What are we talking about in 1994? O. J. Simpson, Al Cowlings, LAPD chasing a white Bronco down the 405, the bloody glove, Mark Fuhrman, Marcia Clark, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Kardashian, Kato Kaelin, Judge Ito; Tonya Harding; Kurt Cobain; Lillehammer; Jackie Onassis; the World Series canceled; Newt Gingrich; the internet; Rwanda; the IRA; Pulp Fiction; Nelson Mandela; the Channel Tunnel; Ace of Base; Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Ross, Joey, and Phoebe; Richard Nixon; The Shawshank Redemption.
Whether or not our boy Jake (and he is our boy, we’re with him here through the good, the bad, and the incredibly stressful) wants to admit it, his life has been changed by spending Labor Day weekend with Mallory.
He would like the record to show that he went to Nantucket as a free and single man. A week before Jake headed to the island, he and Ursula had a category 5 breakup that destroyed everything in its path—Jake’s self-esteem, Ursula’s promises, both of their hearts.
He hadn’t been looking for another romantic entanglement, not even an easy rebound. But by Saturday, after first Cooper, then Leland, then Frazier had left—bringing to mind the children’s song about the dog that chased the cat that chased the rat—he realized this was what he’d been hoping for since the moment he saw Mallory waiting on the dock of Straight Wharf.
Mallory’s eyes, he’d noticed, were bluish green or greenish blue; they changed, like the color of the ocean.
They were green when she stared at him across the harvest table with her empty breakfast plate in front of her. She had devoured every bit of her omelet, making little sandwich bites with her toast. Jake couldn’t believe how at ease he felt with her, almost as if she were his younger sister.
Nope, Jake thought. Scratch that. His feelings were not brotherly. When he came around to clear Mallory’s plate, he saw a golden toast crumb on the pale pink skin of her upper lip. He brushed the crumb away with the pad of his thumb, gently, so gently, and then he kissed her and he experienced the most intense desire he had ever known. He wanted her so badly, it scared him. Go slowly, he’d thought. Jake had been with only a handful of women other than Ursula, most of them casual dates or one-night stands in college. He spent a long time kissing Mallory’s lips before he moved down to her throat and the tops of her shoulders. Her skin was salty, sweet, her mouth and tongue buttery. She made cooing noises and finally said, Please. I can’t stand it. This was how Jake felt as well; the want in him was building like a great wall of water against a dam, but he savored the nearly painful sensation of holding himself in check. Slowly, he moved his mouth over the innocent parts of her body. And then, finally, she cried out and led him by the hand to the bedroom. Somehow, he’d known that the experience would change his life, that he would never be the same again.
Mallory’s eyes were still green when she propped herself up on her elbow after they’d made love.
“Put your bathing suit on,” she said. “I want to show off my island.”
They headed out the back door and down a nearly hidden sandy path that led through the reeds and tall grass to Miacomet Pond. On the shore was a two-person kayak painted Big Bird yellow that Mallory dragged out to knee-deep water. She held it steady as Jake climbed on—he wanted to appear confident, though he hadn’t been in a kayak since he was twelve years old, back when his sister was still healthy enough to spend the day on Lake Michigan. Mallory handed Jake his paddle and effortlessly hopped up front.
Away they went, gliding over the mirror-flat surface of the water. Jake let Mallory set the pace for their paddling and he matched her strokes. She didn’t talk and although there were questions he wanted to ask her, he allowed himself to enjoy the silence. There was some birdsong, the music of their paddles dipping and skimming, and the occasional airplane overhead—people lucky enough to be arriving or, more likely, poor souls headed back to their real lives after an idyllic week or month or summer on Nantucket.
Jake tried to absorb the natural beauty of the pond—what an escape from the Metro stations and throngs of monument-seeking tourists in DC—but he was distracted by the stalk of Mallory’s neck, the silky peach strings of her bikini top tied in lopsided bows, the faint tan lines on her back left by other bathing suits. Her hair was swept up in a topknot and the color was darker underneath, sun-bleached on the ends. He examined her earlobes, pierced twice on the left, a tiny silver hoop in the second hole.
Suddenly, she leaned back, her paddle resting against her lap, her face to the sun, eyes closed beneath her Wayfarers.
“You paddle,” she said. “I’m going to lie here like Cleopatra.”
Yes, fine, he would paddle her for as long as she wanted. In twenty-four hours, she had become his queen.
Mallory’s eyes were blue when she gazed into the lobster tank at Sousa’s fish market later that afternoon. She was wearing cutoff jeans and a gray Gettysburg College T-shirt over her bikini. Her hair was in a ponytail; little wisps of hair framed her face. She had freckles on her nose and cheeks from the sun that afternoon. There was a tiny gap between her two bottom front teeth. Had she ever had braces? Jake knew every single thing about Ursula—they had been together since the eighth grade—but Mallory was a whole new person, undiscovered. Jake would get to know her better than he knew Ursula, he decided then and there. He would pay attention. He would learn her. He would treasure her. He would make a study of her eye color, the tendrils of her hair, the shape of her tanned legs, and the gap between her teeth.
When Mallory picked out two lobsters, her eyes misted up. The blue in her eyes then was sadness, maybe, or sympathy.
“You’re going to have to cook those buggers by yourself,” Mallory said. “I don’t have the heart.”
That night was their first date. Mallory melted two sticks of butter and quartered three lemons. She opened a bottle of champagne that had been in the cottage when she moved in, left by a long-ago houseguest of her aunt and uncle. They ate cross-legged out on the porch while the sun bathed them in a thick honeyed light. Once it was dark, they laid a blanket down in the sand and held hands, faces to the sky. Jake tried to identify the constellations and explain the corresponding mythology. Mallory corrected him.
She told Jake that her aunt Greta had moved in with a woman after Mallory’s uncle died. This had scandalized everyone in the Blessing family except Mallory.
How could it possibly matter if Aunt Greta chose to be with a man or a woman? Mallory said. Why wouldn’t everyone who cared about Greta just want her to be happy?
Jake had responded by telling Mallory about Jessica. I had a twin sister, he said. Jessica. She died of cystic fibrosis when we were thirteen.
That must have been so difficult for you, Mallory said.
It was, Jake said. Survivor’s guilt and all that. Cystic fibrosis is genetic. Jessica inherited the genes and I didn’t. He swallowed. She never got angry or made me feel bad about it. She just sort of…accepted it as her albatross.
I’ve never lost anyone close to me like that, Mallory said. I can’t imagine life without…Cooper. How do you ever recover from something like that?
