Vivian
Seeing her name alongside Oscar’s in the New York Times makes Vivian’s pulse race, like they’re too exposed for their own good. After that first night, she and Oscar stole minutes together whenever they could. Their hands brushed as they carried their plates from family dinner to the dishwasher. They stayed at Della well past closing time, right up until the moment he’d retreat to the apartment he owned with his wife. Of course they were professionals about it all. They kept their heads. Nobody at the restaurant ever suspected anything. Vivian was relieved—not only that this wasn’t affecting her work, but also that it was just a fling. She couldn’t get hurt.
As it turned out, however, he liked things about her that other men never did: her naked ambition, her blunt tongue, the sass that came roaring out after a couple of glasses of cab. He admitted her palate for wine was better than his. She fell for him by accident, turned on by his surefire confidence and gregarious command of the room. She liked the deep, rumbling crack of his laughter, especially once she realized that nobody else made him sound quite like that. She appreciated the challenging lilt to his voice; it brought out the best in her. Around Oscar, Vivian felt like the sharpest, boldest, sexiest version of herself. The first year flew by in a dizzying blur. She’d never been happier. Her work had never been better—she felt energized, creative, deliciously alive.
Last summer, although Vivian didn’t know it, she was packing for her last trip to Fox Hill Lake with her dad. She was moving back and forth from her narrow closet to the suitcase splayed open on the bed. Oscar, shirtless and barefoot in the open kitchen, was making coffee using the fancier machine he’d bought when he started spending more time at her apartment.
“So, tell me about this place,” he said. He’d given her the week off. “It’s special to you, isn’t it?”
“To my dad,” she corrected, sorting through her pile of swimsuits to find a few she could comfortably wear around him.
“But you’re going.”
“It’s a free vacation.”
“You can afford a real vacation.” Oscar frowned. “Or am I not paying you enough?”
Women more ruthless than herself would use this opportunity to secure a healthy raise, but she didn’t want to take advantage of him. It’d feel cheap.
“You pay me fine,” she insisted.
Oscar appraised the gauzy white dress she’s folding. “I can’t picture you there. A dress like that belongs in Bali, Tulum—not on some backwoods lake.”
She struggled to put her thoughts into words. “It’s like turkey on Thanksgiving, you know? It’s flavorless, dry, it puts you to sleep, nobody actually likes it. But every year, you make the turkey anyway because that’s just what you do. That’s how I feel about Maine.” She paused. “And I’ll be honest, it is pretty up there.”
“If I ever visited,” he said, joining her on the burgundy duvet and delivering a mug, “what would it be like?”
A ridiculous question. He’d be out of place for sure, even more so than she is. But with Oscar in tow, the idea of Fox Hill Lake sounded more alluring. They could paddle out to the island, eat fried-clam lunches on the back deck, savor a bottle of sauvignon blanc as the sun slips behind the blue hills on the horizon. He could see how the forces of nature rule the lake, the same way they shape the grapes that become wine. A twisted part of her could see him getting along with her dad. Hank’s already said he’s impressed by Oscar’s success. At thirty and forty-two, she and Oscar are a dozen years apart—exactly like Oscar and Hank. And if anyone could hear their story without judgment, wouldn’t it be her dad?
Her phone was buried under a mess of clothes, so Vivian grabbed Oscar’s off the nightstand and punched in his passcode: 0625, the birthdate of his hero, Anthony Bourdain.
On Google Maps, she typed in the lake house’s address to show him where it is: a blip of blue on an expanse of green.
“Maybe someday,” he said, kissing her temple.
Three months ago, when Carla flew to Cleveland for her cousin’s baby shower, Vivian and Oscar had an entire delectable weekend together. Normally, he’d go over to her cramped studio; by comparison, his two-bedroom apartment was a palace bathed in natural light. Vivian peered at Carla’s unfamiliar things: her faded Buckeyes sleep shirt hanging over the lip of a white wicker hamper; a copy of Michelle Obama’s memoir with a sticker on the front proclaiming it’s signed (the spine hasn’t been cracked); her deep conditioner formulated for color-treated hair (this reminded Vivian to vacuum and wipe down the shower and change the sheets, lest one of her own dark hairs stayed behind and ruined everything). She touched nothing.
