Chapter 25
25
The next few days blur together, the bright blue skies bleeding from one afternoon into the next. We spend most waking hours on the white sand beach, every morning setting up an umbrella for shade, unfolding beach chairs, spreading a blanket out, and doling out shovels and buckets for Harper to play with.
We apply and reapply sunscreen to ourselves and Harper, offering each other our backs, slathering on coat after coat until our skin shines. We take turns wading in the water with Harper, splashing in the surf. Taylor Swift plays on repeat as we trade magazines, reading articles out loud to each other, talk about nothing, everything. When Harper yells, “Mom!” we both look up and wave.
Anne-Marie and her kids pop by every so often to dig in the sand, share juice boxes, snacks. Anne-Marie gossips about the families on the island, complains about her husband, and, along with Sloane, ogles Jay when he comes down to swim with Harper.
Jay is mostly holed up in his makeshift office upstairs in the oversized laundry room, but he joins us for lunches and dinners and will occasionally appear on the beach under the pretense of saying hi to Harper, instead flirting with Sloane, predictable as always. He’s taken Anne-Marie up on her offer to run together; every morning he disappears for an hour, comes back brow beaded with sweat, his T-shirt soaked through, clinging to his chest and back. Already his skin has darkened, deepening into a golden hue. If it’s possible, he’s becoming even more handsome, ripening in the sun. Soon, he’ll be ready to pick. Then I’ll squeeze, letting the juice run down my arms, stain my clothes.
At night, he puts Harper to bed while Sloane and I do the dishes. When the kitchen is clean, we change into our pajamas and binge-watch Bridgerton . Jay usually comes back down to grab a beer, then disappears again, back up the stairs to his office.
I stock our fridge with ice cream and Popsicles, help myself to extra scoops and oversized portions at dinner. It doesn’t take long for me to gain weight, my cheeks becoming a little rounder, stomach a little softer. I don’t wash my face at night, either, pleased in the mornings when there’s a new smattering of pimples on my chin, along my jawline. I don’t pluck my brows, never blow-dry my hair. I look less and less like my old self each day. I catch Jay staring at me one morning while I’m changing into a swimsuit, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
Things have changed between Sloane and me here, too. A subtle, almost imperceptible shift. In New York, we were close; it wasn’t real, not all of it, but I really had begun to enjoy her company. She’s funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful. A liar, yes, but desperate, mostly, for people to like her. And she wanted me to like her, thought I was special. It made me feel special, something I haven’t felt for a long time. I’d been lonely in New York. I told her the truth that first night; I hadn’t made many friends since the move, spent most of my time with Harper, or by myself. By the time we left for Block Island, I looked forward to seeing her every day, glad when she walked through the door.
But now she looks at Jay the way she used to look at me. She lights up when he walks into a room, her eyes bright and shining. It’s his desire she wants, not my friendship. I don’t fault her, especially since I’ve been gently nudging her to him. Even though it’s necessary, it leaves a bitter taste at the back of my throat, a hardened pit at the base of my stomach.
It’s Thursday night, our sixth night here. Sloane and I have just finished cleaning the kitchen when Jay comes back down from putting Harper to bed. Normally, he stays upstairs, claiming he has to work for another hour or two. But tonight, he had three beers with dinner. I can tell he’s restless, will likely open a fourth, maybe a fifth, tired of being alone. I want to be asleep when he’s ready for bed, or at least pretending to be.
I let out a loud yawn, stretching my arms above my head. “I’m going to head upstairs. Can we rain-check Bridgerton tonight?” I say to Sloane, pretending to suppress a second yawn. “I’m beat. I think I’m going to take a bath and get into bed.”
“Of course,” she says. She flicks her eyes to Jay. I can tell she’s excited by his presence, by the possibilities.
“Okay, good night!” I give a general wave and make my way upstairs. A moment later, they begin to banter, Sloane giggling.
I’m just changing out of my clothes and into a pair of sweatpants when I hear the squeak of the front door opening and closing. I lean my head out into the hall to see if I hear anything downstairs, but the house is quiet. Did they leave together?
