by Laura Carter
We walked back to the market without talking much. I couldn’t resist running my fingertips across all the fabrics—silk, cotton, satin, lace—in bright, bold colors. That would be the day that started my obsession with fashion designing, and it would be the start of my self-made hippie wardrobe, as Jake would call it. But I tell you about it so that you might understand me better. So that you might come to see, as I did, that Jake and I could never be together.
Chapter 9
Jake
I watch Jess as she rolls her hair into a bun and sticks it with two fancy-looking chopsticks. She turns to me, her hands held out from her sides. “Well?”
She’s wearing the Asian-style wrap top she made a couple of weeks ago. She’s teamed it with black, low-rise pants and her own bold print wedges. She looks unique, fantastic, and her all at once.
“Four. Sorry, babe, I’m not in an Asian mood.”
She rolls her eyes as she adds gold leaf earrings. “That’s because you have your sights on all the French food Edmond and Amelie brought with them.”
When she turns her back on me, I notice one of her chopsticks isn’t pushed quite far enough into her hair. I get off the bed and move behind her. She watches our reflection in the mirror as I slide the chopstick farther into her bun. “Better.”
Reaching back and raising her hand to my jaw, she smiles softly. She squeals when I take her by surprise, biting her hand.
“I like this shirt on you,” she says, twisting to face me. She fiddles with the collar of my pink shirt. I breathe her in, the scent I love on her. She looks up to me, her teeth pressed into her lip. I would pay big money to know what is going on in her mind right now. I stare at the lips she’s painted red. They look inviting. Too inviting. I tug her bottom lip from her teeth with my thumb.
“You have lipstick all over your teeth,” I lie.
“I do?” It breaks the dangerous tension when she starts rubbing her teeth frantically with her finger. When I laugh, she gives me a thump in my pec. “I hate you.”
“You love me.” I tuck her under my arm and we head downstairs.
The smell of beef bourguignon, or maybe coq au vin, hits my nose before we even make it to the kitchen. It could be either because I know Becky and Edmond decided to cook both dishes for everyone tonight. Whichever, it smells damn good. I tell Becky and Edmond as much as they work around each other, seamlessly navigating chopping boards, checking on food in the oven. I can see how these two work well together in the restaurant.
Edmond leans in to taste some kind of mixture Becky has in a large bowl. He takes a bit from the teaspoon she holds. “More vanilla,” he says.
She nods. “Agreed.”
“Those two are like a well-oiled machine. It’s fucking impressive,” I say, stepping onto the decking.
“I told them they didn’t have to cook but they love it,” Drew says, handing Jess a glass of champagne and me a bottle of beer.
“You can’t tell a chef to stop cooking,” Amelie says.
Everyone is sitting around on the wicker furniture. Jess and I take a two-seat sofa. I love that she can mix with everyone easily. It’s always been one of the things I’ve admired about Jess. She can talk to anyone, in any setting. I guess many years immersed in different countries and cultures is the reason. But, right now, I wish she wasn’t deep in conversation with Madge and Izzy about style tips, because my mind is wandering to Emily and the fact she could turn up at any minute.
What was I thinking inviting her here tonight? I don’t have too long to panic because the flow of Emily’s dress in the wind catches my eye as she comes up to the house from the beach. I watch her and exhale heavily, slowly. More than three years we haven’t spoken. The last feelings I had for her weren’t friendly. I was contemplating spending the rest of my life with her. The girl I grew up with. The girl I loved. The person whose presence in my life meant as much as my parents’, my brother’s.
Jess breaks from her conversation to follow my gaze. She puts her hand on my thigh and squeezes. “You’ve got this, Jake. You’ve got this.”
I nod, not sure that I’ve got this at all, but grateful for the sentiment.
Emily and I meet on the decking below the pool. She hands me a bottle of wine but keeps hold of the flowers she’s carrying. Her skin is pale, her lips a light pink. She has a small amount of makeup around her eyes. Her hair is loose and blowing in the wind with her polka-dot dress. “Hi,” she says, clearly as unsure as I am.
“You look nice.”
