Excerpt from We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He was a natural athlete. They went to the driving range with her old friend Cindy and her husband Jack, who was into golf. Ed teed up and smacked the ball so soundly that when she saw it next it was a tiny pea at the end of its parabolic journey.

They headed out to Forest Hills one weekend to see her friends Marie and Tom Cudahy. There was a tennis court near the Cudahys' townhouse. They borrowed tennis whites from their hosts and the four of them hit the ball around in doubles, no keeping score or serving, just volleying. Ed returned shots he shouldn't have been able to get to in time. At the end, Tom asked him to play him solo, and Eileen turned and saw the embarrassed look on Marie's face. They both knew what was coming. Tom had been a letterman at Fordham and had a powerful serve, and though he mostly kept his competitiveness in check during mixed doubles, he liked to throttle his counterpart for a while afterward.

The two men took their positions and Tom fired a blistering smash. The ball raced up Ed's body off the bounce, as if it was trying to hit him more than once. The second serve came in on Ed's hands. He flicked his wrist at the last second and deposited the ball just over the net. Tom hustled but the ball died, bouncing again before he got to it. They traded points and games. Ed's serve was careful and reliable, his returns determined and vigorous. She liked the way he whipped his racket across his chest, dismissing offerings with sudden ferocity. He tucked the ball into corners and moved it around the court. Tom won the set, but Ed made the contest closer than anyone in their circle had.

They walked back to the Cudahys' to shower and change. She had one hand in Ed's, while the other held down the hem of Marie's mod minidress. On the court she'd felt protected by all the activity, but off the court she felt almost naked in it. Ed looked terrific in Tom's spare whites, as if he was born to wear them.

"When did you get so good at tennis?"

"I'm not that good."

"You looked pretty good to me."

He bounced a ball as he walked. "I cleaned up trash one summer in Prospect Park. I stuck around after work a few times and played at the Tennis House. I was always running after shots, trying to catch up to them. There was a pro who gave me some free advice. 'Go where you think the ball's going,' he said. 'Beat it there.' "

"I have a good strategy too," she said. "I don't move at all. I let it go past me to you."

He laughed. "I noticed."

"I'm flat-footed."

The smell of honeysuckle wafted up at them from a garden. Ed put the ball in his pocket. "Well, we can't exactly have you sweating through this white dress." He pulled her to him and gave her hip a squeeze. "This little white dress." They took a few stumbling steps together. "It just wouldn't be decent."

"The term is tennis whites, Tarzan," she said, shoving him playfully.

"And they're very proper. So behave yourself."

Tom was walking ahead with Marie, his racket slung at his shoulder like a foxhunter's spent rifle. His clothes were casually disheveled, his shirttail hanging out in a way that suggested he'd never had to worry about money, but Eileen knew he was wearing a costume, trying to blend in. He worked for J. P. Morgan, but he was from Sunnyside, his father was a laborer like hers, and Fordham was Fordham, but it wasn't Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.

When the waiter came over, Tom wrinkled his nose up and pointed at something on the wine list, and she knew it was because he didn't want to mispronounce the name. He ordered for the table without asking what anyone wanted to eat. Ed gave her hand a little squeeze, and it felt like a pulse passed between them. For a moment she knew exactly what he was thinking, not just about Tom, but about her, and himself, and all of life, and she liked the way he saw things. She could spend her life tuning into the calming frequency of his thoughts.

Excerpted from We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. Copyright © 2014 by Matthew Thomas. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.