If David was known for anything in high school, it was for making things look easy that were not easy at all. The fact that he gotthe grades he got and the SAT scores he got and the admission to Yale he got without seeming like he was trying at all drove a lot of people in their high school crazy. The girls who never went out on the weekends because they were doing their APUSH reading and the boys who didn’t have a girlfriend until grad school. The valedictorian rejected from Harvard and Cornell. David was even-tempered and funny and never an asshole to his girlfriends (and there were alotof girlfriends) and as a result there was a constant line of girls waiting in the wings, as it were—though he drew the line at high school theater. He probably would have been good at that too. Actually, he does have a decent singing voice. They used to put on plays when they were kids, that’s how Nicola knows, all the cousins with a makeshift stage in one or another of their basements, an old sheet slung across whatever they could find, to approximate a curtain. Their best show was when they performed one of the early scenes inA Sound of Musicbecause there were enough of them to pull it off. (Nicola was Marta, if you’re wondering.)
Is she supposed to pretend David doesn’t know why he’s here? Of course Jack has already told him. She jerks her thumb behind her.
“She’s on the patio. Jack will get you a drink.”
“Cool, cool,” says David, and she sees now (because an unruffled David would never saycool, cool)that David is just as nervous as Juliana is.
Olivia Rodrigo is 100 percent right. Loveisembarrassing.
She hears ice crackle into glasses, then stop. When the door to the patio opens and closes again she decides she’s ready to brave the kitchen. Jack is alone in there, contemplating the drink choices. “Ready for one now?” he asks. Out the kitchen window, Nicola can see David and Juliana sitting far apart from each other, each holding a drink, each looking toward the water.
“I don’t know if I can go sit out there with them,” she says. “It feels like, I don’t know, like walking in in the middle of someone’s dream or something.”
In an instant Jack’s hand is on the small of her back, his lips on her ear. “Then let’s get out of here,” he says.
Don’t melt, she tells herself sternly, as she starts to melt. “Shouldn’t we stay? We’re the hosts.”
“Wedefinitelyshouldn’t stay. Let’s go for a drive.”
Jack has David’s Tesla; next to it is David’s Porsche. In Juliana’s driveway Nicola can see the Audi. What the exact hell? she thinks. How am I the only person in this scenario without a luxury car—nay, any car?
“Where to?” Jack asks her.
“Let’s go out Corn Neck, all the way to the end.”
Nicola loves this drive, past all the best swimming beaches, Crescent and Scotch and Mansion (where there used to be an actual mansion, she has learned), then the entrance to Clayhead, then the hidden gems of houses on their right, beautiful and remote, with Sachem Pond to the left.
They park and walk out on the rocks; Nicola points out where the seals sometimes gather and she tells him about the rescues she’s heard about. “Not that I want a seal to need rescuing,” she explains. “But if one does, I really hope I get to see it.” She goes on about the seals for what might be a few beats too long, so she checks Jack’s face for signs of boredom.
“Sorry,” she says. “Am I talking too much?”
“Never,” says Jack. “I’m hanging on your every word.” She can’t tell if he’s kidding or not. Zachary told her, two years into their relationship, that she was overly chatty in the mornings; he’s an only child, and in Nicola’s house you basically woke up talking if you wanted your voice to be heard. Ever since then she’s been insecure.
She told Jack she’d just come out of a long relationship the night after Payne’s, but does he want to know more? Does Jack want to share anything about his romantic past? It must be extensive—he’s too hot for it not to be. She turns over the question for a while inher mind, looking out at the water, feeling how the ocean calms her, brings her peace.
“Who was the last person you dated?” she ventures eventually. Probably some beautiful golfer who knows how to pull off wearing a visor and has amazing calves.
His smile is mysterious. “I live in the present, Nicky.” He touches her cheek with two fingers and she shivers. “Only in the present.”
“Smart,” she says, even though she’s a little stung by the rebuff. A seal’s head appears, then another, then another, and she points them out to Jack. Does he appreciate the seals as much as she does? Does it matter if he doesn’t?
After a time Jack peers at the sky, then looks at his watch. “Should we get back before the sun sets?”
“I guess,” she says, trying not to sound sulky, though she’s feeling it—sulky that he won’t tell her more, sulky that he can leave this secluded place so easily, sulky that he has a power over her that he hasn’t earned and she hasn’t asked for.
By the time they get back it’s getting dark, and at first Nicola can’t make out the figures on the patio. Then her eyes adjust to the dim light and she sees that David and Juliana have pulled their chairs close together. They’re talking intently. Every trace of awkwardness is gone, as though it’s been sucked by a giant vacuum into Great Salt Pond. When David and Juliana hear Jack and Nicola approach they look up, startled, and rise from their chairs.
“Oh, hey. We were waiting to say goodbye. I’m going to show David my house,” says Juliana. “Thank you for having us over.”
David and Jack do a complicated male handshake/fist bump thing, and while they’re doing that Juliana leans toward Nicola, hugs her, and repeats, in a whisper, “Thank you.”
What have I done? Nicola starts to think as she watches them walk across the grass, now almost obscured by darkness. But then Jack’s lips are on hers again, and she forgets to wonder.
July
Juliana
The best part of a party, thinks Juliana, is when it’s over—when the quiet is so thick you can take a bite out of it. Everyone is gone now: the caterers, the DJ, the bartender. Even Allison, who got invited to an after-party with a couple of locals. What is the point of an after-party? Juliana has never understood this, just as she’s never understood the point of a pre-party or a pre-game. The students at BC loved their pre-gaming! They couldn’t get enough of it. You didn’t even need a game in order to pre-game. You could pre-game a party, or a dance, or a trip into downtown Boston. You could pre-game a pre-game.
