The Sixth Wedding

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “I bumped into her this morning on my run,” Jake says. “She was walking her dog.”

  “Wow, small island,” Coop says, then he wonders if maybe Jake found Brooke attractive too. That would be great. Jake needs to get back in the game after losing Mallory and splitting from Ursula. And it would be so fitting, him dating the woman who replaced Mallory. Or would it be weird?

  “She gave me her number,” Jake says. “And she told me to tell you to call her.”

  “Me?” Coop says, laughing. This is unexpected. Or is it—now that he thinks of it, he was dancing with her pretty exclusively.

  “Do you remember that they invited us to that beach picnic tomorrow?”

  “That’s right!” Coop says. He forgot about the beach picnic. But they were definitely invited. “Send me her number now. I’ll text her and find out what time.”

  Coop marvels at how well Sunday’s schedule works out. At eight o’clock, Coop, Jake, and Fray play nine holes of golf at Miacomet while Leland bikes to a hot yoga class. They all meet back at the cottage for bagels and fruit salad and coffee (of course) and after a swim and a nap in the sun, they get ready for their respective afternoons. Fray and Leland are biking out to Sconset for a late lunch in the garden at the Chanticleer. Cooper and Jake put on polo shirts and swim trunks and drive out to a beach called Fortieth Pole, stopping at Cisco Brewery on the way for beer so they don’t show up empty-handed.

  It’s been an A+ day so far—Coop shot a 45 in golf, he was sharp and clear-headed, and he loved hanging out with his two best friends for three hours. He feels even more excited about this picnic and the chance to reconnect with Brooke. They had a flirty text conversation the evening before. Brooke was making a blueberry pie to bring to the picnic and she would be wearing a blue bikini.

  They drive the Jeep up over the soft sand road that cuts between the dunes until they come down onto a flat curve of beach.

  “Jake!” a woman calls out. “Coop!” The woman is blond and wearing a blue bikini, so Coop figures it must be Brooke. She’s with a group of people camped off to the right. She shows them where to park and when Cooper climbs out of the Jeep, she throws her arms around his neck and gives him a big hug.

  Okay? he thinks. When they separate, he studies her face. She’s pretty, smiling, and he does vaguely remember her from the other night. Vaguely.

  Apple is at the picnic with her husband, Hugo, and their twin boys, Caleb and Lucas, who are going to be seniors at the high school, and a bunch of other people whose names Coop tries to retain but loses after ten seconds. He knows he doesn’t have to worry about Jake; the guy raises money for a living and can talk to anyone about anything.

  Coop throws their case of beer into the tub of ice and cracks one open for him and one for Jake.

  This is the life, he thinks. “Upside Down,” by Jack Johnson, is playing on the portable speaker, the grills are smoking, and there’s a table laden with food, including a blueberry pie with a lattice crust. Apple holds out a platter of oysters sitting in rapidly melting crushed ice.

  “Hugo just shucked these,” she says. “Please, have one.”

  “Then you two come play some bocce,” Hugo says. “Jake, you’re on my team.”

  “No wonder my sister loved it here so much,” Coop says to Apple.

  “You know something funny I remember about Mallory?” Apple says. “She never once came to our Labor Day picnic. She always claimed she was busy. Every year.”

  “Oh, she was busy all right,” Coop says.

  “Bocce,” Jake says.

  Coop hopes that he will be as impressive at bocce as he was at golf that morning—but he’s the weak link, probably because he’s distracted by Brooke, who is waving her drink around, chanting his name, “Coo-per! Coo-per!” He wonders how much she’s had to drink and then reminds himself not to judge. She’s a teacher, this is her last full day of freedom, she’s allowed to be enthusiastic.

  The tenth-grade history teacher whose name Cooper thinks is Nancy comes around with a tray of pink cocktails in plastic cups.

  “Madaket Mysteries,” she says. “A Labor Day tradition.”

  Coop tastes one—it’s strong and goes down way too easily. The Spanish teacher, Jill, comes by with Buffalo chicken dip and Fritos, and Cooper is a sucker for Fritos. Then the ribs and jumbo shrimp come off the grill. This is the best day he’s had in a long time—even though he loses, badly, at bocce.

  “Want to go for a walk, handsome?” Brooke asks. She has pulled on a diaphanous white cover-up and she hands him another Madaket Mystery.

  “Sure,” he says. He checks on Jake, who is deep in conversation with the biology teacher over by the deviled eggs. He catches Jake’s eye, waves, and points to Brooke.

  They head down the beach, walking past kids building sandcastles and collecting shells and a teenager on a skim board who looks at Brooke and says, “What’s up, Ms. Schuster?”

  Without missing a beat, she says, “See you Tuesday, Liam.”

  “I love it,” Cooper says. “You see your students at the beach.”

  “I see my students everywhere,” Brooke says. “It’s a small island.”

  She then tells Coop her basic story: She’s forty-eight years old and has two kids, a son who’s a sophomore at UMass and a daughter who will be a senior at the high school, in the same class as Caleb and Lucas. She lives on the island year-round in a rental that she fears the owners will someday sell out from under her, but she doesn’t make enough on her teacher’s salary to buy her own home. “I always wondered how Mallory did it,” she says. “She was a single mom too, right?”

