“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It seemed insensitive since you clearly miss it. But if you think you’re up for it?” he asked, wrapping his headphones around his neck.
She shook her head. This weekend was no time to push her knee past its limits.
“Okay, well, brunch starts at nine. There’s always coffee in the kitchen.”
“Is there a map?” She laughed, but truthfully, the last thing she needed was to run into Jonathan on her own. Because that wouldn’t be awkward or confusing.
Will stopped playing with his Forerunner watch and glanced over at her, his cheeks still pink but paired with an expression somewhere between bashful and sympathetic. “I can take you down there or bring you up a cup.”
She sat up, attempting to comb through her bedhead with her fingers. “What are the odds that I would run into, say, your father who has no idea I exist?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him to already know.” He strapped the watch to his wrist. “Though Jonathan sightings are rare before brunch.”
HANNAH FOUND HERSELF surrounded by stainless steel in a kitchen larger than her old apartment. On a large piece of butcher block acting as a table was a coffee setup and an oversized bowl of fruit salad. Off to the side covered in plastic wrap was a plate of English muffins and what looked to be orange marmalade.
Will picked the plate up. “Renata is too good to me.”
Renata, Hannah had learned, was the housekeeper, cook, and general head of the staff— a staff that had dwindled to just Renata and Jonathan’s assistant, Arthur, in recent years.
Hannah sat down on one of the stools surrounding the table. She popped a grape into her mouth as the scent of the coffee made its way through her system, awakening her mind. The smell brought back memories of stumbling into Starbucks half-asleep, waiting for that first batch to brew, the sun not yet up but the city still awake. This was no Starbucks coffee. The steam coming off her cup smelled bold and bitter, and she detected a hint of other flavors—vanilla, cinnamon, and possibly lemon. But she’d never been one for strong roasts. She’d trudged through the mildest of roasts those early mornings at Starbucks because she had no other choice.
“All right,” Will said, wiping crumbs from his shirt. “You’re good? Can you find your way back?”
She nodded as she poured half-and-half into her coffee, watching it go from black to muddy to the edge of drinkable. “Have fun.”
The second the door swung shut, she dropped the smile and let her shoulders slump. Will was a runner. Hannah had never even seen him in workout clothes. Any other morning, she would’ve been happy for him, glad that he’d finally told her and wasn’t depriving himself of something he loved. But why this weekend? She was already the odd one out, and their best chance of being believable was to tell their story together. And yet, she wasn’t surprised. This was the Will she had always known, somehow always adrift and yet a constant in her life.
She stared down at her coffee, the color still one shade away from drinkable. If she put any more milk in this cup, she was going to have a very weird latte on her hands. She speared a piece of mango with her fork, wishing for plain old cantaloupe, then judged her coffee again. Any coffee had to be better than no coffee. Right?
Two knocks sounded from the entryway, pulling Hannah’s attention from her coffee disaster. Madison stood in the doorway. Her leggings and cowl-neck sweater looked much too warm for the weather, even with the ocean breeze. “Hannah, right?”
“Uh, yes. Good morning, Madison.” Hannah ran her fingers through her hair. She’d noted last night that Madison was gorgeous, but in the daylight, she was even more striking. Her chestnut hair, which had fallen in thick waves last night, was pulled back into a messy bun. Her eyes were bright, her face already made-up. Hannah had barely had time brush her teeth and wash her face before Will had escorted her downstairs.
Madison plucked a strawberry out of the bowl. “Please tell me you aren’t actually drinking that stuff.”
“I wasn’t aware I had a choice.” Hannah gave the kitchen another look but didn’t see any other means of procuring coffee.
“Well, I have ten bucks and the keys to the Mercedes. What do you say?”
“Oh, thank God.” Hannah hadn’t really gotten a read on Madison from Will—he’d mainly stuck to his blood relatives—but she seemed nice enough, and it would be helpful to have a female friend among the brood.
“Good,” Madison said, closing her hand around the keys. “You are going to need to be well-caffeinated to handle brunch with the boys.”
CARS HAD NEVER BEEN Hannah’s thing, but she couldn’t deny the appeal of the Mercedes. Everything was sleek lines and leather. But Madison was awful at driving it. It was no wonder she’d had to steal the keys.
“Your New Yorker is showing,” Hannah joked as Madison reattempted her parallel parking job.
“Hey, you’ve lived in the city your entire adult life. That makes you a New Yorker too.”
At least someone had accepted her into their ranks. Hannah was starting to wonder if it would ever happen. “Queens, Madison. We use cars in Queens.”
Madison rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything as she attempted to straighten the car out in a spot that could more than accommodate the coupe. After a few more maneuvers, Madison slammed the car into park. “Whatever. We’re going, like, twenty feet, and we’re in a town full of rich people. No one is going to hit the car.”
