Page 8 of Sunset on the Solstice

Shelby remembered telling Lily, “This is the happiest day of my life! Why aren’t you happy for me?” She remembered Lily bursting into tears. She hadn’t been able to answer.

Maybe because Shelby was so immersed in looking at the photographs, she didn’t hear her husband come back from the bar. All at once, he stood over her, holding the notebook into which she’d been writing a silly romance novel. His eyes were beady, maybe from the beers he’d drunk at a bar. Shelby was stricken with fear.

Rather than argue with him, rather than rip the pages out of his hands, she sat there, clutching their wedding photo album and waiting for him to say whatever it was he wanted to say—whatever cruelty he wanted to land on.

“I see you’re writing your stupid girly stories again,” he growled. “Your stupid girly stories about other men.”

Shelby flared her nostrils and tried to laugh it off. “Those are from years ago, before we were married,” she lied.

“Which means you moved them out West with us?” her husband asked.

Shelby swallowed the lump in her throat. “I was going to get rid of them tonight. Spring cleaning.”

Her husband tore four of her written pages from the notebook, and then stripped them in half. He let the pieces flutter to the floor, a floor that Shelby had swept and scrubbed earlier. “I don’t want to have to come home and see this garbage,” he said. “I don’t want to be reminded of how much my wife wishes she was with someone else.”

“I don’t wish that,” Shelby said. She considered showing him the photo album in her hands. She considered telling him that all she wanted was their love, the one they’d chosen together all those years ago. But already, having torn up the rest of her story, her husband turned on his heel and stomped back to their bedroom, where, soon, he would be sprawled on his back and snoring.

5

Nantucket Island, Six Years Ago

It was Lily’s idea that Shelby go on another date immediately. “Hank wasn’t right for you,” Lily assured her. “I was wrong to match you up in the first place. That was my bad! But now, you have your first date under your belt. You know what it’s like. You can dig into the fun stuff, now.”

Shelby wasn’t sure if any part of dating seemed fun to her, but she was willing to give it another go, if only to prove to herself that she wasn’t half as much of a loser as she felt.

Shelby agreed to meet Baxter Balms three nights after her disastrous date with Hank the lawyer. Baxter suggested they grab a couple of beers and head to the beach to talk. It felt low-key in all the ways her restaurant date with Hank hadn’t been, so Shelby agreed immediately. This time, she decided, she was going to have one beer, if only to loosen up. Maybe she’d been too much of an alien before, bug-eyed and unable to articulate who she was. She hadn’t known what to say or think.

Baxter was slightly cuter than Hank, but he was a bit more awkward, too. When he picked her up from the Sutton Book Club, they walked for a while, as the beers he’d bought for their date clanked around in his backpack. Baxter explained that he was a grad student at NYU, which was perfect, as they were both New York City-bound at the end of the summer. It meant there was an opportunity for a future. He was also a prolific reader, and he explained that he’d read all of Knausgaard over the previous two weeks, which led Shelby to conclude he was a book freak. She’d read only one Knausgaard, and they got into a pretty good discussion about him, arguing lightly, until they reached the beach and cracked open their beers. She could see from his expression that he sort of liked her, or at least enjoyed her reader-brain. She sort of liked him, too.

Was that all it took to build a life with someone?

For a little while, Shelby allowed herself a swell of hope. Maybe she and Baxter would hit it off. Maybe they’d have a summer of romance before returning to New York City and getting serious not only about one another but about their schooling. Maybe they’d be professors together and have intellectual children and host dinner parties. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It was like a song in her brain.

But about an hour into their date, when Shelby felt a little woozy from the three-quarters of a beer she’d drunk, Baxter let it slip that he still wasn’t over his ex-girlfriend. Apparently, she’d gone to get her master's in Argentina, and although they’d agreed to stay together, she’d met someone else. “She calls me every few weeks and says she’s not happy there, that she wants to come back,” Baxter said, his eyes darkening. “I don’t know what to believe.”

Shelby’s tongue felt fat and strange in her mouth. She tossed back the rest of her beer.

“But I don’t know,” Baxter went on. “My mom thinks I need to move on, so she sent me Lily’s contact, and yeah, now I’m here with you. And it’s pretty fun? Don’t get me wrong. But I think we’re just friends, right? You feel it, too?”

“Yeah. Just friends,” Shelby agreed, although at that moment, she wanted to melt into the sand.

Later, Shelby lay on Lily’s bed and wept, while Lily reminded her that dating was always like this. “It was only your second time out!” she said. “Plenty of women go on first dates constantly, for years, and only find ‘the one’ when they stop looking.”

“I’m not even looking for the one!” Shelby scowled at her sister. “You told me I had to start dating! So I could be like a real person! But maybe I don’t want to be like a real person?”

Lily sighed and lay down next to Shelby, and for a moment, the two sisters were like the little girls they’d once been, arguing and laughing at intervals.

“I’m just embarrassed,” Shelby admitted.

“That’s what living is,” Lily reminded her. “It’s embarrassing yourself over and over again. It’s opening yourself up to heartache and experiences. Living doesn’t happen in the pages of a book.”

Shelby sighed. “I think I’m retired.”

“Don’t retire yet,” Lily said.

But Shelby asked Lily to stop matching her up. She wanted to focus on work at the Sutton Book Club. She wanted to focus on her own heart and her own mind.

The following evening, their mother Rebecca hosted yet another Sutton family party. Shelby found herself out on the sand beneath the delicious summer sun, listening as her Grandma Esme and Aunt Valerie bickered happily about something inane, and Lily and her boyfriend Mick teased one another, and Chad and their cousins played with a soccer ball, nearly losing it in the waves. Shelby’s heart was full with her love for her family. Soon, Grandpa Victor came out with an accordion, introducing them to a talent he’d thought was long dormant. He played old European tunes, and the Sutton family laughed and clapped along. Seeing their usually so serious and intellectual grandfather acting playful, musical, and foolish was remarkable. Kade, especially, couldn’t stop laughing.