Dinner at Winfield’s went extremely well. Joy had thrown all caution (and wisdom) to the wind and ordered the spaghetti carbonara with duck confit instead of the swordfish or the halibut, and Anthony had the grilled beef tenderloin. A seltzer for Anthony, and two glasses of Prisma Sauvignon Blanc for Joy. She was ready, if Anthony produced another I love you.
Over the appetizer (they shared the seared scallops and the Narragansett Bay mussels), Joy pulled out a few of her favorite family stories—the time all four of her brothers got kicked out of Scottie’s Pub for fighting with each other, the time her sister-in-law Tina packed up her family after a day at Sandy Beach and drove a quarter of a mile away before she realized she’d left one of her kids behind, the time one of the Hallamore Clydesdales pulling Santa’s sleigh pooped on her father’s shoe before the annual Christmas parade. For dessert they shared a crème brûlée that was to die for.
But Maggie was sleeping at home that night, no sleepover at Riley’s, no Dustin, so after dinner they parted ways, Anthony depositing a chaste peck on Joy’s lips. Joy’s entrée had been heavy on the garlic—was that to blame?
Later, the cream from the carbonara wreaked havoc on Joy’s system. She came down with a case of heartburn. She tossed and turned for much of the night. It was too warm in her bedroom, but when she opened the windows there was so much street noise that she couldn’t fall asleep. She walked around the upstairs, checking on Maggie, checking on Pickles. (Both were slumbering soundly in Maggie’s bed.) She took three Tums and drank a glass of water. She returned to her own bed and tried every sleep aid app on her iPhone—Calm, Brain Waves, Sleep Genius, Sleep Pillow. Nothing worked. Everything seemed to make her brain race faster.
Just after dawn she gave up and made coffee in the French press. When she looked in the mirror she saw that her eyes were puffy. Her head hurt. Her heart hurt. It was ridiculous. What, specifically, was wrong with her? Was she simply too full of rich food and wine, or was she in love? Was she heartsick? Pickles appeared from Maggie’s room.
She sat on the deck with her coffee and watched the first streaks of light begin to swoop across the sky. Pickles sat on her feet. As she sipped, she felt the truth float toward her like an island breeze.
She loved Anthony.
She did.
She’d been a fool to respond so cagily when he’d told her he was falling in love with her. (Out of olive oil?) She’d been scared, that was all. But despite all of her proud status as an independent woman, despite all the years-old disappointment with her marriage and the bitter taste it had left her with, it was time to stop hiding from the truth. She was a woman in love. You could be independent and be in love, couldn’t you? Could you?
Maybe she’d tell him. Yes, that was exactly what she should do: Life was short and summer was even shorter. Why wait for him to say it again?
Olivia was opening the shop, so before Joy went in to work she took Pickles out for a walk through Rodman’s Hollow. Maggie, who was awake uncharacteristically early, came along—a rare treat. At the end of the walk they took Mohegan Trail to Spring Street to get back into town, and Joy’s organs constricted only a little when she saw that the Roving Patisserie was parked near the post office, a little too close to Joy Bombs for Joy’s taste. There was already a line. Joy looked the other way. Soon it would be the end of July—summer was flying.
Now it was just after one and Joy was dragging with a capital D. She made herself an espresso and knocked it back. Olivia was in the back of the shop overseeing the filling of six trays of pies. The door opened; the bell tinkled. In walked a woman, definitely not a local, not your typical Block Island tourist either. She walked up to the counter and shook her head so that the colored tips of her hair, which were blonder by half than the rest of her hair, swung back and forth. Joy watched the hair for a moment, fascinated, almost hypnotized. Swing, swing.
“Hey,” said this creature, “I’m looking for Anthony. I heard I might be able to find him here.”
The woman was wearing a positively ridiculous outfit, a fitted summer dress and heels that, if Joy had known anything about shoes, she was sure she would have been able to identify as a four-hundred-dollar-plus set. Jimmy Choo or maybe that Italian guy, Ferra-whatever. Her eyeliner was perfect (tattooed? didn’t people do that?) and her arms were uniformly smooth and bronzed. She wore perfume that Joy, who knew even less about perfume than she did about good shoes, would only have described as expensive. She looked like she could be Bridezilla’s slightly older sister.