  “She was,” Coop says. “She inherited the cottage from our aunt when we were in our twenties. It’s on the beach but it’s simple and pretty small. When my parents died, she had the money to finally renovate.”

  “Well, sadly, I don’t have a rich aunt to leave me a beachfront cottage,” Brooke says. She goes on to tell Coop that all of her family is in New Hampshire, which was where she lived before she got divorced from the children’s father and decided she needed a change. She sighs. “So, what do you like to read?”

  Coop scrambles for one of the titles on Mallory’s bookshelves, but he draws a blank. He was always the kid in English who skimmed the CliffsNotes five minutes before class. “I don’t read for pleasure because I do so much policy analysis at work.” This answer is lame and to distract Brooke, he reaches for her hand. It works—maybe too well. Brooke pulls him into the water. He manages to shuck off his shirt but she goes in with her cover-up still on, which strikes him as a bit odd. Brooke paddles out then turns to splash him right in the face and when he sputters, she says, “Oh, I’m sorry, baby,” and while Coop is thinking, Baby?—he hardly knows this woman, he wasn’t even sure it was her when they pulled onto the beach, and he never would have recognized her on the street—she swims into his arms and starts kissing him.

  Whoa, he thinks. That was fast.

  “We should probably get back,” he says.

  She splashes him again, right in the face. “You’re no fun.”

  As they’re walking back, she says, “So how do I convince you to move into your sister’s cottage and stay on Nantucket year-round?”

  Coop laughs, even though he is now officially uncomfortable. “Hopefully in a few years when I retire, I’ll be able to spend more time here.”

  “A few years?” Brooke says. “I’ll be off the market by then.”

  At a loss for how to respond, Coop quickens his pace. He’s relieved when they get back to the party and Jake says, “Leland called, we have to go.”

  “Did something happen?” Coop asks.

  “She didn’t say. She just told me we were needed at home.”

  Coop and Jake say their goodbyes and Coop gives Brooke a hug and a quick kiss goodbye. “I have your number,” he says. “And you have mine if you ever get to Washington.”

  Brooke waves like crazy until the Jeep is up over the dunes.

  “You like
her?” Jake says.

  “Perfectly nice woman,” Coop says. “And attractive. But we had exactly nothing in common and I’m not unhappy to be leaving.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Jake says. “You two were gone so long I was afraid you’d proposed.”

  As they head down the no-name road, Coop wonders if he should be concerned. Fray and Leland both seemed giddy about their reunion—but all Coop can think now is that they had an argument (this would be par for the course with them) and Fray lost his temper and is threatening to leave. It would be sort of like what happened thirty years ago.

  But when they pull up to the cottage, Coop hears laughter and conversation coming from inside. He hears a woman who is not Leland. It sounds like…

  Coop throws open the screen door and steps inside. Fray and Leland are sitting at the narrow harvest table with Stacey.

  Stacey?

  She stands up and smiles at him. She’s wearing a flowing white strapless dress and a pair of barely-there sandals. She’s every bit as captivating to Cooper as she was the first time he saw her in the basement of the Phi Gamma Delta house.

  “Stace?” he says. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve had a change of heart,” she says. “So if your offer still stands…?”

  Coop sweeps her off the ground. He grins at his friends. “I’m getting married!” he says.

  “For the last time,” Stacey says.

  Jake

  On Monday, Fray generously offers to fly Jake back to South Bend on his private jet.

  “It’s on my way home,” he says. “It’s no problem to make a stop. I’ll have my pilot add it to the flight plan.”

  Fray and Jake part ways with the others outside the terminal. Leland is heading to New York, Cooper and Stacey back to DC. Jake gives Coop and Stacey each a hug as Fray and Leland share a very long kiss goodbye.

  “Wow,” Stacey says, elbowing Coop. “Why don’t you ever kiss me that way?”

  “I do!” Coop says and he pulls Stacey closer.

  “Time for me to get out of here,” Jake says. He feels a lump rising in his throat as he recalls all the Labor Days that he kissed Mallory goodbye. No offense, but they put Fray and Leland to shame.

  Jake has never flown private before. It isn’t something he’s ever aspired to, and even when Ursula was an arm’s length from the presidency, he never pictured himself aboard Air Force One.

  Good thing.

  Fray’s plane is a Gulfstream 550, which Jake understands is a big deal. The plane has a pilot, a co-pilot, and a bubbly flight attendant named Heather. After Fray and Jake take seats in the living area—they’re facing each other in buff leather chairs with a high-gloss table between them—Heather asks what they would like to drink.

  Jake is about to ask Heather for a Bloody Mary—why not celebrate this crazy experience?—when she says, “We have Classic Black, the Platinum, and—” She pauses dramatically. “This jet is one of the few places in the world where you can get a bottomless cup of Frayed Edge Select Reserve.”

  Coffee. She’s talking about coffee, of course.