Well, the answer was that you didn’t recover. Losing Jessica was the central fact of Jake’s life, and yet he almost never talked about it. Everyone he grew up with in South Bend already knew, but once Jake got to Johns Hopkins, it became something like a secret. He remembered being at a fraternity event, beer and oysters, and mentioning his sister to Cooper without thinking. Cooper said, “I didn’t know you had a sister, man—how come you never told me?” Jake froze, unsure of what to say, then blurted out, “She’s dead.” It felt like the party stopped and everyone turned to stare at him; he was that uncomfortable. Cooper said, “Hey, man, I’m sorry.” Jake said, “Nah, man, it’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, it would never be fine, but Jake learned to keep Jessica out of casual conversation. He couldn’t believe he’d told Mallory about Jessica after knowing her for little more than twenty-four hours. But there was something about Mallory that made him feel safe. He could turn himself inside out and show her his wounds, and it would be okay.
Sunday morning, Jake woke early and again made omelets, this time using sautéed onions and leftover lobster meat. Mallory wandered out of the bedroom wearing only Jake’s shirt from the night before. Her hair hung in her face, and one eye was still half shut.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, then he nearly apologized because Ursula had found those very same words demeaning. Women are more than just objects to be looked at, she’d said. We’re people. You want to give me a compliment? Tell me I’m smart. Tell me I’m strong.
“And also,” he said, “you’re smart and you seem very strong.”
Mallory tilted her head and grinned. “You feeling okay?” she said.
After breakfast, they climbed into the Blazer and Mallory drove down a long and winding road—the Polpis Road, she called it—to a gatehouse, where she hopped out of the car and let some air out of the tires using the point of her car key. Then they bounced over a slender crooked arm of sand where the landscape emptied—houses disappeared, trees disappeared, the road disappeared—until it was just beach, water, grassy dunes, and, in the distance, a white lighthouse with a black top hat. Mallory pulled into a private little “room” created by the natural curve of the dunes that she had discovered on another trip. Had she been with someone else there? He couldn’t help but wonder as they fell asleep in the sun.
When Jake opened his eyes, Mallory was holding a metal mixing bowl. “Come on,” she said. “Treasure hunt.”
They walked along the shore, eyes trained a few feet in front of them. Mallory showed him slipper shells, quahogs, and mermaid purses. She picked up a sand dollar.
“Perfectly intact,” she said. She held it up to the sun so that Jake could see the faint star pattern. “You should take this back to Washington to remember me by.”
“Do I need something to remember you by?” Jake asked. “I mean, I’m going to see you again, right?” He was half thinking that he might never leave Nantucket at all.
“Sure,” she said, but her tone was too casual for his liking.
They strolled all the way down to Great Point Light, collecting pieces of frosted beach glass, scallop shells, and driftwood until the bowl was filled, then they turned around.
“Why can’t this work?” Jake asked. “We like each other.”
“A lot,” Mallory said, and she squeezed his hand. “I haven’t been this happy with a guy in a long time. Maybe ever.”
“Okay, so…”
“So…you’re going back to Washington and I’m staying here.”
“Couldn’t we figure something out?” he said. “You visit me, I visit you, we meet someplace in the middle—Connecticut, maybe, or New York City? We rack up massive long-distance bills.”
Mallory shook her head. “I did the long-distance thing with my last boyfriend and it was agonizing,” she said. “Of course, he was in Borneo.”
Jake laughed. “DC is closer than Borneo.”
“The basic problem is the same,” Mallory said. “You have a job and a life in Washington and my life is here. I lived in New York for nearly two years and every single day I wished I were someplace else. I’m not doing that again.” She paused. “And in the spirit of full disclosure, the officer who was up at the house the other night asked me out.”
Jealousy, strong and swift, caused Jake to stutter-step. “What did you tell him?”
“I was vague,” Mallory said. “I said he should maybe call me next week.”
Jake didn’t like this answer, nope, not one bit. “Can’t we just pretend that we’re the only two people in the world and that this weekend is going to last forever?”
Mallory stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. The lighthouse floated over her right shoulder. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “We’re the only two people in the world and this weekend is going to last forever.”
“Are you humoring me?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, and she grinned.
Back at the cottage, Mallory took the first shower. Jake was studying the books on the shelves of the great room when the phone rang. Jake’s first instinct was to answer it. He liked answering other people’s phones. He used to answer Coop’s phone all the time—which was how he’d gotten to know Mallory in the first place. But of course he shouldn’t answer Mallory’s phone—what was he thinking? It might be Cooper apologizing for his exit, and how would Coop feel about Jake staying to shack up with his sister? Then again, what if this was that officer calling to ask Mallory on a date? Maybe Jake should scare the guy off.
Mallory raced out of the bathroom, naked and dripping wet, to snatch up the phone before the machine picked up. Jake wondered if she, too, thought it might be the officer from the other night. Jake’s neck and shoulders tensed. His emotions were spiraling out of control. He was gobsmacked by this girl.
“Hello?” Mallory said. “Yes, this is she. Oh, yes. Yes!” There was a pause, and Jake imagined the officer asking if she was free the following night. Would he see her tan lines; would he have a chance to appreciate the shallow dip in her lower back? Would he cook eggs for her? Would he wipe the crumbs from Mallory’s lips?
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Mallory said. “Yes, yes, of course I’d be willing. Oh my, thank you so much. Seven thirty. Okay, I’ll see you Tuesday.” She hung up and said, “The English teacher at the high school is at Mass General in Boston getting some tests done and he won’t be in for the first week of school, so they’ve asked me to cover for him.”
The relief Jake felt made him light-headed. “That’s great!” he said. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
“I wanted someone to retire,” Mallory said. “I didn’t want anyone to get sick.”
Jake gathered Mallory up and kissed the top of her head. He was happy for her, but he didn’t want to think about Tuesday.
“It’s Sunday night,” she said. “When my aunt was alive, that meant Chinese food and an old movie on TV.”
They ordered from a place called Chin’s—egg rolls, wonton soup, spare ribs, moo shu pork, fried rice, Singapore noodles, beef with broccoli.
“And dumplings!” Mallory cried into the phone. “Two orders! One steamed and one fried.”
It was too much food, but that was part of the fun. Whenever Jake and Ursula ordered Chinese, Ursula ate only plain white rice and she refused to eat fortune cookies; she wouldn’t even read the fortunes. The fortune cookie, she claimed, was a cheap gimmick that diminished the complexity of Chinese culture.
Jake watched Mallory dip one of her golden-brown dumplings into soy sauce, then deliver it deftly to her mouth with her chopsticks. She loaded a pancake with moo shu pork until it was dripping and messy and took a lusty bite. Jake was so stunned by the vision of a woman enjoying her food rather than battling it that he wondered if he might be falling in love with her.
Mallory handed Jake a fortune cookie. He was about to inform her that the purpose of the fortune cookie was to dupe a gullible public and distort the wise sayings of Confucius, but before he could share Ursula’s skepticism, Mallory said, “Whatever it says, you have to add the words ‘between the sheets’ to the end.”
Jake laughed. “Are you serious?”
