How can she live in a city filled with men and still not be able to meet anyone suitable?
When she raises her head, Link has retaken his seat. He’s leaning forward, staring at her. “Friend of yours?”
“That was Aidan,” Bess says. “The lobbyist.” Aidan was the last man on earth she should have chosen off Bumble. Now that I’ve seen you in person, I don’t think I want to bother. The only reason I asked for this date is because I know who your mother is.
“He seemed like a real peach and I’m sorry you missed out on spending the evening with him, but I’ll try to make it up to you.” Link reaches for Bess’s hand again.
Link doesn’t seem like he’s in a particular hurry to rush out, but Bess is wary. “Everything okay with your phone call?”
Link shakes his head. “It was my uncle’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend? Almost fiancée? The woman who turned down his marriage proposal, which was what made him want to organize the Nantucket weekend? Yeah, that was her. She’s had time to process, she’s decided she wants to marry him after all, so she showed up at the house but he wasn’t there so she called him and it went straight to voicemail and she’s convinced he blocked her, which he probably did, because what else would you do to the woman who turned down your proposal? And she wanted to know if I knew where he was.”
Bess is overcome with relief. Stacey isn’t Link’s girlfriend. Stacey is his uncle’s girlfriend! “Did you tell her?”
Link shrugs. “I said I wasn’t sure but I thought he’d made plans out of town with a friend.”
“Aaaaahhhh!” Bess says. “Did she think you meant a female friend?”
Link squeezes Bess’s hand, then lets go so he can dig into the palau. “I don’t want to worry about Coop’s romantic life,” he says. “I’d like to focus on my own.”
After dinner, Link asks if he can walk Bess home and she says yes, and they stroll the streets of Washington, holding hands. When they reach the Sedgewick, Link escorts her to the door and Bess says, “Thank you for saving me from the lobbyist.”
Link lays a gentle hand on the side of her face and then he leans in and kisses her. It’s the best kiss Bess has ever received—sweet, warm, just enough to leave her aching for more.
“Oh,” she whispers.
Link kisses her again. He pulls her to him and soon they are making out while moths beat around the light over their heads.
Bess pulls away. “Would you like to come up?”
Link takes a breath, and Bess wonders: Does he not want to come up? Was something wrong with her kissing?
Link says, “I feel like I should let you know something.”
“Okay?” Bess says.
“Seeing you once a year isn’t going to be enough for me,” he says. “So if we’re following in our parents’ footsteps or fulfilling their thwarted destiny or whatever, that part has to change.”
Bess pulls out her key. She can’t hide her smile. “Deal,” she says.
Cooper
On Saturday, Cooper wakes up at noon. Noon! When is the last time he’s done that? College? High school? He’s an up-at-the-crack-of-dawn, seize-the-day kind of guy. A morning person. But when he finally unsticks his eyelids, he can’t deny he lacks any motivation to get up off the wide, comfortable sofa.
Except that he’s the host here.
Ever so gently he lifts his head from the cushion and gazes around the room. Nobody is in the cottage, though he hears voices on the beach. Coop swings his feet to the floor and stands up. He overdid it—drank too much, stayed out too late. Deep inside him, like a coin dropped in a well, rests a small sense of accomplishment: He closed the Chicken Box!
The person he would like to tell this to is Stacey.
He pours himself a giant glass of ice water and heads out to the beach where Jake, Leland, and Fray are enjoying the sun. Jake is in his trunks sitting in a chair with a book open on his chest; his hair is wet. Fray and Leland are lying side by side on a blanket. Leland is in a black tank suit and a straw hat and Fray is beside her. Something is funny about that. Cooper squints, it’s bright outside, and he goes inside for his sunglasses. When he comes back out, he sees that Fray and Leland’s legs are intertwined in a way that looks more than friendly.
“Hello, all,” Coop says, collapsing in an empty chair.
“How you feeling, old man?” Fray asks. Coop can see that Fray is also stroking Leland’s shoulder. Ohhhhkay.
Jake says, “Want me to make you an omelet? You must be starving.”
Coop feels queasy. “I think I’ll go for a swim first, then see if I can handle food.”
“So listen,” Fray says. “I booked a sunset sail on the Endeavor for Leland and me tonight and then I got the two of us a highly sought-after reservation at the Boarding House. I’ve heard their lobster spaghetti absolutely slaps. So I hope that’s cool with you…”
Sunset sail? Lobster spaghetti? What does that mean, it “slaps”? The “for Leland and me” part he understands; Fray and Leland want to go to dinner alone. Coop made a nine thirty reservation for the four of them at Nautilus, but who is he kidding? He’s not up for sitting down to dinner at nine thirty; he’ll fall asleep in his bao buns. He’ll cancel Nautilus. He and Jake can get a pizza and watch college football. He feels a bit bummed that they aren’t doing something all together, but he can’t ignore his relief. He has been set free of expectations.
Coop spends the afternoon waiting for the fog in his head to clear. The swim helps a little and the pillowy omelet that Jake serves him with two pieces of toasted Something Natural herb bread soaks up the beer and the shot of tequila he did the night before. (The tequila had been handed to him by a member of a bachelor party who called him “Pops.”)
He sits on the beach for a while but the sun makes his headache worse. Jake suggests hair of the dog—he’s drinking a Dark and Stormy—but Coop can’t think about alcohol.
Fray and Leland disappear inside and Coop says to Jake, “Did something happen between them?”
“They have a thing,” Jake deadpans. “A thing that refuses to die.”
“Since the mid-eighties,” Coop says. He lowers his voice. “I thought Leland liked women?”
Jake shrugs.
Jake dozes off in his chair and Coop heads inside to grab a Coke, thinking some caffeine might help. He sees Fray and Leland pop out of Mallory’s bedroom all dressed up. “Dressed up” for Fray is jeans and a white button-down shirt that looks like it could have been pulled off the rack at Sears but probably is by an Italian designer and costs eleven hundred dollars. Leland is wearing a fitted black dress; after only one afternoon in the sun, she’s tan.
“Have fun, kids,” Coop says. He is looking at Frazier Dooley and Leland Gladstone in 2023, but he’s also having a flashback to Fray and Leland standing up against the cinderblock wall outside the Calvert Hall boys’ locker room after one of Fray’s lacrosse games. Rumor around the school was that Leland gave him special “favors” if he scored a goal.