I cross the bedroom and slowly slide the window open. The ocean is loud, rushing, but their voices carry. They’re both on the porch. I strain to hear, but only catch a word here and there. I need to be closer.
Quietly, I ease the bedroom door open and tiptoe down the hallway. The downstairs is dark, the lights shut off. Holding my breath, I make my way down the stairs. From the last stair, I have a clear view of the window that looks out onto the porch. I creep toward it. It’s open; I can hear them perfectly. I’m hidden in the shadows of the darkened room, but even if I wasn’t, they’re distracted, their backs to me, each in an Adirondack chair.
“Over there,” Jay’s saying. “See, low, in the grasses?” He leans toward Sloane, his arm outstretched so she can see where he’s looking.
Then, after a pause, “Oh!” Sloane cries. “I think I saw one! And—another! There are a ton!”
Even though I can’t see, I know they’re talking about the fireflies that light up the dusky shoreline, blinking on and off like neon dots, glow-in-the-dark confetti. He’s showing her like I’d shown him when we last visited. When I was little, my grandmother and I would come down to the beach after dinner, running through the sand to chase them, shrieking if we caught one, their wispy wings tickling our palms.
Jay laughs. “Is this the first time you’ve seen them?”
“No,” Sloane says. “But it’s been ages. Not since I was a kid. My mom and I used to live in Florida; there were millions of them there.”
They sit quietly for a moment, but I can feel the charge from here. I remember that feeling, alone with someone, the air thick, heavy with anticipation. Her heart is pounding, I’m sure of it.
“I’m glad you came on the trip,” says Jay. He’s lowered his voice, and Sloane shifts to look at him.
“Me too,” she says.
Then, slowly, so slowly, his head begins to tilt toward hers. As if by magnetic force, she leans in, too, millimeter by millimeter. I hold my breath.
Then, as their lips are about to touch, Sloane pulls back, shakes her head. “I can’t…” she says, but I can hear in her voice how much she wants to. “I can’t do that to Violet.” I bite down on the inside of my cheek, internally screaming, Do it! , the voice in my brain sharp and shrill.
Jay pulls back. He studies her, then shakes his head. “You don’t know,” he says. “Do you?”
“Know what?” Sloane asks.
“We’re separating. Violet and me. I’m moving out when we get back to the city.” I breathe in sharply. We’ve discussed divorce, of course, but he agreed to work on things. It’s why he thinks he’s welcome in my bed on this trip. But it should be no surprise that he’s chosen to leave that part out.
Sloane’s quiet at first. Finally, she asks, “Why?”
That’s a great question, Sloane. Why, Jay? Are you going to tell her why we’ve discussed—well, shouted, screamed , about—divorce? Tell her, I dare you , I want to hiss through the open window, my breath hot in his ear.
Jay sighs. He leans his head back against his chair. “A million reasons. But mostly, she’s changed. We both have. And we’ve been fighting a lot. It feels like we don’t want the same things anymore. She hasn’t been happy here. In New York, I mean. I think she resents leaving San Francisco for me.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms to keep from screaming. It’s not that he’s wrong, but he’s not right, either. He’s so far from right. It’s true, we’d been arguing, like we had been for years, but that night— the night that we said everything, when divorce was said out loud—was different than our previous fights. The limit had been reached.
“You’re not the woman I married,” he’d said, shrugging, by way of explanation. Like I was an old rag, once new and bright white, now disappointingly faded, stained, tossed into a bucket of dirty water and used to mop the floor one last time before being thrown into the trash.
At that, I threw my glass of wine at him, overcome with fury, incensed by his nonchalance, how blasé he seemed about it all. Cabernet and glass shards exploded against the wall to the right of his head.
No, I wasn’t the woman he married. The woman he married was a meticulously curated version of myself, a boxed-in twenty-four-year-old with a round ass and a tight dress, in lacy bras and thongs, who gave him head in the bathrooms of bars, drunk and uninhibited. Now I was the mother of his child. But it shouldn’t have been a denigration, should it?
I wasn’t na?ve; I knew that things would be different once I had Harper. I knew I’d be different. I thought Jay knew that, too. I thought he’d understand that our lives would change, our relationship would change. I thought he wanted it to. I did.
