THE THING ABOUT dating Lucas was, you were never alone. Parties, groups, restaurants, phone. Even during sex Doe felt a crowd. At a certain point he would stop kissing her, considering the job done. His tongue would lie like a slab of Spam in his mouth, and she knew, on top of him, that she’d lost him to the porn in his head.
Despite that, the sex was good. A workout. Didn’t matter anyway, because her head was full of Lark.
There had been long lunches at Sant Ambroeus in Southampton, there had been a beach walk, and there had been a kiss that Doe still thought about while Lucas was thinking about porn. It fizzed inside her. Snap crackle pop. Lucas had spent most of June in the city, except for weekends and Mondays. Daniel Mantis flew out on the weekends, so Lark was always unavailable then, which made Doe suspect that Daniel didn’t know that Lark preferred women.
Doe had rules. After three weeks, she knew if it was going to last six. After six weeks, she knew it would be three-months-worthy. After three months she didn’t know, because past that was an unknown country. She always had a backup, someone in the wings. She never went exclusive until someone asked her if she would. That was fine, but they had to ask. Simple rules. She should write a book. Only problem was, success depended on the possession of instinct and cunning. Most people were like Shari, they went into a relationship with hope and amnesia. Every fucking time.
“Good philosophy,” Lucas told her when she explained why it didn’t bother her that he was constantly texting other girls. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”
She did not add that she knew he asked her out because of proximity and laziness, because he was stuck at Adeline’s and needed company on the ferry. Not so much for the ride over but the ride home. He was always disappointed on the way home. The party was never what he thought it would be. It always sucked.
Yet he never said no, and he was invited to everything. Doe no longer needed to put a wineglass in her purse, or jam her bike in a hedge. She’d been boosted to the top-tier parties. She herself could be spotted in various Instagram accounts thanks to Lucas, along with comments like “hawt!” and “yesss deedy” and “omggdamn.”
In only a month she’d been able to sell enough of her own pictures to float her through July at the Doyles’, and at summer rates. Seekrit-hamptons was up to 678,000 followers, and there was an online buzz about who could possibly be behind it. It had been mentioned in Hamptons Magazine right next to “Trendy Workouts You Need Right Now,” and a lively speculation about who was running it had taken up a column in Dan’s Papers. Who had that much access and style? Rumor flitted from models to bloggers to famous wives, and Jessica Seinfeld was trending.
Adeline had leased Lucas a white Jeep for the summer. He rarely stayed on the North Fork; all of their dates had been in the Hamptons. They’d just been to a brunch party for two hundred in Montauk to celebrate the opening of a sunglass pop-up shop, and Doe was tired and wanted to go home. For the last hour they’d played “if you were an emoji what would you be” with a table of at least twenty people, all drunk, and when Doe had said “an exploding star of sorry to be here,” Lucas had laughed and jingled his car keys.
“Mind if we run an errand before we go back?” Lucas asked her. “It’s on the way.”
To Doe, an errand meant picking up toothpaste or dry cleaning, but Lucas drove to a semi-industrial section north of the highway and pulled into the parking lot of a storage unit company.
He sat behind the wheel, not getting out.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s a big fucking pain in the ass,” he said. “My nightmare dead mother.”
“That sounds like something I’d stream with popcorn.”
“It’s beyond.”
Simone Fischer Clay. Doe had looked her up. A poet. Beautiful. Peter’s second wife. An alcoholic who moved to Italy and drowned. Maybe suicide. Lucas had gone to boarding school—more than one—and had bounced among Simone and Peter and Adeline during his childhood. In the summers he’d been on European bicycle trips and sailing trips and pre-college programs at fancy universities. It was sad in that way that the childhood of a rich kid can seem lonely, but you still have to think, Wow, I wish I had that.
“She packed up the Sag Harbor house and left stuff here,” he said. “Just a couple of boxes I think. She sold everything else. I just want to stop getting the fucking bill.”
He rubbed his eyes and kept his hand there. Fantastic. The guy was about to cry like a…well, like a guy who can’t help crying even with a girl in the car. How many cocktails had he had? She didn’t know him well enough to go through this kind of drama. Not in her job description. But when he took his hand away she was relieved to see his eyes weren’t all misty. They were as sharp and pale as ever.
“You can wait in the car,” he said, opening the door.
“That’s okay. I’ll give you a hand.”