This, of course, must be the estranged Cassie. Who else would show up here, looking rich and well attired, acting presumptuous, asking for Anthony? Having such ridiculously long eyelashes? Wearing lipstick? People didn’t wear lipstick in the daytime on Block Island—they wore Banana Boat lip balm, or nothing at all. They wore flip-flops, they wore beach cover-ups or shorts and tank tops, and they wore a light coating of sand.
“Anthony?” A low drumbeat of panic began to play in Joy’s ribs. Did Cassie want Anthony back?
“Anthony Puckett.”
“I don’t know an Anthony Puckett.” This couldn’t be Cassie. The last name did sound familiar, though—where had Joy heard it recently? Puckett, she thought. Puckett, Puckett, Puckett.
“He’s here for the summer,” said the woman. “Or, ah, maybe longer, I don’t know. Sandy hair, about this tall . . .” She indicated with her hand. “Super-cute.”
Then again, could this be Cassie? The physical description of Anthony was spot-on.
“I know an Anthony Jones.” Super-cute was absolutely right. But something else felt very wrong.
The woman sighed. “Fine. Whatever. I’m sure it’s the same guy. He might be incognito.” She narrowed her eyes at Joy.
“Why would he be incognito?”
“Do you know an Anthony or don’t you?”
Now Joy was certain this was Cassie. She was caught exactly halfway between feeling threatened and feeling angry. If she’d had the guts, she would have smacked Cassie across her gently made-up face, smearing her lipstick. How dare she leave Anthony for another man! How dare she make him sad? How dare she, how dare she, how dare she? And also, what did she want with Anthony now, after all this time? Joy didn’t like feeling threatened.
Joy raised her finger and said, “Yes. I think I do. Do you need his number?”
“I have his number. I’ve been trying to call him since I got on that ferry. He’s not taking my calls.”
Joy picked up her cell phone from behind the counter. “Let me give him a try.”
Anthony answered on the first ring. “Joy!” he said. “I’m so glad you called. I was just thinking about last night. It was such a strange ending to a great night, and I know that’s because Maggie was home, but I never got to say—”
“Not now,” interrupted Joy. “Anthony, not now. I have to tell you something. Cassie’s here.”
“She is?” said Anthony. “Cassie?”
At the same time the woman with the colored tips to her hair said, “What the fuck are you talking about? Cassie?”
“Aren’t you Cassie?” Joy asked. She was definitely very confused.
“Absolutely not,” said the woman aggressively.
“You’re not?”
“I know Cassie, Cassie hired me. But I am definitely not her. She— Whatever. I can never remember how that goes.” Not-Cassie sighed and held a business card out between two fingers. Her nails were cut square and painted an extravagant turquoise, like they were trying to match the color of the water off Scotch Beach.
“Scratch that,” said Joy into the phone. “It’s not Cassie after all. My mistake.” She took the business card and squinted at it. “It’s Shelly Salazar, book publicist.”
“Oh, God,” said Anthony. “Really?”
In a quick and decisive motion Shelly Salazar took the phone from Joy and pressed it to her own ear. “I heard that, Anthony,” she said. “And I don’t know where you are on this tiny island but you’d better get yourself down to where I am, a place called . . .” She looked around. “What is this place called?” she asked Joy.
“Joy Bombs,” said Joy. She tilted her chin up in a small display of pride and ownership.
“Joy Bombs,” she said into the phone. “You know it?”
“He knows it,” said Joy. “He definitely knows it.” Out the window she saw Maggie pull up on her bike. Reinforcements, thank goodness. She watched as Maggie steered the bike into the bike rack and wound the lock carefully around it, locking not just the tire but the body of the bike to the stand, the way Joy had shown her. Good girl. During the winter they wouldn’t dream of locking anything on Block Island, but in the summer you just never knew.
“Cute title,” Shelly Salazar said, when she was off the phone. “Joy Bombs.”
“It’s not a title,” said Joy. “It’s a name. Aren’t titles just for books?”
“Or movies,” said Shelly Salazar. “Or magazine articles.”
“Not for bakeries, though.”
“A bakery,” repeated Shelly. “You guys sell gluten-free chocolate chip cookies?” She turned to scrutinize the display cases.
“No,” said Joy. “We sell just one thing. Whoopie pies. Here, try one.” She put a classic chocolate cream on a plate and held it out over the counter. Normally she cut samples into small pieces but she gave Shelly a whole one.
Shelly Salazar reared back like a spooked horse. “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “Gluten.”
“Allergy, or preference?” That was something you had to ask, in case ingredients got mixed.
Shelly blinked at Joy and said, “Both.”
