“No one,” he said. “Work.”
Work? At ten o’clock at night? When they got home, Walker tried to kiss her but he was sloppy about it and his breath was sour, and Sharon was distracted by the hairs in his nose and it felt disturbingly like kissing someone she was related to.
“You can sleep in the guest room,” she said. Before Walker could protest—“A guest in my own home?”—Sharon went into the primary suite and closed the door. And locked it. Still, even then, she thought they might be able to make it work. She would learn to trust him again; she would ask him to tweeze his nose hairs; their sex life would resume. In the morning, Sharon knocked softly on the door of the guest room; she wanted to discuss how they would explain things to the kids.
“Come in,” Walker said.
He was sitting at the desk with Sharon’s laptop open. He was… reading her character study, which Sharon was working on turning into a story. She had the characters down; she just needed a conflict.
“Excuse me,” Sharon said, slamming the laptop shut. “That’s private.”
“Hey, I didn’t get to finish. That was good. You wrote that?”
“I did.”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve found a little hobby,” he said. “Other than gossiping.”
So many things about this statement offended her, she wasn’t sure where to begin. It’s not “a little hobby,” I’m pursuing a lifelong passion for creative writing. It’s what I plan to do with my one wild and precious life.
What Walker would have her do with her life was cater to him—cook, clean, drive the children around, keep track of Robert’s blood sugar (Walker didn’t even know how to use the Dexcom app), handle the twins’ applications to college. Sharon realized that she gossiped because her own life was so extraordinarily dull and unfulfilling.
Until this summer.
“Wake up the kids and take them to the Downyflake for breakfast,” Sharon said. “After that, I’d like you to leave.”
“Leave?” Walker said.
“It’s over, Walker.” Sharon texted Romeo: It’s over with Walker. He slept in the guest room and will be leaving after breakfast.
There was no response. Sharon called Romeo and was dispatched to his voice mail. She thought she might see him when she drove Walker to the ferry, but Walker insisted on taking the Hy-Line, not the Steamship. “On principle,” he said.
When Sharon gets the invitation to the Richardsons’ day-drinking party—a party Romeo will likely attend—she decides she needs advice, so she calls Heather, who is in the office even though it’s Saturday.
“You’re married to your work,” Sharon says.
“It’s a blissful union,” Heather says. “What’s up?”
Sharon tells Heather how her own blissful union with Romeo was disrupted by a surprise visit from Walker. “He requested ‘Just Like Heaven’ at the Club Car piano bar and dedicated it to me.”
“Dirty pool,” Heather says.
“Now Romeo won’t speak to me and I have to see him at a party tomorrow and I don’t know what my approach should be. Should I plan to arrive right at two so I’m there when Romeo walks in or should I let him arrive first and wonder where I am?”
Heather takes a beat. “Who’s throwing the party?”
Sharon doesn’t like to lie to her sister, but she doesn’t want to admit that she’s still consorting with the Richardsons. “Dr. Andy and Rachel McMann,” she says. “It’s a Preppy Handbook theme.”
“Isn’t that redundant on Nantucket?” Heather says, and she laughs. “My perennial advice is to play hard to get. Show up late. Make an entrance, or as much of an entrance as you can make in a grosgrain headband.”
Coco hates the Richardsons.
She hates Leslee for making Lamont her boy toy, and Bull for casually crushing her life’s dream. She considers quitting her job. She can pack up her things and return to her rental in St. John, but the Caribbean is staring down the barrel of hurricane season, and the Banana Deck is closed, so where would Coco work, and can she walk away from the absurd amount of money she’s making? Can she leave Lamont? Lamont comes to Coco’s apartment at sunrise the day after he gets back from the Vineyard. When he knocks, Coco ignores him, but then she hears a whispery noise. She goes out into the hallway to see that he’s slipped a piece of paper under the door: I’m not leaving until you talk to me.
Coco stares at the door, picturing Lamont’s lean form on the other side, his coppery eyes, his beautiful, strong hands. The truth is, she’s missed him. In her gut, she knows that when Lamont is with Leslee, he’s working. He took Coco to meet his mother for a reason—he wanted her to understand.
She opens the door and pulls him inside and immediately his mouth is on her neck and she nearly falls to her knees, she wants him so badly. He picks her up and carries her over to the sofa, then lightly tongues her collarbone and starts working his way down, stopping every so often to look up at her. Is this okay? It’s torture; she wants his mouth on her. She begs him and he goes slowly and then faster and faster until she’s screaming, she doesn’t care who hears her.
Later, she asks him, “Do you do this with Leslee?”
“I hope you’re joking.”
“Lamont…”
“Coco,” he says. “I’m just her arm candy.”
But Leslee acts like she wants Lamont to be more than arm candy. Leslee wants what Coco has, and even though Leslee doesn’t know about Coco and Lamont, it still feels like a kind of revenge.
Coco could, she realizes, take her revenge against the Richardsons in other ways. She could poison their food; she could go into Bull’s computer and screw with his emails—maybe alter the Richardsons’ application to the Field and Oar Club—she could take their dry-cleaning bags to the dump or shrink Bull’s suits in the washing machine.
Leslee, she decides, is merely pathetic. Coco doesn’t know much about Leslee’s life growing up, but she can guess—her father was absent or died early, so Leslee never received the right kind of validation from him and has to seek it from every man she comes in contact with.
Coco’s fury at Bull is more complex. He read the screenplay and admired things about it but found it unsuitable to pass on to his contacts in Hollywood. There is no story here, Coco. These are the words that crush her. She handed him a secret piece of herself and it wasn’t enough. It’s too… small. She’s also mortified that she considered propositioning him; she can’t believe she was that desperate. And after all that, he proved to be honorable. She hates Bull, she realizes, because if she doesn’t hate him, she’ll end up hating herself.
Coco gets a text from Kacy: Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a couple days. You okay?
Coco loathes Leslee, despises Bull, is in danger of falling in love with Lamont—but her feelings about Kacy are the ones that trouble her the most. Coco is not only disgusted, she’s hurt. All. Those. Selfies. How can Coco reconcile Kacy’s actions with the smart, thoughtful person she believed Kacy was?
She doesn’t respond to the text.
