Romeo spins around on his stool and offers Walker his hand. “Hey there,” he says. “I’m Romeo, from the Steamship.”
Walker looks from Sharon to Romeo and back and belatedly grips Romeo’s hand. “Hey there, I’m Walker, Sharon’s husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Sharon says.
“The divorce isn’t final,” Walker says. “Legally, I’m still your husband.”
“What is this all about, Walker?” Sharon asks. She’s pleased to note that Walker looks awful. He’s pasty and bloated, and there are some long hairs sticking out of his nose that Bailey from PT must have been too timid to tell him about.
“I’d like to talk to you,” Walker says. “I made a big mistake, an epic mistake, and I want you back.”
Sharon blinks. How many times in the days and weeks following Walker’s departure had she envisioned this moment?
“She isn’t coming back to you,” Romeo says. He stands up so he can face Walker, and Sharon tenses.
Walker huffs. “This is none of your business.”
Sharon has to stop this. The last thing she wants is a scene in the middle of the Club Car; there isn’t room for a confrontation and she doesn’t want to go viral for being part of a Gen X love triangle. Walker is right that this is none of Romeo’s business, but Romeo is right about something too: Sharon has repeatedly told Romeo that she would never, ever, ever go back to Walker.
But now that she sees the two men together, she feels like she has known Romeo for only fifteen minutes. She has never used or even thought the word rebound, though she can understand how the term might apply. Sharon and Walker have thirty-plus years of history, routines, habits, inside jokes, memories; they have a community, neighbors, couple-friends; they have relationships with each other’s families; they have their ways; and, most important, they have their children.
Sharon puts a hand on Romeo’s right biceps. (If there’s a fistfight, Romeo will break Walker in half.) “Let me just go talk to him.”
Romeo’s expression is incredulous; his eyes are wounded. “Really?”
She nods, and Romeo retakes his stool, throws back what’s left of his drink, then throws back what’s left of Sharon’s.
Sharon grabs her purse and follows Walker out the door. There are so many people trying to get in that getting out takes longer than she expects. When she reaches the cool air at the entrance, she hears Mike saying, “This one is for Sharon!” And he launches into “Hooked on a Feeling.”
Coco sees Romeo from the Steamship standing in the crowd on the other side of the piano, and where Romeo is, Coco has learned, Blond Sharon is sure to be as well. Coco and Kacy sing along gamely to “Hooked on a Feeling,” but when it ends, Coco wants to go. Everywhere they’ve been tonight, they’ve seen the Richardsons’ friends.
As if Coco needs one more reason to leave, Mike the piano player starts singing “You and Tequila.” No, Coco thinks. No Kenny Chesney for me. She grabs Kacy’s hand and pulls her out the back door.
Every good night out on Nantucket ends at the Chicken Box. Kacy hasn’t set foot in the place since a Christmas break during nursing school, but it never changes—it still smells like beer and lust. The place is crammed with the beautiful people lucky enough to be on Nantucket tonight. There’s a cover band playing the Backstreet Boys and everyone on the dance floor is scream-singing the words: “I! Want! It! That! Way!”
“I’ll get beers,” Coco says, and she dives straight into the crush at the bar.
Kacy heads over to the pool tables, where it’s less crowded, and rereads Isla’s text. There’s something going on with Dave.
It sounds like Isla wants Kacy to give her relationship advice. How unfair is that? Kacy would like to respond: I don’t care about Dave! She wants to say: If you’d just left Dave like you said you would, you would be here at the Box with me! Any issues that Isla has with Rondo are her own problems.
Kacy knows she should continue to wear Isla down with silence, but she’s had just enough to drink that she decides to throw gasoline on the fire instead. She texts Isla three pictures: one of her and Coco at the Oystercatcher, one from Cru, one from Stubbys. She captions this with the two-girls-with-heart emoji and then four dots meaning “end of discussion.”
