“You know what, David? I don’t think I can come. I just remembered plans I have with the work peop—”
David cuts her off. “No retractions. You already said yes.” He sounds like he’s sort of joking, but also sort of not.
“I can retract if I want,” she bristles. “I am my own person, David.”
There’s a beat of silence where she can feel him figuring out which fork in the road to take. “You are,” he says. “You are your own person. But I really want you to be there. Okay? It’s important to me. After all...”
She wonders if he’s going to say,After all, you wouldn’t even be living here if not for me.
But he says, “After all, you’re my favorite cousin.”
Damn it. It gets her, the pull of the past, the nod to nostalgia. “Six,” she says, making her voice crisp and unemotional. “See you then. But I don’t need a ride from Jack. I’ll ride my bike.”
Ten minutes later David calls back and says, “I have a better plan than Jack or your bike. You can get a ride with Juliana.”
“David!You invited Juliana?Whatare you doing?” She whispers this, as though someone might hear her, even though she’s completely alone, it’s just her and Great Salt stretching out in front of her, ponding for all it’s worth.
His voice changes, becomes sharper, even clipped. “Wasn’t my idea. It was Taylor’s.”
She doesn’t ask Juliana for a ride. She’ll stick to her plan: She’ll take her bike. She’ll owe nothing to Jack, nothing to Juliana. Still, she can’t sleep Saturday night, thinking about it, twisting the different threads around and around to see what kind of knot they make. Is Taylor planning some sort of a showdown, and, if so, will Nicola beimplicated as the link between David and Juliana? And how did she become some pawn, stuck in the middle of all of it? She flips her body over, flips her pillow over, flips them both back so that she’s right back where she started.
The thought she’s left with as she finally drifts off to sleep, way later than she meant to, is about another Taylor, Taylor Swift, who, she read somewhere, is still andwill always bethe girl whose friends once lied and said they weren’t free to go to the mall and then went to the mall, together, without her. Taylor saw them there—she was with her mom. Deep down, Nicola thinks, we’re all still walking around with our earliest wounds just under the surface, scared of being re-cut at any time. What are Taylor Buchanan’s wounds? What are Juliana’s?
The best part of the night, Nicola discovers upon her arrival, is that David and Taylor are serving gin and tonics, and they’re strong, and they come fast. She hasn’t been to David and Taylor’s since she babysat for Felicity. Cocktail hour takes place on the patio where they ate the first night Nicola was there. Caroline, with the same pinned-up braids, the same no-nonsense attitude, brings out a charcuterie board. Nicola tries to catch Caroline’s eye, desperate for some sort of connection, a hook onto which she can hang her discomfort. She wants to say,It’s me! Hi! I’m the normal one!
Caroline, intent on her tasks, doesn’t look up.
If the best part is the gin and tonics, the worst part is that besides David, Taylor, Juliana, and Jack—already enough to make the Cup of Awkward runneth over—there is a fifth guest, and that guest is the woman from the bathroom line at the last party, who is also the woman Nicola saw with Jack at the end of the party.
That’s right, it’s Just My Luck, in the flesh.
Oh, comeon,thinks Nicola.Seriously?She glances at Jack and, reflecting on the fact the bike ride was not a great idea, grabs a cocktail napkin and tries surreptitiously to wipe at the sweat that has collected around her collarbone. Even being quite generous withthe euphemism, she’s not glowing. Jack smiles at Nicola. She looks away. How dare he. She looks back. He smiles again, even more charmingly. She grimaces and turns steadfastly, finally, in the other direction. No.
David introduces Just My Luck; her name is Shelly Salazar, and she’s doing some PR for Buchanan Enterprises.
“We’ve met,” says Nicola.
“She’s doing PR for me too,” Juliana says hastily, and Nicola watches as Taylor arches an eyebrow. Nobody, she will reflect later in life, when she’s seen all kinds of eyebrows arched in all kinds of ways, can quite arch an eyebrow the way Taylor did that night in her beautiful home on Block Island, on what was up to that point one of the last unsullied nights of the summer.
“Juliana and I went to college together,” says Shelly. “Go Eagles!” Then, “Till the echoes ring again!” which Nicola supposes is code for something. Nicola turns to Juliana, surprised she never mentioned that she had a college friend on the island. “We just ran into each other one day, back in June,” says Shelly. “It was crazy!”
“We weren’t really close friends in college,” Juliana hastens to explain. “More like acquaintances.” She looks beseechingly at Nicola.
“We lived on the same hall freshman year!” says Shelly. “I’d say we were pretty close.” Shelly seems like the type of person who drinks too fast at the beginning of a party. And also at the end of a party, and probably in the middle too. Nicola glances again at Jack, and feels her face grow warm with the humiliation of remembering Jack and Shelly on the couch at Juliana’s. It’s extra humiliating that Jack doesn’t seem to think there’s anything strange about any of this.
Juliana says, “It’s more that you were friends with my roommate.” She looks more and more miserable as every second ticks by.Be careful what you wish for,Nicola wants to tell her.You asked for this dinner, remember? You wanted it! And now here you are. Here you are, and what the hell, Juliana, are you going to do with it?
“Same difference,” says Shelly. Is she staring longingly at Jack,or does she just have the sort of eyes that always look like they’re longing?
The seating arrangements don’t help, or maybe they do. David and Taylor each at an end of the table. Juliana and Shelly on one side, and Jack and Nicola on the other side. Juliana and Shelly get the water view; Nicola and Jack are facing the house, their backs to the water. In the pool, a giant swan float glides majestically by, urged on by a very slight breeze.
The salad course is a twist on a Greek salad. Why, Nicola wonders, must everything in this world be a twist on something else? Why can’t anything justbe?
“What sort of PR have you been doing for LookBook?” Nicola asks Shelly. She feels as unhappy as Juliana looks, but she’s excellent at small talk, and she tells herself to buck up and small talk the hell out of everyone else.
(The twist, it turns out, is that the salad is served on oblong slices of whipped-feta toast.)
Juliana answers for Shelly. “So many things! She really elevated the last few parties.”