“My house, my rules,” Mallory said.
Jake played along. “‘A fresh start will put you on your way’”—he paused—“between the sheets.”
Mallory gazed at him. Her eyes were green tonight. “Damn. Was I right or what?”
“Read yours,” he said, handing her a cookie.
“‘Be careful or you could fall for some tricks today,’” she said, “between the sheets!”
He gathered up both fortunes. He would take them home, he decided. Along with his sand dollar. Things to remember her by.
They turned on the TV and found a movie that was just starting: Same Time, Next Year with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn. It was about a couple who meet at a seaside hotel in 1951 and decide to return together on the same weekend every year, even though they’re both married to other people.
“Now, that is something we could do,” Mallory said. She was lying between Jake’s legs on the couch, her head resting on his chest. “You could come back to Nantucket every Labor Day, no matter what happens. We could do all the stuff we did this weekend. Make it a tradition.”
A year? he thought. He had to wait an entire year?
On Monday, pregnant, pewter-colored clouds hung on the horizon, and when Jake stepped onto the porch, there was a chill in the air. It felt like an ending—not only of the weekend and the summer, but something bigger.
Jake made omelets while Mallory pulled a Joyce Carol Oates novel off the shelf that she wanted him to read.
“One thing I like about you,” she said, “is that you’re secure enough in your masculinity to read female novelists. Who are, in case you’re wondering, superior to male novelists.” She winked. “Between the sheets.”
She was keeping things light, which made sense. She was excited about her substitute-teaching opportunity, and she got to stay here, in her beachfront cottage on Nantucket. The cottage had grown on Jake nearly as much as Mallory’s company. The wood paneling made it feel like the cabin of a boat and Jake liked that the cottage smelled like summer—a little salty, a little marshy, a little damp. He loved the single deep blue hydrangea blossom in the mason jar on the harvest table; he loved the table itself, how unusually long and narrow it was. He loved the wall of swollen paperback books and he loved the sound of crashing waves in the background. He imagined being back in Washington with the traffic and the sirens and thought of how his heart would ache when he thought about the sound of the ocean.
The end of summer was the saddest time of year.
Jake gave Mallory a long, deep kiss goodbye. “I’m happy the dog chased the cat that chased the rat.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m happy it ended up being just you and me this weekend. And I’m coming back next year. Same time next year.”
“No matter what?” Mallory said.
“No matter what,” Jake said, and it did make leaving a little bit easier.
It isn’t until the invitation to Cooper’s wedding arrives in the mail—on expensive ivory stock, printed in a script so fancy, it’s nearly unreadable—that Jake realizes he won’t have to wait a year to see Mallory.
But there’s a complication that our boy had not foreseen. He and Ursula have decided to give their relationship one last try.
“If we break up again,” Ursula says, “we break up for good.”
Jake thought they already had broken up for good. In their last breakup, the one that took place before Jake left for Nantucket, they had been point-of-no-return honest. Ursula admitted that she valued her career above everything else. It was more important than her health (she’d lost twelve pounds since starting at the SEC and now looked severely malnourished—passing supermodel stage, heading for famine victim), more important than her family (her parents were back in South Bend; her father was an esteemed professor at the university, her mother a housewife, Ursula rarely visited them and she discouraged them from visiting her because it would require sightseeing trips to the Air and Space Museum and the National Archives), more important than her faith (at Notre Dame, Ursula had been vice president of the campus ministry, but now she didn’t go to Mass, not even on Christmas Eve or Easter. There simply wasn’t time). Finally, she said, her career was more important to her than Jake was.
“Really?” he said.
“Yes, really,” she said, leaving no room for interpretation.
Jake had wanted to say something back that was equally cruel—but what?
Jake had met Ursula in sixth grade at Jefferson Middle School. He knew her from his “smart kid” classes—pre-algebra, Spanish, accelerated English—and also because she was friends with his twin sister, Jessica. Ursula was the only one of Jess’s friends who remained steadfast once Jess’s health started to decline. When Jessica’s blood-oxygen level was too low for her to go to school, Ursula swung by with Jessica’s homework assignments, and she didn’t just drop and run, the way any other twelve-year-old would have. Ursula used to sit in Jess’s room, undeterred by the fact that Jess was hooked up to an oxygen tank, unfazed by the terrible coughing fits or the thick, gray mucus that Jess used to spit into a purple kidney-shaped basin, unbothered by their mother, Liz McCloud, who had taken a sabbatical from Rush Hospital in Chicago, where she was a gynecologist, so that she could care for Jess herself.
Jess was happiest when Ursula was around. Jess called her Sully, a nickname that Ursula didn’t tolerate from anyone else. Jess liked to listen to music, so Ursula would put on Jess’s favorite record, which she had ordered from a TV commercial. It was a compilation of novelty hits—“The Monster Mash,” “Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” “The Purple People Eater”—and the two of them would sing along. Jake wasn’t in the room but he suspected that Sully was also dancing, because he could hear Jess laughing.
Jake was always home when Ursula came over, stationed at the kitchen table, dutifully finishing his homework. Once Liz McCloud determined that Jess had had enough, and it was time for Sully to go, Ursula would pop into the kitchen to say hello and goodbye to Jake and their housekeeper, Helene, who was usually making Jake an omelet for his afternoon snack. Once, Helene offered to make an omelet for Ursula, and Jake could remember thinking, Yes, please sit, please stay—but Ursula said no, thank you, she had to get home, she had the same homework as Jake. As soon as Ursula left the house, Helene made a comment that had stayed with Jake all these many years.
“Sully is pretty girl, Jake. But more important, Sully is kind girl.”
Ursula had been an altar server at Jessica’s funeral. If Jake closed his eyes, he could still see Ursula in her white vestments that morning, her heavy, dark hair hanging in a braid down her back, her expression stoic in front of the coffin that held her friend.
Jake and Ursula had shared every single memory since that tragic year—right up until Jake went to Johns Hopkins and Ursula stayed in the Bend and attended Notre Dame. Over eight semesters of college, they had been broken up for only three, and as soon as Jake graduated, he moved to Washington so they could be together. He had taken the job lobbying for Big Pharma—possibly the most nefarious industry in America—because he wanted to impress her. Jake hated working for PharmX. The best thing about breaking up, he told Ursula, was that he could quit his job.
She’d laughed. “And do what?”
Maybe he’d teach chemistry at Sidwell Friends, he said, or maybe he’d go into fund-raising. He was good with people.
“Fund-raising?” she said.
