Chapter 16
“Jon Boy, is that you?!” a voice booms across the quad.
Jonathan turns, Cece on his arm, to locate the voice. A redheaded man squeezed into a blue blazer at least one size too small bounds toward them, his fiery locks bountiful and flowing.
“Logan?” Jonathan shouts and leaves Cece to greet the Viking.
“Fifteen years, and you still walk like a stiff. Recognized you from a mile away.”
A scuffle breaks out, and Cece isn’t sure whether to laugh or come to Jonathan’s aid.
Then the two men are laughing and fixing each other’s collars.
“This is my girlfriend, Cece,” Jonathan says.
They’d agreed beforehand that girlfriend made the most sense.
None of the people at his high school reunion knew about the unsuccessful engagement, and he seemed more than happy to go back in time, to a place before he ever proposed.
Cece shakes the Viking’s hand.
“Logan. We were floormates.”
“Logan played on the lacrosse team.”
“Jon was more of the chess-club type,” Logan says, giving Jonathan a nudge.
“You told me you played in high school,” Cece says, eager to catch Jonathan in a lie, to find out some mysterious secret or imperfection about him.
“Logan’s just being an ass. I was on the team…mostly rode the bench for four years.”
It’s pleasing to see Jonathan on his heels. It had never occurred to Cece that he’d gone through his own stages of social awkwardness, that he hadn’t always been this poised, all-knowing man.
“Shit. It’s been years, Jon Boy. What are you up to? No. Let me guess. Making gobs of money.”
“That’s putting it a bit indelicately. But yeah. I’m in finance.”
“Indelicately—listen to you, man. Big words! What about you, Cece?”
It’s the question everyone either dreads or looks forward to at any high school reunion: What do you do? Cece considered lying. Jonathan would understand, and perhaps even appreciate it.
Working in risk management as an actuary is a respectable job, a real job, one that makes real money.
None of Jonathan’s classmates would find the job terribly interesting, but they wouldn’t find it weird, either.
It wouldn’t cause raised eyebrows and demand follow-up questions like telling people you work on an oyster farm.
And while Jonathan hasn’t said anything, she gets the distinct feeling that he cares a great deal about what these people think of him.
But if things are going to work between them this time around, Cece needs to start being authentic to herself, and Jonathan will just have to deal.
“I work on an oyster farm.”
“No shit. I’ve never had an oyster. They freak me out.”
“It’s a great opportunity,” Jonathan says. “We’re looking to grow the business.”
While the three of them walk to the palatial white tent on the green, Logan tells Cece and Jonathan about his medical sports equipment business based out of Jupiter, Florida.
It sounds a bit like a pyramid scheme to Cece, but she doesn’t say anything.
She’s too busy taking everything in, from the brick, ivy-covered buildings to the impressive athletic complex.
Cece knew Jonathan’s alma mater was storied and grand, but she hadn’t comprehended that it would put her college to shame.
It makes sense now—his confidence and self-assurance.
Cece would like to think that she might have come to possess these qualities earlier in life had she attended a school like this, but she has her doubts.
In the distance, the recently renovated library (by the looks of it) sparkles in the summer sun.
Old oaks cast shadowy respite on the pedestrian paths, and Cece can see it now: students in ties and skirts hustling from the dining hall, teachers in tweed blazers and worn leather satchels lost in thought.
Even without the bustle, it feels magical, and Cece finds herself thrilled by the school, with its history and tradition, its gold-framed oil portraits, and engraved trophies.
If her mother could see Deerfield Academy for herself, what might she think?
Would she be elated? Her eldest daughter walking among the privileged and moneyed like she belongs?
Steam rises in thick white plumes around the tent, the aroma of boiled corn and lobster on the wind.
This must be the famous lobster bake, Cece thinks to herself.
She hadn’t needed to be sold on attending the event with Jonathan, but that didn’t stop him from assuring her that the school pulled out all the stops for reunions: catered meals with open bars, concerts by the a cappella group and jazz band, an alumni soccer game, and a massive dance under the big tent.
