by Nancy Thayer
Mack asked, with a frown, “Seriously, you never dated since then?”
Lisa laughed. “I was asked out a few times. Sometimes I’d go with a divorced father to see our kids in a play and the four of us would have celebratory ice cream sundaes. But no, I never dated as such. This town…this town is so small. I knew I couldn’t have a romantic relationship without everyone knowing it, and I didn’t want the kids teased in school.”
“But the kids are grown. They live off-island now.”
“True. They’ve lived off-island for years.” Lisa shrugged. “I suppose I’ve simply fallen into the habit of living alone and liking it. I’m busy. I like my life. Maybe I like my solitude. Maybe I like…not being bothered by a man.”
“We’ll see about that,” Mack said.
Lisa felt her cheeks burn as electricity shivered through her body. The truth was, she’d lived so many years without being the object of scrutiny by anyone, male or female, except her family physician, that this experience of growing closer with Mack, knowing he was now suggesting becoming intimate—well, it was frightening, a little. Or not frightening, but uncomfortable. It wasn’t just the physical stuff, an image of herself naked before a younger man’s eyes. It was, well, all of it.
Being judged. Not pretty enough, not fascinating enough, and certainly not accomplished enough in the art of lovemaking. Until now, until this date, she’d enjoyed the mild flirting. It had meant something to her, something flattering and fun, but as she sat at this table in public with Mack with his gaze fastened on her face and her face certainly bright red, could she tolerate all this? She could back out now. She could tell him simply and firmly that she had no interest in any intimate relationship. She didn’t have to do this. Whatever it was they were going to do.
But she wanted to do this.
Another thought, and this one she spoke aloud: “Tell me about you.”
Mack paused, gathering his thoughts. “I was born here. Grew up here. My dad was a carpenter, so I learned from him. I like the old houses around here. I respect them. The width and length of some of the boards in the older houses, well, they’re two hundred years old. Three hundred. They’re treasures. So many contractors tear down old houses and ruin the boards, take them to the dump, and build mansions that look like they belong in Vegas. Sorry, don’t mean to lecture you.”
“No, I like hearing about this.”
Mack looked Lisa in the eyes as if he was studying her. “You know, I think you do.”
Lisa felt a rush of lust sweep through her. She had to look away. But she wanted to know…she needed to know. “What about your personal life?”
“Huh.” He set his eyes on his silverware, turning the spoon over and over. “Okay. My personal life, well, it’s shrunk down to two people, me and Beth.” Flushing, he concentrated on the spoon as if it was fascinating, and said, “I never really dated. I never brought another woman into the house. I never introduced Beth to another woman. But…I didn’t go without female companionship.”
A slight prickle of completely inappropriate jealousy pinched at Lisa’s heart.
“I never lied to anyone,” Mack continued. “I never promised a long-term relationship. I was up front about my situation.” His face fell. “And sometimes I’m sure I was a bit of an asshole. I didn’t want to get serious.”
Lisa waited.
Again, Mack raised his eyes to hers. “But this is different. You and I are different. Maybe it’s the time. Maybe it’s, well, you.”
His words took her breath away. At the same time, she imagined those other women, those sexy women, their waist-length hair and young shapely bodies, their sophisticated ways…she didn’t want to imagine how her own body compared.
It was an absolute blessing when their dinners arrived. Their conversation turned back to memories of former restaurants and bars, and then on to former shops, houses, eccentric islanders, back and back into their childhoods.
Mack paid the check and they walked out into the chilly spring evening. As they drove to her house, they didn’t talk. When he came around to open the passenger door of his truck for her, she stepped down and waited while he closed the door. Mack put his hand on the door handle and his other on the body of the truck, enclosing Lisa in his arms. She leaned back, looking up at him, and he held himself an inch or two from touching her with his own body.
“Invite me in?” he asked.
