Shelly laughed too and explained to Jade, “My mom’s prone to day drinking and dialing.” She shrugged, and pressed theignore callbutton, while Jade gathered two books and a notebook she didn’t need and slunk out of the room. Make yourself invisible, Jade. Ask nothing of anyone.
Nicola
Three days after the moped ride Nicola and Jack Baker have drinks at the outside bar at Mahogany Shoals, in New Harbor. The workday is over. Nicola’s workday, that is. Jack doesn’t have a workday. How’s he fill his time? He says he’s mostly doing physical therapy to rehab the Achilles. He tells her that he sometimes does odd jobs for David and Taylor in exchange for their hospitality.
“What kind of odd jobs?” Nicola wants to know. (Hadn’t David said they had a handyman for odd jobs? Hadn’t she made fun of him for having a handyman?)
He walks it back. “Well, maybe not exactlyjobs,” he concedes. “Not jobs so much as keeping them company. I’mveryentertaining, Nicky.”
The night before, Jack texted Nicola and asked her to meet for a drink so he could tell her a story.
WHAT KIND OF STORY?she texted back, then, feeling sassy, she added,A BEDTIME STORY?She added this??emoji, then deleted it. Too far.
NEXT TIME ON THE BEDTIME STORY, came the answer.STORY ABT YOUR NEIGHBOR.
All day an anticipatory sensation had traveled up and down Nicola’s spine, keeping her company while she cleaned out the touchtanks and greeted visitors. Already life on Block Island is more interesting than life in Providence. Earlier in the week a dead humpback whale washed up on the west side of the island, and tomorrow a group from the Institute is going out to see it.
Not only that, though. She’s been to a party with influencers! She’s having drinks outside! Somebody (somebody hot) is going to tell her a story!
“It was New York City, almost five years ago—” begins Jack, when they’re settled at the bar. Payne’s Dock reaches out into Great Salt Pond, and along it are dozens of boats.
The bartender approaches, and Jack tells Nicola, “To be continued.” The bartender has leathery skin and bright blond hair and a line of earrings marching up both her ears. “I’ll have the usual,” Jack tells the bartender with a wink (he looks like the emoji she didn’t use, but hotter) and she nods and looks at Nicola. Nicola says she needs a minute.
When the bartender has moved away Nicola says, “You have a usual drink? So not your first time here?”
“It’s not even my first time heretoday,” he admits. “I’m trying to make this my summer version of a local pub.”
“Okay,” she says. “Living the dream, are you?”
“A version of the dream,” he says.
When Nicola looks across the pond she can see Juliana’s massive home with her own (Taylor’s) small cottage beside it. Her cottage looks like a toddler sitting next to its mother, waiting for instruction. When she swivels her head in the other direction she can see, in the great distance, what she thinks is the dock at David and Taylor’s house, though the house itself is obscured by the curve of the land. She faces front once again and studies the menu, hanging over the bar.
The bartender returns and puts a drink in front of Jack. “One Dark ‘N’ Stormy for my favorite golfer,” she says.
“Why,thankyou,” he says flirtily.
She rolls her eyes at Nicola as if to say,This guy!“One for you?”
“What else is good?”
“Get the Mudslide,” Jack tells her. “They’re famous for their Mudslides here.”
“Yeah? Okay. Sure, why not. I’ll have a Mudslide.” The bartender nods and gets to work. A catalog-ready family with two blond adults and two blond children, one boy and one girl, step off a yacht. Anyway, Nicola thinks it’s a yacht. Truly she doesn’t know the difference between a yacht and a very big boat. Three young adults dock a motorboat and somebody whoops. A twentysomething in shorts and a bright pink bikini top cheers them on from land, taking pictures with an iPhone. A couple around Nicola’s parents’ age sit on one of the benches, watching all of this go on. She notices the way their fingers intertwine between them, and the way they aren’t talking but they don’t seem bored with each other either. She feels a pinprick in her heart, and that pinprick is the loss of Zachary. Is she allowed to feel the pinprick, when it was her decision to go? She hates that thoughts of Zachary have the nerve to pop up like this, unwelcome,making her feel things. Interlopers in her mind.
She’s got to get out of her own head. So she tilts it toward the boat-maybe-yacht and asks, “Who lives like this?” Rhetorical question mostly, but seriously,who lives like this?
“Lots of people.” Casually, as though he’s petting a dog that happened to sit down near him, Jack traces the inside of Nicola’s elbow with his fingers, and the sensation of pleasure she feels is almost violent. She shivers and tries not to look too closely at his lips. He has really good lips: full but not too full. Well moisturized. “Someday I’ll buy you one of those, and we’ll go off in it together.” He says this affably, nonchalantly, like he’s saying someday he’ll take her to the driving range.
“Stop,” she says, when what she really means isplease keep going.
“Stop talking? Or stop this?” He lifts his finger. She doesn’t answer and he continues tracing. Her drink arrives. The Mudslide is perfection in a disposable cup: cold and just sweet enough, with the tang of the vodka hitting the back of her throat. Almost instantly, she feels a little woozy. Lunch was a Clif Bar.
“Okay. Now, the story I’m about to tell you is what Juliana talked to me about the other night at the party.”
“The night you deserted me in the library for like an hour?” She’s teasing, a little, but she’s also still stung by the abandonment, and her third sip of Mudslide has loosened her tongue. What a lightweight she is.
He puts a finger to her lips and holds it there for an instant. (Can he justdothat? Can he just put his finger on her lips without permission?) “Yes,” he says. “And you know it wasn’t an hour.”