She followed him while he checked in and borrowed a hand truck. He led her down a hallway of blue doors. He hesitated again, holding the key in the lock. And just like that, looking at his hand on the knob, not turning, she wanted to leave. Nausea twisted her stomach. She tried to catch her breath, like she’d been knocked off a stool and had hit the ground hard.
She was back in that hot hallway, her hand on the knob, counting breaths, afraid to turn it.
She had to do it when Shane died. Shari couldn’t deal. Clean out his room, his pajamas still with his smell, his Finding Nemo sheets. It’s your fault so you have to do it I’m his mother nobody can expect me to do it you do it and don’t let me see anything
She’d been eleven.
“Hey,” she said. “I know this is rough.” It was the first real thing she’d said to him. She knew how to order his coffee—cortado, extra hot—but she didn’t know anything about what he felt until now.
“You have no fucking idea,” he said, and pushed open the door.
The room was the size of Doe’s garage apartment, pretty much, but there were only three boxes sitting on the ground. The tape was loose, and Lucas opened one, then another, cursing steadily.
He held up a frying pan, then a pale-peach silk nightgown. “Can you believe this shit? It’s full of crap. Dish towels. Poetry books. Jesus. What was she thinking?” He balled up the nightgown and tossed it back in the box, then kicked it. “Thanks, Mom. You fucking cunt.”
Doe hovered by the door. She did not interrupt if a man was in a rage. She’d learned that the hard way, like most women. She let Lucas stack the three boxes on the hand truck by himself.
It started to sprinkle rain as they emerged. “Great,” Lucas snarled. “Now it’s fucking raining.” He shoved the boxes into the back of the Jeep. She waited in the car while he returned the hand truck and the key, still scowling like a little boy.
Which he was. A little boy with car keys.
He got back in the car and reached under the seat. He took a swig from a flask.
“Let me drive,” she said.
He didn’t answer, just took another long swallow, his throat working.
“Look, you’re upset, you want a drink, fine,” she said. “But let me drive.”
“I’m not fucking upset, okay?”
“I’m getting out, then,” she said. “I’ll get an Uber.” But she didn’t know if they had Uber out here, or even where she was.
He stepped on the gas. Driving fast, driving like an idiot in afternoon traffic, passing people on the Sag Harbor Turnpike, driving on the shoulder, hitting the brakes like a jerk.
“My parents,” he said. “What a fucking pair. My father, most famous artist of his generation, right? Guess what he left me? Shit nada squat. My mother gets half of what he had, and she spends every fucking dime in ten years. He leaves me nothing until I’m thirty, like I’m a kid. I get an allowance from Adeline. And a fucking American car.”
Oh, poor you, she wanted to say. You went to Brown, your stepmom bought you an apartment and gave you a job. “It’s only eight years away,” she said.
“But it’s mine!” he screamed. “Not Adeline’s!” He slammed the steering wheel. “I’m not a fucking child!”
Arguable, but. “Lucas, cut this the fuck out,” Doe said. “I mean it. You just passed a Ferrari, for crap’s sake.” She knew she was scared, because she was talking in her Florida voice.
Suddenly he swerved, cutting across the traffic, and made a sharp turn toward a housing development under construction, a string of McMansions. He pulled up sharp in the dirt, jerking Doe forward. Relieved, she held her hand out for the keys.
But he just opened his door and disappeared. Doe got out. Lucas lifted one box at a time out of the back and shook out the contents. Items flew in the light rain, the quickening breeze, slender books, a lace tablecloth, a small embroidered pillow, a set of silver spoons tied with a ribbon. The nightgown was tossed by the wind, pirouetted, and landed in mud. Lucas turned the boxes over, shaking out every last thing. He was right. It was mostly crap. Just household stuff, nice stuff, but stuff.
“Fuck you, Mom!” he screamed to the gulls.
He was crying. Really crying, with heaving sobs. What to do. He didn’t want her comfort. He didn’t want her here at all.
Turning and angling her body, Doe checked her texts.
From: Shari Callender
To: Doe Callender
I know u said u were working stuff out but im bad off here can you call?
if u can it wld be yahoo
if u cant it would be no sadder than today
u r breaking every heart in my body
Lark twinkled in.
i miss you wanna sleep over
Lucas’s back was to her, his shoulders heaving. How long did she have to wait until she told him she had to go?