Lisa’s voice trembled. “Yes. Yes, Mack, come in and I’ll make you another cup of coffee.”
five
Juliet was twenty-seven years old, lived in a third floor walk-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and sat in a cubicle all day long building websites for Kazaam, a large tech company with employees in twenty-seven states. She was heading a seven-member team that specialized in websites devoted to pets: their health, breeding, and of course their hilarious antics. The people she supervised lived all over the map; they communicated through email and Skype. They could be a lot of fun, but Juliet would have preferred to have fun with people in the same room.
At least in the two years she’d worked for Kazaam, she’d made a good friend in Mary, whose cubicle was across from hers. Mary wanted to make money as fast as she could so she and her boyfriend could get married. She was from a large Italian family, and she was friendly and smart and practical, and she’d warned Juliet not to get involved with their supervisor Hugh Jeffers, handsome and in a hurry and wickedly clever. Mary had been right.
Juliet had gotten over a lot of broken romances in her life, at least a lot for a girl who’d gone through high school always considering herself the smart one and her younger brother the attractive one. Having an absent, totally absent, father had made her distrust guys from the start, and it had also, oddly, sadly, made her feel she wasn’t pretty enough, adorable enough, for her father and therefore for any male.
In college, lots of guys seemed to think she was absolutely the bomb, but she quickly learned that many of them would tell her anything so they could get her into bed. When she was in her early twenties, she’d thought she’d found a lasting relationship with Doug Manchester, but when they both applied for positions at Kazaam and Juliet got hired and Doug didn’t, he broke up with her and moved to Chicago. That had been painful.
For the last few years, Juliet forced herself into a routine that worked for her, even if she did think she was becoming a bit eccentric and more than a bit lonely. She worked hard, went to the pub on Saturday nights with her girlfriends, ran three miles four times a week, and spent Sundays like a Victorian spinster, doing laundry, cleaning her apartment, and making a duty call to her darling, hardworking, lonely mother. She’d taken this job at Kazaam in part to be near to her mother, in case Lisa needed her.
Then Hugh Jeffers was sent by New York to take over this office. Brilliant, impatient, critical, he was also elegant and articulate, unlike her caveman brother and her last boyfriend. While all the other men in the office wore long-sleeved L.L.Bean flannel shirts, as if they were leaving momentarily to work as lumberjacks, Hugh wore designer suits with Brooks Brothers shirts that took cuff links. As a hobby he played classical piano.
Mary’s opinion was that Hugh had quickly noticed who was the best worker, the most diligent, the most influential, and he’d chosen Juliet to be his lieutenant, standing up for him when there were rebellious mutterings when he wasn’t in the office, never failing to carry out an assigned task.
Juliet’s opinion was that Hugh had noticed her for her work and then had genuinely fallen in love with her. Certainly he acted that way. When they were sitting in his office discussing website traffic, he suddenly went very quiet. Juliet looked at him, puzzled.
“I want to ask you something,” he said, “and I don’t want to make you angry.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” Juliet answered honestly.
“Will you be offended if I ask to take you
out to dinner?”
She was so surprised, she couldn’t answer.
“I mean, socially. I’d like to date you but I wouldn’t want you to be insulted. You’re too valuable an employee.”
In an odd way, it was a romantic moment.
“I’d be delighted to go out to dinner with you,” Juliet answered, adding of her own accord, “and it won’t change my work habits.”
They went to dinner several times. He didn’t rush her to bed, but when they finally made love, he was careful and caring. He took her to the symphony, the theater, the ballet. She had to buy new clothes for all these special occasions, and beautiful, luxurious, sexy underwear for after.
He wrote a song about how he loved her and played it for her on the piano. He cooked for her. He brought her flowers. He agreed that when they had time, he would go to Nantucket with her to meet her mother.