Coco brings back four Coronas—two for her and two for Kacy—and they enter the fray to dance to “The Sign” by Ace of Base. It couldn’t get any cheesier, but Coco seems to love it. A super-hottie breaks into their bubble. It’s Shawn from Cru! Coco hugs him like they’re long-lost lovers and she turns to Kacy. “Take our picture!”
Kacy snaps a bunch of photos, thinking that Coco is the happiest drunk she’s ever seen. Kacy would like to be a happy drunk too, but she’s too preoccupied with waiting for Isla’s response. It’s midnight here, only nine on the West Coast; Isla is definitely still awake.
“Text me those pics,” Coco says as she spills beer down the front of her white eyelet dress. Kacy notices one of Coco’s sandals is missing. Coco has peaked; now she’s on the downslide and getting sloppy. Kacy should get them both into a cab. Shawn is draped over Coco like a fur coat. In her mental crystal ball, Kacy sees Coco going home with Shawn and having forgettable, regrettable sex.
Kacy hears someone calling her name. She peers into the crowd and sees her brother and Avalon. Oh my god, she thinks. The Chicken Box really is the center of the Nantucket-verse.
Kacy tries to make her way to Eric and Avalon, but Coco yanks on her arm, saying, “Text me the pics!”
“I will when we get home,” Kacy says, but Coco plucks Kacy’s phone out of her back pocket. “I’ll just send them to myself real quick.”
Fine, Kacy thinks, hoping Coco doesn’t drop her phone onto the beer-sticky floor. When she finally gets to Eric, she says, “You have to help me get Coco out of here.” The band is now playing “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe and people are going bonkers. In the midst of this chaos, Eric is a stanchion, a pillar; he is the image of their father.
“We’re leaving anyway,” he says. “Avalon doesn’t feel well.”
Kacy turns around to find Coco, but she’s vanished into the crowd.
At first Coco isn’t sure what she’s seeing on the screen of Kacy’s phone. She forces herself to focus. There are texts sent to Isla—that’s the woman that Kacy broke up with back in San Francisco. In the stream are… pictures of Kacy and Coco. Coco scrolls back. So many pictures—three from tonight alone, plus one of the two of them on the Richardsons’ beach, one from the boat on the Fourth of July, one from the Pink and White Party, one from their trip to Great Point, a couple from their first lunch together at the Nantucket Pharmacy counter when they barely knew each other. Kacy has sent Isla literally all the pictures. Coco reads one of Isla’s responses. I’m sick with jealousy. Now I won’t sleep. Thanks.
Jealousy? Coco thinks. Kacy has been making it seem like she and Coco are… together?
No. Please, no. What can Coco think but that all this time, Kacy has been using her? Maybe since the moment they met in the line for the ferry. Is that why Kacy bought her a chowder? Because she thought Coco was pretty and looked vulnerable? Was their so-called friendship premeditated so Kacy could make Isla jealous and win her back?
Coco’s eyes sting. Lamont has left her, and now Kacy maybe isn’t her friend after all. Is this possible? Coco is sober enough to realize she’s drunk, drunk enough to let Kacy grab her by the arm and lead her through the crowd and out the door to the cool, fresh air of Dave Street.
Kacy waves over a cab. “Let’s get you home,” she says.
The morning after their big night out, Coco is so hungover that she messes up her errands. For the first time ever, she forgets to ask for the sourdough at Born and Bread to be sliced thin and by the time she realizes her mistake, it’s too late—she has to go to the back of the long line and order a second loaf. She puts regular unleaded instead of premium unleaded into Baby and she skips Nantucket Meat and Fish altogether because the idea of staring at raw salmon and halibut makes her want to puke.
When she turns into the driveway at Triple Eight, she notices a black Lincoln following her. Her first thought is that she’s in some kind of trouble, maybe for cutting off the chick in the Mini at the rotary. She pulls into the garage; the Lincoln heads straight to the front of the house. A uniformed driver gets out and opens the back door.
Bull climbs out. He’s home.
The Lincoln leaves; Coco hurries over. “You should have texted, I could’ve picked you up.”