He’d even signed them up to sleep in his old dorm room so that Cece could get the full experience, and while the thought of sharing an extra-long twin bed made her back hurt, Cece was excited by the prospect of getting to know the version of Jonathan that had existed before they’d met.
Picnic tables twenty deep squat in rows under the soaring tent.
Red-and-white gingham tablecloths flap in the wind, secured by enormous steel buckets.
“Lobster bake, baby!” Logan shouts and runs ahead to a table where a few other couples are already seated: a predictable collage of khaki shorts and floral dresses.
“Thanks for coming,” Jonathan whispers in Cece’s ear as they pick their way through the crowd. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” Cece says, pleased with herself for buying a yellow-and-white-checkered Ophelia dress from Tuckernuck and a pair of baby-blue Jack Rogers sandals for the event.
The purchase had been excessive, foolish perhaps, but it had felt good to buy something for herself.
Her feet accustomed to her rubber waders, the grass is foreign and strange against her toes.
She’d decided to stick with the sandals at the last minute despite her egregiously pale feet.
There are introductions all around once they get seated at their table.
A few names sound familiar to Cece, people Jonathan has stayed in touch with since graduating, names she’s heard mentioned in passing.
There’s talk of marriage and children, divorce and home buying, the various ills of getting older.
Cece notices that Jonathan and Logan are the only men at their table who have yet to marry.
If this detail bothers Jonathan, he doesn’t show it.
They’d gotten back together with the express understanding that Cece could take as much time as she needed.
The last thing he wanted to do was rush her.
And yet, surrounded by his old classmates, his lacrosse buddies, dormmates, and something called the Dr. Wales Latin V survival group, Cece is surprised to find herself ready, even eager, to be rushed.
Grown-ups—that’s who these people are, she thinks.
Adults. Isn’t it about time she grew up?
Isn’t it about time she admitted what she wants?
The lobster is succulent, the drawn butter warm, the red potatoes steamed just right (not too mushy), the summer corn perfectly sweet.
The boys, or maybe just Logan, are drinking beers at an impressive rate, and Cece volunteers to grab the next round from the bar.
She stands in line behind a group of women reminiscing about the best places to hook up on campus.
“Remember when Mr. Thornburg would catch you during rounds?” one girl says.
“Don’t remind me. Pervert alert!” The group devolves into laughter.
Cece wants to think she could have thrived in a place like this, but something tells her she would’ve drowned.
She might have been able to cut it academically, but socially…
this place, these people? She wouldn’t have stood a chance, but now she’s with Jonathan.
She’s older and wiser, and while she might feel a little out of place, she’s stopped caring whether she belongs.
The bartender is a young kid with a mop of black hair and the hint of a mustache. The group in front of Cece puts in an order for five Aperol spritzes. He looks at them, befuddled, his black standard-issue polo already showing sweat stains. “Like a wine spritzer?”
“Aperol. It’s a bitter,” a woman says.
“An aperitif,” another one says.
“You think he knows what an aperitif is?” another voice cackles.
The woman who originally ordered sighs. “Just make it five white wines.”
Cece shrinks into herself while she watches the kid hurriedly retrieve a bottle from the cooler, fingers pink from the ice water, and fill the wineglasses. The women swoop in and snag their drinks, and then they are gone as quickly as they’d come, laughter trailing behind them.
Cece approaches, trying to imbue her face with some kind of silent understanding between her and the kid.
She’s not like those women. She knows how it feels to be a financial-aid kid and work an on-campus job.
She knows what it means to earn a buck, to work with your hands, to sweat in the summer sun for anything but a proper tan!
Is he a local kid, Cece wonders, or is he a current student?
It doesn’t matter, but she’s determined to make up for his previous customers.
“Just five beers,” she says.
“What kind? We have a bunch.”
Cece feels around in her bag for her wallet. The tip jar is woefully empty. “Whatever’s easiest.”
“It’s easiest if you tell me.”
“Right,” Cece says, her fingers identifying what she hopes is a five-dollar bill. “How about five Heinekens?”
The kid disappears under the table and emerges with five green bottles. He wraps each one in a thick paper napkin.
Cece drops the money in the tip jar and wrangles the beers by the neck. “Thank you,” she says, but the kid is already walking away to help another customer.