Juliet was only slightly bothered by the way he acted toward her at work. He didn’t favor her or especially notice her in the office. He seldom looked her way and he never called her in for private meetings. He was out of town many weekends, most often in New York, on business. Those were long weekends for Juliet, because he never called or texted her, and even though she had his number, she was too proud to call him. He had her off balance. She loved her job, and she was good at it, so she had never considered an office relationship. But Hugh told her he loved her. She was expecting a proposal and an engagement ring.
Instead, on a beautiful day in May, Hugh Jeffers walked into the office and announced to the entire staff that he was moving back to New York. Suzanne Daniels would be coming here to Boston to replace him.
Juliet had spent the night with him a week ago, and he hadn’t even hinted at such a move. When he made his announcement to the group, his eyes slid over her as if she were nothing but a shadow.
It was all Juliet could do to get through that day. She wanted to corner him and demand to know what he was thinking, what his move meant for her. But she stubbornly kept hold of her dignity and didn’t pursue him. Not that night. Not for three days and nights. She’d been certain he would seek her out, or phone her at home, or at least send her an email. But nothing.
Finally, on a Saturday morning, she phoned him and asked him to meet her for lunch, or dinner, or a drink. Hugh told her he didn’t have time. So they had a brief and chillingly unpleasant conversation over the phone. She held back her tears. He told her he’d assumed she knew how ambitious he was, and yes, of course he had really loved her, but love could appear in many forms. He thought she knew that he would always love his work more.
Juliet felt like such a fool. How had she allowed herself to be so sappy, so gullible, such a simpering peasant believing the white knight would carry her off on his galloping steed to a castle in happy land?
She hated herself. She was ashamed. She slunk around her apartment all Saturday and Sunday, crying and eating. She talked for hours to Mary. But she didn’t phone her mother. She worried about her poor mother, living alone in her big old empty house. Juliet just couldn’t dump her troubles on her mom.
She didn’t want to go back to the office on Monday because she was afraid the other programmers would look at her with pity. But she forced herself to work, hoping it would distract her from her misery. She pulled on black leggings and a black tank, glad this was her normal outfit. She didn’t want to be seen in some bizarre kind of mourning.
She walked to work, bought her usual everything bagel, plastered on a fake just fine look and took the elevator to the sixth floor. The long monochromatic space was like any other cubicle farm. People were already here, bent toward their computers. Only Mary gave her a quick hello. Everyone was gearing up to prove they were essential to the new supervisor. Juliet collapsed at her desk and worked in steady despair. No doggie antics made her laugh.
She went through the week in a kind of gloom coma. She faked a smile when necessary, but mostly she kept her head down, and she got a pile of work done.
At the end of the work week, Juliet wanted to go home. Not to her lonely apartment, but to her real home in Nantucket. She had probably driven poor Mary mad every evening with all her weeping and anger. Who else could she turn to? Theo was on the West Coast now. Plus he was such a guy, so unsentimental, he was hopeless. Juliet had gone home for the past Christmas, and Theo stayed in California, so Juliet had her mother all to herself, a real pleasure. They cooked and ate and went for long walks on the stormy beaches and watched old movies together, eating ice cream from the container.
Suddenly, right now, Juliet wanted to go to Nantucket. She wanted all things not digital, not clickable. She wanted to curl up on a sofa with a slice of her mother’s red velvet cake, and read anything by Agatha Christie. She wanted to fall asleep in the middle of the night, right there on the sofa. Her mother would gently cover her with a blanket, and in the morning, she would wake her up, laughing at Juliet’s wrinkled clothes. She’d fix Juliet an enormous fattening breakfast of eggs and sausage and pancakes instead of the bagel Juliet bought on the way to work, and she’d tell Juliet she’d lost too much weight, and Juliet would eat lots of sweets.
Brainstorm: She actually could go home. All the work she had to do could be done anywhere there was Wi-Fi.
