by Grace Palmer
“Wait, didn’t you get married?” she asked quizzically as she took another drag on her cigarette.
He nodded solemnly. “I did. Then unmarried. Well, been separated for a few months now. But made the split official today, actually.” He raised his left hand and waggled the fingers. Sara could make out a faint tan line where his wedding band must have once been.
She winced. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. I’m sorry enough for both of us. Wasn’t exactly a clean split.”
“Irreconcilable differences?”
“Sure, as in, she wanted to be with someone different, and I wasn’t able to reconcile with that.” He chuckled and shook his head again.
“Yikes. If it’s any consolation, my life isn’t exactly all that grand at the moment.”
“Divorce?” he asked cautiously, looking at her left hand where she held the cigarette at her side.
“Nah. Didn’t even get that far. Boss, employee, other woman. You can connect the dots. It was pretty ugly, too.”
He let out a low whistle. “That’s a raw deal right there. What’re you doing now?”
She laughed. “You’re full of questions.”
He blanched at once. “You’re right, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m prying. Not very polite of me at all.” He turned to leave, but Sara caught his forearm.
“I’m just teasing. It’s fine. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine, you know?”
He hesitated, looking into her eyes to see if she was serious. When he realized that she was, he relaxed a little. “If you’re sure. Really, though, I don’t mind leaving. You just came out here for a breath of fresh air, not the Spanish Inquisition.”
She waved him away. “Nonsense. I want to catch up. Let’s sit.” They settled down onto the bench. “You asked what I was doing. Not much, is the answer. I had some savings built up, so I’ve been all right since my dad’s funeral. Living at home helps. But I’m running low, and I can’t go back to New York. Gavin—that’s the guy—he’s a big shot up there. Anyone who’d hire me would want his okay first, and to be honest, I’m terrified to find out what he’d say.”
Russell nodded. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since they sat down. Not in a creepy way, but just an intense listening expression. His eyes were a light gray. “Makes sense. I heard your mom was running the Sweet Island Inn now. How’s that?”
Sara ran a hand through her hair and took the final puff on her cigarette before stubbing it out in the ash tray at her side. “Great. She needs to be busy. The inn is perfect for her. Work never stops there.”
“I figured. I know the feeling.”
“You’re still living here, right? What’re you doing for work?”
“Yep, still on the island. Doing some internet marketing. It’s gone fairly well, not to be a braggart, but it keeps me busy all hours of the day.”
Sara smiled suspiciously as she looked at him. “Vague ‘internet marketing,’ lots of money, and a weird schedule? Russell Bridges, are you a drug dealer?”
He threw his head back and laughed for a good long while at that. He had a nice laugh. It reminded her of her dad’s. He really committed to it—tearing up, slapping a knee, a full guffaw from deep within. It was the kind of laugh that made you want to laugh with him. Warm, inviting. Finally, he simmered down.
“I forgot you laughed like that,” Sara said with a smile.
He grinned sheepishly. “MaryAnne hated it. Said I laughed like a buffoon.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore, I guess. If you’re looking for an upside.” Sara thought maybe she’d gone too far when Russell winced, but his smile quickly returned.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Maybe it is time to start looking for the good stuff yet to come. Speaking of which,” he continued, “I’m starving, and I’ve been craving a slice of pizza since we sat down. Any interest in joining me?”
Sara thought about it and then nodded. “That sounds great. Let me go tell my sister I’m leaving.”
“You got it. I’ll be here.”
After sticking her head back in the bar and telling Eliza she was going to get pizza with an old friend, she and Russell went and sat outside the pizza parlor for a while. They had a couple beers each and more slices of pizza than Sara cared to admit. It felt good to catch up with him. He really did have a nice laugh, and this older Russell was handsome. He was such a good listener, too. He looked like he immersed himself in whatever she was saying, as if there was nothing else in the world more important than the words coming out of her lips. After months of pining after someone who didn’t seem to give a darn what she did or said, it felt nice to be attended to like that.
Plus, he was funny. He had her howling more than once during the couple of hours they sat together, wiping tears from her eyes and the whole nine yards. Making fun of people they both knew from high school, of his ex-wife and Gavin. For all that he seemed weighed down by his own worries, Russell was a lighthearted person. In his presence, Sara felt her own burdens ease up somewhat.
“Oh, shoot!” she blurted after a while. “It’s almost nine! I promised my niece I’d call to tuck her in.” Sara and Alice had a standing agreement to video chat on Friday nights so that Sara could “tuck her in” virtually. She would’ve just done it here, but her phone was dead and she’d left her charger at the house on Howard Street.
“Well, all good things must come to an end, I guess,” Russell said with mock-mournfulness.
“Afraid so.”
“Maybe we can do it again sometime?” he asked. He didn’t quite look at her as he said it, and he didn’t voice it outright, but Sara knew what he was getting at.
“If you’re gonna ask me on a date, you better do it properly. I am a lady, after all.”
“You curse like a sailor, so I wasn’t quite sure.”
She smacked him on the shoulder. “Watch it!”
