Big Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  He smiled at me as we strolled toward the raw bar. His smile was a little crooked, lifting the right side of his mouth higher than the left, and he was graceful as he walked across the sand. When we got to the buffet, he handed me a plate and picked up a pair of tongs. “Oysters?”

  “Yes, please.” I heard Nana’s voice in my head, telling me that oysters were pure protein, low in calories and practically fat-free. I shooed that voice away, too, as Nick put a few oysters on the plate, shells clinking against the porcelain. He picked up a small silver cup of cocktail sauce and raised his eyebrows. I nodded and added clams, shrimp, a wedge of lemon, and a scoop of horseradish to my plate. Nick filled a plate for himself and led me to an empty cocktail table by the farthest bonfire. I squeezed lemon onto my first oyster, added a dollop of cocktail sauce, tipped it into my mouth, and gulped it down, humming in pleasure at its sweet, briny taste. Nick looked at me with approval.

  “That’s probably the freshest oyster you’ll ever taste.”

  “It’s amazing,” I said, and ate another one. I wondered, briefly, if he was one of those guys whose fetish was feeding fat women, or watching them eat, but he hadn’t seemed to be staring inappropriately, and he had turned his attention to his own plate instead of mine. He took his oysters with just a squeeze of lemon, I saw.

  “So you’re from New York?” he asked. “First time on the Cape?”

  “That’s right.” We spent the next few minutes eating seafood and discussing our jobs and education. Nick, I learned, was a Massachusetts native who’d grown up in a suburb of Boston. He’d gone to the University of Vermont—“I was a big skier, but not much of a student in high school,” he said—and was now back in Boston, working at a program that taught yoga to at-risk elementary school students.

  “I know that sounds a little crunchy-granola,” he said, which was exactly what I’d been thinking. “But there’s science that shows that yoga breathing really works, and if you teach kids how to regulate their emotions while they’re young, it helps them achieve as they get older.”

  “That’s so interesting!” I said, thinking that it also explained his grace, his ease in his body. He didn’t move like a man with a desk job. “So, do you have your summers off?” My mind supplied me with a picture of Nick, lounging on the sand, tanned and shirtless in his swim trunks, or cross-legged on a paddleboard, hands in prayer pose at his chest.

  “I do. Which is why I’m here, on the Cape. The schools can’t pay us a lot, and the businesses up here always need seasonal workers. Plus, it’s where I spent my summers growing up. I’m basically a salmon, swimming back to my natal bed.”

  I smiled, appreciating the word “natal,” wondering if he did crossword puzzles.

  “I’ve been a lifeguard at the National Seashore beaches in Chatham, and worked at a bicycle shop in Orleans. This summer I’m the mate on a charter fishing boat.”

  I resisted the urge to make a dad joke about mates, as my brain adjusted the picture. Instead of Nick lolling on the beach, I was imagining him, still tanned and shirtless, only instead of paddling a paddleboard, he was holding a fishing pole, legs braced and chest muscles bulging as he worked the reel. “I know how that goes. My parents are teachers, too.” I told him how my father worked at the school that Drue and I had attended, and that my mom taught art at any place that would have her, and how we’d all spent summers at a camp in Maine. I waited for him to reciprocate with information about his parents—their jobs, their hobbies, his life growing up. Instead, he swung the conversation back to the bride.

  “So did Drue ever grow out of being awful?”

  I spooned more horseradish on my last two oysters, stalling. “I’d say that it’s an ongoing effort. You know. Progress, not perfection. One step forward, two steps back.”

  Nick nodded toward the groom, currently engaged in a game of touch football with his fraternity brothers. “It seems like she landed a decent guy.”

  “I haven’t spent much time with Stuart.” Because the parties I’d attended hadn’t filled in many blanks, my knowledge of the groom was still largely based on what I’d gleaned from TV and from Google. I knew that he was a good-looking guy with a Harvard degree; I knew that the critics had ranked him as among the best of All the Single Ladies’ bachelors, the one most likely to treat the women he was courting like people and not bodies, which was impressive insofar as the producers would put the ladies in bikinis and hot tubs as frequently as the plot could be bent to accommodate swimsuits and bubbling water.