On Sunday morning, she rose from Oscar’s warm bed and quietly crept into the bathroom. One single sheet of toilet paper hung limply over the roll. Vivian opened the cabinet beneath the sink, hoping to find more, which she did. Next to a stack of pregnancy tests.
When she crawled back into bed, Oscar slung one leg over Vivian and pulled her close. Carla’s flight home was that evening.
“Morning,” he mumbled into her hair.
She stared at the wall over his shoulder. He nuzzled her stiff neck.
“You okay?” he murmured.
She didn’t want to ask the question because she might get an answer she didn’t like. But she asked anyway.
“Why are there pregnancy tests in your cabinet?”
His soft grip on her hip tensed ever so slightly. “Are those still there? They’re old.”
“How old?”
“Years.”
“I didn’t think you were trying.”
“Originally, we were both on the fence—maybe me a little more than her—but we figured…if it happened, it happened. Now, though, I mean, she and I don’t even touch in our sleep. I’m right on the edge of the bed.” Then he kissed Vivian’s neck. In a voice like molten chocolate, he said, “Thank you for giving me a reason to sleep closer to the middle.”
Vivian was relieved.
“If I threw them out, she wouldn’t even notice,” Oscar added.
She kissed him on the lips. “Good.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said. “I want you to stay here every night.”
She’d been having similar thoughts for weeks: She wanted more of him—maybe all of him. She hadn’t said anything about it yet because, well, Oscar was a married man. Married men never leave their wives. In Oscar’s case, Carla’s own father had bankrolled the launch of Della. A divorce would kill Oscar’s career and could put Vivian and the rest of the staff out of work, too. She knew not to beg for the impossible.
But he said it with such longing. He wanted her. He admired her, too: He asked the publicist to place Vivian on panels at food festivals and get her profiled in Bon Appétit. (She was working on it.) He clung to her words, preferring, for once, to listen instead of speak. Their relationship was a risk, but she always felt safe with him. So she said it. She put out the kind of suggestion you can’t walk back.
“You know, we could do this all the time if things were different,” she said, trailing her fingertips down his forearm, watching her nails drag across his dark hair.
“I know,” he said, staring at her sadly.
Heart pounding, she tried to keep her voice even. “And what would you think about that?”
He fidgeted with his wedding band, which Vivian always tried to ignore. It looked like Hank’s.
“I think about it all the time,” he croaked.
The room felt airless. Up until then, Vivian hadn’t let herself fully consider what would happen if Oscar were to leave his wife because she’d assumed he wouldn’t. If he did…it would be a thrill. A terrifying thrill. He rubbed his face. An eyelash flaked onto his cheek. Part of Vivian yearned to be a little girl whose troubles could be resolved by making a wish on it. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“Would you really want that?” he asked.
Oscar ran a finger gently along the ridge of her collarbone as he waited for her response. And for the first time, she let those thoughts unfurl. That day, the idea for the bar was born. They’d need to find new investors—a lengthy, difficult task, yes, but not necessarily impossible. Once they locked in the money, their future as a couple in public could begin.
Lucy
Harrison offers to pick up Lucy and drive her over to Foxy Roxy’s for dinner, but that place is teeming with everyone she’s ever known, Patrick included. She’d never be able to relax there. Instead, she suggests they meet at the Clam Shack, one of her favorite spots two towns over, and he agrees.
When she arrives, she spots him leaning against the side of the building. She struggles to hold cheerful eye contact for the full twenty seconds it takes to walk across the parking lot. She doesn’t know where to look. How do people learn these things? The last time Lucy felt this lost on a date, she was fifteen years old. (Reader, she married him.)
“Hi,” he says, offering her the lightest graze of a hug. “Thanks for coming out on such short notice. You look beautiful.”
It’s the simplest compliment, but it catches her off guard anyway. Patrick fell in love with her when she was a wisp of a teenager; once her thighs filled out and her belly turned soft, she wasn’t sure how he felt about her appearance and didn’t want to ask. He’d offer up “cute” or, if she put on a dress and prompted him, “pretty.” But “beautiful” hadn’t been in rotation for a long time.
“Thank you,” she says as Harrison opens the door for her.