“Thanks.”
I lean in. I think to kiss her cheek, which is weird, because that’s not our thing. She leans in but goes for a hug. We wind up in an awkward hug-kiss situation.
“This used to be easy,” she says with a short laugh.
“Did we ever hug and kiss?”
She bunches her lips together in a way I’m familiar with and shakes her head. “Only that one time.” She winks and I chuckle. The heavy air diminishes.
“Come on up.” On the deck, I introduce her to Izzy and Becky, not needing to introduce her to everyone else she’s already met. Jess has disappeared.
“Ems, I haven’t seen you for an age,” Brooks says. He pulls her into conversation, which gives me a chance to get myself together and look around for Jess. Eventually, she comes onto the deck.
“She’s even more beautiful in real life,” she whispers to me.
I decide against responding to that. For years, I didn’t think about whether Emily was attractive or not. She was just Emily. Even when I thought my feelings for her were changing, I don’t think I thought of her as hot, or like I needed to tear her clothes off.
“Em, come here a sec,” I call. “This is Jess. She’s my…ah…”
Jess thrusts her hand out. “I’m his roomie in London.”
My roomie? She’s not just my roomie. I scowl at her but she ignores me, seemingly hitting it off with Emily right away. Unsurprising really, since they’re both pretty incredible. At least I used to think Emily was incredible. Then I started to hate her. But now, watching her talk easily with Jess, I’m finding it hard not to remember how great she is. Twenty odd years of her being like my right arm might have something to do with that.
We eat around the outdoor table. Conversation flows. Wine flows. Whether it’s relief or wine, or that Jess and Emily are getting along, I feel content. Confused, absolutely. But not weird. Which is weird, no?
After dinner, Brooks, Kit and I clear the table and load the dishwasher. It’s the least we can do, given we’ve contributed in no other way. We decide during that time that we should make a fire on the beach.
Like the cavemen hunter gatherers that we so obviously are, in our tailored shorts and shirts, the three of us find wood and other scraps to make a fire on the beach. Unlike cavemen, we light the fire with half a box of matches and a bottle of lighter fuel.
We bring a few fold-out chairs, a cool box of booze and a couple of rugs down onto the sand, then beckon the others. Becky brings down amazing cakes that ought to win awards for how stunning they look. We pass them around with forks.
I sit on a rug, with Jess by my side, sharing what Becky calls Opera with a Twist. Emily takes one of the fold-out chairs opposite us in the circle we have formed around the small flames. Izzy brings down her acoustic guitar.
“I am so full,” Jess moans, as she lifts another forkful of cake toward her mouth. “But this cake is too good to leave.”
I dart forward, wrapping my mouth around the forkful of decadence, toppling both of us in the process, so we’re laughing in a boozy heap on the rug. “Thinking of your hips, babe,” I tell her, receiving a well-earned elbow to the ribs in return.
As we sit, I catch Emily looking our way. She offers a slight and clearly forced smile, which kills the mood. What was that about?
I don’t know why but as Izzy starts to play her
own songs, her voice soft, her words beautiful, I keep looking at Emily. Watching the way the light of the fire flickers across her skin, the way her eyes close and she rocks gently as she listens to Izzy play. I’m transported to Staten Island, sitting in our treehouse, watching her move this exact way as I played the guitar for her as a twelve-year-old kid. God, that was an easy time.
“Does anyone else want to play?” Izzy asks once she’s finished another song.
“Would you mind?” Emily asks. “I’m precious about people touching my guitar so I’d understand.”
“No, please, go ahead.”
Emily takes the Fender and puts the strap over her head. She tunes the strings to her liking and I watch her settle into the guitar, the way I used to tell her to do before she started to play. I don’t realize I’m smiling until Jess prods my dimple with her finger.
Emily starts to pick the beginning of a tune I recognize. It’s RaeLynn’s “The Apple.” She’s always loved country.
I watch her delicate fingers move across the strings. I listen to every rasp and dip of her voice as she sings. I listen to her singing about biting into an apple and how that move started to make everything she knew unravel. I know she chose the song with intention. The thing about Emily and me is that we always struggled to talk about feelings. We knew they were there, the way we knew everything about each other, but we never put them into words. Unless we put them into music.
