Oh, yeah, Rose couldn’t make it between the break room and her windowless office without getting propositioned by a movie star who wanted to be one of her many boyfriends. “Completely serious,” she drawled, covering the hurt with sarcasm. “Give him my number.”
He did not appear reassured. “Well…monogamy is not the hill I want to die on. I guess…we can talk about that too? I’ll get my head around it. Eventually.”
It took her a moment to process that she might have accidentally tripped into some current drama with Tom’s relationship with Boyd. Oh shit. Rose had no idea how people handled open relationships, never having voluntarily been in one, and she was the last person Tom ought to be taking advice from on the subject. She started looking for the exit.
His eyebrows gathered unhappily. “I know that face. What did I say? Babe, I get that this shit is complicated, but it only works if we agree on what we want. What do you want for us?”
Us? Usas in her and Tom?
Her ex-husband patiently watched her, as present and earnest as she’d ever ripped her heart to shreds wishing for before their marriage ended, and it only then snapped into focus that Tom really did think there would be anusinvolving the two of them in some configuration at the conclusion of this trip, notwithstanding his preexisting relationship with Boyd Kellagher.
Now approaching panic, Rose was prepared to fake an asthma attack to get out of the conversation, but as though sent by angels above, Sloane came clattering down the endangered redwood stairs, crowned with her boyfriend’s admiral’s hat and sporting a knit bikini under a stolen Mandarin Oriental robe.
“There you are!” she crowed. “Everyone’s getting in the hot tub on the top deck. Everyone’s getting stock tips.Youget a stock tip, andyouget a stock tip, andyouget a deferred prosecution agreement if you turn them in for insider trading. Are you coming?”
Rose shot her a silent plea for assistance, telepathing as hard as she’d ever done in her life that she needed a rescue.
“Thanks, but I was just going to keep Rosie company while she works,” Tom said, crossing a foot over his knee and adopting a patient posture.
Sloane looked back and forth between the two of them. She made a dramatic pout at Rose, who imagined Sloane didn’t care to be the only woman in a hot tub full of billionaire bros. Rose put her palms together in supplication beneath the table.
“I guess…if Rose needs to work,” Sloane said slowly, corners of her mouth turning down. “Then maybe we should give her a little space.”
Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m pretty sure that was one of the things I did wrong last time.”
“Not at all,” Rose lied through her teeth. If he’d comfortably ignored her for more than eleven years, he could give her some time right now, when she actually needed it. “Go have fun. Entertain our hosts. Sloane was just mentioning that she loves show tunes.”
“Idooo. Can you sing anything fromCats?” Sloane asked excitedly. “I love basically anything Andrew Lloyd Webber.” She winked at Rose, grabbed Tom by the upper arm, and paused with her fingers pressed into the muscle. She mouthedOh my God, and Rose died a little inside. When Sloane recovered, she hauled Tom to his reluctant feet. “Just let me know when you want him back.”
6
The yacht dropped the two of them off just before sunset in Oak Bluffs, on the northern tip of Martha’s Vineyard. It was quiet and empty. The last snow was mostly melted, leaving the rocky cliffs brown and bare around darkened houses. Rosie coughed in the wet air, hand automatically smoothing over the inhaler in her purse.
“I’m not sick. It’s just the humidity,” she explained apologetically.
Tom knew that already.Rosie, it’s me, he wanted to tell her.
He wouldn’t have thought it was possible on a boat that only had three decks, but she’d managed to avoid him for the entire trip. He’d spooked her badly, and he didn’t understand how. Had she not spent the last decade the same way he had, wondering how things had gone so wrong, wishing there were some way to make them right again?
But Rosie only mumbled a request that he stay with their bags before scurrying away down the block to the car rental shop.
Maybe he’d approached this from the wrong direction. There was no reason they had to start with some big relationship-defining discussion. If Rosie wanted to start on the scene where they held each other and cried, or even on the make-up sex, that might put her in a better mood than she seemed to be in now. Tom resolved to keep things lighter for a while. She was lovely today, in a floaty blouse over a knit skirt and tights, all of it hugging her curves. Rosie always looked nice to touch, but the cling of the fabric made his palms ache to press themselves against her.
She returned with a small four-door Honda sedan.
“We were supposed to have a pickup truck,” she said, half in annoyance and half in apology. “For the construction stuff. But I guess they move a lot of the rental cars off the island for winter.”
She fiddled with the radio, drawing mostly static and commercials as she hunted for music.
“Do you want to play Three Songs?” Tom asked, attempting his most appealing and least intimidating grin. It was her favorite car game.
Rose sawed her lower lip over her upper teeth, worried blue eyes darting his way before answering. “No, thank you. I think there’s an NPR station.”
NPR was in the middle of a long-form feature story about a scientist with scleroderma who had identified a new species of tube worm in her backyard. Somehow the story was also about grief and the history of Casimir Pulaski Day. Tom didn’t doubt its literary merit, but he thought Rosie would have reallyappreciated winning a few games of Three Songs more. He had a lot of sets saved up for her.
There was little conversation as they drove to the inn, half an hour up-island. The last time they were here, on their honeymoon, they’d both been too young to rent a car. They’d hitchhiked from Edgartown with a vacationing family of five, and Tom had to sit on top of the suitcases in the luggage compartment, the two of them giggling and holding hands across the seat backs.
Do you remember when we were in love, Rosie?