Russell laughed. Then, he pretended to doff an imaginary cap and said, “M’lady, would you do me the pleasure of sharing your company again on some other fine evening?”
Sara groaned and rolled her eyes. “I changed my mind. I prefer the first method.”
They chuckled together again. “For real, though,” Russell said after an awkward pause. “I’d love to take you out sometime. Like on a real date. If you’re interested.”
She gave him a wide smile. “Yeah. I think I’d like that a lot.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Then it’s a date. I’ll see you soon, Sara Benson.”
“Good night, Russell Bridges.” She kissed him on the cheek and then left before he could say anything else.
19
Eliza
Brent gone. Sara gone. Just Eliza left by herself. Life had been doing that to her far too often lately. She’d been weirdly nervous about it, too. Anxious, in a way she never used to be. She had spent more or less the entirety of her life as a lone wolf. Introverted, yes, but more in an “I don’t need other people” way than anything resembling shyness. She’d done just fine on her own. She’d come this far.
So why did she suddenly need people around her?
Since the day she found out she was pregnant, she’d been victim to a constant need to be surrounded by others. Her family was the best salve for her anxieties. Having Mom or Brent or Sara or Holly around—though each of them was currently messed up in their own way—was the closest thing to a cure for the heart-racing, sweaty-palmed fear that overtook her whenever she had a quiet moment to herself. Even now, in a bar full of people on the island where she’d grown up, she felt uncomfortable. She kept shuffling around in her seat. The seltzer seemed flat all of a sudden. The music was overly loud. Was that guy looking at her?
“Get it together,” she mumbled to herself under her breath. Sara had left what, five minutes ago? Stuck her head in the door and said she’d run into an old friend and was going to get pizza. The thought of pizza turned Eliza’s stomach. This pregnancy was doing
strange things to her body. She was hypersensitive to smell, though she’d never been one to have a strong nose for fragrances before. Now, if she closed her eyes and focused, she could sense the sweat hiding beneath the heavy-handed cologne worn by the man four stools down at the bar. She could smell the limes in the garnish caddy a few feet away.
“Need something, Liz?” asked Big Mack from behind the bar. Her eyes flew open. She knew him vaguely—a friend of her brother’s in some form or another. Always seemed like a nice enough man. He looked like a grizzly bear, large and hairy and tattooed. But nice. Warm.
Eliza smiled at him. “I’m good, thanks.”
“You got it. Lemme know if you want a refresher on that thing,” he said, nodding towards the seltzer she’d been babysitting since she first arrived.
“Will do.”
He turned away to help someone else who was calling for his attention from the far end of the bar. Eliza let out a long sigh. She was far too deep inside her own head these days. Four months of quivering whenever she was left alone and smelling stuff from dozens of yards away, like she fancied herself a superhero, was really doing a number on her psyche. She used to be strong. Fearless. She batted leadoff her entire life because the pressure never got to her. First up to bat, no idea what kind of heat the opposing pitcher would be bringing, it didn’t matter. She knew how to execute. She knew how to do the work.
But what did she know about anything that was happening now? She knew nothing about death, or babies, or breakups. The only thing she knew for certain was that she didn’t know what to do next. She’d left so much in her wake: Clay, work, the city, her safe and richly decorated life. It had seemed so easy to rid herself of those accoutrements. She’d ended things with Clay with four neat pitches into his chest: engagement ring, pregnancy test, pregnancy test, pregnancy test. Then goodbye forever. She’d left Goldman Sachs—temporarily—with a blunt email to Marty Fleishman, also CC’ing Janine, the head of HR.
I need some time off. I have vacation days accrued. Please consider this an indefinite leave of absence.
Best, Eliza.
She knew Marty wouldn’t like it, but she also knew that she’d already hit her revenue goals for the year, she was his best employee, and Marty could just figure out how to pick up the slack in her absence. She’d be back when she got her head screwed on correctly. When she had a plan.
It was easy to leave New York behind. Easier than she might’ve expected. She’d always told herself she loved the city. Didn’t everybody tell themselves that? “Oh, it’s just so lively! There’s always something happening! It’s the capital of the world!” Blah, blah, blah. Everybody said the same garbage. Few, if any of them, believed it, or took the time to see it for themselves. In Eliza’s experience, most people moved to New York with starlit dreams of galivanting down Fifth Avenue and attending rock ’n roll shows in East Village. But—down to a person—they always ended up building a nest in some overpriced apartment and leaving it as rarely as they could manage. She was no different and no better than the rest. She’d done exactly that.
But she didn’t miss her nest. Not one piece of art or furniture. Not a single aspect of the decor she’d slaved over. She didn’t care what happened to any of it. Let Clay keep it or sell it or give it to a homeless man in the Bowery. As a matter of fact, she didn’t want to see any of it ever again.
She sighed and took another sip of her seltzer. Nantucket was a different world than New York. She could smell the ocean no matter where she went, super-powered nose or not. People here looked her in the eye and smiled when she passed them on the street. She knew all the street corners and the shop owners. It was nice to feel like a living, breathing person and not another rodent in the rat race.
