Allison met her new local friends when she went out on July Fourth, the day before. Should Juliana have asked Allison where she was going? No. Juliana is not her mother. She’s far too young to be Allison’s mother, and probably too old to be her big sister—there are eight years separating them. She’s happy that Allison is having fun. Their workdays are stressful and busy. There’s so much prep to do for the road show, when Juliana will travel around the country and meet with potential investment banks. She’ll visit eight cities in six days, and she’ll pitch the story of LookBook again and again and again, while the banks decide if they’ll put orders in the books. Before the road show comes the regulatory process, and thevaluation, and beforethatcomes the constant monitoring of similar public companies, to see how they’re faring in the market.
Juliana is tired just thinking about it, but she’s energized too. This is the same kind of energy she used to feel at college, especially as a freshman, especially in her Portico class, the first-year multidisciplinary business class, which opened her eyes wider than they’d ever opened in her life. She learned then the connection between doing well and doing good; the philosophical foundations of business; the importance of reflection. She’d worked so hard. She’s been working ever since, always grinding, always reaching, never taking a step back. And it’s about to pay off. Once LookBook goes public she’s going to have access to more financial stability than she’s ever dreamed of.
And now there’s David. She’d been so scared walking over to Nicola’s house. But the world kept turning, as it does, and she just kept moving, as she always did. Eventually the door from the kitchen to the patio opened, and there was David, looking as he’d looked nearly five years ago, with some small additions, like little crinkles around his eyes when he smiled. More substance in the neck, in the shoulders, but also almost exactly the same. Now she knows. She knows that David isn’t happy with Taylor. She knows she didn’t make any of this up: what they both felt that night was real and true. Taylor doesn’t care about David or his thoughts and passions, about his inner life. She never has. Look what she’s done to David’s dream of race car driving: He’d presented it to her, holding it carefully like it was made of crystal. And she’d knocked it to the floor. Shattered it! She treated David like a bit player in her life. In Juliana’s, he’ll be a costar.
It’s a lot of emotion for four days. Happiness—real, true happiness—is so close she can almost touch it. She has to be patient; she has to be careful. She can do that. She’s made it through 100 percent of her bad days so far. Just. Keep. Moving.
Right now, though, for just a moment, she’s remembering howto reflect. The moon is entirely invisible: it’s a new moon. The opposite of a full moon. It’s a little creepy sitting out here on her dock in total darkness, but not creepy enough that Juliana does anything about it. Where she came from, darkness could be dangerous. Here, as long as she stays away from the water, it’s safe. If she needs a light, she can use the flashlight on her phone, or turn on one of the battery-operated lanterns placed (tastefully) around the seating area by the decorator. But she doesn’t do that, not yet, because there’s also another light she can see: the green light at the end of David’s dock.
Someone is coming toward her down her own long, black dock. Juliana sucks in her breath, positive she’s about to get murdered. It would be an easy job: all the murderer would have to do would be to push her into the water and step back. One murder, done.
Now she does turn on the flashlight on her phone, angling it toward the murderer, hoping to blind him into submission. Then she hears, “Hey hey!” A familiar voice.
“Shelly?” What is Shelly doing here? Juliana sighs and switches on one of the lanterns.
“There you are! I’ve been lookingeverywhere. I don’t even know what happened! I went to the bathroom, and I gotso tiredso I lay down to take a tiny nap in the tub, really just a catnap. I mean, I closed my eyes not even for a second, and when I woke up everyone was all gone.”
Juliana rolls her eyes. This means that Shelly ventured to the second floor, or even the third floor; there are no bathtubs on the first floor. She hopes she didn’t leave anything personal in easy reach in her bedroom. She wouldn’t put a little snoop past Shelly.
“All gone,” repeats Shelly. She palms-ups her hands, sounding exactly like a bemused toddler whose ice cream slipped off the cone.
“Right,” says Juliana. “Maybe it was a little longer than a catnap. The party’s over. There’s a noise ordinance, you know. We have to shut things down at elevenp.m.”
“Ihatewhen parties are over,” says Shelly. “It’s the worst part ofthe night.” She slumps in the love seat, looking forlorn. Then she perks up and says, “Oh, but guess what? I think I fell in love tonight.”
“Yeah?” Not a shock. Shelly fell in and out love with lightning speed in college. It’s an irritating habit, but it’s also somewhat endearing. Shelly is so—what is it? She’s soopento the possibilities in the world. She’s guileless. She’s hopeful.
Because this isn’t her first experience with Besotted Shelly, Juliana knows the next line in the script. She asks, “Who’d you fall in love with?” She thinks about turning on another lantern but decides to keep the atmosphere as it is. The waters of Great Salt are still and quiet, and occasionally the cry of a night bird reaches them. Crickets too. There are all kinds of lovely sounds that come out when the lights go off. This is not how it was where she grew up; sirens were the crickets of her childhood summers.
“Jack Baker.” Shelly sighs. “The guy I mentioned to you before, who’s staying with the Buchanans. Do you know him? I mean, did you invite him? Or is he one of those people who just showed up?”
“Hmm,” says Juliana, playing it cool. She’s not going to tell Shelly about why she knows Jack Baker, and his connection to David, or, for that matter, Juliana’s connection to David, or Jack’s connection to Nicola. Shelly claims to be a vault, but what she really is is a sieve. “Isn’t he a tennis player or something?” Sure, it’s dark, but even in the daylight Juliana’s poker face is top-notch.
“Golfer,” says Shelly dreamily.
“Oh, right.”
“Who knew golfers were so hot?”
“Not me!”
“I just felt like—God, I just felt like our sexual chemistry wastangible,you know? Visible. I’m sure it was visible.” Shelly might have caught the lantern-lit look of horror on Juliana’s face because she hastens to add, “We weren’tdoinganything. We were just talking. But likeveryintimately.” After a pause Shelly says, “Is he seeing anyone, do you know?” Shelly shifts her body into prone position, rearranging the pillows so that her head is protected from the love seat’s arm.
Juliana coughs, feels around inside the moral quandary—and settles on a nebulous “I’m not sure?”
“Well, ifIhave anything to do with it, the person he’ll be seeing is this girl right here.” Shelly motions to her chest with both thumbs.
They say that Block Island has no native predators, Juliana thinks, but looking at Shelly now she might disagree.
“Be careful,” says Juliana.
Shelly stretches out. “Careful? Why?”
“No reason,” says Juliana. “Just—it’s always a good idea to be careful.”
Shelly unleashes a massive yawn. “Well,” she says. “I’ll be a tiny bit careful. But not too careful. Careful isn’t really my specialty.”
Facts, thinks Juliana.
