5
People started showing up at August House around nine that night, wandering over in twos and threes; by ten-thirty the yard was full to bursting, the overflow trickling down the wooden staircase and onto the beach. Jasper was known around Bartley for throwing a pretty good party—Drinkin’ for Lincoln in February, Last Gasp every spring—and clearly his reputation had followed him to the Vineyard. “Do we need to be worried about your neighbors?” I asked, watching with some interest as he pulled two giant handles of vodka out of the Sub-Zero.
Jasper blinked. “Worried about my neighbors doing what?” he asked.
I thought of Mrs. Le back in Eastie banging on the ceiling if I played video games too loud. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m gonna get a beer.”
I dug one out of the cooler on the patio and looked out at the crowded yard. Eliza was sitting in the hammock with Doc, I noted grimly, the two of them talking with their heads bent close together. Aidy the waitress had shown up after all—she’d broughta couple of friends with her, all of them tequila-drunk and laughing in the deep end. Jasper had made a beeline in their direction, hopping into the water and slinging a slightly-more-than-friendly arm around Aidy’s neck. A pretty girl in a bright red bikini looked like she was trying to keep Wells’s attention over on the patio, but he didn’t seem particularly interested; at one point I caught him sneaking a glance at the clock on his phone, like possibly he was waiting for her to finish talking so he could go watch the newest episode of his favorite nighttime soap in real time.
The night blurred by, the smell of weed and chlorine, the bass from the outdoor speakers reverberating down my spine. Around eleven-thirty I went inside to pee and passed Eliza lying on the couch in the library with her ankles crossed, almost at the end of her Joan Didion book. “What are you doing in here?” I asked from the doorway.
Eliza shrugged into the throw pillows. She was wearing a white eyelet sundress that skimmed her smooth, tan knees, her hair loose and wavy to her shoulders. “Hiding,” she said.
“Fair enough.” I nodded at her book. “Should I leave you toit?”
“Nah,” she said, sitting up and tucking her feet underneath her. “You’re acceptable.” She made a face. “Jasper’s been throwing these tasteful little gatherings all summer like he thinks it’s the last days of Rome or something. And I kind of hate parties to begin with, honestly.”
“Really?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
Eliza smiled. “I’m a very good actress.”
I remembered what she’d said last night, about the toll thissummer had taken on all of them; still, I didn’t press her, taking a sip of my beer and leaning back against the bookshelves. The library seemed like the kind of place Teddy Roosevelt might smoke a cigar after dinner, with a deep leather sofa and two green velvet chairs. There was a piano in one corner, a baby grand with a stack of old music books on the bench. “Can you play?” I asked.
“Of course I can play,” she said. “What am I, a hobo?” She shook her head. “I’m kidding. But yeah, we all took lessons. My mom is old-fashioned about that kind of thing. She had to do it, so I have to do it, et cetera.”
Mrs. Kendrick hadn’t struck me as old-fashioned, but I could see what Eliza meant as I looked around the library: the classics and prizewinners on the bookshelves, the abstract art on the walls. A thing about August House was how weirdly timeless it felt, like you might at any moment look up and realize you’d accidentally traveled back to the thirties or the sixties or the eighties. I kept glancing down at my phone, half expecting not to have a cell signal.
Eliza nodded at my beer then, holding one manicured hand out; I passed it over obediently, sitting down on the sofa beside her. “When do you leave for France?” I asked. She was going to Paris for her fall semester, she’d told me last night, to live with a host family in the 12th arrondissement.
She took a sip of the beer, the muscles in her throat moving as she swallowed. “Not until the third week of September,” she said.
“And you’ll just hang out here until then?”
“I might,” she allowed, her fingers brushing mine as she passed the bottle back. “Unless a better offer comes along.”
“What’s the thing you’re looking forward to most?”
“What, about being abroad?” I was expecting her to say the food or the culture, maybe make some joke about a French affair, but instead Eliza seemed to consider it for a moment. “The thing I’m looking forward to most, Linden,” she said finally, her pink lips twisting, “is being someone entirely new.” Then, before I could answer: “We should get in the hot tub,” she announced, setting her book aside and standing up on the thickly piled rug. “Do you want to get in the hot tub?”
I blinked at the conversational whiplash of it, then nodded. “I would…love to get in the hot tub,” I told her, and she laughed.
The hot tub was set into the far end of the swimming pool, steam rising off the surface of the water and curling up into the air. “Out,” Eliza said to the couple that was currently using it as their own personal Playboy grotto; she smiled, satisfied, as they hauled themselves up and out of the water, then pulled off her sundress to reveal a pale pink swimsuit and hopped in herself.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked once we’d gotten ourselves settled. I leaned back against one of the jets, trying to act like I casually sat in hot tubs with pretty girls all the time and not like Iwas concentrating extremely hard on not getting a boner, which I was. I liked her, Eliza, but even as her feet brushed mine under the water, there was a part of me that knew I also liked her life: She spoke three languages. She smelled preternaturally fresh. She gave off the subtle but unmistakable impression of ease, like as long as you were around her, you’d never need to rush for a train and there would always be a pile of fresh towels still warm from the dryer waiting for you when you got out of the shower. “You and Doc.”
Eliza gazed at me across the hot tub, something that wasn’t quite a smile playing at the very corners of her mouth. “That’s not really a question, Linden,” she pointed out wryly. “Are you jealous?”
“I—yeah,” I admitted after a moment, ducking my head and laughing. “A little bit.”
Eliza smiled for real this time, sliding one foot up my shin under the water. “Well,” she said, “don’t be. We messed around a couple of times last summer, but we’re just friends now.” Her foot crept up a little bit higher. “Besides, I might have just met somebody I like.”
I smiled back—and yeah, now I definitely did have a boner. “Okay.”
I was about to slide closer and kiss her when all at once Eliza straightened up, her attention snagging on something over my shoulder: “Oh, dirt,” she said, hoisting herself elegantly up out of the hot tub in one smooth movement. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
“Wait,” I said, momentarily disoriented, “what?” I took a second to admire the view of her from behind—and, okay, to readjust my sails—before scrambling out after her. I trailed her through the crowd over to the patio just in time to see Jasper push past Meredith and step between Wells and some kid I didn’t recognize.
“Holliman, dude,” Jasper was saying as we approached, lopsided smile belied by the broken-glass edge in his voice, “is there any particular reason you can’t stay on your own beach? I mean, I know ours is nicer, but fuck.”
