2
“They didn’t have Heath or toffee vanilla. Best I could do was chocolate chip,” Tam said, handing me the pint that she had ordered through DoorDash. I traded her a whiskey sour for the ice cream and grabbed a spoon.
“You sure you don’t want any? This is my second ice cream of the day,” I said, in between spoonfuls of Edy’s and sips of my cocktail.
“I’m good,” she assured me. Tam did not share my ice cream obsession—her attitude was one of indifference, which baffled me. “I’m supposed to meet this new guy at nine tonight at Woods Hill, but I’m not sure I want to go all the way to the Seaport,” she said with a yawn.
“You live in Southie. You’re literally around the corner.”
“Maybe not for much longer,” she responded. “My lease is up next month. And you know me, I can’t stay in an apartment or with a man for long. I get so bored.” It was true; other than her job or her friendship with me, Tam always seemed to be looking for something else. No guy or landlord hoping for longevity stood a chance.
“Is that why I got involved with Bentley?” I mused, poking the bottom of the pint with my spoon. I was making quick work of it. “Was I just bored? I don’t know.”
“I did wonder,” Tam said, scrolling through her phone. “Oh geez. My Yale classmate Andrea Lark. Did I ever tell you about her?”
My cell phone rang, and I put up a finger to signal that I’d be a minute. “Dr. Anders! Elaine!” I never knew what to call her. “Thank you so much for calling me back.”
“Of course, dear,” she said. “David said the enchiladas last night were better than ever.”
“Oh good, I’m so glad. Look, Dr. Anders, I’m in a bit of a situation. I don’t know if you saw—”
“Yes, it’s all over the Boston media feeds—which I follow closely, of course. I never know when David will be mentioned.”
“So, okay, yeah. I’ll be honest with you. It’s true. Not the intentional homewrecking stuff—and it was only with one person—but yes, I did have a relationship of sorts with Bentley Preston. And I totally understand if you don’t want me—”
“Now stop right there, Devon,” she ordered in a voice she must use with noncompliant patients. “My son loves your chicken enchiladas. And everything else you make for him. Those cookies. Mmm. I dream of those cookies after I visit him. Why would I care who you’re involved with?”
“Oh, thank you so much, Elaine. Seriously, I’m so grateful.”
“You know I can’t always be there for him, but you can.”
“Yes, yes, one hundred percent. I’ll bring him food tomorrow. Oh wait, he’ll be in Toronto for that scrimmage. You must be there right now. Sunday, then!”
“Yes, I’m in Toronto through tomorrow night. Sunday will be wonderful. He’ll look forward to it. Thank you, Devon.”
“No, thank you!” I said and ended the call. I took a deep breath and looked at Tam. “Okay, I have one client. One client.”
“And how much of your expenses will that cover?” she asked, picking up my checkbook from the coffee table and tossing it at me.
“Probably my car insurance,” I scowled, setting the checkbook aside. “Maybe my electric bill, too.” I was in so much trouble.
“So, hear me out,” she began. “My classmate Andrea Lark has very suddenly become the Head of School at Rockwood. It’s a boarding school in New Hampshire on George’s Island, just next to Portsmouth. You can walk into town; it’s that close.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“She needs a Dining Services Director. Like immediately. Housing is included.”
“Me? A boarding school? I’ve never done anything like that. Come on, Tam. I would have no idea what I was doing.”
“Think of your experiences,” she said. “Didn’t you say you shadowed staff at events during your semester in DC during college? The White House and State Department, right? Nothing shabby about that. And ten years in multiple high-end Boston restaurants, followed by private chef services for some of the wealthiest families in Boston?”
“And David Anders.”
“How could I forget your reclusive Celtic? What I’m saying, Dev, is you are flexible, innovative, and can work with anyone. Your name is mud here in Boston, at least for now. But people have short memories. You’ll be able to come back. You just need to do something else for a little while.”
I swirled the ice in my glass and decided to change the subject, not wanting to fully entertain this idea. “Who is this guy you’re seeing tonight?”
“He’s a professor at BU. That feels old and serious, doesn’t it? Is that the life stage I’m in? Dates with professors? I still feel like I’m twenty.” She stretched out her hands and examined her manicure. “Maybe I won’t go.”
I sat up suddenly, my mind cycling back to fifteen years earlier. “What if he’s the one you’re meant to be with? And you don’t go, and someone else snags him? But he’s actually meant for you.”
Tam laughed. “Do you really believe in that? That these missed opportunities really mean we’re denying ourselves our destinies? Come on, Dev, I’ve never heard you talk like that. I’m the one who clings to rom-com movies, and even I don’t think it’s true.”
For whatever reason, I couldn’t shake the image of a twenty-year-old boy with dirty blond hair and a hand that felt so perfect in mine. When I had bad days, my brain often went back to 007 for no apparent reason. It had been amazing until it was so disappointing, so why think about it? Maybe I just liked to wallow in more misery when things took a downward turn. “Did I ever tell you about Kyle?”
“Who’s Kyle?”