Joy wanted to say, You have to pick one, but she held herself back.
Joy hadn’t heard Maggie come in. Maggie liked to use the back door, the one that led into the kitchen, because she said it made her feel more legit. Suddenly she was there, and she was saying, “We have gluten-free whoopie pies,” and when Joy turned around she saw that Maggie had already donned an apron and plastered on her best customer-service smile. Her purple streak was pulled back into a ponytail, along with the rest of her hair. Her T-shirt said My Other T-Shirt Is a Ferrari. She looked fresh and wholesome, like a Swedish milkmaid.
Shelly Salazar nodded and said, “Do you have gluten-free sugar-free dairy-free?” Her expression was optimistic, as though she actually expected that they might have something so useless and ridiculous in a bakery.
“Absolutely not,” said Joy, under her breath.
“No,” said Maggie. “I’m sorry, we don’t. Maybe try, uh—the farmers’ market? I can give you directions.” She met Shelly’s gaze square on, and she smiled.
Shelly handed the whoopie pie back to Joy and for a split second she looked legitimately disappointed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It looks delicious. I wish I could, I really do.”
Then the door opened: Anthony. He was wearing faded jeans and a plain gray T-shirt that looked exactly like the T-shirt he’d been wearing that day at Poor People’s Pub and really almost all the other days of the summer. Joy could feel a faint blush rise to her cheeks. All of Anthony’s T-shirts were the kind of T-shirt that tried to pretend they were from Target or Olympia Sports but really cost ninety-five dollars and were made from silk spun by a thousand exotic caterpillars. That was why they were such a butter-soft place to lay one’s head.
“Anthony,” said Shelly. Big smile, open arms.
“Shelly,” said Anthony. Smaller smile.
Joy watched them closely as they embraced and did that New York cheek-kissing thing. She didn’t observe any kind of spark between them, any chemistry.
Anthony looked her way and—what was that? Some kind of a salute? Then he turned back to Shelly and said, “You be careful of these things. You eat one, you want to eat ten. They’re little joy bombs, just like the name claims.”
A section of a moment passed and then Shelly said, “Ohhhh!” She smiled. “Joy bombs. I get it.”
“Also my name is Joy. It’s a play on words, you see.”
“Ah. A double entendre, if you will.”
“Oh, I will.”
Shelly laughed a little, not insincerely, and then said, “Anthony Puckett, you are a hard man to track down.”
Anthony glanced at Joy again and then back at Shelly. Did he look a little panicked? And what was going on with this last name?
“Wait,” said Joy to Anthony. Where had Joy heard the name Puckett? She searched her memory and came up empty.
“Hang on,” said Anthony to Shelly.
“Mom?” said Maggie to Joy.
“Anthony?” said Joy.
“We have to talk,” said Shelly to Anthony. “I came all this way to see if we could finally do that thing with your fa—”
“Not now,” said Anthony, cutting her off. Not since that first car ride had Joy seen Anthony blush, not even in the heat of, well, in the heat of the moment, but now she thought she saw some color rise to his cheeks, visible even through his impressive summer tan.
“What?” said Joy, miffed.
“Not you, not now,” said Anthony, looking at Joy. He turned to Shelly. “I mean, you, not now.”
“Oh, come on,” said Shelly. “This is ridiculous. I came all this way! That ferry trip takes fifty-five minutes, you know! To go what, thirteen miles?”
“Why does she keep calling you Anthony Puckett?” asked Joy.
Shelly ignored her. “My feet are killing me, Anthony. I’m not leaving unless it’s to go to a bar and figure this thing out once and for all. I’ve got five different publications lined up for this, ready to rock.”
“Publications?” said Joy. “What kind of publications?”
“Nothing,” said Anthony. “No publications. Shelly, why don’t you come back in a little while? I want to talk first to Joy here.”
“No way,” said Shelly. “We’ve been talking about this all summer. I want to lock this down, Anthony.”
“All summer?” said Joy.
“Joy—” said Anthony.
There were prickles on the back of Joy’s neck and up and down her arms. “You know what?” she said. “You guys go to your bar. Maggie, Olivia is in the back. You call her out here the minute things get busy. I’ve got to run home for a few minutes.”
“Joy—” said Anthony again.
“Anthony?” said Shelly. “What’s going on here? I’m getting a vibe.”
“Joy,” said Anthony, more urgently.
“Uh-uh,” said Joy. “Nope. You, not now.”