That was probably true, but Hannah couldn’t help but laugh when she stepped out of the car and onto pavement rather than the sidewalk. She’d seen some bad parking jobs in her day, but wow—at least the car was straight.
Hannah followed Madison down the street to a small café called the Peach Pit. The resemblance didn’t go much past the moniker—leave it to the Hamptons to outclass even fake Beverly Hills. The café was quiet, with an older couple and a few teenagers sitting at tables on opposite sides of the room. It was nothing like the Saturdays she had experienced at Starbucks, but this wasn’t the city, and it wasn’t in season. Hannah didn’t know how much of the town’s population was permanent. Maybe it was like Jersey Shore, where the BENNYs— tourists from the north that the locals only liked for their patronage—descended each summer, making the months between October and May the only bearable times to visit. Hannah stopped midscan of the menu. If she was officially a New Yorker, did that make her a BENNY?
“Are you okay?”
Hannah blinked a few times, Madison’s small frame coming back into focus with a coffee cup held out her to her. “Yes, sorry. I was just contemplating something horrid.” Hannah took the too-large cup, breathing in the wondrous smell of drinkable coffee.
“Well—” Madison eyed her up and down. “Please refrain from thinking such things. It is far too early, and we’re decaffeinated.”
They sat at a table near the older couple, as far from the teenage girls as they could get—not that that helped keep their squeals out of earsplitting decibels. Oh, to be sixteen. Beyond the clamor, the chorus of one of Hannah’s favorite songs was fading out.
Music found her everywhere. She might not be able to hear someone across a table from her in a crowded restaurant, but she’d be able to pick out the song, know the lyrics, and find it again throughout the course of a conversation. Wilderness Weekend’s latest track started up. A calmness came over her, as it did whenever one of their songs came on. It had been that way since she’d found them. It would be that way always.
“Oh god,” Madison said, breaking off a piece of her scone, apparently unable to wait for breakfast. “William found himself another Wilderness fan. Okay, okay, let me guess.” She paused dramatically. “You and William met at a Wilderness Weekend concert. You both went to sound check and then to the bar next door, where Leonard Nulty was having an early dinner. Your eyes met, and the rest, as they say, is love.”
That would’ve been a fabulous story. Hannah almost wished she’d thought of it. Of course they would’ve reconnected over Leonard Nulty’s soul-crushingly beautiful words.
“Not quite.” She sipped her coffee, caffeine and relief filling her veins. She liked Madison. She was fun and quirky and owned it. The last time Hannah had felt this comfortable with a stranger had been with Riley, and the time before that, Kate and Will. “Are you a Wilderness fan?”
“God, no. No offense. They just aren’t my thing.” Hannah could only imagine the music Madison listened to. The car radio had been set to something innocuous, but that didn’t mean anything. “But it’s impossible to know William without knowing Wilderness.”
Hannah laughed. “That is true. Will introduced me to them back in college.”
“Ah, so you two have a history.” She winked as if Hannah had slipped up and spilled a secret.
“Yeah. We were best friends in college, lost touch for a while, then a few months ago we ran into each other... and the rest, as they say, is love.”
“Shame you two didn’t run into each other sooner. Manhattan’s not that big, after all.” There was a hint of contempt in Madison’s tone, but Hannah couldn’t place it. Yes, she’d given her a detail-free version of the story, but she’d tied in Madison’s own phrasing, made sure her “ran into each other” sounded wistful.
“I know, but there are a million people on that island—my best friend and I live a few blocks apart, and I swear, if we didn’t seek each other out, we’d never accidentally run into each other. Will and I actually crossed paths down the Shore.” That was the part of the story they had crafted generically enough so it couldn’t be questioned or verified, unlike a concert or a fundraiser or even something as simple as being in the same bar to watch the same game. “My parents live ten minutes or so from the beach, and I was down for a weekend. Our shared loved of funnel cake brought us together, really.”
“Kismet,” Madison said, her eyes glued to her phone. She still seemed off, but all Hannah had to judge by was the bubbly woman she’d been with for the past thirty minutes, and no one could stay that way indefinitely.
“Everything okay?” Hannah asked finally, unwilling to let the weird vibes she felt go unnoticed.
Madison pocketed her phone with a grimace. “Yeah. Just work and wedding stuff. Jon and I are meeting with the florist tomorrow before we head back to the city. She agreed to a Sunday-night meeting, and now she’s being all bitchy about the timing. But there are ten other equally qualified florists in the area, so whatever.”
“Wedding planning sounds fun.”
“It’s god-awful. I swear, if you can get through planning the wedding, marriage should be a breeze. You seriously dodged a bullet.”
