“Lily!” a voice calls out as I’m pinning a flyer on the bulletin outside of the coffee shop, the Hub. I recognize it immediately.
There, walking across the brick sidewalk, is Becca Stone. I met her the same night I met Henry. She was the coworker who invited me to the party. For the last several summers, we have reconnected like old camp friends, picking back up where we left off despite the winters of not speaking.
I have a somewhat naive theory that almost everyone in the world would get along if only they were locked in a closet together for enough time. Being in Nantucket that first summer was kind of like being locked in one glorious, small closet; Henry and Becca and I banded together and bonded over house parties and bonfires and tanning on the beach and ducking into bars on the wharf through the open windows when no one was looking. Drunk middle-aged men would buy Becca and me drinks, and we would pass them back to Henry, fishing paper wristbands out of trash cans, taping them back together, and sneaking into Cisco Brewers during the day—persuading one of the young oyster shuckers to give us free snacks from the raw bar.
Back then, everything was easier because anything was possible.
“It’s so good to see you!” I say when she approaches. “How have you been?”
“I’m good! I’m just here for the week, back and forth between the island and Boston for the summer.”
“What’re you doing downtown now?” I say quickly, before Becca can get a chance to ask me any questions.
“Oh…” Becca looks down at her white sandals. They have handwoven flowers on them. “I’m actually meeting Henry for lunch, and his…” She adjusts the glasses up the ridge of her nose before continuing. “His, uh, fiancée.”
“Cool.” I smile breezily while my heart splits open. I know Becca and Henry have remained friends. She refused to take sides in the breakup, which I respect. “That’s great. I ran into them at the grocery store the other day. She seems nice.”
“She is, yeah!” Becca grins, clearly relieved. “I kind of can’t believe they’re getting married already, I feel like we just graduated college yesterday, but I’m happy for them. Real excited for the wedding in August, too. It’s going to be at the yacht club.”
Miraculously, I keep the smile fixed on my face as shock hammers through my body, landing somewhere in my gut. I know I need to respond, but I can’t locate the appropriate words—or, really, any words.
So soon. “Oh, that’s lovely,” is all I manage.
My voice sounds false, even to me. I adjust the flyers to my other arm. The edge of one of the pages slices across the soft skin of my forefinger, leaving a paper cut. My legs feel strangely weightless, like they might buckle.
“Well, I should be going, but it was good to see you,” I add. “Tell Henry I say hi.”
Before Becca can respond, I am already walking away, down the brick sidewalk, past the wharf, onto the farthest edge of the dock, where the boats are floating, oblivious. Five seagulls fight over an abandoned turkey sandwich, ripping the bread to pieces. Their squawking drowns out the sound of the ocean, my thoughts, everything. The salt air must be thinner around here, because I can’t seem to find the oxygen to take a full breath.
I stand like that until I can no longer feel my fingertips vibrate, watching the ferries come in and out of the port.
It was on one of these ferries that I saw Henry on the last day of our first summer. We were on the way back home, off to college shortly after, and I spotted his curved back on the top deck of the boat.
We had been on dates on and off all summer, but neither of us wanted to start college with a long-distance romance, so we never pushed it past casual. We didn’t ask how each other felt or question when we would see each other next. So much was unsaid back then.
The night before the ferry departed, I considered calling him. I even walked by his family’s house on Baxter Road and stared at the big white porch, the swing chair that looked over the steep drop of the cliff. I thought about knocking but didn’t. I just kept on walking, regretting my cowardice.
Seeing him on the ferry that last day felt like fate, a chance to finally say how we felt before it was too late.
We smiled at each other hesitantly over the tops of seats until I approached, navigating my carry-on bag through the aisle. The waves made everything unsteady as the boat reversed into the harbor, propelling us forward.
There’s an island tradition that throwing a penny in the water when you pass the Brant Point lighthouse on the ferry will make your wish come true. We went outside to watch the white lighthouse shrink smaller and smaller and threw pennies in the water, standing back-to-back. My wish came true, and then it didn’t. I didn’t ask what he wished for, but I used to like to think it was the same.
Imagine us standing there, hair whipping into my eyes, stinging my cheeks, both of us asking the universe for each other. How could it resist? Even the universe can be persuaded.
Henry had the penny framed for our third-year anniversary. As it turns out, he had never thrown it at all.
Maybe that’s where everything went wrong.
August. They are getting married in August.
Chapter NineRose
June 1
The ocean mist hangs in the air like a question.
I check my watch again. It’s past six and my date is nowhere to be found. I’ve been sitting on the wooden bench by the docks downtown, waiting for him to arrive for ten minutes already. The sun is now beginning its slow descent into the water. Behind me, people are chattering at one of the many open-air restaurants on the wharf. I can hear drinks colliding, melodic voices rising and falling. But I won’t be joining any of them, because William insisted on having dinner on his boat rather than at a restaurant downtown.