The place still has a kind of retro charm, with a red-and-white-striped awning, warm wood-paneled walls, checkerboard floors, and a lengthy section of the menu dedicated to milkshakes.
“Table for two?” he asks the waitress.
As she takes them to a booth, Lucy scans the room, dreading the possibility of spotting Patrick. She breathes a little easier once she realizes they’re in the clear—that is, until she and Harrison are sitting face-to-face. She’s close enough to see there’s a freckle near his left pupil, and a dimple that flexes when he smiles. She didn’t know regular people outside Hollywood had cheekbones like that and finds herself nearly too shy to speak. What had she been thinking, pretending she could do this?
“Long time, no see. How’s it going?” he asks.
Her laugh is strangled. “Um. Well.”
She flicks through recent events, searching for anything remotely attractive to discuss. Losing her job? Crying over her dead dad? Yearning for the husband she’s still married to? Accusing her half-sister of swanning around on a life raft of money in a sea of clueless privilege? One minute in, the conversation is already a choose-your-own-adventure book with doom on every page.
“Well, I’m a teacher, so I’m off work for the summer,” Lucy says, a little too brightly. Technically, it’s not a lie. “I spent the afternoon reading outside—that’s kind of my perfect afternoon.”
“You teach English?”
She’s sinking. Does she?
“Eleventh and twelfth grade.”
“What’s your favorite book to teach?”
“ Pride and Prejudice . It never gets old.” Especially now that she isn’t guaranteed another year of teaching it. “The kids think it’s going to be this musty, ancient thing, but then they discover it’s still so relatable.”
“That’s a good one.”
“You think so?”
The girls in class are usually on board. The guys typically couldn’t care less.
He leans forward on his elbows. “Don’t act so surprised. It’s a classic. I like to read all sorts of things.”
A waitress interrupts them. “You ready?”
Lucy rattles off her usual order: a basket of fried clam bellies with tartar sauce, a side of fries, and a vanilla milkshake.
“I’ll trust you. Two of everything, please,” he says.
Bursting with nerves and guilt, Lucy sits on her hands and watches the waitress scribble notes.
The moment she’s gone, Lucy exhales. “I actually got laid off yesterday.”
He winces. “I’m so sorry, that’s terrible.”
Fortunately, he sounds sincere, not turned off. It’s a relief to have at least a shred of the truth out there.
“I’m freaking out,” she admits.
“Oh, I bet. I get it, I was laid off once.”
“Really?”
They get to know each other. Before Patrick bought her a cone of mint chocolate chip ice cream on their first date, she had already known all the scraps of someone else’s life you’re bound to accumulate in a town of two thousand people. He’s the youngest of three boys. His dad owns a landscaping business. He broke his arm falling off a dirt bike in fifth grade, and his best friend, Brody—later the best man in their wedding—scrawled “POOP” on the cast in Sharpie. He had once gotten detention for running across the middle school’s soccer field in his boxers on a dare from friends…in February. He still doesn’t mind wearing shorts in winter, as long as it’s over forty degrees. If Lucy had met Harrison on a dating app, she’d at least know a few basics: his age, where he went to school, where he lives. But up until five minutes ago, Lucy only knew that his name is Harrison and that he has a library card.
But she learns. As they eat, he shares that he grew up in Portland and still works there as an attorney at his dad’s company. He was in Fox Hill the other day to visit some relatives on the lake. She offers up that she’s applying for jobs around his hometown, which gets a small smile out of him. He likes late-night talk shows and buys too many cookbooks. He’s been meaning to take a woodworking class but hasn’t gotten around to it.
Lucy likes the sound of his life. When he asks about hers, she scrubs Patrick from her story as if he never existed at all. She’s been vulnerable enough for one night.
“Any siblings?” he asks.
“No,” she says on autopilot. She rarely spoke about Vivian to anyone other than her husband and her best friends. “Well, sort of. A half-sister. We didn’t grow up together.”
“Are you close?”
She can’t help but snort. Her eyes widen at her own sound.
“Sorry, no, it’s just that she’s…difficult. It’s like we’re from two different planets.”
He nods. She overshared, didn’t she?
“Is she on your mom’s side or your dad’s?”