  “Ah. You a big Single Ladies fan?” Nick inquired.

  “I am,” I said. “I can’t even lie. That and Real Housewives.”

  He made a face. “You and my aunt. She swears she doesn’t watch, but when that Countess Whoever came to Provincetown to do her cabaret act, she wanted tickets for both shows.”

  This led to a discussion of the Real Housewives, and his aunt, who also watched RuPaul’s Drag Race, and all the drag performers who came to Provincetown in the summer. Nick asked how I liked the big house. When I told him how beautiful it was, and how my room came with a semiprivate hot tub and a private deck, he leaned close. Under the soap and fabric softener, he smelled like beer and sweat, warm skin and sunscreen, the very essence of summer.

  “I heard,” he said, his voice low, “that Drue’s folks paid the Weinbergs thirty grand to rent their house for a week.”

  I felt my breath catch. “How do you know that?”

  He looked down at his beer. “I shouldn’t be gossiping.”

  “Oh, please,” I said, “gossip away.”

  “How about we get a refill on the oysters first?”

  I nodded, squeezing my last lemon wedge onto the flesh of the last oyster on my plate and tipping it down my throat. It was firm and sweet, like eating a mouthful of the ocean. I sighed with pleasure, and Nick smiled. The sun was starting to set, tinting the sky gold and apricot and flamingo pink.

  Nick led me back to the raw bar, where I refilled my plate, then we strolled over to one of the bonfires. The sand underneath it had been flattened, then piled up at the rug’s edges to form a kind of couch, and the seaweed had been raked against the dune. I wondered whose job that had been, and again how much this affair was costing the Cavanaughs.

  “So tell me how you met Drue. You guys were school friends?” he asked.

  I leaned back against the carpeted backrest, spreading the skirt of my dress over my legs, and gave him the abbreviated version of the story—that we’d been friends through high school, then hadn’t seen each other for a while, and had recently reconnected. I wanted to get back to the wedding gossip or, better yet, to learn more about him, but Nick seemed interested in my history, and in life in the city, asking about my job and my life as a babysitter/Instagram influencer.

  “I’ve done some babysitting myself. But I’ve never met an influencer before.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet you have.” I’d had only one glass of wine, an icy Riesling that was perfect with the oysters, plus a few sips of the signature cocktail. It shouldn’t have been enough for me to feel buzzed, but I did, warm and expansive, with my joints and my tongue loosened. I leaned closer and whispered, in a mock-ominous voice, “We’re everywhere.”

  “Can I see your page?”

  “Of course.” As I pulled out my phone, I examined his face for scorn or skepticism, any gesture or expression that would have implied doubt or disbelief that a reputable manufacturer would pay someone like me to model their clothes. But all I saw was curiosity.

  “Here we go.” The first picture on my Instagram feed was a shot that Drue had taken, of me on the ferry, wearing my navy-blue sunhat, red lipstick, and red-framed heart-shaped sunglasses. Against the white-painted backdrop of the boat’s railings, with the blue sky and the dark water behind me, the colors all popped, although I’d played around with the contrast and the saturation to get it just right.

  “Very nice,” Nick said.

  “So you’ll be following me?”

&
nbsp; “I have a confession.” Nick dropped his voice and leaned in close to me, so close I could almost brush the top of his head with my lips. “I’m not on Instagram.”

  I widened my eyes in an expression of shock. He grinned.

  “I’m not actually online at all.”

  Now I actually was horrified. “What?” I sat back, staring at him. “No Facebook? No Twitter? No nothing?”

  “No nothing,” Nick confirmed.

  “You mean you won’t be posting shots of the wedding bed, with the approved wedding hashtag?” I shook my head. “I’m not sure they’re going to let you stay.”

  “Oh, it gets worse. I didn’t even have a smartphone until two years ago.”

  “Who even are you?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “I just never got around to it,” he said. “At first, I thought Facebook was for, you know. Um. Older people. And I didn’t need to sign up somewhere to keep in touch with my high school and college buddies when I saw them in real life. So, by the time I made up my mind to do it, everyone had moved on to the next thing.” He smiled, wiggling his bare feet in the sand. “Guess I just missed my moment. But what about you? How does the influencer thing work? You use your account to advertise clothes?”