“The great thing about breaking up,” Jake said, “is that it doesn’t matter what you think.” This landed; he saw her flinch. “I don’t fault you for putting your career first. I know how badly you want to…achieve.” Ursula had been without peer academically at John Adams High School. She’d gotten into Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, but Notre Dame was free because her father taught there, so she stayed. She had been resentful about this, but she continued to soar. She was valedictorian at Notre Dame and got a perfect score on her LSAT. She was editor of the Georgetown Law Review and aced the bar exam. She was recruited by the trading and markets division of the SEC at the start of her final year of law school. In another year or two, she could move into private practice, write her own ticket, name her own salary. But what did it matter? She didn’t enjoy the things money could buy; she never relaxed, never took a vacation, didn’t have girlfriends to meet for drinks. “Just be aware that what you achieve doesn’t matter as much as what kind of person you are,” Jake said in his final blow. “You know, I sometimes think back to the girl I met in sixth grade. But that girl is gone.” What he meant was that Ursula was no longer the kind of person who would spend even one hour with a sick friend. She was no longer the girl who would move the arm of the record player back to the start of a song again and again and again to bring someone else joy. She was no longer Sully and hadn’t been for a long time. “Your own parents”—here, Jake was venturing into dangerous territory, but if the gloves were off, they were off—“apologized to me over how gruesomely self-centered you’ve become.”
Ursula shrugged. “I don’t care what my parents think of me, Jake. And I care what you think even less.”
Those had been her last words to him—forever, he’d thought.
After Jake returned to DC from his weekend in Nantucket, he avoided any place he might run into Ursula; he even changed his usual Metro stop. But then, when Jake was home in South Bend over Thanksgiving, he bumped into her at Barnaby’s. They were both picking up pizzas.
“You’re here,” he said. “You came home.”
“Yeah,” Ursula said, her tone uncharacteristically sheepish. “I thought about what you said about my parents. And then Mom told me Dad has heart issues and is putting in for early retirement and Clint wasn’t coming home…” Clint, Ursula’s brother, five years older, was a rafting guide in Argentina. “So, yeah, I’m home for a few days.”
Jake hadn’t responded right away. Quite frankly, he was startled by Ursula’s presence there, in the place they’d grown up. If he’d seen her running along the Potomac or at Clyde’s in Georgetown, he would have ignored her. But this was where they’d first kissed (at the ice-skating rink) and where they’d lost their virginity to each other (in Ursula’s bedroom their junior year in high school while Mr. and Mrs. de Gournsey were away on a research trip in Kuala Lumpur). After Ursula graduated from Notre Dame, it was as though she had graduated from South Bend, from the state of Indiana, from the Midwest. Jake couldn’t believe she’d come back of her own volition, without him prompting/urging/forcing her to.
It seemed notable.
Before he spoke, he noted how thin Ursula was—way thinner than she’d been when they parted at the end of August. Her cheekbones jutted out, her wrists were as skinny as sticks, and her chest, beneath her sweater and parka, seemed concave. She was holding a pizza but Jake knew how Ursula ate pizza—she pulled off the cheese and the toppings until it was just sauce and bread and then she took one bite.
If he mentioned her weight, she’d get defensive.
“Do you want to get a drink later?” he asked. “At the Linebacker?”
“Sure,” she said.
One hour and four Leinenkugel’s between them was all it took before they were making out in the front seat of Jake’s old Datsun like the teenagers they had once been.
They ended up flying back east together and sharing a taxi from Dulles to Dupont Circle. Ursula debated staying with Jake that night but opted to return to her own apartment. It was as she got out of the cab in front of the Sedgewick that she said it. “If we break up again, we break up for good.”
Jake lived every day as though it might be his last day with Ursula. It felt a little bit like he was cheating death; he knew the end was coming, but when? It would have been a terrible way to live, except that Ursula was trying. She picked up the invitation to Cooper’s wedding from Jake’s desk and said, “Have you already RSVP’d to this?”
“Uh,” Jake said, “no, but I mean, yeah. I’m standing up. I’m a groomsman.”
Ursula tilted her head. In the two weeks since they’d been back together, she’d started looking better. Not any heavier, but she did have slightly more color. Ursula’s paternal grandmother was from a town in the French Pyrenees close to the Spanish border, and Ursula had inherited her looks—hair like sable and a touch of olive to her skin. When she was outside in the sun, she turned bronze in a matter of minutes, but since she lived almost exclusively indoors, her skin tended to look jaundiced. Now, however, there was pink in her cheeks.
“I want to go to this,” she said. “I like Cooper.”
“Ah,” Jake said. “Well…”
“You don’t want to bring me?” Ursula said. She studied the invitation. “Cooper hates me now? He thinks I’ve been jerking you around? He thinks we’re toxic together?”
“It’s not that,” Jake said. “I don’t talk about…I’ve never said anything bad about you.” This was mostly true, but Jake must have drunkenly slandered Ursula at some point in front of Coop. Every single one of Jake’s friends knew that Ursula was his kryptonite.
“Who is Krystel Bethune?” Ursula said. “I haven’t met a Krystel. I would have remembered.”
Right. Ursula was particular about names. Her litmus test had always been, Is your name suitable for a Supreme Court justice? Safe to say, in Ursula’s opinion, there would never be a Supreme Court justice named Krystel. This was a perfect example of why people disliked Ursula.
“He met her back in the spring,” Jake said. “At the Old Ebbitt Grill.” Jake didn’t bother mentioning that Krystel had been Cooper’s waitress; Ursula would have had a field day with that.
“This country club is nice, I’ve heard,” Ursula said. “Old railroad money. Tell them I’ll be your plus-one, will you?”
“Um…” Jake said. He didn’t want to take Ursula to Cooper’s wedding. He hadn’t thought it would be an issue. Ursula was always working and she didn’t like to leave the District for any reason. It was like she was umbilically connected to SEC headquarters. “I already said I was going solo. It’s pretty fancy and the wedding is next week. I don’t want to spring this on them.”
“They’ll understand,” Ursula said. “I may take a lunch today and go buy a dress.”
“Or you could take a lunch and eat lunch,” Jake suggested.
Ursula slapped the invitation down. “I’m excited about this. A wedding! Maybe we’ll be next.”
Jake put off asking Cooper to add Ursula to the guest list because Jake was certain she would cancel. Work emergency. The wedding was on December 18, and Ursula was hip-deep in an investigation that she couldn’t talk about. Jake was hoping Ursula would cancel. He wanted to see Mallory alone.
Mallory. Mallory. Mallory.
When, by December 15, Ursula still hadn’t changed her mind—she had, in fact, bought a black velvet off-the-shoulder gown—Jake called Cooper and told him he was bringing a plus-one. Coop checked with his mother, Kitty, who said that was a stroke of phenomenal luck because they’d had one last-minute cancellation.
“Way to go,” Cooper said. “You managed to add a guest without pissing off Kitty.”
“Great,” Jake said half-heartedly. Kitty wasn’t the person he was worried about.
The ceremony was to start at five. Ursula and Jake pulled into the church parking lot at ten past four because there would be a quick run-through for the groomsmen and bridesmaids—and also some Jim Beam, Cooper said.
