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Hollis’s junior prom dress is white; her father, Tom Shaw, is uncharacteristically mushy during the pictures. He kisses Hollis on the forehead and says, “Do me a favor and don’t elope tonight.”
“We’ll wait until senior prom, sir,” Jack says with a wink as he helps Hollis into his pickup, which he has washed and vacuumed for the occasion.
At dinner at the Brotherhood, at a table right downstairs from where they are now, Hollis and Tatum order the chicken piccata—they both want burgers, but they’re worried about onion breath and spilling ketchup on their dresses—and the boys whisper about whether they’ll be carded if they try to order beer.
“Yes, you’ll get carded,” Tatum says. “We’rehigh-school students going to our prom.Terri’s brother is the manager. Everyone here knows us.”
There’s an older couple sitting at the next table; they lean over and say, “Enjoy it, kids. It goes by so fast.”
Yeah, yeah,Hollis thinks.Hold on to sixteen as long as you can,blah-blah-blah. All the four of them want, in that moment, is to be older.
When they finish eating, the server tells them that the couple picked up their entire check.
“Damn!” Kyle says. “I knew I should have gotten the lobster.”
It goes by so fast,Hollis thinks now. What if she’d had a crystal ball that night and could see the four of them together thirty-seven years later at the new bar upstairs? What would she have thought? It’s dizzying to consider.
Jack takes a sip of his beer. “You won’t be sitting for long.” He goes over to the guitar player, whispers something in his ear, slips him some money.
Does Hollis know what’s coming?
Of course she does—but the first chords of the song give her the shivers nonetheless. The guitar player sounds just like a young Mick Jagger.“I know living is easy to do…”
Suddenly Jack is behind her, singing in her ear.“The things you wanted, I bought them for you.”He reaches for her hand. “Dance with me, Holly.”
Hollis looks at Tatum but she and Kyle are in their own world. Kyle is stroking Tatum’s hair; Tatum’s eyes are closed.
Hollis is shy—nobody else is dancing—but what does she care about anyone else? She and Jack slow-dance in the space between the guitar player and the bar. Hollis clings to Jack, inhales his scent, thinks about the boy who rode his bike seven miles out to Squam every Saturday morning and chopped wood with Tom Shaw just so he could spend an hour with Hollis on the beach alone. She thinks about her father saying,Don’t elope tonight,and Jack responding,We’ll wait until senior prom, sir. He’d been kidding but also serious. They had planned to get married. All the years they’d dated, that had been the plan.
Oh, Jack,she thinks. She can’t imagine how badly she hurt him.
Wild horses,she thinks.We’ll ride them someday.
But things had turned out the way they were supposed to. Hollis was meant to marry Matthew, that much she’s sure of.
There’s a tap on her shoulder. It’s Tatum.
“We’re leaving.”
“But you’re coming back to Squam tonight, aren’t you?” Hollis says.
“I’ll bring her out there,” Kyle says with a wink. “But we’re taking the long way ’round.”
After they disappear down the stairs, Jack says, “Can I buy you another drink?”
“I’ve had enough, I think,” Hollis says. “I parked my Bronco on India Street, but I should probably get a cab.”
“I’ll drive you home in the Bronco,” Jack says, “and catch a ride home with Kyle.” He tilts his head. “But we’d better take the long way ’round.”
Hollis would have said there was no way she would recognize their spot—the place, deep in the moors, where she and Jack used to park in high school—but Jack drives there without even having to think about it. It’s a quarter mile from Gibbs Pond, where the high-school parties are, a tiny enclave surrounded by fir trees: the Round Room. All these years later, it looks exactly the same—one reason, Hollis thinks, why she’ll always support the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. Jack cuts the engine and snaps off the lights. There’s a smattering of stars straight up but the crescent moon is obscured by the trees.
Hollis says, “How many couples do you think parked here after us?”
“And before us,” Jack says.
“But it was ours for years,” Hollis says. They came here nearly every weekend junior and senior years and the summer in between. The other kids knew to stay away.
“I want to talk,” Jack says. “Tell me everything.”