But he wasn’t happy. “You never want to do anything anymore,” he’d say. “You never want me anymore. You’re always tired.”
Of course I was tired. I had a baby who woke up three times a night and every morning at five thirty, sometimes earlier. Who I carried everywhere, who wanted something from me every second of every day. I was swollen, puffy, both before I gave birth and after, my face sallow from the lack of sleep, nerves frayed from the crying—hers and mine. It’s not that I didn’t want to go out, that I didn’t want him, it was that I couldn’t. I was consumed by Harper, by her milk-sweet smell, her velvet-soft skin, by the warmth and weight of her, by how much she needed me.
And, I wanted to know, if we did go out—who was going to get up with her in the middle of the night? Who was going to make her a bottle in the morning if we drank too much, were hungover, too sick to get out of bed? Not him. Never him. Where was his sacrifice? I was the one who’d given up my body, yes, willingly, of course, willingly, but what had he given up? Nothing. Not a thing.
But I tried. When Harper began sleeping for four-hour stretches instead of three, when I weaned her from my breasts, I put myself back in the box. In his box. I dressed up and smiled. I sucked his dick again. And I agreed to move, to uproot our lives. I left my job and my friends and my support system. For him. For us. Because he promised things would be different. That they’d be better. But instead, he removed my heart from my chest and crushed it with a sledgehammer.
So when he told me I wasn’t the woman he married anymore, like it was something he could no longer abide, I threw a glass and started screaming. The night dragged on for hours, slogged on, yelling and shouting, then a blur of red-and-blue lights. When it was over, the sun rising, I knew nothing would ever be the same. How could it be?
“I had no idea,” Sloane says to Jay. Her voice is hushed.
Jay goes on. “We agreed to live together through the divorce proceedings, but we’ve been sleeping in separate bedrooms, living two separate lives. The only time we talk is around Harper, or about her. Up until recently—right around the time she met you, now that I think about it—she wouldn’t even look at me. Lately, it’s been better, though; she’s been pleasant, friendlier than she’s been in a long time.”
This is what he thinks Sloane wants to hear, what it will take to convince her to sleep with him. If he could only hear how it sounds, if he was just a little bit smarter, he might put two and two together. But it just wouldn’t be fair if he had looks and brains, right?
“Do you think she wants to get back together?” Sloane asks. I almost laugh out loud. Even though it’s what I’m pretending to want, I’d rather choke on my tongue.
Jay nods slowly. “Maybe? But it’s over. For me, at least. I think she knows that. I’ve made it clear.” See? he’s trying to say, I’m a stand-up guy. A good guy. Are you wet yet?
Sloane doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, then finally, she asks, “Why did you come on this trip?”
Jay sighs. “For Harper. Violet said she wanted to keep as much normalcy as we could. I said no, but she begged me. She wanted Harper to have one last happy memory of her family together.”
“I can’t believe she didn’t tell me,” Sloane says softly. I have to lean closer to the window to hear. “I wish I’d have known.”
Is she upset that I didn’t tell her the truth about me and Jay? That I lied? I hold back a snort. Come on, Sloane, really?
“You’re a good friend,” Jay says. He reaches out and tucks a strand of Sloane’s hair behind her ear. My stomach turns. I can’t believe this shit used to work on me.
They both fall silent. A minute passes, then two.
Finally, Sloane shifts. “I should go to bed,” she says.
I can see Jay’s head nodding. “Me too.”
Carefully, I sneak back up the stairs. My blood burns hotly in my veins, anger boiling, simmering. Jay’s lies burrow under my skin like a tick, latching and feeding, making me sick. He’d told Sloane a sliver of the truth, a tiny, microscopic piece; the rest was bullshit.
Shortly after I close my door, I hear the door to Sloane’s room shut, too. Briefly, I wonder if Jay followed her upstairs, into her bedroom, but a minute later the doorknob to our bedroom turns. I squeeze my eyes shut. I feel the mattress shift as he climbs into bed next to me.
It’s time. I was going to give it a few more days, but I can’t wait any longer.
Strike while the iron is hot, isn’t that the saying?