“You saw them on the Fourth of July?” Kacy says. “She was practically lying on top of him. And at the Pink and White Party, they were skinny-dipping, remember? She was naked on the boat and he swam out there, Coco.”
Coco sips her rosé, though she would like to chug the glass. “They’re not,” she says. “Leslee just flirts.”
Um… okay? Coco sounds defensive, and Kacy wonders if she still has a thing for Lamont. She hopes not—Lamont is definitely getting with the boss lady.
“What are the sleeping arrangements for this overnight trip?” Kacy says.
“Lamont is staying on the boat,” Coco says. “Leslee is staying at the Charlotte Inn.”
Gah! Kacy is dying to stay at the Charlotte Inn. Back when Kacy and Isla used to talk about coming to Nantucket on vacation, Kacy imagined a weekend trip to the Vineyard—staying at the Charlotte Inn, hanging out at clothing-optional Lucy Vincent Beach, drinks at Nancy’s, dinner at the Red Cat, dancing at the Ritz, breakfast at Morning Glory Farm. “How much is that place per night?”
“I have no idea,” Coco says.
“Didn’t you make the reservation?”
Coco did not make the reservation, a detail that hasn’t occurred to her until this very second.
“They can’t get into too much trouble,” Kacy says, “because the boys on the crew will be there, right?”
Coco’s head falls back. “They couldn’t go.”
“Oh, honey,” Kacy says. “Leslee is definitely staying on the boat.”
Kacy might as well be sticking the three-pronged oyster fork into Coco’s heart. “I don’t care,” Coco says. “I just feel sorry for Bull.”
“They must have some kind of agreement,” Kacy says.
Kacy’s right, Coco thinks. They must. She feels naive, duped, out of her league. There weren’t a lot of open marriages in Rosebush.
Kacy hands her phone to the bartender, Carson. “Would you take our picture?” she asks.
The next stop is Lola 41, where they order hibiscus blueberry margaritas. Kacy says, “I’m going to have my parents come get my car and we’ll walk. Because we are getting drunk!”
Drunk sounds good to Coco. As she’s tasting her margarita, she recognizes two dudes at the end of the bar. “It’s Addison,” she says to Kacy.
Kacy glances over. “This island is too small. He’s with Fast Eddie.”
Eddie Pancik, Coco thinks. Married to Grace, residing at 1313 Lily Street. She’s delivered invitations to their house twice now; it is starting to feel like a small island. “Should we go say hello?”
“Absolutely not,” Kacy says. “I want to enjoy myself.”
When Addison notices Kacy at the bar with the Richardsons’ personal assistant, he lowers his voice: “Bull priced out the difference between on-island contractors and off-island contractors for our project,” he says to Eddie. “Off-island contractors came in twenty percent cheaper. Which, I hardly have to tell you, is a savings of nearly three million dollars.”
Eddie takes a beat. Why did Bull reach out to only Addison with this information? he wonders. This feels like something that should have been written in an email to them both. Are Addison and Bull intentionally sidestepping Eddie? Is he expendable on this project? (He fears the answer is yes, but they have a deal.)
“We know off-island contractors are cheaper,” Eddie says. “We also know we have to add in the cost of transportation over and back every day, which adds up. We have to factor in bad-weather days when the boats and planes are canceled and they can’t work or they get stuck on the island and we have to put them up at a hotel. If there’s an issue after the homes are built, is the off-island contractor going to show up? No! But most important, the on-island contractors are the ones we have the relationships with. They’ll show up. They’ll get it done.”
Addison spins his Aperol spritz. He persuaded Eddie to order one as well—the drink is having a moment, Addison said—but to Eddie, it tastes like the toothpaste they use at a dental cleaning. He ordered a second one anyway, hoping the drink will telegraph that Eddie, too, is having a moment.
“I told him that,” Addison says. “But he still wants to go with off-island contractors and I told him it was okay.”
“You…” Eddie feels himself about to lose his cool. “The three of us are partners, are we not? Why wasn’t I privy to this conversation?”
“Well,” Addison says, and for the first time ever, Eddie sees him squirm. Addison Wheeler is to the manor born; he has an ease in the world that Eddie envies, a combination of pedigree, education, and charm. But right now, Addison looks like he’s holding in a fart. “It came up in a conversation about something else.”
“Which was…”
Addison sighs. “Bull is helping Reed get into his first-choice boarding school. Tiffin Academy. Bull knows several people on the board, and apparently it’s an old-fashioned place where strings can still be pulled.”
“And in exchange for him doing you this favor, he wants you to concede on the off-island contractors.”
“Yes,” Addison says. “But also, Eddie, it’s a lot of money. Three mil, a million dollars apiece. You can’t sneer at that.”
Eddie pushes away what’s left of his Asinine spritz. “I have to go,” he says and then he does, in fact, sneer. “And for the record, that drink sucks.”
At Cru, which is perched on the very end of Straight Wharf, Kacy and Coco order the Crucomber, which is icy cold vodka, cucumber, lemon, and toasted sesame. It’s served by a bartender named Shawn, who is so fine, Coco forgets about Lamont for a moment. She thinks Shawn might be checking her out as well because when he sets down their drinks, he says, “You have zombie eyes.”
Coco laughs. This is a new one. “Is that a good thing?”
“Yeah, they’re otherworldly,” he says.
Coco raises her glass to him. She’s terrible at flirting.
The woman on the other side of Kacy is holding a tiny baby, Kacy would guess only three or four weeks old; she can see the pulsing of his anterior fontanelle. She’s whisked right back to the NICU—the beeping of the monitors, the whoosh of the respirators, the squeak of the nurses’ sneakers. In the midst of all this, Kacy suddenly hears Isla’s voice. She would address every baby formally—“Good afternoon, Mr. Defazio.” “Good evening, Ms. McQuaid”—in a way that lightened the mood in the unit but also indicated a future where these teeny-tiny babies would become adults. Isla is such a good doctor that she inspires every NICU nurse to be just like her. This brings Kacy to the question she’s been asking herself since she left San Francisco: How can a person so impeccable in her professional life have such a messy personal life?
She has reached the conclusion that this must happen all the time.
Kacy hands Shawn the bartender her phone. “Would you take our picture?”
