“Why?” Don’t be so shy about getting right in there, thinks Jordan.
“She thought I was too focused on my work and that she’d never be the center of my attention.”
“Was she right?”
Jordan chews her lip. “Maybe. I’m not sure.” (She was right. And Jordan still misses her every day.)
“I can’t believe your dad is selling the house! I can’t believe you have an evil stepmother!”
“I do,” says Jordan, even though she knows that’s not true or fair. “It’s very Disney-esque. She makes us sweep a lot.” Simone snorts. “That was definitely more than thirty seconds. Now, you go.”
“Okay. My parents are going to sell. They bought property on Kiawah, where the water is warmer. They stopped coming here regularly a few years ago.”
Good luck with that coastal flooding, Jordan thinks, offended on behalf of Rye. Kiawah! It’s not supposed to be easy to get in the water; you have to earn it.
“Really, I think they realized they were never going to get into the Beach Club. They would never say it, but they wereso jealousof your parents.” The Beach Club wait list is famously long, decades long, and money can’t move you up. “My partner and I just broke up. We were living in Santa Cruz. There was cheating.” Jordan tracksthe passive voice. “It got ugly. I’m living in my parents’ house while I get my yoga-and-smoothie place off the ground. It’s something I’ve wanted to do forever, so—I’m doing it. I found a little space in Portsmouth. I plan to open in September.”
Jordan should saythat’s amazing!She should sayI love yoga and smoothies and Portsmouth!But a wire trips in her brain and instead she asks, “Was the partner male or female?”
They’re walking side by side, but at this Simone stops, so Jordan stops too, and Simone gives her a long, long look. “Female,” she says finally.
For some reason that frees Jordan up to say, “That’s amazing. I love yoga and smoothies and Portsmouth.” Simone smiles.
They walk in silence the rest of the way, and then, when they are adjacent to Jordan’s house, Simone says, “That was the best summer of my life, when we were seventeen.”
“I was eighteen,” says Jordan. “Spring birthday.”
“I’m lamenting my lost youth. Are you?”
“No,” Jordan says. “I don’t lament.” She doesn’t like when people talk about their lost youth. It’s not lost, it’s simply in the past. That’s fine, that’s the normal way of things, the only constant is change, etc., etc. “I like adulthood.” She likes having money and a nice apartment and being the master of her own universe. She likes buying good bourbon and monochromatic Pilates sets and being a generous tipper and saying, “I’ll have the Seven Stones Cabernet.” She loves her job. She’s good at it!
(She used to love her job.)
(She does love her job. Just not her boss.)
“But I will say,” she adds wistfully, “life was uncomplicated then.” Before she lost Theresa and gained Bernadette; before she even knew Audrey. When she had Simone. She hadn’t lost anything yet.
“Oh, Jordan.” Simone’s smiling, but she sounds a little sad.
“What?”
“You think that, but you always made things complicated, even then.” She squeezes Jordan’s arm and Jordan’s heart skips a beat. “It’s like you’re in a permanent defensive crouch.” She laughs like this is some sort of compliment.
“No, I’m not,” says Jordan defensively.
“It’s okay. You are who you are, right?”
Jordan is stymied. She’s not sure what to say, and she can feel herself starting to bristle, so she says, “I should get back to my sisters.”
“Oh my god, yoursisters,” says Simone. “You have the best sisters. I was always so jealous of the three of you. I would have given anything for sisters! To be a Shipman girl!”
“Yeah,” says Jordan.
“Text me, okay? I have the same number.”
“I deleted it,” says Jordan. “In 2008, I deleted it.”
The skin around Simone’s sea-glass eyes crinkles when she smiles. She never wore enough sunscreen, Jordan remembers. She always wanted to be so tan.