  “Clothes, shoes, makeup,” I said. “Exercise gear. Heart-rate monitors. My dog endorses organic pet treats. It’s a whole hustle.”

  “How long have you been doing it?”

  “Oh, a few years.” I cleared my throat, figuring I should tell him my history before he borrowed someone’s smartphone and looked it up himself. “I had a clip go slightly viral a while back. After that, a few brands approached me. I’d say it’s been a slow build since then.”

  “And did you always want to be, you know, famous?”

  I looked at him to see if he was teasing, but his expression was sincere. “I’m not famous,” I said.

  He gestured at my phone. “People are giving you money to wear their clothes and feed your dog their treats. That’s kind of famous, right?”

  I cringed, thinking of a term that I hated: “Insta-famous.” I said, “If I’m famous at all, it’s only in a very specific circle, to a very small number of people. And it’s not about fame. It’s about having a community. Connecting with people who care about the same things that you do.” I sipped my drink.

  “So what’s the goal?” Nick’s voice was still pleasant, but his expression had become a little guarded, somehow wary. Or maybe he was just genuinely clueless. Maybe influencers hadn’t yet colonized Cape Cod, and this was all new to him. “Do you want to hit a certain number of followers? Make a certain amount of money? Or is it just about having a community?”

  “You sound like my dad,” I said, half to myself. My father had asked me all of these questions and more, usually after I’d pulled out my phone in the middle of a meal, to see how a post was doing, or respond to comments. “The goal,” I repeated, using one fingertip to draw circles in the sand. “Okay. Ideally, if I could wave a magic wand and have everything I want, Instagram would be just for community and connection. And I’d make as much money as the big names, without having to deal with… you know, everything they deal with.” I was thinking of the genuinely famous plus-size influencers and the hard-core hate-followers they attracted. So far, I’d only gotten a smattering of disparaging or cruel remarks, but I knew that the more followers I got, the more of them I could expect.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’ll give it all up and just do my crafts and run Bingo’s account. Let her be the breadwinner.”

  This led, naturally, to a discussion of my crafts, which led to me showing him my Etsy storefront and then Bingo’s account. Nick told me about the dog he’d grown up with, a flatulent beagle named Larry, who would howl every time he heard the refrigerator opening, and that he hoped to have a dog of his own someday, but that he wasn’t home enough to give a pet the attention it would need.

  For the next half hour, Nick and I sipped icy wine and ate oysters as the sun descended toward the waterline and the party got louder around us. I learned that the boat he worked on was called the Lady Lu, that a mate’s jobs included gathering the bait—most of the charters used herring—setting the lines, baiting the hooks, helping clients reel in bluefish and striped bass, extracting hooks from fishes’ mouths, and filleting the fish for the passengers to bring home. “It’s expensive,” he said. “We charge passengers seven hundred and fifty dollars for half a day, which covers our fuel, the equipment, maintenance and upkeep on the boat, all of that. Captain Steve’s got regulars. People who go out every year. Fathers and sons, grandfathers or grandmothers and grandkids. For some of them, especially when the little kids catch their first fish, it’s the best day of their summer.”

  “It sounds wonderful.” I could picture it—a sunny day, a little girl squealing in excitement as her line bent, Nick standing behind her, coaching her as she pulled in her fish. I could also picture myself with Nick standing behind me, his chest against my back and his arms holding mine.

  “It’s great,” he said, nodding. “I love being outdoors, working with my hands. I’m always sad when summer’s over.”

  For a moment, I let myself imagine relocating to some quaint Cape Cod town and working with Nick. Getting the boat ready, spraying off its decks or coiling ropes or whatever else one did. Spending days out on the water, in the sunshine, listening to whoops of excitement as people felt the tug of a fish on the line. Heading back to the dock as the sun went down, with the wind in my hair and Nick behind me, his hands warm on my shoulders. Taking pictures that would never be posted or shared, shots of the day that would just be for us.

  Nick twirled an oyster shell around his plate with one blunt fingertip. He looked a little sad.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Oh, sure. Just lots of memories here,” he said, his voice low.

  “Did you go fishing when you were a kid?”