“What am I supposed to do while you rehearse?” Ursula asked snippily, sounding very much like her pre-back-together self. “I don’t want to sit in the church alone.”
“Work in the car?” Jake said. At her feet, Ursula had an attaché case filled with depositions. He was relieved she didn’t want to come into the church early. Mallory was a bridesmaid and although she was eventually going to find out Ursula was in attendance—it was possible Coop or Kitty had already told her—at least they would have the rehearsal hour together. Jake could talk to her, warn her, explain. He’d brought Mallory a gift camouflaged in white wrapping paper with silver bells that he’d told Ursula was a private-joke-groomsman-thing for Coop. He wasn’t sure he’d have the courage to slip it to Mallory, although now was his best chance. He plucked the gift from the back seat, where it rested next to the KitchenAid stand mixer that they’d gotten for Coop and Krystel, and tucked it under his arm.
The sanctuary of Roland Park Presbyterian was lit by hundreds of ivory pillar candles, the altar blanketed with white poinsettias. The other groomsmen and Cooper were all in white tie and tails. Jake set Mallory’s gift in an empty pew and rushed up the aisle; he was the last to arrive. He saw five bridesmaids lined up in the first pew; they were listening to the pastor’s instructions. Jake tried to pick out Mallory from the back of her head, but then he saw Coop urging him to hurry up and take his place in the formation.
“Sorry,” Jake whispered. “Traffic on the Beltway.”
Coop slipped Jake a leather flask, and Jake stood next to Frazier, who was the best man.
“Good to see you upright,” Jake said.
Fray smirked. He looked far better than he had that summer; he had a good haircut and was clean-shaven. “At least I was on time.”
Jake turned his head toward the cross while he took a slug off the flask; he had never needed a drink as badly as he did right that second. He tapped Frazier. “You want some, man?”
“Nah,” Frazier said. “I’m on the wagon for a little while.”
That probably wasn’t a bad idea, Jake thought, considering what had happened the previous summer. Jake took a second swig and, thus fortified, he looked over at Mallory. She was wearing a long ivory dress with lace cap sleeves. Her hair was swept up in a style that had a name Jake couldn’t remember. She was wearing full makeup and although Jake had grown attached to his unvarnished memories of Mallory, he thought, Wow. Drop-dead. Her eyes looked bigger; her cherry-red lips were incredibly sexy. She had on a pearl choker and pearl earrings and there was baby’s breath woven into her hair.
When she saw him, she grinned and waved like a little kid. The sheer earnestness of her excitement made Jake want to pull her up to the altar and marry her right there and then. Also, it made him hate himself. It was obvious she didn’t know he’d brought Ursula.
They ran through the wedding choreography, minus Krystel and the maid of honor, who were off-site getting ready. Jake had not been partnered with Mallory, which crushed him so badly that he nearly offered Cooper’s colleague, Brian from the Brookings Institution, a hundred bucks to switch. Jake was insanely jealous when he saw Brian and Mallory with their arms linked. He was such a hypocrite! Ursula was waiting in the car. He and Ursula were back together, all the way back.
The run-through took ten minutes. They did it twice and then the bridesmaids were supposed to retreat to an anteroom to wait, but Mallory hurried right over to Jake. The expression on her face made it look like she wanted to tackle him in wild passion, but when she was a couple feet away, she stopped, probably just then reminding herself that they were in a church and that no one on earth knew what had transpired between them on Labor Day weekend.
“Hey,” she said. “Good to see you.”
Her restraint was adorable. “You look beautiful,” he said. “Take-my-breath-away beautiful.”
She dipped her chin. “You look beautiful too. The tails.”
“Listen,” he said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
She raised her face. She was as luminous as one of the ivory pillar candles. “That you’ve thought about me each and every day for the past three and a half months?”
“I have,” he said honestly. “Of course I have. But…at the last minute, I brought a guest to this thing.”
“Guest?”
“Ursula.”
Mallory’s eyes searched his face and he saw her swallow. It was excruciating, watching her be brave. She bobbed her head and Jake wanted to march out to the car and tell Ursula to drive home, there’d been a mistake, she wasn’t welcome. This, of course, was impossible, and Jake did love Ursula, or at any rate, he found himself unable to live without her.
Mallory said, “I know I don’t have any claim on you.”
You do, though, he thought. “Listen, I brought you something.” He retrieved the gift from the pew and handed it to Mallory.
“A book?” she said. She tore off the paper, crushed it into a ball in her fist, and, without missing a beat, slid it into Jake’s pants pocket. Her fingers brushing his leg made him weak for a moment. “The Virgin Suicides. Jeffrey Eugenides.”
“It’s by a man,” Jake said. “But it’s good anyway. Merry Christmas, Mal.”
A tall, frosted-blond woman in an elegant long-sleeved ivory knit dress appeared at the head of the aisle. “Mallory, darling, chop-chop.”
Mallory gave Jake a wobbly smile. “That’s Kitty,” she said. “I have to go. Save me a dance.” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss Jake’s cheek, then scurried away, hitching up the hem of her dress so she wouldn’t trip.
Jake was distracted during the ceremony. He’d been the one who led Ursula to her seat on the groom’s side, and she’d clutched his arm and whispered, “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know a soul.” He then stood at the altar practically incandescent with anger. Why had he allowed Ursula to come as his date? The answer was hardly rocket science. She had said she wanted to—and Ursula always got what she wanted. Jake was so angry he couldn’t even look at her, so instead he sneaked peeks at Mallory, who seemed genuinely absorbed by her brother and Krystel exchanging vows. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
Maybe we’ll be next, Ursula had said.
Ha! Jake thought. If he were to lose his job, go bankrupt, get hit by a bus, or be diagnosed with terminal cancer while he was married to Ursula, he’d be on his own.
He would never, ever marry Ursula.
Mallory wiped away a tear. Cooper kissed the bride. The organist played “Ode to Joy.” Everyone clapped. Jake sought out Ursula. She was looking into her lap. Reading…the program? No. She’d brought work into the church. She folded her papers in half, tucked them into her purse, then looked up to see that Jake had caught her. She blew him a kiss.
In the car on the way to the country club, Ursula said, “Bride was pretty. But wearing a white fur stole at the altar? Wearing a white fur stole, period? T-a-c-k-y.”
“Please,” Jake said. “Don’t be a bitch.”
This was a standard start to one of their arguments: Ursula said something unkind, Jake called her on it, Ursula objected, the thing escalated. But tonight, Ursula stared at her hands. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
The ballroom at the country club had been transformed into a winter wonderland, and even in his agitated state, Jake found it hard not to be impressed. Everything was done in shades of white. Each round table had a small tree with white leaves in the center. From the branches hung glowing white ornaments. There was a wooden bramble arch decorated with white fairy lights and what must have been every white rose in the state of Maryland in creamy round bouquets. The orchestra was onstage in white suits; the waitstaff wore white dinner jackets. The cake was seven stepped layers iced with white fondant and topped with coconut meant to look like snow.