It’s such a simple question, and yet it catches Lucy off guard.
“Um.” She’s horrified to feel herself welling up. Her date is about to crumble like a kicked-over sandcastle. She stares down at her meal, refusing to let a tear fall. “My dad’s? It’s complicated.”
When she eventually looks up, his expression is sympathetic, not pitying.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” he offers.
She’s grateful that he doesn’t dig further. At first, there’s a natural lull in the conversation, but then it stretches on for too long.
A loud roar erupts from a rowdy table of eight—a welcome distraction. A rowdy group of young guys is doing shots, exuberantly whistling and goading each other on. Lucy wouldn’t have guessed the Clam Shack had shot glasses. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it doesn’t: They’re clutching the same shallow plastic cups her tartar sauce came in.
“Summer people,” she mutters.
Harrison turns around. “You think?”
They’re dressed in T-shirts from private colleges and otherworldly-looking sneakers you’d never find at Famous Footwear. One has dared to don a Yankees cap.
“Absolutely. They can clog up Portland—sorry—or Kennebunkport or Bar Harbor, whatever. But small towns like these don’t have much in the way of restaurants, bars, attractions, you know? It’s not…” She searches for the right word, thinking of the luxurious locales Celeste Levy writes about. “This isn’t Vacationland.” Maine’s slogan. It adorns every license plate in the state.
“Parts of it are going that way, but is that necessarily such a bad thing?”
Her mind flashes to a political dynasty retreating to Fox Hill, the way the Bushes do in Kennebunkport, hikers and leaf peepers and lobster lovers infiltrating every corner of her hometown, bachelorette parties renting out houses just to use the lake as a backdrop for Instagram.
“No, it’s already outrageous. These perfectly homey cabins that have been in families for generations get knocked down by out-of-towners building flashy ‘farmhouse-style’ mansions to use a few weeks a year. I don’t get it—if someone wants that look, there are plenty of actual farmhouses around here.”
For a second, she loses her focus, imagining Hank’s warm, lovingly scuffed house—a place with real character—replaced with the cookie-cutter sterility of new construction, all white and greige with faux-marble counters. She’s railing against the exact problem she could be complicit in. The shame is sickening.
Harrison laughs. “True.”
It’s time to get off her soapbox, but she can’t. She refuels with a sip of milkshake.
“I see ‘For Sale’ signs everywhere these days, and these houses are going for double or triple what people around here can afford. How is that fair? The real estate agents are vultures. If Fox Hill gets overrun by outsiders, they can move on to the next vacation town. We can’t.”
The waitress stops by to clear their plates, curbing Lucy’s ramble.
“I’m sorry, that was a lot,” Lucy says.
“No, I understand,” Harrison says. “Tons of people from New York and Boston moved up to Portland during the pandemic. Property values nearly doubled.”
Pushing the idea of a life there further and further into fantasyland.
The waitress drops the check in the middle of the table.
“Let’s split it,” Lucy says, reaching for her wallet.
The thought of spending money without a guaranteed paycheck in sight nauseates her, but she isn’t sure what the etiquette is. She’s pretty sure men still typically pay on the first date but doesn’t want to seem greedy or entitled if she’s wrong.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to get it,” Harrison says.
Her stomach unclenches. “Are you sure?”
He admonishes her good-naturedly. “Lucy, even if you weren’t just laid off, it’d be my pleasure.”
Lucy feels strangely taken care of. It’s not new to have a man cover her bill—she and Patrick typically alternated paying at restaurants—but that felt ordinary, not romantic.
She tucks away her wallet. “Well, thank you so much for dinner. This was lovely.”
She isn’t exaggerating. If he’d been too forward or asked invasive questions, she would’ve panicked, but tonight has been just right.
His dimple flexes in a way that gives her a nervous thrill. “It really was.”
Later he’s saying something as he accompanies her to her car, but she doesn’t have the bandwidth to listen. She’s mentally flipping through every romance novel she’s ever read, zooming in on the first dates. This should end with a good-night kiss, shouldn’t it? She’d be crazy not to want that—Harrison is gentle and kind. He’s been nice to her. He’s hot . But as they’re walking across the parking lot, all she can think is, Please don’t kiss me, don’t kiss me, don’t kiss me. Lucy’s married. She loves Patrick. It would be excruciatingly wrong.