“I guess not then.” I curled up tighter into the elbow of my small sectional couch. “The night before I left for my DC semester—this was January 007—all the Norwell College students who were leaving on school-affiliated programs had a dinner. We had come back from our semester breaks before everyone else, had brief orientations with our groups, and stayed in temporary dorm rooms for a night before departing. People were going all over the world. This, of course, was when I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and was going to DC to immerse myself in the rat race of government and politics.”
“Which you hated,” inserted Tam, who had known that much about me. She actually knew almost everything. I had just never told her about Kyle.
“Yes, which I hated. The rest of my group loved it, but it wasn’t for me. Anyway, I knew Kyle the way you knew people at small liberal arts colleges who you didn’t really know. We had been students in the same Intro to Sociology class our freshman year, but it had been a big lecture hall. He was the goalie of the soccer team, so I knew of him, but that was really it. We were sometimes at the same parties, but he lived in the soccer house for his sophomore year and the first semester of his junior year, and I had stuck with the same group of friends from my freshman dorm. Our lives hadn’t intersected in any sort of meaningful way until that moment. But there we were, grabbing for the same last slice of watermelon in the food line with our own pairs of plastic tongs.”
“How romantic,” mused Tam. “I mean it. Now, this sounds like a nineties rom-com movie that I can get on board with.” Tam loved rom-coms, and by extension, I had grown to enjoy them, too. But she was the expert and could relate most of life’s circumstances and scenarios to specific movies. It was impressive.
“I guess it was romantic, at least at first,” I replied, knowing where the story was going, which was where the magic died a humiliating death. “He offered to split the watermelon slice with me, so naturally, we ended up sitting together. He suggested we sit in the smaller room that was adjacent to the main room, so I sat across from him, and we talked for the next two hours. It was one of those conversations without any spaces or awkward pauses. It just kept going and going. Like one of those really good ‘Dinner with Cupid’ matchmaking columns in the Globe .”
“I love those,” Tam quipped. “I need more dates like that. It rarely happens.”
“Agreed,” I said, continuing with the story. “And it was unusually warm for January—like fifty degrees at eight at night, which you know is crazy for New Hampshire in winter. So, we took a walk around the Loch. You’ve never been to Norwell, but there’s this lake in the middle of campus. It’s small and technically called Lake MacGavin after some Scottish donor, so Norwell students call it the Loch.”
“I’m learning so much.” Tam laughed. “It’s eight-thirty. I need to make a decision. Do I stay or do I go?”
“Give me five more minutes, and then you can decide,” I said. “I’ll give you the express version of the rest of the story. We walked around the Loch like five times. After the second time, we were holding hands. After the fifth, we kissed for the first time.”
“Oh, was it good?”
“Like the best kiss of my life. I still go back to it in my head. Nothing has come close to matching it.” I felt my body temporarily relax and flush warm. Despite what eventually happened with Kyle, that was one of the greatest moments in my highlight reel.
“Aww, I love that. Okay, keep going. Three more minutes.”
“We went back to the dorm where we were temporarily staying, we listened to Oasis on his iPod, and we drank Coors Light that he bought from a guy staying in the next room over.”
“And I’m guessing….”
“Yes, eventually, but not until like three in the morning. There was a lot of talking. He talks a lot, but it didn’t annoy me. He was fun to talk to. I liked everything about him. And then we went to breakfast and ate a bunch of bacon. Other things, too, I’m sure, but I remember the bacon. For some reason, it tasted like the best bacon ever.”
“And then you had to leave each other? This is excruciating.”
“It was pretty awful. We had shared this magical night, and suddenly, I couldn’t care less about going to DC. He left for the London School of Economics, and I went to American University. And I never talked to him again.”
“Oh my God, Dev! Did you try to reach him?”
The happy, warm feeling drained from me, and I found myself grabbing for a throw blanket even though it was ninety-five degrees outside. “I tried to get in touch about thirty times. I sent him emails. I sent postal mail, but I have no idea if it ever reached him. Once, when I was drunk, I spent twenty dollars calling various switchboards at his school, trying to find him. Even if I had connected with him, I would have sounded like a wacko stalker at that point. I finally gave up.”
“And you haven’t Googled him or anything? You could still try now. Who knows? Maybe he’s single and has been thinking about you for years, too.”
“I don’t let myself,” I conceded. It still made me sad. “That rejection was so intentional, so purposeful, I just can’t put myself through it again. He made a choice.” I sat up and tapped my watch, snapping out of my emotions. “You have about ten minutes to somehow get from Beacon Hill to the Seaport. What’s it going to be?”
Tam stood up and readjusted her outfit, even though she always looked newswoman-amazing. “I think I need to go. On the off chance that he’s my Kyle.” She grabbed her bag and walked over to hug me. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Eventually,” I said. “Thanks for being here for me tonight. Have a good time with Professor Plum.”
“With the candlestick.” She laughed.
“In the study. If he’s a total dork, come back here, and we’ll watch Clue again.” It was one of our go-to movies, even though it wasn’t technically a rom-com.
“Deal. And Dev? Seriously, think about the boarding school and talking to Andrea. It’s worth an email.”