Jake and Ursula were seated at table 2. Mallory was seated at the far side of table 1 with the bride and groom, her parents, and Brian from Brookings. Mallory already had champagne and her head was tilted toward Brian as he told her something that made her laugh.
“Do you want champagne?” Ursula asked. “I’m having some.”
“I need something stronger,” Jake said.
Weddings were tricky, Jake decided after his third bourbon. They were either terrific or downright awful. This one was, technically, terrific—a lot of time, effort, and money had been invested—but because Jake had to babysit Ursula while at the same time pining for Mallory, it was also awful. He autopiloted through dinner and the toasts, noting only that Frazier’s toast was touching and appropriate, probably because he was stone-cold sober. Ursula was chatting with the guest to her left, Cooper’s cousin Randy, who was the in-house counsel for Constellation Energy in downtown Baltimore. They were talking shop, leaving Jake free to watch Mallory. She seemed very into Brian from Brookings—either that or she was trying to make Jake jealous.
The first dances came and went, then the band launched into “Holly Jolly Christmas,” and Brian pulled Mallory onto the dance floor. Jake watched them for a few seconds; Brian had the nerve to undo his bow tie and pop his top shirt button. Jake flashed back to the night at the Chicken Box. Mallory had danced with such gleeful abandon. Jake had been so close behind her that he could smell the strawberry scent of her shampoo.
That tiny gap in her front lower teeth. The soft skin of her throat. The sand that gathered in the whorls of her ears. The crumb on her lip. It was agonizing to think about.
He turned to Ursula. The right thing, he supposed, was to ask her to dance. But she had pulled out whatever document she’d shoved into her purse and was reviewing it.
Jake shook his head and went to the bar.
Krystel threw the bouquet; Cooper slipped off her garter. Ursula made no secret about finding both rituals distasteful, so she and Jake remained seated throughout. Meanwhile, Brian from Brookings was getting a little handsy with Mallory, and at one point, he kissed the top of Mallory’s head. Jake wanted to punch him. Could he reasonably cut in? The night was slipping away. Save me a dance.
“You look miserable,” Ursula said. She stuffed the brief back into her handbag. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Jake didn’t respond.
“Let’s dance,” Ursula said. The song was “Build Me Up Buttercup” and everyone else was out on the dance floor, so Jake offered Ursula his hand. They stayed in the back corner. Ursula was a terrible dancer, but Jake was used to it. He knew she felt self-conscious, so it was a major concession for her to even be out there.
Just as the song was ending, one of the white-jacketed waiters tapped Ursula on the shoulder. She had a phone call, apparently.
“Is everything okay?” Jake asked. He thought immediately of Ursula’s father, his heart trouble.
“It’s work,” Ursula said. “I gave them the number here—sorry. It’s that thing I’ve been looking over…due Monday.”
“Go,” Jake said. This was so predictable that he didn’t even pretend to be surprised or indignant. “Take your time.”
Ursula swept off the dance floor in a flurry of self-importance and the band segued into “At Last.” Jake marched right up to where Brian and Mallory were dancing, tapped Brian on the shoulder, and said, “May I?”
“Really, dude?” Brian said.
Mallory said, “This is my old friend Jake and he promised me a dance. I’ll find you later.” She stepped into Jake’s arms and Brian skulked off.
“Hi,” Jake said.
“Hi,” Mallory said.
They fit their hands together. Jake took firm hold of Mallory’s back and they began to sway. “I didn’t want to bring her,” Jake said. “She invited herself at the last minute.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“You’re very pretty,” he said.
“It’s not a contest,” Mallory said. “She’s your girlfriend.”
“Yes,” he said miserably.
“Thank you for the book,” she said. “That was very sweet. You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“Every book I’ve read since I left Nantucket has reminded me of your cottage,” he said. “I was just waiting until I read something good enough to share with you.”
“Jake.” Her tone was almost chiding. Was it wrong of him to make such a romantic gesture when he’d brought Ursula to the wedding?
Mallory rested her head against Jake’s chest for one brief second, then murmured, “I know where there’s a quiet spot. Want to sneak off for sixty seconds and kiss me?”
“Yes,” he said.
She left first and he followed at what he hoped was a discreet distance. She strode down one hallway and turned into a second hallway that was definitely staff only. She opened a door and closed it. A second later, he followed. It was a supply closet. She locked the door behind him and turned the light off.
He got lost in her. He could not stop kissing her. He wanted to memorize how her face felt in his hands and the pressure of her lips on his.
She was the one who pulled away. “You’ll come to Nantucket Labor Day weekend?”
“No matter what,” he said.
When they were back in the car, Ursula—now in the driver’s seat—turned to him and said, “Who was the bridesmaid you were dancing with?”
Jake was ready for this. Ursula could be drowning in depositions, but if an attractive female came within five feet of Jake, she would notice. She didn’t want to spend time with him but neither did she want to share him.
“Cooper’s sister,” Jake said. “Mallory Blessing.” It was a relief, a joy, even, to say her name out loud to Ursula. “I’ve known her for years.”
“She seemed to have quite a crush on you,” Ursula said. “It was actually kind of cute.”
Labor Day is eight months away, then seven, then six. Still six months away. Then the spring arrives, cherry-blossom season in Washington, when the paths of the National Mall look like pink carpets, and time moves a little faster. Jake plays for the PharmX softball team and spends his spare time scheduling practices and games. Then June arrives; it’s officially summer and Washington is so beastly hot that even Ursula agrees they should get out of town on the weekends. They go to Rehoboth Beach twice and then Ursula does the unthinkable and takes a week’s vacation so that they can go to Paris.
“It would be such a romantic place to get engaged,” she says.
It is, in fact, romantic. They go at the beginning of August, when the Parisians are on vacation, so they have the city to themselves. Ursula splurges on a room at Le Meurice, which is the nicest hotel either of them has ever stayed in. Jake blanches at the prices on the room-service menu, then rationalizes that Ursula works so hard, they deserve a little luxury. They order breakfast in the room each morning. The coffee is rich and fragrant; Jake enjoys hearing his spoon chime against the sides of the bone-china cup. It sounds like privilege. He feels the same way about the French butter, which he paints across the flaky insides of the croissants. As doctors, Jake’s parents make plenty of money, but they’re too busy to spend it. Ursula is exactly like them, so Jake figures he should enjoy the luxuries while they’re on offer.
They stroll in Le Marais, holding hands, admiring the shops on the charming narrow streets. Ursula is drawn to the florists and wanders in to inhale the scent of the freesias and chat with the owners in her impeccable French. The women compliment Ursula’s scarf, her dress, her bag; they think she’s a Parisienne. Jake watches, amazed, feeling very much like a big dumb American; he stops wearing his Hopkins Lacrosse hat on the second day.