“Mm. Yeah,” she says as they reach her car, sensing that’s likely the right response.
She gulps in air as she fumbles for her keys, not quite able to look at him. He seemed to enjoy dinner together and she feels guilty for shutting down like this. She doesn’t want to disappoint him or waste his time. When she finally looks up at him, though, his smile is polite, nothing more. His hands don’t leave his pockets. She freezes as Harrison’s gaze slides to her mouth, and then he blinks.
He clears his throat and takes a step back. “Well, thanks for coming to dinner.”
Her cheeks burn as she nods. “Of course, thank you for inviting me.”
A shadow flickers across his features as he gently touches her arm. “Have a good night.”
Lucy sinks into her car in a confused daze. Harrison asked her out. He called her beautiful. He seemed to like her. And then he pulled away? She wasn’t ready for a kiss, but she’s embarrassed by the rejection, too. She puts the radio on to drown out her thoughts, but the song that fills the car is an old Taylor Swift ballad that reminds her of falling in love with Patrick. She jams her finger into the dashboard and lands on an infomercial. She doesn’t care enough to find anything better. As she drives home, the last peach-pink rays of sun slip away. She missed the sunset. The sacrifice hadn’t been worth it.
Vivian
Vivian had known this New York Times piece was coming. The reporter had contacted Oscar weeks ago. She was with him, eating blintzes and borscht at B&H Dairy, an East Village hole-in-the-wall Carla would never visit, when he got the email. The interview happened the next week—he thought it went well—and the photo shoot was set for the end of June. Carla had wanted him to wear his charcoal Polo Ralph Lauren suit and his navy Hermès tie.
“Roll up your shirt sleeves and throw the jacket over your arm,” Vivian suggested in bed when Carla was in an hours-long cut-and-color appointment. “Skip the tie. Undo a couple buttons.”
He smirked. “You want me to undress for the New York Times ?”
The vision delighted her. God, the zing of chemistry was still there.
Splaying her hand across his chest, she said, “No, I want you to undress for me and only me.”
Recently they’d had a promising meeting with an investor, and it had gotten their hopes up that Oscar would be free of Carla sooner rather than later. They couldn’t wait: He had tucked a suitcase under Vivian’s bed with stacks of emergency cash, some underwear and shirts, the James Beard Award he won for Outstanding Restaurateur last year. She daydreamed about the sweet relief of living openly—no more pretending to be single in front of her family, no more last-minute cancellations she had to suck up and forgive because he had to save face with his wife, no more requesting the Valentine’s Day shift to avoid spending the evening alone.
“Looking boring, professional, stuffy —that’s the wrong move here,” she said. “That won’t make Della the hottest restaurant in town. You know what would? You looking like every woman’s fantasy.”
“I don’t need to be every woman’s fantasy,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, pulling her closer and grinning through a heady kiss. “Just yours.”
She felt drunk off his words—buzzed, giddy, weightless.
“You know I’m right,” she said, rolling on top of him.
And those were the last words either of them spoke for the rest of the afternoon. The next day, the promising investor called back to say he’d decided to go in a different direction. They were crushed.
If Oscar skipped the tie, she thinks, it will mean he’s truly committed to her. His silence right now is a fluke. He loves her.
If he’s wearing a tie, she’s in trouble.
She clicks, then scrolls down in a frenzy.
No tie.
Breathless, she skims the piece to see how prominently he was featured (fairly so) and if there was any mention of her wine program (briefly). Then she rereads it slowly from the top. The review heaps praise on the inspired seasonal menu and stylish atmosphere, though noting that certain creative dishes try too hard. The writer calls the wine list a “thoughtfully curated” mix of little-known producers with big flavors, which makes Vivian flush with pride. Oscar comes across as decisive, sure-footed, original, tuned in to what diners want before they realize it themselves.
Vivian studies the photo, hoping to see traces of puffy eyes or dark circles—something to hint that he’d been missing her—and comes up empty-handed. It’s an upsettingly handsome portrait. His dark eyes, his best feature, glint alluringly. For one brief moment, Vivian considers if she should text him congratulations. After all, no tie.
