May had her laptop open on the kitchen island, staring at the screen in frustration. She had been searching for information about the missing man since Kelsey had driven off, but to no avail. Even with the benefit of the area code from the flyer, which covered the entire state of Rhode Island, the name was simply too common, and every online search she tried seemed to bring up a hundred different David Smiths.
“Total waste of time,” May said as she sat back on her stool and crossed her arms.
Lauren was picking at the cinnamon roll, shaking her head with disapproval. “Will you please just give this up? You are not going to find that man in a sea of a million people with the same name, and even if you did, what exactly do you expect to learn? You’re going to play Sherlock Holmes from a computer and figure out where he is? He obviously has someone looking for him. And if he’s wearing Gucci sneakers, they probably have the resources to find him without your help, May. This isn’t your job.”
May typed in another search: David Smith Rhode Island wealthy. Among the hits were a quote from someone named David Smith who said that “art isn’t made for the wealthy,” a statement from a Rhode Island state senator that the wealthy needed to pay their fair share, and a wealth manager named David Smith. She clicked on the wealth management firm’s website, but the picture wasn’t a match. “Not our David Smith,” she reported.
“He is most definitely not ours, May. You’re letting that crime-obsessed imagination of yours go wild. The note was just a joke. I’m sure they laughed it off and threw it away. Think about it.”
“But what if you were actually right? What if he really was cheating, and that note made his girlfriend check his phone or whatever? That’s exactly the kind of fight that can set off domestic violence.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that.” Lauren sighed, wiping her fingertips on a paper napkin. “But think, May. If he wasn’t cheating, there’s no way an anonymous note is going to lead to a fight like the kind you’re talking about. He’d show her his phone or do whatever he needed to convince her the note was a prank. Will you give me that?”
May nodded reluctantly.
“And if he was actually cheating, the police who are looking for this man will find that out. They’ll read his texts. All his emails. Check out his dating profiles or whatever. It always comes out once the police start to look. Aren’t I right about that?”
May conceded that point as well.
“And they’re also going to find out where this man was going. They’ll ping his phone or whatever voodoo they do. He’s probably paying for stuff on a credit card. Isn’t that what the police will do?”
May had to admit that everything Lauren was saying was true and led to an inevitable conclusion. “Yes,” she conceded, “which means that we really can’t tell them anything they won’t find out on their own.”
Lauren had been nodding along as she spoke. “So we’re good now?” Her face fell when May hesitated.
“There could be cameras on Main Street, though. What if they see Kelsey leaving that note there? And if there’s footage of us getting back into the car, it’s Josh’s license plate.”
“Then they’ll trace the plate, Kelsey will have to tell them about her little prank, and you won’t have anything to do with it. But there’s no need to call attention to it for now.” When May said nothing more, Lauren walked around the island and gave her a quick hug. “We’re on the same page?”
“Yeah,” May said, nodding in agreement.
“And I’m sorry for what I said about you being a DA and the police and all of that. It was a lot.”
“No, I appreciate when you share those things with me. It’s important.”
They were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. “We’re here!” There wasn’t a hint of tension in Kelsey’s voice, let alone any indication that she had run off with May’s keys and cell phone.
It had been almost eight years since May had last seen Nate, and she hadn’t been sure what to expect. As he stepped through the door, backpack slung over one shoulder, she noted the spray of gray at his temples and a few fine lines around his eyes, but those eyes were still dark and intense, and he had a jawline that could cut glass.
Now that she was seeing him again in person, the stark differences between Josh and Nate were even more obvious. The dark hair and medium build were about the only similarities. Where Josh’s energy was laid-back and goofy, Nate had always been a bit edgier—an adult version of the boy you’d cut class for to smoke cigarettes behind the gas station.
“You look good, Hanover.” She felt a tingle at the nape of her neck as he pulled her into a hug, and hoped no one could see the flush of her skin. Damn it. What was wrong with her? “So what have you birds been up to so far?”
May was quiet as Kelsey and Lauren walked Nate through their weekend. Friday-night dinner in Montauk. Saturday at Main Beach, followed by takeout from La Fondita. Sunday-morning shopping, pool day, then 1770 House. The weekend had gone so fast.
While Lauren was asking Nate about the train ride, Kelsey pulled May into the living room. “I’m sorry I ran out like that, but—”
May held up a hand to stop her. “I already talked to Lauren. You guys were right. Let’s just let it go, okay?”
“Oh my god, thank you, May. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I really am sorry for taking your stuff. I totally panicked.”
“Yeah, that was pretty bitchy.”
“Love you?” Kelsey said, wrinkling her nose.
“Love you too.”
“And I saw the way you and Nate were looking at each other. You sure there’s not something still there?”
“I’m happily engaged, Kelsey.” She held up her left hand, ring forward, for emphasis.
“I believe that’s what the lawyers would call nonresponsive.”
“Stop being a shit-stirrer.”
“Well, that’s no fun. For what it’s worth, I think he was flirting with you.”
