“The step and repeat was my idea,” Shelly says modestly. “It really helped our efforts on social. And the goodie bags!”
“I never got a goodie bag,” says Nicola. “What was in them?” She’s picturing the birthday parties of her youth, with Dum Dums and small plastic games that broke during first use.
“Curated accessories from a few of our brands,” says Juliana.
“They were for VIPs,” says Shelly regretfully.
“I’ll get you one!” says Juliana. “I’ll have Allison bring one over tomorrow.”
“That’s okay. I’m okay, thanks.” Nicola wonders how “curated accessories” would look with her BIMI polo.
“I’ve really been on the ground this summer,” says Shelly. Is it Nicola’s imagination, or does Jack clear his throat at this? “I still have a few more ideas, you know.”
Here Taylor breaks in. “That’s great.” She looks at Juliana and says, “But our public relations situation is quite delicate on the island currently. We really can’t spare too much more of Shelly this summer.” Shelly looks enormously pleased with this vote of confidence; she celebrates by draining her gin and tonic glass, just in time for the arrival of the wine. “She committed to us first, you know. Shelly, it’s my turn for a party, and I want you to help me. I need to figure out how to get to these locals.”
“You got it!” says Shelly. “I’m all yours.”
The wine is a cold, welcome Sancerre. David pours generously, and Nicola tries hard not to gulp it. Shelly has no such compunction, and she’s on her second glass by the time Caroline brings out the main course: rib eye steak with potatoes and green beans. Nicola hardly ever eats meat, but she does that night, and it’s heavenly.
But she can’t enjoy it fully, because of Jack, and because of Shelly, and because of the love triangle with Taylor, Juliana, and David at each of the points.
To take her mind off the awkwardness of the present she lets it wander into the past, landing on Zachary. Was she ever in love with Zachary? Love makes a person do crazy things—reckless things, like hijacking a dinner, maybe even a marriage and a life. She tries to imagine a world where she loves Zachary so much—where she lovesanyoneso much—that she’d sit through a meal like this, gulping expensive wine the way she and David as children guzzled lemonade on July afternoons on Pokegama Lake, just to be near the person, just to exchange the looks David and Juliana are exchanging right now.
What is going through David’s mind? she wonders. Through Taylor’s? Does Taylor know about Juliana and David, or does she merely suspect?
Is anyone else seeing these looks between Juliana and David?To Nicola they seem as hard to miss as a total solar eclipse, and yet on and on goes the conversation around them, Jack telling a story Nicola hasalready heard about the Tiburon Golf Club in Naples (“Florida, not Italy,” he says to Shelly the same way he once said it to her), Shelly reaching over for the wine bottle.
When she misses Zachary, Nicola realizes, it’s never for the smoldering emotion that she can see on David’s face, on Juliana’s. What she misses is her cold feet pressed against his warm ones in bed, or the way his mother always bought her a high-quality scented candle for Christmas. She never even lit those candles, and now she feels nostalgic for them, and guilty too. She didn’t take them with her when she left. Are they still there? Has Zachary ever lit them? Is some other woman enjoying the SANTAL 26 in medium concrete?
She suddenly feels, much to her horror, like she’s going to cry, and the more she concentrates on not crying the more she feels the tears build up behind her eyeballs, or wherever tears build up. What will shesayif these tears come out? Will she tell Taylor,I’m crying because I’ve never experienced a love as real as the one your husband feels for my neighbor?Obviously not. She blinks and allows herself a deep inhale, a slightly less deep exhale.
She wishes that she had gone to Mahogany Shoals with the people from work. Just as she’s thinking that, and wondering if she can go after dinner, Jack takes her hand under the table, resting both of their hands together on Nicola’s knee. What the actual hell? When she looks over at him, startled, he gives her one of his infuriatingly charming smiles.
Nicola cannotwaitfor this dinner to be over. She wants to peek under the table—does he have his foot tucked in between Shelly’s at the same time he has his hand on Nicola’s knee?—but she doesn’t have the stomach for a full investigation. She removes Jack’s hand from her knee and puts it back in his own lap. She can’t. She just simply cannot.
“—you guys know you were both here?” Taylor is asking Shelly when Nicola returns her attention to the conversation.
“Funny story!” says Shelly. “We were both on Clayhead Trail at the same time. I was just walking along, minding my own business, and I sensed someone beside me. I turned around, and there was Jade!”
“Jade?” says Taylor, and Nicola flashes back to Shelly clapping her hand over her mouth in the bathroom line.
Juliana shakes her head with perfect equanimity—Nicola doesn’t realize until later how much composure this takes—and says, “Shelly, they don’t know the backstory of that silly joke.”
Shelly says, “You’re right!” and grabs the wine bottle, empties it into her glass. As if by magic, a fresh bottle appears, slid onto the table by Caroline’s hand.
“I’d love to hear it,” says Taylor smoothly.
“They called me Jewel in college,’ says Juliana. “As a nickname. Juliana, Jewel. But then, because Jade is a stone used in jewelry, and I used to wear a lot of jade, it evolved.” She shrugs. “I know, it’s really dumb.”
“That’s not what I rem—” says Shelly.
“College!” Nicola breaks in. She doesn’t know what’s going on with this name thing, but she’s desperate to make the situation better for someone, even if she’s not sure for whom. (Definitely not for Shelly.)They were for VIPs.“Didn’t we all do the dumbest things?”
“I sure did!” says Shelly, merry as can be.
Taylor, Nicola notices, has eaten only half her dinner, and had no more than two sips of her wine. Jack and David are talking about something else, not paying attention to the women. Taylor smooths her hair, which is already perfectly smooth, and says, “There are a lot of coincidences in this group.”
“Oh, yeah?” says Shelly. “What else?”
