferry and Sea Breezes in a muggy East Village bar to swimming at Coney Island, Sawyer feels seen by Nick in a way that surprises her. He pushes her to be braver. To ask for what she wants. Meanwhile, Sawyer draws Nick out of his hard shell, revealing a surprisingly vulnerable side. They both begin living for their Friday afternoons together. 

But what happens when the summer is over?

Summer Fridays is a witty and emotional love letter to New York City that also captures the feeling of being young and starting out, uncertain what to do on your summer Friday. It’s also perfect for readers who remember when “going online” meant tying up the phone line, and the timeless thrill of seeing a certain someone’s name in your inbox.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Suzanne Rindell is the author of four novels: The Other Typist, which has been translated into twenty languages, Three-Martini Lunch, Eagle & Crane, and The Two Mrs. Carlyles.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1.

When her eyes catch on the little clock on the far wall beyond her desk, she realizes it's already ten past noon.

She gets a sudden urge: she wants to take her bag lunch outside and eat it in the park. This seems wrong, to a certain extent-but then, everything seems wrong lately. Every time she scans the newspaper headlines or opens her email, she reads of another event canceled. It seems that no one feels right doing anything but staying home and feeling not right.

She glances at the clock again, and makes up her mind. She wants to be reminded of things that are simple: Trees. Sky. Birds. Squirrels. Bench. The way the park path bends around a big brownish-gray boulder. Things that haven't changed, in a time when it feels like everything will never be the same.

From her office, it is a short walk to the southwest corner of Central Park. There are fewer people out than there would normally be in mid-September. No drummer guy merrily tapping away on his plastic buckets, no flower guy with the blue roses, ink stains on his fingers. But there are still a couple of snack vendors hunched over the stainless steel carts that are their livelihood, looking guilty for selling hot dogs. A handful of people dressed in office attire, clutching giant pretzels and cans of diet soda. Even a few joggers intent on a return to normalcy.

She walks a little bit of the way into the park-just to the bend in the path she was longing to see-and finds a bench in the shade.

People pass by. A middle-aged woman pushing a stroller. A man walking a golden retriever with reddish-tinged fur. An off-duty doorman smoking a cigarette, sweating under his heavy uniform.

After a while, two girls come along and settle into the opposite end of the bench, a polite distance away from her. She takes out a book and pretends to read it, between bites of her lunch. Potato salad that she made herself-extra dill. She eats the salad out of a Tupperware bowl with a plastic spork from the office kitchen.

She listens to the girls talk. They are young. She is young, too-probably only a few years older than them-but somehow they are youthful in a way that makes her feel already slightly invisible.

So, just like that, he's back in touch? one of them asks the other.

Yes, the first girl replies. He wrote a long email. I got it that night. It was really sincere, actually.

He said the attacks made him think of you?

Well, yeah, I mean-in a roundabout way. He said it just put things in perspective. Made him think about what's important.

Ah. So: you, the friend says in an approving voice.

I guess so, the girl replies.

Will you get back together?

I don't know, the girl says. We might.

Hmm, the friend says.

After a pause, the girl adds, The thing is . . . I was thinking of him, too, when it happened. I know his office isn't downtown and there shouldn't be any reason he would have been in the area, but I still just . . . found myself thinking of him. Wanting to know he was OK. And wanting to talk to him again, I guess.

I guess it says something if you were both thinking of each other, the friend says.

Yeah, the girl agrees. We'll see. I'm meeting him tonight for a drink.

The friend giggles.

The girl doesn't laugh. She gives a furtive, self-conscious glance across the bench. I kinda feel like a jerk, talking about my love life right now, she confesses to her friend. You know . . . with everything else going on in the city . . . in the world.

Nah. What the hell else are we going to talk about? her friend points out. The rest is too depressing.

• • •


Eventually, the girls get up and walk on, leaving her alone on the bench again. The potato salad is all gone and she isn’t pretending to read a book anymore. A glance at her watch tells her she ought to be heading back to her office.

On her walk back, she gets to thinking. She's overheard the same thing a few times now-it's in the air. People getting back in touch with old friends, old acquaintances, and old flames. Are you OK? they ask each other. I was thinking of you. I hope you're OK. I wanted to hear your voice.

At her desk, she replies to a few work emails, forwarding an early review of a novel to the book's author and cc'ing her boss, then responding to the marketing department, mostly to agree with the marketing director about which bits from the review make for the best pull quotes.

Then she sits for a moment, staring vacantly into the even, bluish-white glow of the computer screen, lost in thought again.

After a moment, she clicks on Internet Explorer and brings up the web portal for her personal email. She logs in, and clicks on the envelope icon to start a new email message. She doesn't type in the address, not yet. She clicks on the body of the email. Start there, she thinks.

The blank message glows brilliantly white and empty, its cursor blinking like a character tapping their foot in a cartoon.

She stares for a long time. Minutes pass. She isn't sure how many. The message remains empty. The cursor blinks in place, having never moved.

Finally, she closes the blank message, then the browser window altogether.

New York City

1999

2.

Friday, May 28

The first surprise of the evening came when Charles didn't have an opinion about her dress.

Sawyer knew that plenty of men didn't have opinions about what their girlfriends wore, but Charles was not one of those men. He liked nice things. He respected style and admired design. Granted, he possessed a much wider array of in-depth opinions about men's fashion than he did about women's fashion-but either way, he had opinions.

Although Sawyer didn't necessarily agree with all of Charles's opinions, she appreciated that he always had one. A year earlier, when Charles first started as a junior associate at Wexler Gibbons, he'd been acutely sensitive to the fact that landing a spot at the prestigious corporate law firm had been like winning the lottery, and he'd wanted badly to make a good impression. He'd had plenty to say about what they both wore to company events. They'd made a ritual of it: Sawyer tried on the various possibilities and emerged from the bedroom in the back of their apartment to show him. Charles waited for her to ask what he thought, then proceeded to give her the carefully considered input of a true friend. Sawyer was grateful. Living in New York in your twenties meant trying to make your way in a mind-bogglingly expensive city while simultaneously paying off student loans. Looking the part on a budget required strategy, and having a huddle with your other half made it more fun.

So, when Sawyer pulled out the two dresses she was considering from their closet and held the hangers aloft to show Charles, she was thrown off to hear him say (after barely glancing at the dresses), "They both look nice."

She tried one on. Then, the other.

"Sure. Whichever you like; they both look great."

It was like a cliché scene in a movie: The husband's flat, comical indifference to his wife's appearance, the wife's alienated frown.

This isn't who we are, Sawyer's brain protested, with a hint of indignance. They'd gotten engaged less than a year ago; they were hardly an old married couple. Usually, getting dressed up for a night out was an occasion to flirt, a chance to hint that there might be sex later.

But having changed out of both dresses, Sawyer stood there in her underwear, frowning through the open bedroom door to where Charles sat in the other room. He didn't look up, not once. His attention was wholly trained on his company-issued laptop. The IBM ThinkPad was cracked open on the kitchen table, a heavy black clamshell with thuggish rectangular angles. Sawyer squinted,...

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Verlag
Dutton
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593473914
ISBN 13 
9780593473917
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
432
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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