As May led the way back to the kitchen, she realized she was smiling.
She sent a quick text to Josh before starting the engine. Heading out now. ETA 5:17.
Drive fast. The apartment’s quiet without you.
Any hope of driving quickly was dashed when she reached 27 and found it stacked with an endless line of cars whose drivers had the same idea of waiting until Monday to make the trip back to the city. During the stops of all the stop-and-go traffic, she scrolled through her list of podcasts and eventually settled on the latest episode of a true-crime series about the unsolved murder of a Chinese American lawyer in Washington, DC. May had been obsessed with the case for years.
She realized she already knew all the facts being presented in the episode, and found her thoughts wandering. It had been so hard to say goodbye when they all walked her out to her car. She gave them each one last hug, holding on tight to Kelsey and Lauren as they agreed they had to find a way to see each other again soon. The hug with Nate had been quick, and she had avoided looking at him afterward.
She would never cheat on Josh—not now. The lockdown had locked her down as well, first with the move-in and then with the engagement. But she never told Josh there was a possibility she’d be seeing an ex-boyfriend today. And then her own body betrayed her when he gave her that initial hug. You look good, Hanover. After all these years. One throwaway compliment and her head was already wrecked, thinking about how things used to be.
May was forbidden by her mother from dating in high school—boys were a distraction from schoolwork and the piano, she insisted, and May didn’t have the judgment or (ironically) the experience to keep them from taking advantage of her. May suspected that her father’s decision to leave her mother when she got pregnant might have had something to do with her mother’s views, but a prohibition was a prohibition.
As a result, Kelsey was always at least one step ahead of her when it came to boys. She had already let her seventh-grade boyfriend under her bra while May was still trying to figure out tongue kissing. May remembered feeling scared but excited when Kelsey demonstrated how the feeling of a boy’s fingertips tickling her rib cage while his arm was wrapped around her waist was enough to make her tingle “down there.” Matt Lenox is the one who did that. I got so out of my mind, I let him grind on top of me until he…well, you know. But he’s way too stupid to be my first. So now I know I can just lead a guy’s hand to that spot and let him figure out how much I like it. She was a one-girl sex advice column for teenagers.
Nate and May had known each other since she was twelve years old, but it wasn’t until her junior year in college that he suddenly kissed her after a night out drinking with Kelsey and their fake IDs. By then, May’s virginity existed only in her mother’s imagination. At May’s insistence, they kept their hookups a secret. Sleeping with your best friend’s brother felt like a violation of the sister code, she said. The truth was that her privacy about sex wasn’t limited to Nate. Maybe it was all those lectures from her mother that had made boys all sound so mean and dangerous, but once she finally went there, she wanted to keep that part of herself strictly to herself—and the guys she chose to share it with.
Even though May thought she knew a thing or two about guys by then, being with Nate felt like graduating from the bunny slopes directly to a Black Diamond. Good-looking, cool, confident, and—from what she could tell—very experienced.
After a few carefully planted questions to Kelsey, May began to worry about what she had gotten herself into. According to his own sister, Nate was a “babe magnet” who tended to get bored easily and move on—the same approach he had shown both to school and life in general. “I love him, but as a boyfriend? I wouldn’t wish him on my worst enemy.”
May was determined not to get hurt, telling herself that the two of them were just having fun. It was all going according to plan until May’s senior year when Kelsey showed up at Harvard unannounced, a DVD of Working Girl in her purse, hoping for a break from her BC roommate and an impromptu slumber party in May’s single. Her brother was already there. After a split second of surprise, the explanation became obvious, and May prepared herself for the onslaught. How could you sleep with my little brother? How could you lie to me?
But Kelsey wasn’t mad. Quite the opposite; she was ecstatic. She literally clapped her hands like a kid getting a present. Kelsey was the founding member of Team “Mayonate,” as she quickly dubbed them. Once the secret was out, May no longer had an excuse to keep her relationship with Nate covert, which meant it became a “relationship,” whether it had been one before or not.
If Nate was rattled by the small yet sudden shift in their status, he didn’t show it. Their illicit one-on-ones were replaced by group hangs where Kelsey was usually around too, and that changed the dynamic in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
Perhaps it was inevitable in every trio that someone would end up feeling odd-man-out at any given moment—how many times in the past few days had she wondered whether Lauren and Kelsey were the real friends, while she was just an add-on?
When May was dating Nate, any one of them could occasionally feel like the third wheel in different contexts. Sometimes Nate was the dude crashing the gal-pal lovefest. Sometimes it was Kelsey who needed to take a hint that her friend and brother wanted to be alone. And May still recalled the sear of the bizarre sense of jealousy she sometimes felt around them. Jealous of the brother who seemed to know her best friend’s every secret even before she did. Jealous of the friend who was always going to be her boyfriend’s closest confidante, the one who promised she’d never abandon him the way their father had.