  He jerked his head up, looking almost startled. Then he smiled. “Nah. It wasn’t my family’s thing.”

  I wanted to ask him more about his family and what their things had been. I wanted to hear all about the Lady Lu, and where his favorite beaches were, and how he liked to cook his bluefish, but that was when the dinner bell began to clang.

  “Hope you like lobstah,” Nick said cheerfully. He extended his hand, and I gripped it, careful not to let him take too much of my weight as I rose. His palm felt warm and callused, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world when he kept holding my hand as we made our way to the buffet line. The sky was streaked in a hundred shades of orange and gold, and the wind had picked up, sending a fine layer of sand skimming across the beach and churning the tops of the waves into lacy white foam.

  “Magic hour,” I murmured, looking at the light. Then I remembered that I wasn’t just here for fun.

  “Hey,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Would you mind taking a few pictures?”

  “For the ’gram?” he asked with a sly smile.

  “Hey, I’m a working girl.” I opened up the camera app, handed Nick my phone, and waded into the water, gathering my skirt as the water swirled, warm and foaming, around my knees. I could feel the tide’s pull, the suck of the sand beneath my feet. I could smell lobsters and grilled corn on the cob and a whiff of corruption; crabs and fish decaying in the seaweed under the water.

  “Turn that way,” Nick said, pointing with his chin.

  “Oh, are you my art director now?” I asked, turning as he’d directed and smiling as the wind lifted my hair.

  “Very nice,” he said as the bride strolled by. I called, “Hey, Drue!”

  “There you are!” she said, and came trotting past Nick and splashing into the water, where she stood beside me and linked her arm with mine.

  “One, two, three,” Nick called. I smiled, tilting my head against Drue’s. I could feel her trembling, like there was an electrical current running through her, and her eyes were very wide.

  “Are you okay?
” I asked.

  “Sure!” she said. She must have gotten her teeth freshly bleached, or had new veneers put on. Her smile had always been bright, but now it was practically radioactive. “I’m better than okay! I’m getting married tomorrow!”

  “I know! I know you are!”

  She hugged herself. Ankle-deep in the water, she danced a funny, skipping jig, waving her arms, kicking to splash me as Nick said “Smile!” Maybe she wasn’t anxious, I told myself. Maybe she was just exhilarated, euphoric at the prospect of her big day and her life with Stuart.

  A minute later, Drue smacked a kiss on my cheek. “Post these!” she instructed, and went trotting away. When Nick gave me my phone, I scrolled through the pictures, holding my breath as I looked. Darshi, who’d become my unofficial Instagram photographer, knew that if she didn’t shoot me from above, I risked looking like a collection of chins on top of boobs, but even without that warning, Nick had done a decent job. Better than decent, I thought, looking at one of the last shots he’d taken. Drue and I had both been laughing, facing each other, with droplets of spray that she’d kicked up arcing in front of us. Our mouths were open, eyes closed as we’d laughed, with our hair and skin glowing in that lovely, peachy light.

  “Hey, these are great!” I said.

  “Glad to be of service.”

  I threw a quick filter on the best shot and posted it alongside the words “Beautiful dress, beautiful night, beautiful bride,” taking care to use Drue’s wedding hashtag and to tag all the pertinent accounts, including Leef. As soon as I was done, Nick took my arm and led me to the buffet. People were lining up, the men resplendent in their linen shirts and madras shorts, the women in brightly colored sundresses. I could smell seafood and woodsmoke, perfume and aftershave, wine and beer and champagne, and, underneath it all, the briny scent of the ocean.

  Nick and I filled our plates with lobster and clams and corn on the cob, and returned to our spot on the silky rugs in front of the fire at the farthest reaches of the party, in a nook that seemed custom-made for two. We ate, and finally he started to talk about himself: the time he and his cousins had taken their grandmother to play bingo in Provincetown, only, unbeknownst to them, it was drag bingo, and they hadn’t had the heart to tell their grandmother that the woman in emerald sequins and matching eye shadow cracking jokes and calling numbers at the front of the room wasn’t a peer from her assisted living and was not, in fact, a woman at all. “You’d think her name might’ve been a giveaway.”