14
The next couple of days were exactly what I’d been picturing when I accepted Jasper’s invitation to the Vineyard to begin with: We swam. We drank. We dicked around. Dean dug a pit down on the beach and we did a clambake at dusk, the sun oozing down below the horizon while we sat in the sand and stuffed ourselves silly; we made s’mores over the bonfire, Eliza kissing the melted marshmallow from my bottom lip when nobody was paying attention.
My tan deepened. My ankle didn’t hurt. In fact, I didn’t think about my ankle at all, or what might happen in a few short weeks when Coach Lydell realized I couldn’t actually run worth a damn, let alone run and play championship-worthy offense at the same time. I didn’t want to go back to Boston. I didn’t want to go back to school. I wanted to stay here, blissfully relaxed, only planning as far ahead as the next meal that Birdie might bring out to the patio table or the next bathing suit that Eliza might wear.
Eliza thought Meredith needed to blow off some steam—“You’ve been living at that hospital,” she pointed out with a frown,“and it isn’t healthy”—and convinced her to come to Doc’s birthday party with us the following evening, a formal affair under a tent in Doc’s parents’ sizable backyard that necessitated borrowing a jacket from Jasper’s well-stocked closet. “Who the fuck brings six different ties on vacation?” I asked, staring into his closet with equal parts horror and fascination.
“Gentlemen, obviously.” Jasper grinned, handing one over with a flourish. “Here you go, princess. This’ll bring out your eyes.”
I was expecting the whole thing to be a country-club drag, but it was actually pretty impressive in a throwback sort of way, with an old-fashioned band in spotless white dinner jackets and tuxedoed cater waiters passing signature cocktails off silver trays. “I’m sorry, this is hisbirthdayparty?” I asked Eliza, trying not to sound too outwardly wowed; for my last birthday, back at the beginning of the summer, my mom had picked up a two-person ice cream cake at J.P. Licks on her way home from work and called it done. “Or his debutante ball?”
“Be nice,” Eliza chided, poking me in the ribs with one manicured finger before heading across the parquet dance floor to kiss Doc hello. I tried not to scowl as I watched them with their heads bent close together, unable to shake the feeling that, no matter what she said about the status of their relationship, he was a way better match for her than I ever could be: Rich. Taller, frankly. And sophisticated in a way I could only ever try to fake.
I got myself a drink and looked around at the party, trying not to think about how much Holiday would love this—the pomp and theater of it, all the potential for glamorous intrigue. I hadn’t talked to her since our awkward goodbye on the side of the roadthe other day; I’d figured she might reach out, but she hadn’t, so I hadn’t either. Not that it mattered, I reminded myself. There was nothing left here to investigate.
Meanwhile, Eliza had been right: Being out around other people did seem good for Meredith. She was more animated than I’d seen her since the night of the party at August House, sipping an Aperol Spritz through a whimsical paper straw as she turned circles on the dance floor with some girls she and Eliza knew from the beach. “Is it just me?” I asked Jasper, popping a crab puff into my mouth. “Or is Meredith, like…actually kind of fun?”
“It’s you,” Jasper assured me, stealing a cocktail shrimp off Aidy’s appetizer plate. He’d asked Doc if he could bring her at the last minute, and I couldn’t help but notice that she looked as out of place as I felt, in a dress that was one click too tight and skinny heels that sank into the grass when she walked; on her face was the expression of a person who would have been more comfortable eating a burger and fries alone in the Harvard Square T station.
“Don’t listen to him,” Eliza said, sidling up beside me with a flute of champagne, a fat pink raspberry bobbing merrily at the bottom of the glass. She was wearing a floor-length dress in a silky midnight blue, delicate straps crisscrossing up the back; all I had been able to think about all night was how it would feel to wrinkle the cool, smooth fabric in my hands. “You should go dance withher.”
“With Meredith?” I shook my head. “I…don’t dance.”
“You don’t, huh?” Eliza’s lips twisted. “Shocking.”
In the end Doc was the one who joined her, the man of the hour in a bespoke seersucker suit that should have been deeplyridiculous but somehow wasn’t. I watched as the two of them twirled around in dizzy circles, Meredith smiling the wide, genuine smile of someone who’d managed, just for a moment, to forget how bad things were outside the gilded universe of this party tent. Greg’s condition still hadn’t improved, Eliza had told me earlier; he was breathing with the help of a ventilator, hooked up to a million different machines. Imagining him lying there while the rest of us joked around eating crab legs made me feel a little sick to my stomach, so I tried not to imagine it at all.
Still, I think Eliza could sense I was distracted; she reached out and slid one finger into the belt loop of my khakis, yanking hard enough that I stumbled into her. “Yousureyou don’t dance?” she asked, stepping even closer.
“Tell you what,” I said—collecting both her hands and squeezing gently, reaching up and winding her arms around my neck. “Just this once, I might make an exception to the rule.”
I was lying on the flamingo raft the following morning, waiting for the morning sun to bleach the hangover out of me, when Eliza crept up behind me and shoved the float over with both hands, sending me sputtering into the deep end. “Sorry,” she said when I surfaced, grinning as I pushed my wet hair back off my forehead. “Just making sure you were paying attention.”
“I mean, I amnow,” I said with a laugh—taking a step closer, backing her up against the side of the pool. Over on the patio thedark, juicy stain from our game of Orange was still faintly visible, though I knew for a fact that Dean had power washed the stones twice since the day we’d played. Just for a second I thought of Macbeth, which we’d read in my English class at Bartley last semester—Out, damned spot.“I think I was sleeping.”
“I think you were too.” Eliza ducked under my arm and commandeered the raft, hopping up onto it with practiced ease and stretching her long legs out in front of her. “See?” she asked teasingly. “It’s not so bad here, once you unclench.”
“I am…definitely unclenched,” I admitted. “I can’t believe I have to leave tomorrow.”
She hummed quietly, then: “What if you didn’t?”
That got my attention; still, I tried to play it cool. “I mean,” I said with a smirk, “I think eventually when Birdie and Dean closed the pool up, it would get a little hard to breathe.”
“Cute,” Eliza said. She rolled over onto her stomach, gazing at me over the tops of her sunglasses. “You know what I mean. A couple of extra days, that’s all. You’ve got time before school starts, don’t you? And your internship is done?”
“My what? Oh yeah,” I said, catching myself just in time. “It is.” She was right, I realized as I thought about it—therewasn’tanything particularly urgent for me to get back to, at least not yet.
“So then?” Eliza raised her eyebrows. “Besides,” she pointed out, “the hurricane is supposed to hit in a couple of days.”
I frowned. “Don’t people usually try to getoffthe island when a hurricane is coming?”
“Patsies, maybe.” Eliza grinned. “Not real islanders. We’ve ridden out storms here a bunch of times before. It’s fun, actually—weboard up all the windows and stock up on food and have a fire in the fireplace.”
I was pretty sure that what she actually meant was that Birdie and Dean did all those things for them, though I had to admit it did sound kind of cozy. Still, I shook my head. “I don’t know. I feel like I should get out of your hair, with everything going on. What’s that old quote? Fish and visitors start to stink after a few days, or something?”
“You smell okay to me,” Eliza said, then surprised me by leaning down and pressing her mouth to mine. “Convinced yet?” she asked.
“Getting there,” I admitted, reaching out and running a finger along the strap of her bathing suit. “Maybe you should try again.”