  “We’ll have two cups of the reserve, thanks, Heather,” Fray says. He looks at Jake. “Do you take anything in it?”

  “Cream, two sugars.” As soon as the words are out, he wonders if Fray will disapprove. Maybe drinking the reserve with cream and sugar is like dropping an ice cube into a glass of Château Lafite.

  Takeoff is smooth. Fray gazes out the window as Nantucket slips from view.

  “Now that was a good weekend,” Fray says. “I had no idea that was how things would turn out.”

  Heather appears with two mugs, the signature silver pot, and a pitcher of cream and tiny bowl of organic sugar cubes for Jake. She winks at Fray. “I saw you on Page Six, Mr. Dooley.”

  “That was me with Leland!” he says. “I can’t wait to introduce you to her.”

  “I’ve subscribed to Leland’s Letter for over ten years,” Heather says. “I didn’t know the two of you were friends.”

  “It’s a long story,” Fray says. “Literally.”

  Jake sips his coffee. It’s by far the best coffee he’s ever tasted.

  Fray says, “Heather, would you pack up a couple pounds of the reserve for Jake to take home?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Dooley.”

  Once Heather leaves them, Jake says, “So will you and Leland continue to see each other? Aren’t you worried about the distance?”

  “I’m going to New York next weekend,” Fray says. “I have a brownstone on East Third Street that I had renovated and I’ve never spent the night there. That’s about to change.”

  A brownstone in the East Village that he’s never even slept in? It’s only sinking in now just how wealthy Fray is. This is his jet, those pilots are his pilots, Heather is his flight attendant. Whenever Jake has thought about Frazier Dooley in the past thirty years, his mind always conjured the angry young man who disappeared down the beach with a bottle of Jim Beam.

  Now, he’s a billionaire who sells the world’s finest coffee in the coolest cafés in the country. Jake has heard that the flagship Frayed Edge café in Burlington, Vermont, has live music twenty-four hours a day. Billie Eilish has played there, Luke Combs, Ingrid Michaelson.

  “I could use your help with something,” Jake says.

  “Anything,” Fray says.

  “I’m going to need a date for Coop’s wedding.”

  “Sorry, man, I already have a date,” Fray says, and they both laugh.

  Jake pulls out his phone. “Have you ever used a dating app?” He figures this is a stupid question. Fray is a billionaire, so—before Leland—there must have been a line of eligible women after him.

  “No, man, but I’m friends with the woman who created Firepink, and that’s the app you want. It’s for users over forty and it’s marketed toward professionals.”

  “Firepink?” Jake says. “What about Bumble or Match dot com. Is Match still a thing?” He laughs. “Honestly, I’m used to meeting women the old-fashioned way. I met Ursula in sixth grade.”

  “I hear you,” Fray says. “I met Leland when we were kids and I met Anna at the café. Her band played there one night and I fell in love.” He’s quiet and Jake wonders why it’s no longer popular to meet someone in real life. “But trust me, you want Firepink. Here, I’ll download it for you.” Fray takes Jake’s phone and taps and swipes, then he hands the phone back to Jake and says, “Fill out the answers to these questions and click the Fire up! button. This app goes through tens of thousands of profiles in lightning speed and picks the top three women. I’ve heard you should always choose number one. They have the highest success rate in the business with the first match. Their algorithm is magic.”

  Jake chuckles. “All I need is a wedding date.” Still, he fills out the answers for his profile and then, once he’s double-checked his responses, he presses the Fire up! button. The phone flips through faces like a Vegas dealer through a deck of cards—Jake thinks he sees a bunch of attractive women but it’s moving too fast and he can’t make it stop—until finally a face appears on the screen.

  Jake blinks. It’s a striking dark-haired woman in what he recognizes as an Alexander McQueen suit.

  Ursula de Gournsey. Age: 56. Nickname: Sully. Height: 5’6.” Hair: dark brown. Eyes: brown. Occupation: attorney, M&A. Address: New York City. Political party: Independent. Birthplace: South Bend, Indiana. Favorite pastime: work.

  Jake laughs. “We’re supposed to go with the first choice, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Fray says. “Did you already match with someone? Let me see.”

  “Not yet,” Jake says. “I’m going to ask her out and I don’t want you to jinx it.”

  “Yeah, bro, go for it,” Fray says. “You’re a boss.”

  Jake doesn’t reach out to his ex-wife via Firepink. He texts her instead.

  Heading back to the Bend, he says. Guess what? Coop is getting married again. His sixth wedding! Next June in DC.

&nb
sp; Jake sees the three floating dots, indicating that his number one match—maybe Firepink does know best after all—is writing back.

  Need a date? she asks.

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  About the Author

  Elin Hilderbrand is the proud mother of three, a dedicated Peloton rider, an aspiring book influencer, and an enthusiastic at-home cook (follow her on Instagram @elinhilderbrand to watch her Cringe Cooking Show). The author of twenty-seven novels, she is also a grateful seven-year breast cancer survivor.

  @ElinHilderbrand

  ElinHilderbrand

  @ElinHilderbrand

  elinhilderbrand.net