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Brooke should be hungry—she skipped breakfast because of the interview with Caroline—but she finds all she wants for lunch is today’s omelet (Brie, sautéed zucchini, and thyme) and a green salad. Warm rolls make their way around the table and Brooke isn’t tempted to take one. Next to Brooke, Gigi orders the Galley burger, which comes with a pile of thin, crispy fries, but Brooke turns down Gigi’s offer to sample them. The omelet is enough; it pairs perfectly with her champagne, though unlike everyone else, Brooke is only on her first glass.
Gigi, however, is on glass number three, and the bubbles have gone straight to her head since she also skipped breakfast. It makes no sense that she’s feeling so nervous now that the weekend is nearly over, does it? She supposes she’s still spooked about the night before, that awful woman, and also by her own random impulses to tell Hollis the truth.Gah!Gigi can’t imagine doing that now. She likes Hollis, likes her friends, and wants to enjoy the rest of the weekend in peace, then go back home and figure out how to forgive herself.
Dru-Ann inhales her lobster roll and then excuses herself and goes to the ladies’ room, where, she’s amused to find out, they pipe in a soundtrack of crashing waves and seagull cries. She sits on the toilet lid and checks her phone. McIlroy has just birdied fifteen, which probably meansGood night, Phineas. Hovland is two strokes behind. The coverage switches to Phineas on the green at fifteen. He has an eighty-foot putt to make for birdie, and although Dru-Ann has now been in the bathroom too long to reasonably explain, she can’t stop watching. Phineas lines up his shot, crouching down to eyeball the hole in a way that reminds Dru-Ann of Phil Mickelson, and then he stands up and hits the ball.
It’s rolling, it’s rolling, it breaks left, and Dru-Ann finds herself leaning right, whispering,Come on, come on!And sure enough, at the very last minute, the ball curves and drops into the cup.
Dru-Ann jumps up. He birdied fifteen! She can’t freaking believe it! Is there any way she can get out of going on the sail? She needs to watch the end of this. Nick must be losing his mind! (Posey, too, but Dru-Ann doesn’t care about Posey.)
When Dru-Ann takes her seat at the table, their plates have been cleared and dessert menus set down. Caroline is out on the beach, barefoot with her camera, taking atmospheric panoramas, then turning to film their table from a different vantage point. Everyone waves, Dru-Ann belatedly.
“Should we get dessert?” Hollis asks. “The brownie à la mode is not to be missed.”
“I’m fine,” Brooke says. “I may have coffee.”
“I’d split a brownie,” Gigi says.
“Get it, sis,” Tatum says.
Ugh,Dru-Ann thinks. She wants to move this thing along. She was in the bathroom for so long that she can just tell Hollis her stomach is funky and she probably shouldn’t get on a sailboat. She takes a breath. That’s her out. She’ll be in front of her TV in thirty minutes, forty tops—plenty of time to see how the tournament ends.
The fudge brownie topped with ice cream and whipped cream goes around the table once, then twice, then Tatum announces that she’s finishing it. As she’s bringing the final bite to her mouth, she sees a familiar-looking couple sitting at a high-top on the patio outside the bar.Oh, boy,she thinks. It’s Terri and Ethan Falcone. (How can they afford to eat here? she wonders. The liquor store must be doing well.) Terri is staring down their table, saying something to Ethan. Tatum almost waves, but the last thing she wants is for Terri and Ethan to come over.
Tatum sits up a little straighter.Yes, Terri, I am wearing an orange Lilly Pulitzer dress eating lunch at Table 20 with Hollis Shaw. Deal with it.
Terri is definitely talking about them, Tatum can tell. But what is she saying?
“You know what I always think about when I see Hollis Shaw and Tatum Grover together?” Terri says to Ethan.
“What’s that?” Ethan says, pushing his plate away and splitting the remains of their second bottle of Domaines Ott between their glasses.This is the life,he thinks. Sitting in the sun, drinking good wine, enjoying a leisurely lunch. Terri is pretty tipsy; Ethan is hoping there might be some afternoon delight in his future.
“I think about how we lost the state softball championship our senior year,” Terri says. “Tatum dropped a ball in left field and the other team scored the winning run.”
Ethan nods. He has heard this story countless times. He’s tempted to sing Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” but Terri would not be amused.
“Tatum was always pranking people,” Terri says. “And there was a split second when I thought she was onlypretendingto drop the ball to fake us all out, doing a sleight of hand, you know, that she would pull the ball from her glove in the end. Because itlookedlike she had it. But then the next second, it was in the grass.”
“You think she dropped it on purpose?” Ethan says. This would be a new twist to the story.
“What reason would she have to dothat?” Terri says. “Tatum is the most competitive person I have ever known. But even so, that drop has always bothered me.” Terri’s eyes are fastened on the other table. “Anyway, that’s what I think about.”
Ethan squeezes Terri’s hand. This is one thing he has always loved about his wife: In her heart, she is eternally seventeen.
Hollis asks for the check, but it takes forever—or maybe it only seems that way to Dru-Ann. She peeks at her phone under the table. Hovland is on the green at sixteen. The check arrives; Hollis hands over her credit card.Thank you, Hollis,everyone says, Dru-Ann belatedly.
There’s another lull, and Brooke, who has been unusually quiet throughout lunch, clears her throat and says, “I have something I’d like to share with you all, and it may come as a bit of a shock.”
Dru-Ann’s head snaps up. Is Brooke going to come out of the closetnow?
But before Brooke can speak, there’s an interruption. A woman in a flowing pink-and-orange caftan comes billowing toward them from the beach. She’s wearing oversize sunglasses that Dru-Ann can only classify as “straight out of divorce court in the 1970s,” so it takes Dru-Ann a minute to realize that this woman is the same cray-cray from the night before.
The woman sails right past Caroline with her camera and steps up to speak to the ladies through the open side of the restaurant.
“Hey there, girls!” she says.
Hollis whips around and comes face-to-face with Electra. She’s wearing pink and orange. This is a joke, right?
Caroline zooms in as Electra Undergrove says hello, even though she and Hollis—and Brooke!—are no longer friends. They are, in fact, something like enemies. Electra is wearing a muumuu in the colors of the day. What the hell is going on?