It also compounded her anxiety tenfold. People around here knew her. They expected her to do well. She always had done well, hadn’t she? Yes. Of course. Eliza Benson succeeded. That was what people knew. That was the promise she had spent a lifetime delivering on. Dad had always introduced her to his friends and clients as “Eliza, my rock-star eldest.” It used to make her proud. She’d smile and shake hands like an adult, with a fire in her eyes that said, “Yes, that is what I am.”
Now, though, she was faking the heck out of that.
She looked around the bar. The sun had set not too long ago, so it was almost dark out. Brent liked this bar because Big Mack served him doubles and only charged for singles. Sara liked it because there was live music a few nights a week. Eliza liked it because it was the least likely spot to run into someone she knew, and the open windows kept the smell of sticky beer from getting too nauseating.
The crowd looked like a mix of regulars and tourists, weighted towards the latter. A few tanned fishermen were knocking back pitchers in the corners. Some old ladies were chitchatting over their chardonnays. And then there was Eliza, smack-dab in the middle all by her lonesome, with a room-temp seltzer and the threat of a migraine looming on the horizon.
That, plus the wet spot on her back when someone suddenly jostled into her from behind and poured half their beer down her side.
“Oh man, I’m so sorry!” came the voice from behind her. She came to her senses and turned around. The guilty party was a tall man she didn’t recognize. He had dark hair, long and unruly, with high cheekbones and bright green eyes. His skin was pale—he must not be from here—and the hand that he offered to help her up from her suddenly soaking wet stool was soft and supple. “Someone bumped into me, and—ay, I got you good.”
Eliza looked down and grimaced. She was wearing blue jeans and a white blouse. Both were drenched down her right side with a Nantucket craft beer. The smell was overwhelming. She got a little dizzy for a second and had to reach out to grab the stranger by his outstretched hand to stop herself from falling.
“Whoa. You okay?” the man asked, his eyes narrowing in concern.
“Yeah. Yes. Fine,” Eliza murmured. She blinked a few times to clear her head, then looked up at him. He was handsome, in an artistic sort of way. Sad, expressive eyes, and very full lips. He looked like a runway model, the ones she’d seen a few times in Manhattan, usually prowling down the sidewalks on the Lower East Side with cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
“What’s your name?” he asked her. His voice had changed a little bit. Dropped in tone, a little softer, enough to make her lean in just slightly. He had a dark, swirling scent radiating from him. Eliza couldn’t place it.
“Eliza Benson.”
“Eliza Benson,” he echoed. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”
“Was I supposed to check in with you?” she snapped.
He held up his hands in mock defense. “No insult intended,” he said. “I’m just the bar pianist. I see most of these people all the time. But not you. You, I would remember.”
She winced and felt bad immediately. Why was she being so confrontational? It wasn’t his fault that she had a migraine coming on and a bevy of personal and familial tragedies on her plate. She made a conscious decision to lower her defenses a little bit. This was Nantucket, not New York. She didn’t need to be so on guard against everyone.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. Just had … a rough day, let’s call it. A few of them in a row, actually.”
He nodded solemnly. “I can see it on your face.”
She laughed at that. “Oh? Are you the bar fortune-teller, too?”
The man chuckled. “No. I just have a knack for reading people. Nothing supernatural about it. You have sad eyes.”
Eliza blushed and looked down at the man’s feet. He was wearing dark leather boots, despite the heat, and slim-fit jeans tucked into them. “Sad eyes, huh?” she murmured half-heartedly. She wasn’t sure what she was really supposed to say to a statement like that. She felt dumb immediately. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so thick-lipped and slow-witted.
“Yes, sad eyes,” the man repeated. She risked a glance up. He was frowning—not in a mean way, more studiou
sly, like he was really looking at her, with a degree of intensity that was honestly a little bit unnerving. “But a proud face. Anyway,” he said, shaking his head like he was coming out of a trance, “I’m sorry I spilled my drink on you. Can I get your next round to make up for it?”
Eliza raised her seltzer to show him. “Good with this, thanks. Pregnant.” Apparently, she’d forgotten how to use nouns and verbs in her sentences. Why was she fumbling over her words all of a sudden? It was strange. The man had an aura to him, which—before this moment—was something that Eliza would have found utterly ridiculous for anyone else to say about another human being. Eliza Benson was not the kind of person who believed in energy or vibes or auras. But there was something distinct about this man that was messing with her head a little bit.
Probably wasn’t the man, actually. Just the stress of the last few months piling up. The death of her father, pregnancy hormones, and a sudden breakup, all compounding into a weird misfiring of her once rock-solid mental circuitry. Yes, that made way more sense. This man was just a catalyst for all that. Nothing more.
He nodded again. His eyes hadn’t left hers since the moment they’d first met. Intense was exactly the right word for him. He didn’t blink. Just stared at her with those piercing green eyes.
“May I sit?” he asked, pointing at the stool next to hers. “I’m done for the night.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Make yourself at home.” The man settled down next to her. “You know,” she said, turning to him, “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Oliver,” he replied.
“Oliver what?”