Is it possible for your heart to ache? If it is, that’s what’s happening. As I realize how much I’ve missed her, how a part of me has been missing for three years, my heart is aching.
Emily moves on to play RaeLynn’s “Young,” and I find myself singing along with her, both of us laughing as we hit pitchy notes. Fuck, I’ve missed her so much.
But when she’s finished, and the moment has passed, I remember how much she hurt me.
“Where did you learn to play like that, Emily?” Izzy asks.
Emily looks at me. “My best friend taught me.”
“Jake?” Izzy asks, pointing the question to me. “You play?”
Emily stands, bringing the guitar to me. “Are you kidding? Jake is amazing on the guitar.”
“It’s true,” Brooks says, from his spot on the floor, leaning back between Izzy’s legs as she sits in the chair behind him. “Get the kid singing Elvis. Come on, Jakey, let’s have the show.”
For some reason, I look at Jess, expecting her to be there to save me. This time, she just shrugs and sips her wine.
Shaking my head, I stand and accept the guitar from Emily with a scowl. I hook it over my shoulder, tune her up, and decide on “Suspicious Minds.” I clear my throat and try to find my inner Elvis…tricky when I’m standing on a beach in the Hamptons barefoot, rather than on a stage in Vegas in a white jumpsuit. “All right, here goes.”
I play that famous intro and strut my best King voice. “We’re caught in a trap…”
By the time I hit the chorus, everyone is dancing and singing around the fire, proving how much booze we’ve consumed. At that part of the song where the volume drops then comes back full throttle, I go all out with my show, dropping one knee to the sand, King-style.
Since I have an audience and I’m pretty wasted, I give them my best rendition of “A Little Less Conversation” next. I try not to be pissed about the fact Marty has wormed his way to Jess’s side and takes hold of her hands as they dance. It’s a party, Jake.
Another couple of tunes and we all settle back around the fire. I explain to Becky that I started playing the guitar when I was seven because I wanted to be in Drew and Brooks’s band in high school. “Of course, that’s when I was a foolish kid and I thought they were cool.”
“Thought we were cool?” Brooks asks. “We were cool, man.”
“We had groupies,” Drew adds, as if it makes their point.
“Groupies? Brittainy Torello and Amber Hasham do not count. They clung to anything with a dick and a set of abs,” I argue.
“Buddy, at least we had abs. You were just a skinny seven-year-old who followed us around like a bad smell,” Brooks states, finishing his point with a swig of beer for emphasis.
“You were a skinny kid?” Jess asks, now sitting on a rug opposite me…and next to Marty. “I can’t imagine you skinny…not with the…you know…”
I smirk as she waves a hand in the general direction of what are now very prominent abs and ripped biceps. “Are you blushing, Jessica Walters?” I tease. She scowls in return.
“Ah, well, the body is thanks to Emily,” Drew says. “See, Emily was responsible for my baby brother’s first busted nose.”
Emily gasps. “God, I remember that. Tommy Arnold.” For some reason, she looks at Jess as she tells the story. “Tommy Arnold was a monster. He was a huge kid. He had a supernatural growth spurt or something.”
“He was also a dick,” I add.
She leans toward me, clinking her beer bottle against mine. “Agreed. Anyway, we were walking home from school one day… Our parents always made Jake walk me home from school. We were running for some reason…”
“I said I’d race you home,” I say.
“That’s right. So, we were running and Tommy Arnold stepped right out in front of me. I ran into him, then he pushed me over. And Jake saw red.” She stops talking to Jess and looks at me. “You always had my back, didn’t you?”
Yeah, and it turns out you didn’t have mine. “Tommy really wanted to pick a fight with me, anyway. He just used Emily to do it.”
“Because he knew it would get to you,” Jess says.
I shrug. “I guess. So, Tommy and I got in a fight. He never came near Emily again and he lost his crowd of followers at school. When I got home, Brooks was there with Drew.”