She arrived at her own city home, a four-story clapboard house, one of the many on the street that needed painting, yanked the front door open, and stepped into the small front hall. She didn’t bother to check her mailbox—anything important came on her phone. As she trudged up the stairs and let herself into her apartment, she took out her phone and checked the bus and ferry schedules to Hyannis and Nantucket. If she hurried, she could take the red line to South Station, the Plymouth and Brockton to Hyannis, and the eight o’clock slow ferry to the island. No fast boats were running that night.
She didn’t take her leather jacket off. She didn’t need to pack—she had clothes in her room at home. She had her wallet in one pocket of her jacket, her phone in another pocket, her charger and computer in her backpack. She went out her door, locked the locks, and ran down three floors of slippery steps to the front door.
She got to the subway, boarded her train, and tapped her fingers impatiently. At South Station, she raced for the bus at terminal number 18, arriving, puffing, just in time for the bus.
She bought her ticket and climbed into the long narrow dimness of the vehicle. It was crowded as usual because it was Friday, so she grabbed the first seat on the bus, where she had a touch more legroom, and settled in for the ride. The portly driver boarded the bus, muttering to himself. The doors wheezed shut. The bus beeped as it backed out, and by the time they were on the road, Juliet was asleep, her head resting on the window.
She woke now and then, blearily staring out the window at the road below. Interstate 93 and Highway 3 glistened with rain. She fell asleep again.
Often a bus driver would take pity on people trying to make the eight o’clock ferry and drive them right to the Steamship Authority. This driver was a good guy, and Juliet stuck a five in his hand in gratitude. She got her ticket in the terminal, slogged out to the ramp leading up into the interior of the Eagle, muttering to herself as she did every time, “Why in the bleeping world did they give a ship a bird’s name?” She climbed the metal steps to the passenger deck, found a seat at a table, and dumped her backpack.
For a moment, she just sat and caught her breath. She felt as if she’d run the seventy-one miles herself. She was awake now, so she bought herself a bowl of clam chowder and a water (the plastic bottle was recyclable). She opened her laptop and worked on a report on leash laws across the country, answered emails, and nodded to herself: She’d done two day’s work tonight. She deserved to play hooky.
The trip wasn’t an easy one. The winds had stirred the ocean into high waves that caused the ferry to rise up and then drop. It was like a roller coaster with an added side to side wobble. Luckily, s
he didn’t have motion sickness, but other passengers were lying down with brown paper napkins soaked in cold water on their foreheads.
At the table directly facing hers, a man sat working on his laptop. He was handsome, older, probably forty, with streaks of white in his dark hair. His jaw was accented with dark stubble. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes. His navy blue zip-up sweater looked like cashmere. Juliet thought, Great, another money manager coming to the island. Then she considered her own clothes—skinny jeans, high black leather boots, black turtleneck.
He raised his head and caught her staring. His eyes were blue. Intensely blue with those extra thick black lashes that only guys seemed to get. He smiled at her. Juliet smiled at him. Their gazes held. Juliet felt herself flush and dropped her eyes.
Hello, sunshine! her body said. Stop it, she told herself. He was undoubtedly married with at least two kids. His wife probably had long blond hair, not short dark hair that she hacked off around chin-level whenever she felt like it.
“Bumpy ride,” he said.
She looked up. “It is,” she agreed.
“It doesn’t seem to bother you,” he said.
She shrugged. “I’m used to it. I grew up on the island.”
“Did you really?”
A woman in the booth behind him snored explosively.
“Do you mind?” He gestured, rising.
“Sure,” Juliet replied.
He stood up—he was tall. He moved around to sit across from her. “I’m Ryder Hastings.” He held out his hand.
Juliet shook his hand. It was firm, warm, and smooth. So not a manual laborer. “Juliet Hawley.”
“And you grew up on Nantucket?”
“I did. My mom still lives here. I’m on my way to visit her. I live in Boston.”
“Are you a student?”
“No!” she replied sharply. She hated that he thought she was so young. But she had to admit, dressed as she was, she looked like a student. “I work in tech. For Kazaam.” She was not about to tell him she programmed a website about dogs.