The screen lights up with Oscar’s name. Finally. Relief flows through Vivian like bubbly streaming down a five-tier Champagne tower. She makes him wait, then picks up at the last minute.
Her resolve melts immediately. “Hi,” she says, more softly than she should. Anger hasn’t kept her from missing him. “There you are.”
Oscar’s breath sounds shallow. When he finally speaks, his voice is pinched.
“Hi.”
Something is wrong. She slides onto the wooden floor and slumps against the bed.
“Did you get my voicemail?” she asks.
“Your voicemail?” The way he says it, it’s like Vivian asked him to locate his last dry-cleaning bill or his sixth-grade math homework. Irrelevant. “Oh. Yeah.”
“And?”
“We need to talk.”
The worst four words in the English language. “Okay.”
Already, she’s firing up arguments for why she’s being reasonable, not clingy. She’s litigating his absence in her head, ready to list off all the ways in which he’s fallen short when she needed him most. She’s so high on self-righteous fury, she doesn’t see the curveball coming.
Oscar sighs. “Carla’s pregnant.”
Vivian’s blood runs cold. “What?”
“I’ve been trying to find the right time to tell you. We found out the morning your dad died, and I didn’t want to upset you then, and then there was Lucy…”
She’s too shocked to speak.
“She’s nine weeks now. She’s been really sick, throwing up constantly. It’s been hectic with doctors’ appointments and everything. We’re not telling anybody yet.”
We. Him and Carla. That word used to mean him and Vivian.
“I don’t understand. You weren’t trying anymore. You weren’t ever really trying at all.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I didn’t think you were sleeping together .”
“Almost never,” he says miserably.
“Well, clearly something happened.”
“It was just once or twice recently, and she—”
“I’m sorry, which was it?”
“What?”
“Once or twice? Isn’t that the kind of thing you’d remember?”
There’s a brutal silence.
“Well, she’s been reading this book about intimacy. She heard about it on a podcast and—”
They’ve fought plenty of times before, usually over Oscar canceling on Vivian at the last minute, but not like this. He’d own up to his mistakes, no excuses. He’s never squirmed like this.
“How. Many. Times?”
Oscar clears his throat. “Three.”
Vivian feels like she’s sinking. “That’s not fair to me.”
“I know. I feel terrible about it. I wish this wasn’t happening. I’m really sorry, Vivian.”
“You’re sorry?” Vivian echoes, brittle enough to snap. “You’re really sorry. Oh, that’s helpful. Amazing, thanks.”
“Viv—”
“Do you know what I’ve been doing, Oscar, while you’ve been tending to your pregnant wife?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve been trying to sell my dad’s beloved house so we— you and I—can go off on our own and build a life together out in the fucking open. Every step of the way, his love child has been pouting and crying and trying to stop me. I feel like a stone-cold bitch, but I’m doing it for us. And you don’t even care enough to text me back.”
Rage illuminates each word. Vivian has been good and quiet and lonely and secretive for two long years, waiting for freedom, waiting for her sacrifices to pay off. Meanwhile, Oscar has been getting laid and offering his wife saltines.
“We can still do that,” he says earnestly. “You and me. Together.”
“Right,” she says, dripping with contempt.
She’d fantasized about it in mouthwatering detail: Mornings in a shared apartment with golden light seeping through gauzy curtains. His espresso machine on the kitchen counter, her decanter in the cabinet above. Ten days off in January for his birthday to eat and drink their way through Argentina. His arm slung around her waist in public. Dropping a container of Greek yogurt and a box of pasta into a single shopping cart. Joint signatures at the bottom of a new commercial lease.
Now she sees a diaper bag. Smells a diaper bag. Imagines dull logistical conversations about pickup times and nap schedules stretching out into infinity. He wouldn’t really leave Carla after all. The slivers of time he can carve out for Vivian would disintegrate even further. She’d strain to get crumbs from him.
“I love you,” he says. “This doesn’t have to change anything.”
It already has.
“I’ve been needing more of you, Oscar. Not less.”
“I want to be here for you,” he urges.
The tenderness in his voice kills her. She can’t subsist on nice words and pretty intentions anymore.
“Well, you’re not,” she snaps. “We’re done.”