“You can’t redo the past,” she says, as gently as she can.
Juliana looks absolutely stricken. “Of course you can!”
“Juliana! Stop. Get ahold of yourself. You’re not thinking straight. You’re not making sense.”
She blinks slowly, then squints at Nicola as though she’s said something in a foreign language. “But he doesn’t love her,” she said.
Nicola is so exasperated she can no longer pretend to be anything else. “How do you know?”
“He told me. He told me that tonight. And she doesn’t love him! Do you know...” She lowers her voice, although they are the only two people in the kitchen. “Do you know she’s having anaffair?”
“How do you know that?”
“David told me.”
“David knows?”
“Please, Nicola? Just get me invited to dinner. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Again Nicola has the floating balloon feeling. She wants out of the conversation, out of the party, out of all of the situations in which she’s become entangled this summer.
She says, “I can’t do that, Juliana.”
The clock strikes midnight.
Okay, nothing strikes. But the numbers on Nicolas’s phone, glowing next to her on the island, gleam. She says her goodbyes and goes home.
But. Not before she sees, as she’s about to cross the lawn, that not everybody has left the party after all—there’s a couple sittingvery close togetheron the same couch where she’d sat with Taylor not so long ago. The man is facing away from her, and he’s in the shadows, but she recognizes the woman, from the bathroom line.The one with the streaky hair, the one who needed a tampon. Just My Luck.
Nicola tries to skulk past them—she’s not about to interrupt a canoodling couple. But she trips on the lip of the patio and puts a hand out to steady herself on a nearby table.
Which wobbles enough to make a noise.
Which causes both parts of the couple to look at her.
Which is how she knows that the other half of the couple is Jack Baker.
She says, “Jack?”
“Hey, Nicola,” says Jack easily.
“I thought you weren’t coming back tonight.” She hates how she sounds, shrewish and demanding. But he said! And she kept checking her phone like an idiot!
“Got back early,” he says. “Decided to pop over.”
“Jack? Who’s this?” says Just My Luck. She sounds the way Nicola feels, which isn’t a great sign. She sounds self-righteous and put-upon and a little tipsy and a little possessive too.
“Nicola, Shelly. Shelly, Nicola.” Jack Baker smiles. He might have been introducing two business associates at a lunch, so unbothered does he seem by the situation.
They stare at each other, Just My Luck and Nicola, until Just My Luck says, “Thisis the girl you’ve been seeing?”
God, Nicola feels stupid. Stupid as she walks as fast as she can across the grass to the safety of her cottage. Stupid as she brushes her teeth in the almost-dark, not wanting to turn on the bathroom lights fully so she can spare herself the shame on her own face. Stupid as she crawls into bed, pointedly choosing a T-shirt other than the whale, and stupid as she lies awake for longer than she wants to, wishing, not in a serious way, of course, but still in a way that will haunt her later, that something tragic will befall the whole bunch of them, everyone at that party, those who are rich or want to be richand those who are in love with themselves at the expense of everyone else and also in love with chaos, but most of all those who are careless, careless, careless.
Host:Welcome back toLife and Death on an Island, episode two. Listeners, if you’re enjoying this podcast, please remember to rate it, or, better yet, leave us a review. And remember, order today from our gold sponsor, Mattress Queen, and our silver sponsor, Buddha Bowls 2 U, Buddha bowls delivered fresh right to your door, ready to eat or freeze.
Lou:Can I ask you something? What’s a Buddha bowl, anyway?
Kelsey:Not relevant, Lou.
