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Jack crushes Tatum in a bear hug so tight that she feels her sore breast. He’s put on some heft and his face has aged, but he still looks good. Men get better-looking as they get older; it pisses Tatum off.
“Your hair looks hot, babe,” Kyle says.
“Thanks.” Tatum gives Kyle a raised eyebrow:Did you know he was coming?Kyle and Jack and Tatum have been friends since middle school when Jack’s father accepted a foreman’s job at Toscana Construction. She’s happy to see him, but a little warning would have been nice. She lights a cigarette.
“Can I get you some wine, Tay?” Jack asks. “I brought you a bottle as a little hostess gift.”
Hostess gift!Tatum thinks.Shoot.She should bring something, but what can she get Hollis that Hollis can’t buy herself? The answer is nothing, but Tatum knows that’s not the point. The point is not to show up empty-handed. Tatum thinks about bringing a can of soup, a roll of paper towels, a neon-yellow T-shirt advertising McKenzie Heating and Cooling. She should have rummaged through her photo albums for a picture of her and Hollis—she has approximately three thousand of them—and bought a silver frame for it at Flowers on Chestnut. That would have been cute, but the frame would have cost her seventy-five bucks, money that she doesn’t have to spare, especially not after the blowout. Maybe she should just grab a picture? There’s the one of them taken in the back of the bus after they won the state softball championship junior year (both of them grinning, Tatum holding up two fingers to signal victory, Hollis with a dorky sweatband at her hairline). Or she could take the one of the four of them—Tatum and Kyle, Hollis and Jack—up at Altar Rock on New Year’s Day of senior year. But how meager, presenting just a snapshot. Besides, she doesn’t have time to look through the albums; she’s late already.
“I need to be in Squam ten minutes ago,” she says.
“Squam?” Jack says. “What’s out there?”
They all know what’s out in Squam, Tatum thinks. Surely Jack remembers that Hollis moved the cottage and built a big-ass house—but does he know that Matthew died, and did Kyle tell him about what he’s affectionately calling the “ten-tit weekend”? Did Kyle invite himbecauseof the weekend? Jack lives in the western reaches of the state where he owns a bar and grill and also serves as the county game warden. He’d traded ocean for lake, striped bass for… whatever kind of fish live in lakes. Perch? Trout? Tatum has no idea. They haven’t seen Jack since Dylan graduated from high school, which was… five years ago? Jack didn’t like the way the island had changed, he said. Too many Chads on their phones in their father’s Range Rovers, and the good places were all gone—Thirty Acres, the Mad Hatter, the Atlantic Café. But Tatum was pretty sure Hollis figured into the equation somehow. She was the reason he didn’t come back to the island.
But now Hollis is a widow, and Tatum will be spending the weekend with her. There’s nowayJack’s visit is a coincidence. He and Kyle must have dreamed this up like a couple of teenage girls.
Tatum pokes her head into the fridge and sees a bottle of Santa Margherita pinot grigio, her favorite. This, she decides, will be her hostess present.
And she’ll bring something for that snob Dru-Ann as well.
She grabs her duffel bag from the bedroom, writesI love youon the bathroom mirror in lipstick, pops into Orion’s room and rummages through his toy chest until she finds what she’s looking for, then pokes her head out the back door.
“Kyle is running me up to Squam,” she says to Jack. “Why don’t you come along?”
He nearly jumps out of his chair. “Already planning on it,” he says.
13. Happy Hour I
Four o’clock on Friday finds Brooke Kirtley strolling down the ramp of the ferry wearing a straw hat, a Lilly Pulitzer skirt printed with turquoise giraffes, and a matching pair of turquoise sandals that pinch between the toes. Before she walked out the door, Charlie said, “You look like something Nantucket spit up.” Brooke knew Charlie was just jealous—and let’s not forgetguilty—so she said, “Why, thank you,” and left.
Brooke feels a tap on her shoulder and turns to find Electra Undergrove on the ramp behind her.
“Wait,” Brooke says. “You were on the ferry too?”
“I was,” Electra says. She’s looking very chic in a clingy blue patio dress with cutouts at the waist. She has a new asymmetrical haircut and a new hair color, the reddish purple of a cherry cola. And, if Brooke isn’t mistaken, something else is different. At first Brooke wonders if Electra has lost weight—this would come as no surprise; a bunch of Wellesley moms joined this weird new “mindfulness spa” on Route 16 where they were encouraged to fast—but then Brooke realizes that Electra has had a boob job. Right? She was always flat as a board, but now Electra’s breasts are buoyant spheres alluringly tanned on the tops.
The great dress, the new hair and breasts, and Electra’s blinding self-confidence all do the easy work of making Brooke feel less-than. Her skirt is frumpy, her hat is silly, her shoes are painful.
Electra peers at Brooke over the top of her giant Kris Jenner sunglasses and says, “How about we go for that drink?”
Now?Brooke thinks. She told Hollis she was getting in on the four o’clock ferry and that she’d just hop in a taxi because this weekend she’s determinednot to be a botherorrequire special attention. She won’t talk too much or apologize for things that aren’t her fault, and she won’t get on anyone’s nerves. She wants, desperately, to be thought of ascool.But maybe she can start by not rushing out to Hollis’s house right away and instead going for a drink with Electra Undergrove.
Besides, there’s no way Brooke can turn Electra down, not after years of obsessing over the reasons she had been banned from Electra’s house and kicked out of their friend group. Electra runs Wellesley. To turn her down now would be to commit social suicide.
Commit social suicideagain, Brooke thinks.
And so Brooke smiles at Electra—though not too eagerly—and shrugs. “One drink couldn’t hurt.”
At Slip 14, a kid wearing a Gunna T-shirt ogles Electra’s new breasts like they’re a couple of bread rolls fresh from the oven. Over the sound system, Kenny Chesney sings about saving it for a rainy day and Brooke thinks,Amen!A row of cute guys at the bar are drinking draft beers and slurping oysters. Brooke follows Electra to a table for two on the patio, dragging her suitcase behind her.
Electra orders a bottle of rosé and Brooke says, “I can stay for only one glass.”
Electra laughs. “Is there such a thing as only one glass of rosé?”
Yes,Brooke thinks. She will drink only one glass; she won’t let Electrainfluenceher. She won’t let Electrabullyher.
“Where’s Simon?” Brooke asks.