Ursula has picked the best brasseries in the city, where they sit in plush banquettes and feast on moules et frites, frisée aux lardons, entrecôte avec béarnaise. Ursula’s abstemious eating habits seem to be on vacation as well. One evening she polishes off her Dover sole, though she scrapes off the butter sauce; the next night she treats herself to six of Jake’s frites. She counts them out.
She has intentionally saved Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur for their final evening. She wants to see the church all lit up and the view over the city. They buy an outrageously expensive bottle of Montrachet to drink from plastic goblets in the grassy park at the base of the church.
Ursula sighs. “I want to get married.”
“Right now?” Jake asks.
“No, but, you know…I want you to propose. Soon.”
Jake feels his throat constrict. He knows that Ursula has been expecting a proposal, or hoping for one, on this trip. There were a couple times in the past few weeks when Jake thought, I should just go buy a ring. But something stopped him. He wasn’t inspired. If he bought an engagement ring now, it would be because Ursula wanted him to. And he’ll be damned if he’s going to let her railroad him into a decision that he’s not ready to make. “Will you just let me handle it? Please, Ursula?”
“Will you handle it?”
“That’s not letting me handle it.”
“What are we doing, Jake?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Jake says. “But I’m putting in the time. I’m trying to grow up. I’m trying to build a relationship that’s going to last for the long haul. And we’re just not there yet, Ursula. I’m sorry, but we’re not.”
When she stands up, her wine spills.
“You’re holding back to be cruel,” she says. “Or to show me how powerful you are.” She looms over him, blocking out the moon, and he feels all the Parisian magic drain away as though someone has pulled a plug. Of course this is how their week away will end.
“Don’t ruin this,” Jake says. “Let’s go to dinner.”
“You’re the one who’s ruining it,” she says, and she storms off.
When Jake gets back to Washington, he has a pile of work on his desk, and mixed up in his in-box are not one, not two, not three, but four phone messages from Cooper Blessing.
He calls Cooper at Brookings and is told that Cooper is out on personal leave.
What?
He calls Cooper at home. Cooper answers in a broken, hoarse voice and says, “Krystel left me.”
Jake has to work late that night in order to catch up, but the moment he’s finished, he goes to Georgetown to meet Cooper at the Tombs.
Krystel, it turns out, is a drug addict and has been all along. Cooper knew she occasionally did cocaine with the other servers at work but he chalked it up to the restaurant business, the late nights, the double shifts. Then he found out that Krystel had been venturing over to Fourteenth and U to buy crack.
“She was smoking crack!” Cooper says. “Like a…like a…”
“Oh, man,” Jake says.
“I tried to get her in rehab,” Cooper says. “But she won’t go. She doesn’t want to quit. She moved back to her mother’s house in Rising Sun, she says—but honestly, I think she’s living in a flophouse somewhere.”
“Is she crazy?” Jake says. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to her.”
“She loves the drugs more,” Cooper says.
Jake nearly says he understands. Substitute the word work for the word crack and that’s Ursula. But it’s not the same, Jake knows it’s not the same. Krystel is addicted to crack; Krystel has walked out on a marriage after less than nine months. It’s a problem so big that Jake is at a loss.
“What can I do, man?” Jake asks. “How can I help?”
Cooper says he needs to get away. He has to get out of DC, if only for a long weekend.
“Mallory wants us to come back up to Nantucket,” Cooper says. “She says we need a do-over.”
“Oh,” Jake says. “Really?”
Mallory picks them up at the airport. She’s tan and fit; her hair is sun-bleached to the color of golden wheat. She’s wearing her jean shorts and a T-shirt from someplace called the Rope Walk as well as her Wayfarers, her suede flip-flops, and half an arm’s length of rainbow-colored friendship bracelets. There’s a thin tattoo of a vine around her ankle.
Jake is smitten. He loves everything that’s familiar and everything that’s different.
Mallory hugs her brother first, long and hard, eyeing Jake over Cooper’s shoulder. Her expression is partially obscured and therefore hard to read. Here it is, one year later, and they’re together—though not under the circumstances they might have hoped for.
When Mallory and Cooper separate, she turns to Jake. “Hey, stranger,” she says. “Welcome back.” She stands on her tiptoes to hug him, grabs a hank of hair at the back of his head, and tugs.
His heart crests like a wave.
Jake is so deliriously happy when he climbs into the back seat of the Blazer that he feels like he could levitate—and he didn’t even have to lie to Ursula. He’s on Nantucket to console his brokenhearted friend. But brokenhearted Cooper is in good spirits. He flirted with the flight attendant and walked off the plane with her phone number. She, too, will be on Nantucket all weekend and they’ve made plans to meet up at the Chicken Box.
When Mallory drives them down the no-name road, dirt, dust, and sand fly up in a cloud. When the air clears, the cottage is before them, perched on the lip of the beach. The ocean is a blue satin sheet beyond. They’re here. They’re back.
The cottage looks the same; it smells the same. This year, Jake and Cooper get their own bedrooms. Jake quickly claims the one next to Mallory’s.
“Swim?” Cooper says.
“Hell yes,” Jake says, though he’s eager to talk to Mallory. He wants to know how her year has been, he wants to look at the new books on her shelf, he wants to paw through her CDs and play some music. This cottage, this stretch of beach, this island, has imprinted itself on his consciousness, like a watermark on fine paper.
“You guys swim,” Mallory says. “I’ll get the hors d’oeuvres ready, and in a little while we can light the charcoal. I made burger patties.”
“That’s funny,” Cooper says. “It’s just like last year.”
Rewind, repeat; it’s just like last year.
There is something different this year, however: an outdoor shower. Mallory shows it off, calling it “the mansion.” It is roomy and beautifully crafted, made of pressure-treated lumber that has only just started to weather to gray. It has a changing area with a bench and towel hooks that look like anchors. Jake is just tall enough that he can peer over the top—ocean to one side, pond to the other. The water is hot and plentiful. It’s the greatest shower in the world.
Then he notices a pair of men’s board shorts hanging from one of the anchor hooks.
He scrambles for a second. He was the first person in the shower; Cooper is in the kitchen, talking to Mallory. So these belong to…
Someone else.
Cooper grills the burgers while Mallory tends to the corn and tomatoes. Jake plays music—Dave Matthews, Hootie and the Blowfish, and then “Hard Headed Woman.” This gets Mallory’s attention; he can see her looking at him through the billow of steam from the pot of corn. Whatever they had is still there. Ursula doesn’t matter, and whoever the other guy is doesn’t matter.
Cooper comes in, holding the platter of burgers and grilled buns. “What is it with you and this song?” he says.
Over dinner, Mallory is direct. “Do you want to talk about Krystel or not talk about Krystel?”