But usually? The three of them just clicked. As time passed, May found herself thinking about a future with Nate and how gorgeous their children would be. She and Kelsey would literally be family. Their children would be cousins. How perfect would that be? Kelsey often egged on the fantasy, talking about the day they might all share a house on the Cape.
But whenever May allowed herself to believe it might actually happen, she’d remember Kelsey’s warning: I wouldn’t wish him on my worst enemy. Kelsey knew Nate better than anyone. She had said that for a reason. What had been hot hookups with a hot guy had become another thing for May to worry about.
She was almost relieved when she got dinged by Harvard Law, meaning she’d move to New York to attend Columbia. She’d be the one to pull the plug before he got around to dumping her. But then he began talking about moving to New York after graduation, and she suddenly found herself in a long-distance relationship with a guy who was supposedly constitutionally unfit for any relationship at all.
She became determined to make it work. She’d find a way to keep Nate interested until he made the move to the city and figured out what he was going to do with himself. May had always been the girl who needed to excel at whatever she tried, and keeping things hot with Nathan Thorne became almost an obsession. She started reading those stupid women’s magazines that promised to teach you the ten ways to make his thighs quiver. She watched porn to learn how to give the best oral. Pull my hair. Do it harder. I’ll let you do anything. One day in class, her torts professor called on her and she was unprepared because she’d spent the previous night messing with her iPhone to figure out the best angles for a homemade sex video.
And then, on spring break, she forewent the opportunity to travel with the moot court team to Stanford and visited Nate instead. Years later, she still tried to block out how ridiculous she had been. The lingerie. High heels. Handcuffs. A stand to hold her phone as a makeshift amateur camera. Oh my god, the stupid plastic phone stand. It cost $4.99 at the CVS and kept tipping over, and Nate would have to be the one to fumble with it because May was incapacitated by the handcuffs. When it was over, she grabbed her phone and said she was deleting the video because it would be more slapstick than hot and steamy.
But when she was alone on the train at the end of the weekend, she put in her headphones and watched. She had wanted to seem confident and bold, but she looked so nervous. Small. Ashamed. In a society that sexualized and fetishized women who looked like her, she had cast herself in a demeaning role of her own making. And why? Just to hold on to Nate? Nate, whose own sister said he wasn’t serious enough for a relationship. Nate, who had only chosen a major after Kelsey and May convinced him that poli-sci wasn’t that much harder than the blow-off subjects he was considering and would keep his employment doors open after graduation. Nate, who had been cut off financially from his stepfather but nevertheless seemed to assume he’d someday see a piece of the Ellis empire. She shouldn’t compromise herself for any man, but especially not for one who wasn’t a serious person.
She never told him why she was breaking things off, or even that she had made a final decision—not initially. She just stopped visiting, and when he offered to come to New York, she begged off, claiming she had too much schoolwork. He kept pushing, calling to ask her where she was and what she was doing. He went from being the guy who was her incentive to get a term paper finished early so she could sneak in a night in his room, to the guy whose name on the phone flooded her with guilt. He eventually asked her point-blank whether they were still a couple. Her reply was unnecessarily cold. “I’m not sure we ever were.”
Kelsey had called her, begging to know what was going on. Instead of admitting her own insecurities, May reminded Kelsey of what she had once said about Nate. Kelsey initially insisted she was only kidding, but eventually conceded that Nate had a lot of growing up to do while May had a huge career waiting in front of her. Mayonate was over.
Four years later, she saw on Nate’s Facebook page that he was leaving his marketing job behind and moving to New York to get more serious about his acting. Kelsey was the one to arrange a reunion between the two of them, jokingly referring to it as a “play date.” It was immediately clear that Nate was nowhere close to becoming a working actor. He searched ads in Backstage everyday but didn’t even have an agent. He was bartending in Hell’s Kitchen. When he asked to walk her to her building, she’d been tempted. He was still cool, funny, sexy Nate. But she politely declined, listening to her head instead of the parts that wanted to take him home. And she’d been telling herself that she had made the right decision ever since.
Over the years, she’d find herself thinking about Nate on occasion, but it wasn’t until Josh made it clear that he was serious about her that she began comparing the two of them. Josh was safe: smart, serious, and well employed. He was also fun to be with and completely devoted to her. He had all the traits she had been ingrained to look for if she were ever going to take the leap. Even May’s mother approved. He did not, however, make her feel the way Nate used to. But weren’t those feelings precisely the ones she had decided to avoid when she ended things with him? Of course she had made the right decision.
The blast of a horn made her realize that she was half a block behind the next car. She also realized she had taken the single memory of saying goodbye at the house and turned it into a way to rethink her entire relationship with Nate. Why was she like that? Because maybe that was one part of May’s personality that hadn’t changed. When May was anxious, her fears ate at her until she found a reason—a concrete, rational reason—to put them away, hopefully for good.
Before she realized exactly what she was doing, her turn signal was on. She’d make one quick stop in Sag Harbor. Just to put her mind at ease about David Smith and that note on the windshield, and then she’d never think about it again.