Brooks nods. “I told him, chin up, getting into a fight over a chick…”
“Is a rite of passage,” I finish, laughing. “Then he started boxing with me, and the fine specimen of a man I am now started that day.”
Jess laughs. “Ah, Mr. Modesty made it to the party.” I laugh with her.
“Yeah, you always did have a way of getting me into trouble, Ems.” I hear almost wistfulness in my words. I guess I am feeling nostalgic. Life was easy back then. The worst thing about my day was pretending to hate picking Emily up from school.
“Uh, I don’t think that’s accurate, actually,” Emily says, her volume and confidence growing with booze. “Name one other thing I did to get you in trouble.”
From where I’m leaning back on one elbow on the rug, I point to Emily. “You are shitting me, right now.” When she still looks incredulous, I say, “Fine, let me see. Okay, what about Mr. Hetherington’s dog?”
She sucks in a breath and covers her mouth with both hands as she falls back in her beach chair. “Oh my God, I forgot about that.”
“Yeah, I haven’t.”
“What happened?” Madge asks.
Shaking my head, I share the story. “Mr. Hetherington lived on the same street as us. He had a dog. What was it called again?”
“Chippy,” Emily manages through her hysterics.
“Chippy, right. Mr. Hetherington was an old man. He was a widower and used to volunteer at a library, reading to kids, for something to do. I don’t know if he never house-trained Chippy or something but when he went to the library each day, he would chain Chippy up in his yard.”
“But, see, Chippy had a crush on Mrs. Dawson’s dog, along the way,” Emily says. “He would pull on his chain, barking and crying, trying to get to Mrs. Dawson’s dog when it was outside.”
“Emily thought Chippy was in love with Mrs. Dawson’s dog,” I explain.
“He was in love.”
I roll my eyes. “This one Saturday, Mr. Hetherington was at the library and Chippy was going crazy outside on the chain. Mrs. Dawson had gone out and left her dog in the garden.”
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“In hindsight, maybe Mrs. Dawson’s dog was in heat,” Emily says.
“So, Emily decided she wanted Chippy to find his love and let Chippy off his leash.”
“He flew over the fence and went straight to Mrs. Dawson’s garden. When Mr. Hetherington came home, Chippy still hadn’t returned. Mr. Hetherington started walking from house to house, asking if anyone had seen Chippy. I was playing at Jake’s house when he turned up. I’ve never been a good liar…”
That’s a matter of opinion.
“Long story short, I took the fall and got into a hell of a lot of shit because Jane Austen there needed to see the dogs fall in love.”
“Wait, what happened to Chippy?” Izzy asks.
“Oh, he returned that night,” Emily says.
“And Mrs. Dawson’s dog?”
I look at Emily and we both start to laugh, again. “We can’t say for certain because we were grounded. But shortly after that day, Mrs. Dawson had herself eight puppies.”
“And the moral of the story is…” Emily looks at me and we finish simultaneously.
“Fucking dogs in heat will lead to unwanted babies.” I fall onto my back, laughing so hard all I can hear is the sound of my own voice in my ears; all I can feel is the aching of my ribs.
“All right, I confess, there were a few times I shit the bed and Jake had to save my bacon. In fact, Jake did once buy me a toilet roll as a gift. Do you remember? It was the day of my finals in my second year of college. Instead of wishing me good luck, like most people would do, Jake handed me a gift bag. Inside, there was a toilet roll and a note that simply said, ‘Don’t shit the bed, Ems.’”
I prop myself back up on my elbow and take a large gulp of beer. “How could I forget? That was the last time I spoke to you before we came here.” Emily’s laughter fades in an instant. As she looks at me, the orange glow of the fire catches the tears that fill her eyes.
What did she think? That one night here would erase everything?
She stands, dumps her empty bottle in the trash bag and screws in a smile that I know is forced. “Well, I’m exhausted. Thank you for having me, Drew, Becky. I’ve had a great time.” Her voice falters as she says, “It was nice to meet you, too, Izzy, Jess.” She doesn’t hug or kiss anyone; she leaves quickly, carrying her sandals and heading down to the beach.