“Not talk about Krystel,” Cooper says. He piles pickles on top of his burger, and Jake notices Mallory doing the same. Without warning, Jake thinks about Jessica—the diving contests they used to have at Potawatomi pool, the way she would flip her wet hair over so that she looked like Dolley Madison. He misses having a sister.
Mallory raises her wineglass. “Here’s to not talking about Krystel.”
They touch glasses and drink.
“I don’t understand love,” Cooper says. “How many times have I eaten out in my adult life? Hundreds. Which means I’ve had hundreds of servers, and half of them were female. Why did I fall in love with Krystel Bethune at the Old Ebbitt Grill? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“She’s beautiful,” Mallory says. “Was that it? Did you succumb to surfaces?”
“She wasn’t the most beautiful girlfriend I’ve ever had,” Cooper says. “Tiffany Coffey in high school was prettier. And Stacey Patterson from Goucher…”
“Yeah,” Jake says. “Stacey was hot.”
Mallory kicks Jake under the table and suddenly the night comes alive. She’s jealous!
“It was timing,” Jake says. “You were ready to meet someone and she was there.”
“I was wearing my Hopkins Lacrosse T-shirt,” Cooper says. “She mentioned that she knew a bunch of players from the ’87 championship team. I was impressed, I guess. But that’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. What if Krystel hadn’t mentioned Petro and Wilkie? Or what if I’d worn a different shirt? We wouldn’t have started talking, I wouldn’t have asked for her number, and I would not be sitting here on Nantucket a broken man.”
Mallory kicks Jake again, only this time the kick is more of a nudge, her bare foot on his shin. If she gets any more intimate, he’s going to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom, Cooper be damned.
“What about you, Jake? Do you understand love?” Mallory asks.
Jake sets about buttering his corn. “No.”
“You do, though,” Cooper says. “You love Ursula. You’ve always loved Ursula.” He looks at Mallory. “They’ve been dating since the eighth grade.”
“On and off,” Jake says. “There’s been a lot of off, actually.”
“But you’re together now?” Mallory asks. The light is fading. There’s only a single votive candle on the table, but even so, Jake sees the question in her eyes, which are green tonight. He prefers them green.
“We are.”
Mallory cuts her burger in half in a way that seems aggressive. “Will you marry her?”
“I can’t believe you haven’t asked her already,” Cooper says.
Jake has reached a crossroads. He isn’t sure what to disclose under these circumstances. Should he spill his guts as though Mallory has no stake in the answer? There’s a way in which they’re both playacting for Cooper and for each other. “We went to Paris last month,” he says. “She demanded a proposal and I told her I wasn’t ready.”
“Ouch!” Cooper says.
Mallory throws her brother an exasperated look. “At least he’s not rushing into anything.”
“Hey,” Cooper says. “You’re supposed to treat me with kid gloves.”
Jake looks down at his burger, then up at Mallory. “What about you, Mal? Have you ever been in love?”
“Coop, may I have the ketchup, please?” Mallory says.
“Answer the man’s question first,” Cooper says.
“Just please pass the ketchup.”
“Come on, Mal. We’re having a heart-to-heart here. Have you ever been in love? And Mr. Peebles doesn’t count.”
“Who’s Mr. Peebles?” Jake asks, already hating Mr. Peebles and hoping he’s long dead.
“Her ninth-grade English teacher,” Cooper says. “Mal was in love with him. It was well documented in the diary that I stole from her room and read to my friends—”
“Thereby scarring me for life,” Mallory says.
“But that doesn’t count because Mr. Peebles was married and very devoted to his wife.”
“All the more reason to love him,” Mallory declares. “Plus, he introduced me to J. D. Salinger. That year, I dressed up as Franny Glass for Halloween, remember? I wore a white nightgown and carried a chicken sandwich and the only person who got it was Mr. Peebles.”
“You’re trying to change the subject,” Jake says.
“Yeah,” Cooper says. “Just tell the truth for the sake of honest, good-faith conversation. Have you ever been in love?”
“Yes,” Mallory says.
“Yes?” Cooper says. He sounds surprised. Jake is holding his breath.
“Yes,” Mallory says again. “I’m in love right now, as a matter of fact. So…would you please hand me the ketchup? My burger is getting cold.”
She’s in love with me, Jake thinks. Or she’s in love with the owner of the board shorts. It’s agony not knowing. He’ll ask her when they’re alone.
No, he won’t. Why ruin the weekend?
At ten o’clock, they pile into the Blazer to go to the Chicken Box. Cooper sits shotgun, Jake is in the rear, mesmerized by the back of Mallory’s neck, her earlobe, the tiny silver hoop.
“Your first time to the Chicken Box!” Mallory says to Coop.
“I should have known Krystel was bad news when she told me to come home last year,” Cooper says.
“We’re not talking about Krystel,” Mallory says.
“We’re talking about Alison!” Jake says.
“Who’s Alison?” Mallory asks.
“The stewardess whose number I got today,” Cooper says. “She’s meeting us at the bar.”
Jake isn’t sure the flight attendant will show up, but there’s a woman waiting out front when they arrive, and that woman is indeed Alison from USAir.
“Cooper!” she says. “Hey!”
Cooper pulls Jake and Mallory aside. “Don’t be pissed, but if this goes well, and I’m going to make sure it does, then I probably won’t be back tonight. Or maybe tomorrow either, who knows.”
Will he and Mallory be that lucky? Jake wonders. “Mal and I will be fine,” he says. “We’re old friends.”
“Mal?” Cooper says. “Is it okay with you? I need this.”
Mallory swats her brother away. “Go have fun. Don’t worry about us. Just be a gentleman, please.”
As Cooper and Alison disappear into the bar, Jake thinks about lobsters and stargazing tomorrow night, Great Point on Sunday, then home to play music and talk about books and maybe shower together in the mansion before they order Chinese food and watch an old movie. Maybe the networks play Same Time, Next Year the same time every year, to be clever.
Mallory is about to follow Cooper inside, but Jake grabs her hand. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
She bounces on her toes. “He sure was easy to get rid of.”
“Mal, seriously.”
“Seriously what?”
“I noticed the board shorts hanging in the outdoor shower, and I want to make sure there won’t be some guy in there waiting to kick the shit out of me.”
“Ah,” she says. “Those belong to JD.”
Jake waits.
“The rescue officer, from last year.”
Jake was afraid of that.
“We’re dating,” Mallory says. “Casually.”
“But not too casually—because he showers at your house and leaves his clothes behind.”
“Well, we’re not engaged or planning to get engaged,” Mallory says. “And…he’s away this weekend, at my suggestion, mountain-biking with his buddies.” She grins. “So you’re safe.”
“We’re the only two people on earth,” Jake says.
“And this weekend is going to last forever,” Mallory says. “Let’s go dance.”