“Oh,” I said. “Sorry, I’ve been spending too much time with Tyler. He thinks my clothes are ridiculous.”
Danny took a long sip of his drink. “Well, I think Tyler is ridiculous.”
I nodded in agreement, then proceeded to tell him about the entire storage closet debacle, start to finish, as piece after piece of fish—red, orange, pink, white—appeared and disappeared before us. I kept waiting for him to crack a smile, offer a laugh, or ask a follow-up question, but instead, he cleared his throat and tightened his grip on my knee.
“Can we,” he said, “maybe talk about anything other than Tyler?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry, just venting. Work stuff.”
“Yeah, well, the guy’s a total loser. And dying to fuck you.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s that. He’s just—”
“Of course it’s that.” Danny pushed his hand a little higher up my thigh. “I mean, look at you. What else could it be?”
Tyler texted me a few minutes after midnight, just when I was about to fall asleep.
I’mreally sorryabout earlier, he wrote.
I rolled over and curled my body around my phone.That’s okay. Iactually thoughtit was kind of cute.
Yeah?he wrote.
Yeah,I wrote.
His text bubble came and went, came and went. I scrunched my nose and closed my eyes. When I opened them, this:As your friend, though, Katie, I have to say, you’ve got the absolute worst taste in men.
I laughed out loud. Danny stirred, pulling me into him, muttering about real estate transfer laws. I carefully slid his bare arms off me and replied,Tell me about it.
The car ride to Meredith’s the following morning was mostly business. We talked through the outline, compared notes on a few books from our Hamptons-inspired required reading list, and stayed quiet as the Long Island Expressway whirled through Melville and Dix Hills, north stars of our hometown. Tyler looked slightly more presentable today: a short-sleeved gray henley anda pair of faded blue jeans. He’d also brought me a cup of coffee from his model-swarmed coffee shop, which, he assured me when pressed, he’d only poisoned a little.
By the time Fowler Street was dissolving into that same private drive—ocean air, sky-high hedges, and the incessant sound of leaves being blown around—everything was dripping in perfect morning light. We continued on and on until, finally,whoosh, the gates to Meredith’s estate swung open.
She was waiting for us, cat in one hand, a bundle of hydrangeas in the other, their just-picked stems still covered in earth. She waved Maurice off as we hopped out of the back seat, smoothing out our clothes as the low, brilliant sun beamed in our eyes. We took off our sunglasses anyway.
“Meredith, hi,” I said, squinting. “Thanks again for having us. I—”
“The outline, please.”
“Oh, it’s... it’s on my computer,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. Tyler put his hands in his pockets. I swallowed.
“I need to feel it,” she said. “Paper. Ink.”
“We, uh—We can print it,” Tyler said. “Can we use your printer?”
“I don’t have a printer,” she said.
We stood there, mouths slightly open.
“Um, okay,” Tyler said. There was a little sweat on his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “We’ll go print it, then. We can find somewhere. Is there a FedEx around here?”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t know,” she said, and then she stepped inside her house and, without another word, slammed the door.
“What the fuck?” Tyler said, very quietly. His hands were on his head, and he was walking around in these little semicircles, stammering. “I mean, I—”
“We just have to print it,” I said to nobody in particular. “We have to print it. We’ll find a FedEx, like you said. It’ll be fine. We’ll print it, and we’ll come back here, and everything will be fine.”
